I saw a TV ad last night that got me thinking. The ad, for AXA Insurance, features people barging into each other on the street, pushing each other out the way and yelling abuse at strangers. The idea is 'you wouldn't behave this way on foot, so why would you do it when you're driving?'
Now I don't think I'm the sort of person to behave rudely on the road, and I've never suffered from road rage. But I do get 'customer service rage' from time to time - and it's invariably brought on by the feeling that I'm not dealing with a real person. I suppose that's what happens to drivers who get angry with others - perhaps they see the vehicles but don't connect them with actual people, and the anonymity that the cars provide is a kind of cushion. ("I don't care what they think, they don't know me and I'll never meet them face to face.")
When it comes to email, customer service replies are quite often automated, or near enough (to a standard template with 'insert case number here'.) People working in call centres abide by a script and are often unempowered to deviate from that. Although I know that it's real people who answer the phones or (sometimes) trigger the emails, I am enraged by their anonymity, their inflexibility, and, if I'm honest, the whole cultural premise that the standardisation of customer service and the reduction of humans to little more than robots is a desirable thing.
There was an example of this today on Twitter. I noticed an argument brewing between O2 and @bengillam who claimed they didn't adequately respond to tweets. I joined in the discussion - having contacted O2 through Twitter several times over the Christmas period to complain that their '12 Days of Christmas' promotion included an invalid 'opt out' number, and having had no reply.
O2's position was that they can't be expected to respond to all the tweets they receive, as there are so many. Why not? Is that also their attitude when a customer writes them a letter? Why isn't a company the size of O2 employing enough people to 'man the Twitter deck' - Dell can do it, and so according to Ben Gillam can Vodaphone and even BTCare.
I do think that if you're going to use Twitter you need to be prepared for what it will unleash. Alternatively you could make it clear that your twittering staff aren't there to perform customer service, but rather to broadcast offers, information or updates. If you state what you're able to cover and are honest about it, that's surely less aggravating than saying "Let's talk - we're happy to help where we can!" as O2 say on their Twitter profile.
Another way of diffusing disgruntled customers is to personalise it. Drop the anonymity, forget the scripts and the 'is there anything else we can help you with?' bullshit. Remove the 'corporate' veneer, show faces, use real names, listen, do something to show you're human, and it's surprising how less inclined people are to get bolshy in public. Because that's what these conversations are on Twitter - visible to all.
Large companies CAN do this - look at the twitter page of Frank Eliason, Senior Director of National Customer Service Operations for Comcast. Now I don't give two hoots whether it's actually Frank replying to everyone, or even whether that's Frank in the photo (although I'd be a bit sad if it wasn't). My point is that it looks and feels like real, human customer service.
Am I being over-sensitive? Is it unreasonable to expect corporates to have got their act together when Twitter is still such a new tool and we're all still figuring it out? Are employers requiring humans to behave more like robots and if so, isn't that ironic given the amount of time being spent on trying to create robots that have even a fraction of the intelligence of a human being?
