Thanks for your comment.

That is the obvious downside to monopolies. They don’t have much motivation to provide exceptional service. Companies that don’t want to (and don’t see a need to) provide exceptional service won’t. Companies that are in competitive industries may very well see a need to since they can use customer service to set themselves apart from the competition.

Take the telco companies for example – they’re known for horrible customer service, but why should they change? What is their incentive? There is competition, but usually not very many choices to pick from, especially in something like cell phones, where companies such as AT&T have a very large market share.

By improving, they aren’t going to get more money from their customers, and their competitors aren’t doing much better for the most part. If they spent more money on customer service, sure, they’d get some customers from their competitors, but then their competitors would respond and you’d have a higher cost for customer service than you did before, and because the other companies stepped it up a notch to match what you did, the market shares aren’t going to change a lot. The end result is a higher cost to support customers.

Why should they bother?

Sure is. When a company gets customer service (or at least the person you’re talking to at the company does), it really makes a difference and you can tell. Unfortunately, it is rarer than it should be.

Good points. Thanks for your comment.

Plus, the clear lack of putting the right tools into help centers really hurts companies. But, that is considered a cost and not an investment in customer retention, so there you go.

I love companies that get customer service. As a consumer, it’s tough to get customer love.