Having worked for a company that has always held customer service in the highest regard, it has now become a sad state of affairs that many others have gone the opposite way.

It used to be possible to simply phone or e-mail a business, but this is no longer the case. You now have to go on-line via a ‘chat system’, most of which are automated, and are not fit for purpose.

This takes much longer to type in your request or concern, and wait for another automated response that hopefully should resolve the issue, but rarely does. So, after failed attempts liaising with a cyber-bot, you get placed in a long queue waiting for a customer service representative.

Then you hear the same old recorded messages of “we are experiencing higher than average calls” and “your call is important to us”.

Any e-mails that you receive from these companies are ‘No Reply’ and do not list an alternative contact option, apart from the web chat as stated above.

Within the past two months, I have had issues with three very large companies, two of which were regarding orders that I placed, but they had made an error. A simple call or response to their e-mail would have resolved these, but no, that would be far too simple and would mean using one of their members of staff.

It has now become a painful and time-consuming task when dealing with these companies, but hey, they are OK because happy customers are not their concern or priority.

KR (via email)