What happened to the quality of customer service and professionalism these days? It seems lately the level of customer service has rapidly declined over the years, more people are getting short with customers and do come off as extremely rude. For example if you were call someplace to get a question answered the person on the other end of the line is impatient and curt. I had called into Dell with a computer problem and when you call after a certain time you’re getting someone from overseas instead of an American. The person I talked to was pretty short and impatient as if my time isn’t valuable. This is where business goes sour when you have customer service workers acting short when customers who call in aren’t rude to them. They treat you like as if you were the last customer and not acting very professional. This was even noticed at fast food restaurants with these younger workers copping an attitude when professionalism is everything.
It never hurts to bring some of that to the job because in this day and age people are making minimum wage so that can attribute to the attitude, but a person who appreciates having a job will have a professional and courteous attitude. You go on some job sites and people are sitting around talking, surfing the net, and gossiping about things that shouldn’t be discussed at the office or work setting. The hard part is that this is a rampant problem among African-Americans. You go someplace where the majority of the employees are African-American, you’ll see them standing around talking, and even joking and flirting with customers, another example was when I made a trip to a local Radio Shack in my neighborhood for some accessories for a phone and a male salesperson greeted me, but then started joking and flirting and his co-workers standing around laughing like it was funny when that’s not professional behavior for a workplace. There’s a time and place for the flirting and joking around, but your job isn’t the place for it.
When do customers say enough with the crappy customer service and unprofessional behavior? What would make a lot of sense is customers utilizing the surveys that are offered to them because many businesses don’t know how they’re doing unless the customers are speaking up about the service they got. It’s important to let the managers and supervisors of businesses and establishments you patronize about how their employees are and let them know what they need to improve and you would be surprised how powerful customer comments and input is for a business to improve the quality of their service(s) and improve how they hire the people who work for them. When supervisors and managers review the feedback they receive this will give them the incentive to hire or fire those who are not fitting the company image in terms of how they carry the purpose of the business and the customers they provide a service for.
A paying customer is entitled to good service and not dealing with employees and workers who have nasty, unprofessional attitudes and don’t greet customers with a friendly tone. If businesses took customer feedback seriously you would see a bigger increase in more professional and courteous customer service standards. So anytime the place you patronize offer feedback cards or forms fill them out and if necessary write a personal letter either postal or email to the supervisor or manager and give them your feedback.
Managers, supervisors and owners appreciate when customers take the time to give them feedback because that helps them improve the quality of service of their businesses. When we let businesses know what is and what was not acceptable in terms of service and quality standards the level of customer service and professionalism will get better over time.