I love this article, “Cutting through customer service doom-loops by calling in a ‘Karen’,” from WaPo:
As the holiday season floods the economy with products to return and refunds to demand, the Pennsylvania group hopes to bring a bit a edgy meme energy to the staid universe of consumer advocacy groups. They join the ranks of those who line up on the side of the stymied, including countless “On Your Side” local news segments, the Better Business Bureau, and nonprofits such as Elliott Advocacy and Clark Howard’s Consumer Action Center.
“Today people just expect to be treated terribly by big business,” said Howard, a longtime Atlanta-based consumer champion on radio, television and podcasts. “Sending a bunch of Karens after them could be their worst nightmare.”
That’s, perhaps, too anodyne. I have to wonder if this plague of companies who offer Customer Stoppage rather than Customer Service end up doing so because they can.
Look, I’m not saying this is a deliberate choice in all cases. But, just like developing a new product, delivering customer service is a complex, sophisticated commercial endeavour requiring smarts and resources. If a company finds itself awash in money, then there’s no reason to ask Where are our customers? They’re busy sending you money – and unhappiness normally leaves no marks on money transfers.
And if it’s a monopoly, or close to it, and you’re dishing up a highly important or desirable product or service, pissed off customers may walk out the door muttering, but they walk back in that door as well, defeated by the lack of choice and just hoping this time what they’re buying will work.
The fix may lay with the anti-monopoly section of government.
