7 Things Companies Do That Are Not Customer Service

David Weissberg Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

If I may, I’d like to borrow an iconic line from the 1976 movie Network. “I’m as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore.”

While the movie’s fictional news anchorman Howard Beale was railing against the world’s depravity, my trigger point is, well, smaller. What I’m mad about is what passes for customer service

these days. Here are some peeves that may bug you too.

If a customer is calling a business, they generally want one of two things: information or someone to complain to. Putting a customer on hold for an unreasonable period of time just

heightens their displeasure. Can’t you at least offer to call me back if you don’t care enough to hire more staff and train them to be helpful? I have found the biggest perpetrators of

death-by-call-holding to be utility companies and the federal government. Hello Social Security, yeah, I’m talking to you.​​

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Everywhere I turn nowadays, I see a tip jar. The origin of the practice of tipping was “To Insure Prompt Service.” Now every takeout restaurant, coffee shop and ice cream scoop place has a

tip jar. When your order is rung up, there are even suggested tipping amounts that start at 18 percent. If I don’t tip the guy at the meat counter or the cashier in the supermarket, why am I

expected to tip the one who hands me my bagel and coffee?

For the naysayers, let me assure you that I always leave a big tip in a sit-down restaurant where I am served a meal, where someone makes sure my water glass is kept full, where the server

knows the menu and can answer my questions. But tipping someone whose job it is to make an overpriced cup of coffee and hand it to me, sorry but no. ​