Shownotes:

What does customer service mean to you and your business? Is it a team that you hire to answer complaints or queries? Is it a group that you hire to have someone be on standby in case something happens? Customer service isn’t just all about focusing on whether the buy-and-sell concept is fulfilled. Customer service is making sure that your customers feel valued for purchasing from your business.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I'd like to talk about customer service and what it means to you. The reason that I want to talk about this is for a couple of reasons. I've had one fairly large company that I was buying my product. It's a subscription product and I had been buying it for a good three years. I found a different product that I wanted to try and I tried it out. I kind of liked it better, the price was better, the things that I needed it to do at the time were better. I went ahead and stopped my subscription of the old company, and that was it.

I didn't get an email that said, "Sorry to see you go." I didn't get any of their customer support reaching out and like, "Hey, I noticed that you were thinking of canceling. Can you let us know why?" There was no exit interview. There was nothing. There was radio silence from this particular company. And it surprised me because they're very well known in remote work. They're very well known for being a great company and yet, as someone who's been using their company from earlier on in the day, I got nothing.

So, I reached out and I said, "Hey, you might not care, I'm just someone who barely spends any money with you, but it would have been nice just to get an email so that you noticed that I wasn't paying anymore." Again, I didn't get a response. And now, I don't think I'd ever go back even if they ended up changing their product and doing it in such a way that was a good fit for me, I'm not sure I would ever use them again because now I just feel like a number, and not even a number. People notice when their numbers go down.

Then, on the second hand, there was another company, again a very large company, that reached out to me and said, "Hey, we think you might be a good fit for this thing we're doing. I'd love to get on a call with you." I'm like, "Ah, really, me? Little old... I mean, sure, I guess," and I got a little excited about it. I started researching on the thing that they wanted me to be a part of and I found some information, but really not that much. I know someone who had been involved with them and so I asked them some questions, but there really wasn't a lot out there for me to gather myself if I didn't have a friend.

So, they said that they wanted to have her call me. The call was scheduled for 20 minutes. So, I'm on the line and waiting. I'm a little bit nervous. I have a list of questions from what I've gathered. The person is late to the meeting, and they were five minutes late. They did not message, but also they did not say sorry when they got on the line. They just asked me if I had any questions. They didn't even try to explain anything to me or pitch anything to me, they were just like, "So, do you have any questions?" My response was, "Well, you haven't really given me a lot of information. Please tell me about this thing that you want me to be involved in." As I said, this call was scheduled for 20 minutes. This person took five minutes to explain their product.

I then went ahead and asked the questions that I had on my list, and a lot of the questions were very much like, "Well, what happens with this information?" or, "Okay, well this happens and then what if I stop contributing or whatever happens?" and, "How long is this process?" A lot of the answers I got during this interview was, "Oh, I don't know. Well, I'm not sure. Oh, I'll have to figure it out." And this wasn't someone that was new to the company because I had checked on that. This person had been with the company for a long time. I don't know if they weren't expecting the questions, or I wasn't giving them the right... I don't know what it was, but they didn't seem to know the answers to my questions.

Now, we're about 12 to 15 minutes in and this person is like, "Oh, well, yeah, you can email those questions and I'll email a response back to you. I'm going to have to go now." I said, "But, the call was scheduled for 20 minutes and I have some more things that I'd like to ask and would like for you to explain a little bit more." Her response was, "Yeah, but just email them to me and I'll email you a response. I've got to go now, bye," and that was 16 minutes of the 20 minute conversation where they were trying to get me to do something. So, I waited with bated breath for this email to come through, and I got the one email, and I haven't responded yet, and I haven't heard from them since. This is a huge, global company.

Customer service is key, people. Just following up, and it doesn't have to be aggressive following up. It could just be like, "Hey, here's this information and if you have any questions," and follow up a couple of days later. It's the really simple things that make the difference. For example, I did an interview in a podcast, totally forgot about it, and a month later I received this beautiful box with information and it was a gift box. I'd totally forgotten about it but it made me feel special. That little bit of customer service goes a long, long way.

Listeners, please email me at janice@thecareerintrovert.com and tell me a time when you have had awesome customer service and what that meant to you.