Customer Service… two very good words that can often be at the top of the oxymoron list of words that just don’t sit well together… like two supporters of different teams being asked to sit together, in harmony, to watch the match… and to be absolutely clear, my metaphor relates to football supporters watching a derby match… and for those that need translation… football can also be called soccer… and derby is not the town in middle England, nor the horse race that is run annually at Epsom Downs in Surrey which adds to the confusion because Epsom is nowhere near Derby… but to get back on course… the derby I refer to is not the cheese, but an important local competition. Ask Manchester United fans to live in harmony with Manchester City, or Portsmouth with Southampton or Rangers with Celtic… mixing these fans would be like mixing oil and water… it doesn’t work… and neither does customer service in many organisations.

Having used two metaphors in my opening paragraph… the first to help explain an oxymoron and the second to help explain the explanation, I’ve come to the conclusion that customer service is not so much an oxymoron but an idiom. As we all know, an idiom is a term or phrase whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions of the words used. For example, we Brits often refer to ‘kick the bucket’ as an endearing way to express the passing of one’s sole to another place… or more bluntly… it is a better way to express the word ‘die’. Now, if you took the literally meaning of ‘kick the bucket’ you would think that people go around doing nothing more harmful than putting one’s foot in contact with a water holding receptacle. Now for those not versed in local language a foreigner to our shores may well get into trouble in wondering why the middle of town is full of people six feet under ground having done nothing more than kick a bucket… and why they are buried with 6 feet when they should only have 2 just further complicates things… and having to explain that a grave yard is not a dead centre and therefore these people may not actually be in the middle of town is just a confusion too far… which is about how I felt today after speaking to customer services at British Midland Airways.

I’m a regular customer of BMI… I might not be their best customer but I try and use them whenever I can. I’ve used them so much in the past that I have lots of frequent flyer points… and now I like to use some of these loyalty points to upgrade from cattle class to mildly acceptable class… they call it club, but on short haul is only just acceptable. However having used my frequent flyer points, my loyalty to the airline puts me in a different class to everyone else. One would think better, but it appears cash still talks and those that fund the whole journey with cash… are king… and those that show loyalty and use their points are trailer trash… which of course, trailer trash… is an idiom, but I think more of American origin than British. An idiom can be thought of as a colloquial metaphor… so origins can be important as we will see later.

It all started with booking on line. Booking on line saves the airline money and generally, when it works, it is easy to do. However, it seems that booking on-line and using points to fund some of the journey does not allow you to reserve your seat. If you pay cash then the system will allow you to reserve your seat. My reservation confirmation sent to me by email says that I can manage my booking on-line… but I still can’t reserve my seat. I therefore call the customer service number shown on my confirmation. I called, had to listen to their on line advert about flying to wherever and then wait in a queue for an agent. The line dropped… I called again and listened to the same advert over again, then went into the queue and the line dropped again. I called a third time and listened dutifully to the advert… which is wasting my time and my call money… and went into the queue, and thankfully this time the line did not drop and after 5 minutes I heard the dulcet tones of someone sitting in a call centre in the middle of India. I explained what I wanted. I had to give the booking reference, my name, the first line of my address, my post code, the full details of my itinerary, my date of birth, by which time I was prepared to give my inside leg measurement, what I had to eat yesterday, the mileage on my car and anything else to confirm who I was. Having gone through all this and wasted 20 minutes of my life I was informed that because I use points I need to call another number. It’s not what it said on the confirmation. This man could book my seats… I know he can… he works for British Midland Airways… he has my reservation details on his screen… but could I persuade him to do it… no… unemotional, uninterested, jobs worth. I now had to ring another number and go through the whole thing again, except this time the dulcet tones had just too much of a local accent to be fully understood and so most things had to be repeated as I strained to work out what was being said. It’s not a pleasant experience speaking with someone you just don’t understand.

So, something that I could have done on-line when I booked the flight, which because I used some frequent flyer points – and cash I may add – I am in a different class of customer and the airline wants to penalise me for my audacity of using my loyalty points and therefore restrict me from booking my seat in the club class cabin. When I pay full cash the system will let me do this. I am therefore forced to pick up a phone and spend a whole day confirming who I am only to be told that the person on the end of the number I was given to call will not book my seats as I am a different class of passenger… one of the unclean who has had the audacity to use their loyalty to the airline points… and therefore I have to speak to someone else who has yet to be trained in building linguistic rapport with their customers and wants all the same information again from me  before they will deal with my request. I got there in the end… but customer service… no it is not, rather customer disservice… and that’s not an oxymoron.

Had a similar experience with customer service?… then add to this post and name and shame those corporations who have more customers than they sometimes deserve.

Share this post: Digg Delicious Technorati Reddit Stumble It!  Email This Post