The Expert Podcast

So why the heck is it so hard to get good customer service from a company these days and by customer service I mean not necessarily that you bought something and you need to get you know shipping or some other type of after the sale service it's more before the sale you have questions about a product question about an industry questions about how to handle something within a business well the reason why sadly it's because providing customer service has become very expensive look if you have a person who's going to answer the phone and talk to customers that's a full-time job and what is the salary for that job you're not going to pay entry level 15 an hour to answer really important questions.
So you have a choice as a company you can either take very highly skilled qualified people and have them answer the phones for prospective customers or even non-customers and give them a bunch of free information that's going to cost you a fortune this day and age that's going to be thirty forty dollars an hour that's like seventy thousand dollars a year and how many people do you need to have on the phone to answer all your customers questions even if you need five people that's 350 000 a year just to answer questions companies can't afford to do that.
The other option is you can have a calls go to your sales staff people that are selling stuff well now your sales staff are answering phones what's their motivation what's their um incentive their incentive is to sell stuff they're paid on commission so they're not going to really give you as a customer good quality third-party unbiased info they're going to be trying to steer you into a sale of a product they may not even know all the details of the question you're asking they're just going to try to stuff you into a sale which who can how can you blame them they're paid on commission they don't get paid to sit around doing nothing and talking on the phone giving out information so they're going to try to put you into a sale if they can't see that there's a reasonable chance for a sale boom they're off the phone.
Option number three is you can have calls go to a low-level clerk admin person receptionist that really knows nothing about the question they can say I'll find somebody that can call you back and nobody calls you back option number four is automation it goes to voicemail hey press two for this press four for that so do those four experiences sound familiar have you run into those four when you try to call a company either you get voicemail press one for this two for that you get some low-level clerk that knows nothing or you get a sales person trying to slam dunk you into something.
Well it's frustrating and you might wish that hey customer service I should get the answers but how are they going to do it right it's very very expensive to do that's why there's more and more services that are offering an alternative but before we get to that how can you get customer service well one way to do it is to to get to the sales department if all you're getting is voicemail or you're getting a receptionist find on that company's website a number or extension for their sales department sales is better than nothing at least that sales person might try to give you some information especially if the calls aren't already going to them.
A sales department that gets overwhelmed with calls from non-buyers non-customers just wanting to get information about a product or service they're already buried they're going to get you off the phone but a salesperson our sales department that doesn't get those calls where the company steers the incoming calls to voicemail or to receptionist those sales people are not overwhelmed so they might welcome the opportunity to talk to a customer that's not beating them up on price or trying to negotiate or complaining about a product you might have good luck asking for the sales department if the sales department isn't already the first choice for that business incoming calls.
And for these Solutions we're talking about Active Solutions obviously you do have solutions for customer service by watching YouTube videos like this one by going online to the website and reading about products and services but I suspect that what you really want is a one-on-one conversation where you can ask questions get answers it's not a passive one-way thing so if you want that that's what we're talking about look you can always get the read read it yourself watch it yourself answers anytime you want Wikipedia gives you answers but the one-on-one is tricky.
So you can steer towards the sales department to see if you can get somebody there to maybe can help you out maybe you can reach a advisory type resource for example if you're trying to let's say get information on I don't know let's say construction and you call construction companies and you want to ask about permits or how big can you build and nobody's answering your questions because they're too busy selling stuff or building stuff maybe look at a Trade Organization for that industry maybe there's a trade group that you can call up and somebody there can answer your questions maybe there's a government agency that you can call up look for alternate sources that have the knowledge that's the key you want to greet somebody who has the expertise and knowledge that can answer your question.
The problem is anybody who's that knowledgeable and that skilled and expertise they're not just sitting around waiting to talk to people on the phone for free they have a job to do there's paying customers that have bought products and services that need them to work on their case their file their product their service so they can't drop everything and answer phones and give out free information but a Trade Organization might have people that do that they might be retired people that are on the phones they might have Consultants advisors right that can do this so look at trade organizations.
Another place you can look is government agencies many Industries are regulated by the government they have to have a license they have to have a um a permit you might call the government agency that oversees that industry to see if somebody there can answer your question now be aware that government agencies have their own problem they have bureaucracy they don't have excess staff sitting around doing nothing they're underpaid under staff but they may have good knowledge if you can reach them.
Option number three it's a little more inconvenient is to go in person if you try to do it on the phone because it's easy look it's easy to do things on the phone you don't have to leave your office you don't have to leave your house if it's really important go in person to a business that's close to you in that industry even if it's not a place you want to do business with if you go in person now they can't hang up the phone they can't put you on hold you're there you're in front of their face so it might be a way to get some customer service or information without having to get the phone tree run around or the put you on hold run around.
And up the left option is obviously what you see on the screen there are some paid resources where you can pay for a dedicated appointment with a professional in various Industries to have a one-on-one consultation live video where it's not just like this watching a YouTube video it's where you can talk to them you have their undivided attention of a an expert in that field that can tell you the answers that you want to know and that's an option you have as well not it's not for everybody nobody not everybody wants to pay just to ask questions but at least you know that's an option.
Let us know what you think about those four or five solutions to the problem of how do you access customer service and get good answers to questions.