Charging For Customer Service

Sometimes I’m amazed at what companies will charge for. We work with a company to process our credit card sales. For over a week we’ve tried to call them to let them know about a change in our bank account number. This isn’t that big of a deal, but it has to eventually be done. No one called back. We tried calling our sales rep and she has not called back. But today we finally got through to someone who said they would take care of us.

This person told us they would be happy to make the change and that we would be charged a $25 “customer service charge.” I would have been okay with paying for it had they called it something else, like a “change fee.” But what they called it was a “customer service charge,” and there was no way I was going to pay for something I didn’t get.

Actually, I did get customer service. It was just bad customer service!

(Do you think I should pay for it? This is a rhetorical question.)

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken