Where Has The Art Of Customer Service Gone?

Call me old fashioned, but I have this crazy idea that businesses should provide at least a minimal amount of human element in the customer service they offer to their paying clientele.

In this age of automated everything, recent experiences have given birth to an increasing suspicion that the amount of quality human interaction between organizations and their customers has reached a dangerous low. I completely understand the need to keep costs down and how technology has given us the ability to make phone payments, troubleshoot and so many other functions without ever speaking to a live person, but I think it’s getting a little ridiculous. Not just from a personal preference perspective, but looking at the impact this has on our global society flat out scares me.

I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys finding their way through the maze of choices on automated phone answering systems. I’ve never heard of someone who trembles with pleasure at the thought of filling out scores of form fields online in hopes of getting some type of response for their problem via email.

Even worse, what minuscule amount of human interaction we do get is either outsourced to someone who has little or no stake in the reputation or well-being of the company they’ve been hired by, and/or it’s via email and live chat and whatever other far-as-possible-removed communication can be established for as little cost as possible.

Okay, I know I’m on a bit of a tirade, but this outburst is the culmination of several years of growing frustration that reached its peak last Wednesday night when I came home from a lovely evening with my wife to find an email from my website hosting company on my computer. The subject line was a single word: “Suspended”.

How JustHost Killed My Websites & My Hope For Quality Customer Service In One Fell Swoop

I scrambled to read through the email, wondering what could possibly have happened.

“During…routine monitoring we have found that your account is utilizing an excessive amount of system resources, and we have been forced to suspend your site as per our terms and conditions ’10% CPU Policy’.”

I wasn’t quite sure what this meant. Over a year ago I had moved over 20 websites (mine and my clients’) to JustHost thanks to some research and recommendations. I had several online chats with their support crew before making the change, and I was confident I had found a new home for my web design business. For an unbelievable price I secured unlimited email accounts, unlimited server space, unlimited bandwidth transfer, unlimited…well…everything, it seemed! How could one go wrong with “unlimited” when there are no asterisks, no quotes, no nothing to imply that it might be…um…limited?

It turns out that JustHost actually does put their limitations in writing in their mile-long terms and conditions document, so that if anyone should set aside a day to read it they would know beforehand that unlimited does not mean unlimited. Sure, it would seem to be an ethical (if not legal) imperative that they put an asterisk next to their front-end offerings, linking to the terms of service so no one would assume that unlimited and other words should be taken at face value, but then again, perhaps I should make a habit of reading the fine print. Unfortunately my idealist attitude made the choice to trust JustHost’s front page. Silly me.

But this is not the main point of this post, because I believe in this instance JustHost did cover themselves quite nicely and although it comes across in hindsight as a little bit sneaky, I don’t necessarily think it’s that unusual. My issue, and the point of this post, is how they handled “suspending” my account. Here’s the breakdown:

First, I received an email stating the suspension. No warning, no “get your files off our server in the next X hours”. Just shut down with an email. And when I went to log in to my account, I had no access. So I couldn’t retrieve any of the files or databases on the server. Worst of all, every single website on the server was now inoperable. If you loaded my website – or any of my clients’ – in your browser you were greeted by a blank page stating “This account is suspended”. You can imagine my frustration. My own website and blog is one thing, but all of my clients? I braced myself for the phone calls wondering why their websites were down, and then I got to work.

Here is where the complete breakdown of personal customer service began and continued quickly downhill, snowballing into a complete mess.

I couldn’t email support back from my bkmacdaddy.com account, because the mail servers were a part of the suspended domain. So I had to initiate email communication from my Gmail account, which I rarely use. Over the next few hours I tried to get a response via email, but to no avail. I attempted to find a phone number on JustHost’s site but initially could not – their contact page only lists a form and email addresses!

Heed this warning: if a phone number of any type of business (aside from freelancers like me) is not readily available on the website, there is a good possibility of some breakdowns in customer service.

I tried using JustHost’s live chat. In the past they had been very responsive via chat, and this time was no exception. However, the chat support is only “Level 1″ and I was informed they were unable to assist me with the suspension. I begged them for access to my account so I could move the files to a new server and keep the downtime to a minimum, but to no avail. They told me I had to email support, in spite of my insistence that email was getting zero results.

While this was all going on, I opened up a new account with HostMonster, simply because I have a client who hosts several sites there and I was familiar with the system. Of course, I talked with their pre-sales support first to make sure the same limitations would not be enforced. And they have phone numbers on their front page. Imagine that.

I began changing my domain names to point to HostMonster’s servers, uploading the backup files I had from my hard drive, and impatiently waited for a response from JustHost. Finally at 12:18am I received a response requesting my WAN IP address so they could give me exclusive access to the account. I was relieved. Finally I would be able to export databases, email addresses and everything else I needed to set up the sites at their new home. I responded instantly with the requested information and waited for the reply.

At 2:30 am I still had not heard back from JustHost.

I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and I was at a standstill regarding anything else I could do to facilitate the move. I was basically a hostage of JustHost’s tech support.

When the alarm went off at 5:00am, I jumped up to see if I had been granted access during my brief rest. To my chagrin, it was not so. No email. No access. No nothing.

It was at this point that I became extremely angry. I am a very patient person, but this was getting ridiculous. And to top it off, I was becoming increasingly aware of my inability to yell or express my anger in a satisfactory way when limited to the context of email or chat. Maybe that’s why they do it that way – to avoid dealing with angry customers? I don’t know. Whatever the reason, the results were unacceptable.

I fired off emails, ripped apart a chat operator, and tweeted my frustration. I toyed with the idea of starting a new hashtag on Twitter: #JustHostsux. But then I decided this would eventually make a better blog post than a tweet tirade.

I went back to JustHost’s website and began an intense search for a phone number. Finally I found one – but only by searching their knowledge base – and called immediately. After working my way through the maze of selections and numbers to push – another customer service annoyance – I eventually arrived at my destination, where I was on hold for the next 35 minutes. Yes, I said 35 minutes. And every 30 seconds the recorded voice told me how important my call was to them. Over and over I heard how much my business meant to them – so much so that they could not manage to answer the phone for 35 minutes.

When I finally spoke to a live person, I explained my situation. I was calm but firm, and the tech support operator stated that he had escalated my case to a higher support level. He told me I would receive an email within 30 minutes granting me access to my account.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Because I have been told this several times already and I still don’t have access.”

“Absolutely, sir,” came the reply. “You will be contacted within 30 minutes without fail.”

At this point I had no faith whatsoever that I would have access in 30 minutes or less, but there wasn’t much else I could do. So I hung up and waited.

90 minutes later, at 11:08 am, almost 12 hours since I had been told I would be granted access and 17 hours since my account was suspended, I received the email that gave me the keys to my account.

Imagine your business being shut down beyond your control for almost 24 hours. How would you react?

Friends told me I should sue. Others said I should do everything in my power to ruin the reputation of JustHost. I must admit, both ideas were appealing.

However, I have progressed through life to a place where I try to look at every type of situation to discern what I can learn from it. How can I come out of it better? What can I do differently next time?

So rather than try to destroy someone else, I am trying to look at the bigger picture and see how I can grow and help others to do the same.

I was able to get all my sites back up at their new location within the next few hours, keeping the downtime to less than 24 hours. Most of my clients never even called or emailed to find out what was going on, and some were even surprised when I emailed them to let them know what had happened. But all in all, the damage was not to the websites or my business itself. The damage was to my already wavering idealistic belief that customer service is still a priority.

What does it mean when so many corporations are resorting to outsourcing their customer service and therefore relegating it to a menial task with little importance?

I understand the need to cut costs in this current economic climate, and I don’t fault anyone for finding creative ways to keep their business alive. But I for one do not need to deal with an organization that prioritizes profits over people, and I am concerned that this is becoming more the rule than the exception.

The technological revolution has birthed amazing creations that provide incredible assistance to many of our life necessities. Many of us can no longer imagine making it through the day without our cell phone, computer, GPS system, DVR and more. But at what expense do we embrace our technology?

I am not suggesting throwing the devices out the window in an effort to save our humanity. But what is the balance? Is anyone even trying to find one?

I’m infatuated with my Android phone and all its cool apps. I spend the majority of my life on my computer, emailing and tweeting and writing and designing. I am a slave to my GPS every time I drive somewhere unfamiliar. I almost never watch live TV since I can fast forward through the commercials on my DVR. I am always enthralled with the next newest gadget or application to be released. I am as much – or more – of a techno-geek as the next person.

But I would never trade any of the gadgets for real live people. Friends. Family. Relationships. Interaction that is not programmed but is exciting and engaging in its unpredictability. And I want to believe that most people would feel the same.

If that is the case, why are we trading in real live people for automated or barely interested customer service? Do YOU think this is acceptable?