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I pledged money on 10/28 with the understanding that I would receive a subscription to Newsweek magazine. I never received a copy and when I followed up with Newsweek today they told me that they had no record of my order. Can you please trouble shoot this problem and let me know. My name is Steven Duke, 675 Tysens Ln 2-L, Staten Island NY. Please contact me at the above email address. thanks

godaddy is a company that does only one thing: answers the phone intelligently.

their actual business, registering people's domains and providing related services, is really an afterthought. i've been using them for almost 10 yrs now. they also follow up after an order -- when is the last time your doctor's office did that, let alone mac or another commodity seller?

godaddy's business would be successful if they rented donuts or painted skateboards...until the day they stop answering the phone intelligently.

godaddy and its customer service is a case study for the b school textbooks if ever there were one.

Never mind retail. Try dealing with a customer service representative at most government agencies.

Reaction to the customer service rep who called in. First, my condolences to him for the loss of his uncle. That said, people calling customer services already have a problem: something that has gone wrong with the product or service and needs to be fixed. They do not need a second problem to deal with, namely, a person in mourning. If the customer rep's personal grief interfered with his ability to do his job (and I can understand how it might), then he was not fit for work. This seems so elementary to me, and I'm surprised that nobody pointed this out to the poor fellow. Customer service is supposed to be about the customer's needs, that's why it's called "CUSTOMER service."

To A in Manhattan: Try accessing the site with a different browser. (Macs usually use Safari; so try Firefox or another browser instead.)

Verizon was trying to sell more services while I was attempting to resolve my problem. Couldn't believe it. Had to nicely say to the customer representative can we first deal with my problem.

The best customer service experience I've ever had was with Bose. The pair of headphones I had broke twice and both times the customer service rep apologized profusely and sent me a brand new pair right away. They kept saying "We're so sorry, this really shouldn't have happend!" They made it sound like they'd made some huge mistake. I kept thinking, "the headphones broke, no big deal." They were amazing when it came to dealing with my issue.

On a positive note: on two occasions I have had the customer service operators from heaven. Both times, these people said, essentially, we are going to work together and get this fixed. And they did. The 1st time it happened, with my health insurance company, I was doubly shocked. First to get a person the minute the phone was picked up, and the second was with this can-do attitude. The second time was a bank where I had gotten a runaround. "I don't know the answer, but I am going to find out for you right now." And she did.

Dell's customer service has tanked since they moved the bulk of it to the Philippines. I wrote them an e-mail with a question and they got back with me THREE MONTHS LATER! Pathetic.

We all have bad episodes with companies we deal with. I to find out how much you're appreciated by the corporations you do biz with, just try to cancel services.

AT&T, old Sprint, Netzero especially gave me a hard time, after I canceled paid service, they didn't even activate cancellation, I disputed the credit card bill, Netzero finally gave me a refund.

No problem with Cablevision though, we had minimal cable, and canceled it after a month.
Guess the competition is too close

Hate those recorded messages try

http://gethuman.com/

yep go directly to a human being no robots

I run www.linoto.com
Not trying to plug my business here, but I have several simple rules that have worked very well for me.

1.
Be friendly and accomodating. If you make a mistake offer a discount on the current or future purchases.

2.
Never put someone on hold for more than 30 seconds. If it will take longer, get a number and call back.

3.
Never let the customer feel that they have inconvenienced you- even if they have.

4.
Never let the customer in on the mundane operational details of your business as an excuse for why something's gone wrong. For example, "Our Fedex shipments are only picked up on Tuesdays." or "Only a manager can approve that kind of exchange" or "The computer system was down"

5.
Always ask for suggestions, feedback, and if the call was helpful.

in defense of dell, i had the most wonderful customer service person in costa rica who brought my completely dead computer back to life helping me over the phone, it was amazing. my insurance company on the other hand (guardian-health net) is a nightmare and not one person in any number of countries i've spoken to can verify any type of coverage at any point ever. uselesss. the people are fine, the company is awful.

what the person calling in right now (the actual customer service person) is missing is that they aren't often given thr tools to really help people/ THat clip from AOL was just the same as a conversation I had with teh cable company when I wasn't workign and decided that $100 for cable wasn't a priority.

give the agents the tools! it's like a maze or rabbit hole with some customer services places.

CitiBank/CitiGroup (whatever)
has absurdly bad customer service, and their branch staff are completely untrained and reluctant to ask questions of their superiors.

Should one be surprised?

Oxford Health Insurance: is there any hope? I'm beginning to think I'd be better of without any health insurance at all. Dealing with this company has caused more stress and headaches than I ever would have imagined. How bad would it be if I were hit by a truck or got cancer and had really complicated long term problems to deal with? Their brand-newly redesigned website doesn't even work on my computer (a Mac). I get the sense they have no actual concern for the health or wellbeing of their customers and are really just there to take our money and screw us over. Is there anything I can do to make them get the message?

I really value good customer service. I own several domains and products through GoDaddy. I switched over to them because their customer service is always available and generally (but not always) very helpful. The bottom line is that when I call GoDaddy they really do seem interested in resolving the issue (the glitch). I switched to GoDaddy because I was having problems signing into my accounts after the company I was using upgraded their systems. The customer service reps I spoke with had no interest in figuring out the issue. When I asked to speak with a supervisor, I was put on endless hold numerous times.

While I think other domain and hosting providers may offer better, less buggy and more versatile products, I stick with GoDaddy because of their customer service and ability to quickly fix problems that arise from time to time.

No one has time to stay on hold for 50-60 minutes and GoDaddy gets it, or at least, can afford to get it.

I would agree with the guest that customer service is an investment in the future. People remember how they are treated. I would also agree that the quality of a company's customer service is directly related to how their CS employees are treated.

With that being said, I think it's also important to remember that some customers are unrealistic and will try to take advantage of a company that does have good customer service.

For almost all the companies I need to call customer service for, except for wachovia, and Apple are all foreign customer service agents. For most of these companies all they are trained to do is look in a manual for a list of problems. They often do not know what they are doing.

My favorite bad customer service experience was with Citibank. They told me that they couldn't help me, but that I should send a fax to their "offline" department. Two weeks later, I got a letter from the people I faxed telling me that they needed more information and that I should call the 800 number I called to begin with. I called the number and explained EVERYTHING again. I was told to send a fax to the "offline" department... Rinse. Repeat.

How can you "twitter" or go to an online forum for Dell if it is your computer that is the problem?

The BEST customer service? Zappos and the Williams and Sonoma reps. Such a pleasure to deal with!

The WORST? Bank of America. They were so rude, I closed my account and joined HSBC.

As a customer service manager I find it helpful for myself to keep in mind a couple of things. One, remember that these people are not calling you because they want to, they are calling youbecause they NEED to. I also find that thinking of the caller as someone's father, mother, child, etc. makes them real to me especially when someone is very frustrating, slow, or not easy to understand.

I'm old enough to remember when people ANSWERED THE PHONE!!!! instead of these asinine "phone mail trees" ... "Please enter your 37 digit account number" and then when I finally do get to a person, I have to tell them the number all over again.

Let's face it. It's all about the bottom line. Companies look to hire for these roles cheaply. They use contractors (rather than hire employees) because they do not want to provide benefits or good salaries. Contractors are not part of the company culture and have no loyalty to it.
Another factor, I think that sometimes callers give customer service representatives from India a hard time because they're (me, too!) are already upset that someone from the US could have the job.
Maybe this problem will be resolved by the economic downturn -- US citizens more apt to take low-paying jobs.

The most annoying customer (dis)service department was my former cell phone company, whose reps insisted on having small-talk conversations before they would even listen to my problem. They also disturbingly addressed me by my first name, which can sound really patronizing.

One time I got very angry at this and made it clear to a supervisor that I'm calling to have my problem fixed, not to have some bland conversation with a complete stranger about my weekend.

The worst and most abusive I find is Time Warner Cable. Their reps couldn't care less and are rude, nasty, arrogant and rarely helpful if it's not a small problem.

in my opinion there is a devaluing of certain types of jobs. I have worked in a lot of environments as an actor in my time, including retail and waitressing. As a college student I spent 3 months in Germany on a work-exchange program and think their model is one that could be adopted in the US: to work as a sales person, or Verkaufer/in, in ANY department store (including C&A, the evquivalent to JCPenny's)a person, usually 16 -18 years old, must study and apprentice for 3 years!

They learn everything about the products they sell so even if you want to buy a sweater at C&A in German any person working on the floor can give you detailed information about every aspect of the garment. IN THE US??? You watch a few videos and I know this because I was a fine jewelry selling specialist for JC PEnny's. You're thrown in!

Yes, there was a day like that. When I did customer service for then NY Tel (back in the early 70s and earlier) The company, then ATT, put lots of money and invested in lots of training to be sure customer service was #1. There were even paid "Observers" who observed calls as well as supervisors observing online and service reps taken to task and retrained if they got into bad habits. It was for the sake of the company as well as the customer. First and foremost we were told FIRST that most customers are calling in with a legitimate complaint and all must be treated that way and listened to.

A sign that customer service has reached a pathetic low is the person who designed the useful Gethuman site in an attempt to get actual customer service. I have found Verizon once the company has you as a customer has terrible customer service. A company that is "too big to help"

The BEST customer service ever, it a small cosmetic company called "Lipstick Queen".

The representative there, Cara was sooo helpful, nice, enthusiastic and treated me like I was the most important person in the world.

Good old fashion customer service - wow it does still exist!

The New York IRS Customer Service was very frustrating to deal with and kept saying, I can't help you until April 16th...I can't help you until April 16th, like he couldn't do anything else, couldn't even answer a simple question.

I was listening to BBC podcast couple days ago and I heard that people in India are selling credit cards of Bristish citizen. It's scary!!! I don't know if Americans have faced the same problem. I am wondering if my credit card and personal informations are safe that I share over the outsourced locations i.e. India, China etc.