If you didn't catch it - and there are around 100,000,000
blogs out there, so you might not have - Mr. Walsh suggested to a patron whom
he witnessed having a meltdown in a fast-food joint that maybe the reason she "always"
gets bad customer service is that she is a bad customer. That is, anybody who
would spend that much time yelling, screaming and cursing in public over
something as trivial as a condiment being left on a junk food sandwich costing
a dollar or so is most likely a miserable human being who believes that it is
perfectly acceptable to treat minimum-wage employees like crap just because
there is nothing they can do about it. That being the case, there's effectively
no chance that this person won't find something wrong in almost any customer
service situation, because what they really want is the chance to exert
dominance over someone...
Now, it is possible that this is just an overt symptom of
the entitlement we've seen in almost every other aspect of modern life; as a
college instructor I've certainly seen my share of students who believe they
should receive credit for work they haven't done, or even that they should
received top marks for assignments done incorrectly. But what concerns me the
most is the cumulative effect all of this is having on business as a whole.
Most people will never have a screaming tantrum in the middle of a junk food
stand, because most of us have matured a bit since we were two, but every time
you live through something like this it makes the more ordinary rudeness we all
have to endure seem more acceptable - or, at least, less important. And believe
me on this, the effect is even worse when you're the one on the receiving end
of the meltdown...
I'm not saying that everyone who has ever had a miserable
excuse for a customer go off on them is going to end up doing the same thing;
far from it. Most of us who have worked customer service jobs go out of our way
to be nice to the people stilling doing that kind of work. I am saying that the
customer service standard common when my generation were children is rare
today, and when it occurs at all it is generally considered
"old-fashioned" and most likely occupies a major part of the
company's strategy. As time goes by, fewer companies are really trying to
"take care of their customers" in the traditional sense, because they
know that fewer and fewer of their customers value good customer service at
all, or at most see it as a weakness and will try to exploit such service in
order to get free products or services from the company...
Over time, as customer service is valued less its overall
quality declines, which leads to even less value being placed on the customer
service function - and the cycle repeats. At the same time, the increased use
of automation and the rise of self-checkout and similar services is lowering
the number of people actually serving in the customer service role in the first
place. If this trend continues it bodes ill for the service sector; what most
people may not realize is that it bodes ill for out entire civilization as
well. Historically, any society in which civility becomes commonly regarded as
a weakness (and rudeness is considered a strength) has not lasted long. I agree
with every one of Mr. Walsh's points; I also believe that if he's right, what
we are seeing isn't just the decline of American commerce, but the beginning of
the end for our entire civilization...
I'm not sure we can fix this. But I believe we'd better
start trying...
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