Is customer service worse than before?
The last few years have changed the employee-customer relationship .
Rudeness, longer wait times, lack of follow-up: is quality customer service on the way out?
Benoît Duguay, full professor at the x27;school of management sciences at UQAM took an interest in the question posed by the members of the program Première Heure.
It's hard to get answers to our questions, commented Louise Lavoie on Facebook. Jean-Claude Gamache, for his part, is of the opinion that customer service is deteriorating, it is even non-existent, as at Ebay try to speak with a person, downright impossible.
Conversely, others claim that it is rather the customers who are more difficult. To the point that some businesses are installing signs that say “No to verbal abuse”. The clientele has been terrible for a while but worse since the pandemic. adds a user.
If these events are anecdotal, however, customer service has “changed a lot” in recent years according to the professor at the School of Management Sciences at UQAM.
Is quality customer service on the way out?
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If the pandemic has made people “impatient” he believes that the job market picture is no longer the same. Fewer employees are interested in certain positions, in restaurants, in call centers, for example, which has the consequence of affecting the quality of customer service.
“People are poorly trained right now. As we lack personnel, when we manage to find some, we take them on and put them to work right away. You have to train them. »
— Benoît Duguay, full professor at the School of Management Sciences at UQAM
Among some employees, the culture of business is simply not there, according to Benoit Duguay. However, employers also have their share of the responsibility.
“We're going to have to hire staff and train them,” he says.
The situation is not irreversible, according to him. A stabilization of the economy, turned upside down by inflation, the pandemic in recent years, could allow some return to normal in terms of customer service.
