Customer service – Will they listen?

Free, Lifetime free. Gold cards, Silver cards, Petro cards, Free free. How many times we hear these free credit cards offer within a month? Actually, the cost of retaining a customer is much cheaper than acquiring a new one. Yet these companies spend most of their time and money to woo new ones. Will they show the same energy to retain their existing customers by hearing them and solving their complaints on time?

Well, customers don’t expect a – Hi, how are we? – kind of feedback call from the companies every month. But whenever they approach the customer service call center with their problems, what happens? After patiently choosing all the options and when we are all set to speak to their service agents, all we hear is the same line – “I’m sorry. All our customer service representatives are busy on call. Please stay online.”

This is not a problem with banks and credit cards alone. Recently when I tried to reach the Reliance mobile customer service to clarify a problem, I faced the same issue and was holding on the line frustratingly for more than 5 minutes.

So my point is instead of saying – “Kindly stay online. Your call is important to us”, and asking us to hold the line for 5-10 minutes, why can’t they call back once their current call is over. In the name of wooing new customers, they are disturbing people in the midst of their busy meeting or in their post lunch nap, so why can’t they call someone in need, instead. Or else will they at least give an option to fix an appointment with their customer service representatives thru SMS, so that we don’t need to wait till their off-peak hours but can clarify the issues on our free time.

Will someone listen?