Most of the complaints I submit are work-related, but generally it seems that whether it’s business or personal companies now are more likely to ignore me than they were in the past. In the past it seemed that even a minor complaint, or even a thank you–I sometimes took the time to send those too–got a response. Now they tend to just disappear.
Part of this may be because so much of the process of submitting a complaint is now automated. Chances are we’ve all had experiences with how hard it is to talk to a real person when trying to get a problem fixed. There’s even at least one current commercial that makes a joke about this.
But I used to work in customer service and I also feel there’s an overall decline in quality. The first thing I was taught about customer service was to acknowledge that the customer has a problem and tell them I would work to find a solution.
Now even when I do get to talk to a person their opening statement is a denial that there’s a problem, and if I can clearly demonstrate there’s a problem their response will usually include a phrase like, “We’ll make an exception in this one case,” continuing the denial theme.
I understand the value of complaining but it only works if companies are listening, and they’re only going to listen if enough wallets are willing to walk.
