Does anybody care anymore? I don’t know how many times I have said that over the last year or so. It could have been Coronavirus, lockdown, Brexit or just a general state of apathy. But everything seems to be more difficult at the moment.
Has customer service become a long-lost art? Remember, in the past, if you had a complaint, you would pick up the phone, write a letter or send an email and normally you would get a response and someone would say sorry.
Not anymore, bad service seems to be endemic in our society and I get the feeling that if you don’t like something then tough!
You just need to look around you to see what I mean. Holidaymakers getting their planes cancelled whilst at the check-in gate, Trains and buses cancelled at the last minute and don’t even start me on the state of hospitality. I was in a bar in the centre of Glasgow on Saturday and we ordered two drinks – £15.60 if that was not bad enough they had the cheek to automatically add a 10% service charge onto the bill. The bill actually came before our drinks!
I know lockdown was bad and everyone suffered but it now seems as if every business wants to make up for their losses immediately and we are the ones that are paying for it. And the really annoying thing is nobody cares. Look at the oil companies, BP recently posted their second-quarter profits of £6.9 billion for 3 months! And we are paying through the nose for petrol/diesel and nothing is being done about it.
Sorry, I normally leave the ranting to my colleague Chris Rogan who loves a Rogan’s Rant and here you can read some of his best.
Does anybody care anymore? – yes, at Unleashed, we do care.
One of our customers asked us recently to give options for renewing or replacing a current system, that we originally supplied. Why would we not just renew, I hear you ask?
Simple, we say. The company that originally supplied the solution is no longer the same company, they have been taken over. Not only have they been taken over but all the people we originally dealt with 3 years ago, have gone and we have had a nightmare engaging with anybody new. After 4 weeks of asking we still haven’t got renewal pricing! I am even starting to feel sorry for our account manager at distribution as he is constantly banging his head against a brick wall as well. This is a sizable deal but still, nobody from the company seems to care!
So, in typical Unleashed fashion, we always like to give our customers options, so I started looking for alternative suppliers. Ha ha, that is becoming a joke. One company advertises they have offices in Edinburgh and London, great I say. I phone the Edinburgh office, and that number is disconnected. I phone the London office and get the merry dance with the options after trying them all and leave umpteen messages – nobody gets back to me. I even find the name of the Chief Operating Officer on LinkedIn and send him a message asking why nobody in his business will answer the phone or my emails, that was three weeks ago and I am still waiting for a reply. Starting to sound familiar!
One thing to note about Unleashed, is we do business with people, we don’t always have to like them but we do have to respect and trust them. Once that has been earned you will have a long relationship with us as long as that respect and trust are not lost or taken for granted.
Eventually, I do manage to get two options for my customer. I have sent both new suppliers a list of their requirements and we have now got product demonstrations booked for the next few weeks.
This is the service we offer free to our customers. When you are looking to renew or replace a system, it is very time-consuming and frustrating and if you have 21 thousand other things on your to-do list then it is quite daunting.
Unleased will research, sort out a solution that will meet your needs, requirements and budget and arrange for product demos. Once you have decided on the new system, we are there for project management, installation and after-sales services. You will never be left waiting for any answers.
So, if you are experiencing the pain of looking for new suppliers, let us take the strain (not train, they are off again!). Give us a call today at 0333 240 0565, and we will answer the phone, or we will get back to you if you leave a message. Or you can use our contact page on the website, we monitor that as well.
We look forward to hearing from you.
