Customer Service Hell

Nothing sucks more than bad Customer Service! Will try to help as many of you as possible and also tag some executives along the way.

#CustomerServiceHell

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

We are in the middle of a Customer Service crisis.

Many companies continue to spend less and less in this area and view it as trivial. They're reducing headcount, increasing hold times, enforcing stingier refund policies, training their agents poorly, resorting to bots, and pretty much doing EVERYTHING in their power to save themselves as much money as possible at the expense of their users' time, money and sanity.

Well you know what?

It's time to take a stand.

This year, I encourage all of you to FIGHT for that refund or other compensation that you are owed. It's your hard-earned money and you should have it, not some careless entity that gave you terrible service.

Demand to speak to a Supervisor until an agent complies, even if they insist that it won't do anything.

Dispute charges with your credit or debit card.

Report companies to the Better Business Bureau and publicize their negligence on social media and Trustpilot.

Threaten to switch to a competitor and actually do it if you have to. If a business doesn't care about you, then they don't deserve your business.

And if the dollar amount that you are owed is substantial, take the company to Small Claims Court. It's easy to open a case and you can represent yourself.

These companies are relying on all of us to concede defeat and stomach the loss. And they're hoping that this status quo never changes.

Well screw that.

Let's change it. 🙌

#CustomerService #BadCustomerService #CustomerServiceHell #FridayFeeling #Motivation

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@AmbridgeMassive @virginmedia [email protected]

You're welcome. 😃

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted That particular comment was reserved for larger companies (including Chipotle, for the record).

For everyone else, I wouldn't automatically assume that the customers murdered customer service.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

Corporate Stockholm syndrome: When companies gut customer service to save money, and customers somehow convince themselves it's the other customers' fault.

Imagine defending the company that put you on hold for three hours by blaming the other customers stuck on hold. 🤦

[The_Count_of_Haunted_Crisco @CountHaunted]

@loobah_l Customer service was murdered by terrible customers. People forget how to behave in society during lockdowns.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@LauraJedeed @CrunchGym Ugh, that's awful. Have you tried contacting the manager of that branch?

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted There are 380,000 large businesses in the world. But even the smaller ones still have a responsibility to prioritize this. They're not immune to criticism.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted Sort of. Generally I think bad customer service is largely a result of corporate negligence and that it's a systemic issue that has gotten progressively worse over time.

The pandemic may have made some consumers more entitled, but I think the companies are the bigger issue.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted They're actually the best example of an industry that used to be good at this and then got progressively worse over time.

It took a few decades but here we are.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted Counterexample: Airlines.

They're all miserable at this and have been for a long time so it seems pretty intentional.

Several of them have profits in the hundreds of millions or billions.

What's their excuse?

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted Yes, great example, because every person who works at Chipotle is super nice and every customer is automatically an asshole.

Maybe if the manager trained their staff better everyone would be happier. Ultimately it's on him/her, doesn't need to be an executive in a suit.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted Fair enough, I missed that. My other points still stand though. You can't talk about consumers and not the extremely opportunistic businesses.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

First of all I never used the word "gutted". I said that customer service has been getting worse across industries for decades now (and deprioritized), which is quite literally the fault of the executives at these companies who are making the decision to do that.

And second, you're still suggesting that customers alone have killed customer service when there is a mountain of evidence of many companies being negligent in this area.

Two things can be correct at once. Some consumers may have gotten "shittier" (in your words), while companies have been getting worse at this for years.

Again, there's a common enemy here. If executives don't do this properly, it's going to make customers angrier and agents less prepared to deal with it.

And even as a former CS agent myself, I can acknowledge that there are "shitty" agents too.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

In this particular example we don't have a ton of information, other than an agent not being very empathetic. Telling a distressed couple, "Well, life just isn't fair" reflects poorly on how they were trained and how they should have handled this.

But you also made a generalization that the main problem with Customer Service is the consumers, and that it was magnified during the pandemic.

The reality is that, yes, there are bad consumers out there, but there are also extremely negligent companies that make this worse for everyone (users + agents). They are the common enemy here and they should not be ignored.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@CountHaunted I didn't think you were the customer in this situation. But to blame customer service on customers in general is just insane.

Take a look at it as a whole instead of just hospitality and you'll see the same patterns emerging across industries.

P.S. I worked in CS for 20+ years

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@loobah_l It was dying long before 2020, especially in the airline industry. Been going south for decades now.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@charizardavis You already live in the U.S. so you should be fine.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@UberEats You're nowhere to be found when your customers actually need help so that tracks.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@Suhail @bchesky $100M for parks but still refusing to fix his own company's miserable customer service.

I guess money talks when it gets you great PR.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@GerberKawasaki Should've ended decades ago Ross but they clearly have their money in the right pockets to have kept it going this long.

Enough is enough.

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

Whenever the U.S. government decides to enforce its already guilty April 2026 ruling that it operates as an illegal monopoly.

Could be decades.

Or never.

Nobody knows! That's part of the fun.

#Ticketmaster

[Customer Service Hell @SadCustomers]

@OnThatNoteTV Don't hold your breath. They haven't for the past three decades and are in no hurry to these days.