DISSERVICE, ANGLO-AMERICAN STYLE

DISSERVICE,
ANGLO-AMERICAN STYLE

James R. Rosenfield

October 2003

"Yahftsenlaunbine."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Yahftsenlaunbine."

"I'm awfully sorry, but I can't understand you."

"Yooooo haff t' sen' you laundry out b' nine!"

"But…but it's only 8:45!"

"Has tooo b' peeked op b' th' outside laundry place b' nine."

"But it says on the laundry ticket 'In by 9:00 am, back by 6:00 pm.'"

"Hoickwaedeenamf…"

I'll admit it: I slammed the phone down in frustration at that point.

Welcome to the wonderful world of British service, early 21st Century, as delivered by the Trafalgar Hilton hotel.

I approached a young fellow disguised as a concierge, and asked if he had a tube map. He looked at me as if I were speaking Ukrainian.

"Toomup????"

"Yes, you know, a map that shows you how to get around on the underground?"

"Uhgroun????"

"Yes, yes, the underground?"

"We don' haff eny."

I mean, can you imagine a hotel in the middle of London not keeping a supply of tube maps? And a supposed concierge not at least offering to fetch one for me, or at a minimum telling me where I could get one?

The fashion in London right now is for young people to speak in a maddening slur, a trend that according to my British friends has begun to infest the BBC itself. The Trafalgar Hilton, wonderfully located across the square from the National Gallery and a mere hop from St. James Park, is an effort to compete with boutique hotels. It's small, has a young staff wearing black and speaking slur language, and is filled with ersatz hip. I would sell Hilton short this minute if they were staking any of their future on this strategy.

One night I returned at 1:00 am to find the door locked. There was a bell, which I rang for a maddening 10 minutes before yet another untrained incompetent opened up for me. I started to say, "Are you in the hotel business or in the prison business," but I realized I wouldn't be able to understand him anyway, so I stalked upstairs in a fury.

Service has declined in London in the several years since I last visited. Some of it, I think, has to do with the class system eroding. Formerly there were those born to serve, and those born to be served. Now most people are born to serve badly and be served badly, which is a lot more egalitarian, although maddening in a daily life sense.

There are some exceptions. Pret a Manger is a ubiquitous coffee/sandwich/salad shop that has relatively fresh food (it's hard to get beyond that "relatively" in the foodlorn U.K.) and consistently cheery, perky sales clerks. The perkiness would drive you crazy in the U.S., which already has too much of it, but it's very refreshing in London. Pret also has a good web site.

I'm picking on London a bit because I was just there, but what I'm complaining about occurs too much in too many places, including the U.S., whose service reputation overseas is belied by what happens when you live here day after day. In the case of certain companies, like American Airlines, service can sometimes veer way beyond ill training and indolence into a twisted netherworld of sheer hostility.

Happy employees make for happy customers, and vice versa, in a virtuous circle. American Airlines, narrowly escaping bankruptcy earlier this year, has laid off thousands of flight attendants, and on many occasions (according to said flight attendants) lied cheerily to their faces. None of this makes for great attitude.

Flying home from London, I was sitting on the ground at Heathrow in the first class section of an American Airlines slumliner - they don't clean the planes much these days. In first class they give you Bose headphones that block noise, handy for sleeping or ignoring the two drunken businesslouts sitting behind you. I noticed that everyone had a pair but me, so when I saw a flight attendant walk past me with a pair of Boses in her hand, I politely asked if I could have them.

She looked at me as if I were covered with maggots, and said "I'm right now working on the other aisle, and I'll get to you when I'm ready!"

May I remind you that this is first class, I was polite - in fact I was subservient, having learned that's the best way to get something on American Airlines - and that also I happen to have 5,300,000 miles on this abominable airline.

One time last year we flew from San Diego to Paris on American. Our plane out of San Diego was late, so we missed our connection. Upon exiting in Boston, we were met by three American Airlines people, one of whom handed us new tickets routing us by way of New York, one of whom asked for luggage descriptions so that he could absolutely ensure that the bags be shipped on to Paris with us, the last of whom shepherded us to a secret VIP lounge. Wow!

We landed at Charles DeGaulle, went out to the baggage carrousel, and waited…and waited…and waited…and then that sinking feeling crept through our consciousnesses like a miasma. It took 48 hours, after numerous French lies in Paris and English lies in the U.S. ("They'll be on the next flight") before we got our bags.

I hate American Airlines. Or at least I did on those days. And I'm telling a bunch of people about my experiences, aren't I, confirming the worldwide finding that unresolved problems elicit an average of 15 retellings. And if those 15 people tell 15 people etc. pretty soon everyone who flies on planes would know the story. And of course the Internet potentially makes word of mouth a mass medium.

To complete a partial survey of (sort of) English speaking countries, service has declined in the U.S. and in Britain, but has improved a great deal in Australia. When I first started visiting that country in 1988, service was either nonexistent or delivered with a palpable chip on the shoulder. It had much to do with the famous Aussie egalitarianism, the polar opposite of England at that point. The serving person in Sydney had first to make the implicit statement "I'm as good as you, mate" before he or she could get down to giving you some coffee. That's now changed completely, as Australia itself has over the last 15 years.

In Canada, everyone is polite to everyone else all the time. Not in the U.S., for sure…

"CASES OF 'CUSTOMER RAGE" MOUNT AS BAD SERVICE PROMPTS VENTING"

That's the headline of a story in the September 17, 2003 Wall Street Journal.

"A new report by the Virginia-based Customer Care Alliance found that 8% of frustrated consumers say they have cursed at a customer-service rep in the past year; and 28% said they have yelled or raised their voice. It is part of a growing trend dubbed 'customer rage…'"

"The findings were part of a national telephone survey of 1,094 households…The chief conclusion of the report: U.S. companies are driving their customers crazy.

"Forty-five percent of households reported at least one 'serious problem' in the past year…more than two-thirds of those customers had experienced 'rage' over the way the incident was handled. Sixteen percent of respondents said they desired 'revenge' on the company, and 3% took legal action.

"The study also suggests that frustration is mounting. The authors compared the results of the 2003 study with a similar report on customer satisfaction conducted by the U.S. government three decades ago. That report, released in 1976, before the rise of call centers and the multibillion-dollar customer-care-center industry (italics mine), found that only 32% of respondents reported experiencing a serious problem in the past year."

So, in a generation, customer dissatisfaction in the U.S. has increased a whopping 41%! And don't blame the stresses of contemporary life. The mid-'70s were a wretched period in America, filled with civic strife, crime in the streets, bankrupt cities, and a lousy economy. To continue:

"Sixty-two percent of respondents said they wanted a chance to vent and tell their side of the story. Fifty-nine percent wanted an apology. Yet few respondents got what they sought. Only 1% felt they got the chance to vent, and just 5% reported receiving an apology. In the end, half of complainants reported that they had received 'nothing,' and just 18% reported feeling completely satisfied.

"Ninety percent of the angry customers reported they shared the story with friends."

Pretty damning, isn't it?

And pretty ironic. The more companies natter on about customer care and Customer Relationship Management (a buzz term that appears to be on its last legs, thank God!), the worse things get.

All of these horrors occur in spite of everyone supposedly knowing the basics of customer service, which are:

--At the very least acknowledge the customer. This means a smile and eye contact if someone has to wait at a retail counter, and something better than the execrable "Your business is important to us, so wait for the rest of your life" when you're put on hold at a call center.

--Give the customer a chance to regain a sense of control, easily and quickly. This means the afore-mentioned acknowledgment, but it also means giving people maximum channels. Having an 800-number on a Web site, for example, ensures a minimum of frustration when (not if) the computer crashes or the Web site misbehaves.

--Get things fixed. That's how customers become advocates. An unfixed problem puts you in the firing line of 15 retellings of the customer's story, each one a bit more exaggerated, human nature being what it is. Fixing things has the opposite effect: "What a great job these guys did of taking care of me!"

--Always remember: It's almost never the problem itself that's the killer. It's what you do about it.