I am, as regular readers of this column may have realised, one of the original grumpy old men. I find myself talking to the television, correcting punctuation on adverts and generally groaning at modern life.
But it has seemed to me lately that customer service has been getting better. Calls are answered more quickly, there are less of those very irritating electronic phone systems and generally business seems to have realised that if you cut customer service you cut the number of customers.
The value of little things like answering messages quickly and replying to letters are things that every business, however big or small, should do. Then there are small, very thoughtful gestures like shops which put out bowls of water on hot days for thirsty dogs. Surely most people would choose to buy from a shop that did things like that than a competitor that did not.
No improvement
So the latest Accenture Survey came as a bit of a shock. According to the management consultants more than two-thirds of the people they questioned (67 percent) said that customer service had not improved in the last five years.
Obviously they didn’t ask me and after reading the survey of 2,000 people I realised I was going soft. I was becoming immune to hanging on the telephone waiting. I remembered waiting 20 minutes on the phone the other day to find out that my car hadn’t been fixed.
I didn't even receive a satisfactory explanation about why it took five weeks to fix a car broken into by vandals other than they were waiting for parts and had to get the key electronically adjusted.
I also had another bad customer service experience when flying with Ryanair from Luton the other week. I was caught up in a suspected terrorist incident in which a passenger was taken away (later found innocent) and my aircraft was not permitted to take off from Luton.
The remaining passengers had to stay on the aircraft - for four hours. We were only going to Nimes.
The long delay was admittedly not the airline’s fault. But at no point in the four hours - much of which was spent waiting for a new crew to board after the police were done - were passengers offered any refreshment.
No sale
Ryanair, of course, are a low cost airline, the type that sells you tea, coffee and sandwiches. I knew that before boarding so after three hours a group of us asked a stewardess if we could buy refreshment. She wasn’t allowed, she said. No further explanation.
The Air Transport Users Council says that for flights under 1500km (and Luton - Nimes is 971km) we should have received "Meals and refreshments in relation to waiting time" and "Two free telephone calls, emails, telexes or faxes."
Well, after a while we were allowed to use our mobile phones and after half an hour or so flight staff let us use the loos after originally refusing.
But the refreshments stayed where they were until we were in the air.
Times Online later asked Ryanair why this would have been the case. A spokesman said that the full attention of its staff on that aircraft had to be on working with the police.
Ryanair frequently gets bad press, and I have no doubt some of it is misguided. But here they did themselves no favours. Four hours with no drinks or food, despite passengers being willing to pay, is hard to take especially on what was expected to be a short hop to France. Even one of those bowls left out for dogs would have been welcome.
And to take the biscuit, coming back - with no terrorist alert - the turnaround was so quick that the aircraft was not cleaned and my seat was covered in crumbs and smeared with grease.
I went straight back into grumpy old man mode but it did make me promise to myself that I would apply as much courtesy as I could in business in future.
Ironically the Accenture Surey says that only four per cent are likely to switch airlines because of customer service problems. But it showed that British business has not got it right yet when it comes to keeping people hanging on, switching them from person to person and attempting to sell them other products,
Phone tag
Then there are the sneaky ones. My main business number is on the Telephone Preference Scheme, but that doesn’t stop the cold caller trying to sell me things. One reminder about the TPS and they are usually quick to go.
But the other day I was called by someone wanting to talk about mobile phones. I mentioned the TPS but was told that this was an Ofcom survey. So I said ring back which they did. I spent five minutes answering questions and they signed off by saying: "Thanks for taking part in the T-Mobile survey."
Shan’t be joining that network unless they start putting out bowls of water for hot dogs.
