Summary: Technology can either help customer service a whole lot, or it can harm it a whole lot, depending on how it's used. It's like a weapon. You can use a knife to cut a steak, or you can use a knife to hurt somebody. And I think the technology is being used the same ways, where they're trying to save themselves time and energy and effort. And they're forgetting the fact that there are other human beings on the other end of that technology.<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of customer service. Is it well and truly dead? Welcome Jay.<br> <br> <br> <br> Jay: Well, I think it depends upon the industry, but I'm going to say it's more dead than not as far as I can tell.<br> <br> David: Yeah, it's sad. And I feel like in some businesses, in the best businesses, it's not dead.<br> <br> And it creates a tremendous advantage for those who are still keeping it alive, whether on life support or just because it's the way they do business. But wow. I have had so many experiences recently where it seems like not only is the customer service unresponsive, uncooperative, unpleasant...<br> <br> Jay: Mm-hmm<br> <br> David: And there's just this level of apathy that seems to go with it, which when you combine those things, really does seem pretty deadly.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah. And I think there is a temptation -- because there's such great technology out there -- there is a temptation to say, "look, we can cut our costs if we just implement this new technology that maybe answers questions online" or "press one for this or for that."<br> <br> I can see the temptation, but I don't know if they clearly understand the frustration. I'll tell you one of my pet peeves right now are the chatbots.<br> <br> I'll go online and they'll say, "Hey, if you don't want to sit on hold," which is an admission already that you don't have enough people, " go ahead, just chat with us." And I'm thinking I'm going to get a live person. And no, I get a chatbot and I type in my question and it sends me to a predefined link that doesn't answer my question.<br> <br> And I'm like, "I've just wasted 15 minutes and I could have been on hold the whole time." So, very cool tech, but on the customer end, I think it's frustrating a lot of people.<br> Does Technology Help or Hurt Customer Service?<br> David: It really can, particularly because technology can either help customer service a whole lot, or it can harm it a whole lot, depending on how it's used.<br> <br> It's just like any other weapon, right? It's like a weapon. You can use a knife to cut a steak, or you can use a knife to hurt somebody. And I think the technology is being used the same ways, where they're trying to save themselves time and energy and effort. And they're forgetting that there are other human beings on the other end of that technology.<br> <br> But even beyond that, tech aside, there are now situations where you leave a message for somebody, or you send them an email. I mean, that is obviously tech as well, but if the human being behind the email does not respond to the email or they don't return the phone call or they don't return the voicemail or they don't return the text. Now it's actually more human error than tech error.<br> <br> And that's where I think customer service is really struggling right now. Because if you've got well-meaning well-intentioned people who are determined to use the technology to make customer service better, then those companies are not just going to survive, they're going to thrive.<br> <br> But the problem is there are people in organizations who just don't care enough about the customers to even do the basic minimum things like returning phone calls, returning voicemails, and that sort of thing.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah. And then there's the question of, you know,
