[sverhagen]

The US system is based on liability and the threat of legal action. The European system is based on their regulatory framework. If you have a complaint that is clearly managed within that framework (my laundry machine spontaneously broke down within the statutory warranty period) they'll comply, else, yeah, good luck. I moved in the other direction (to the US) and I'm amazed when my wife gets a $50 little blender replaced at Macy's after we worked it to its limits for three or four years. For all the complaining about how things aren't how they used to be anymore, the US is great on customer service.

[technothrasher]

Sometimes the regulatory route works in the US. We had our main business phone line go down and Verizon customer service basically shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do and no way to escalate. One call to the state regulator and not only did they fix the phone line within a couple hours, they begged us to tell them what they could do to make the regulatory complaint go away. We told them we'd like access to FIOS but had always been told fiber wasn't on our street and wasn't going to be. Three weeks later, fiber was run down the entire street and we were hooked up to gigabit internet. That roll out can't have been cheap for them.

[owenmarshall]

When I was a youngster growing up with dialup internet we had a problem: when it rained, static filled the line and the internet died.

The repair tech sympathetically said that he was trying, but their policy at the time said the interference was at acceptable levels for voice and he wasn’t able to convince his management to trace the problem upstream and replace the line to fix one rural customer’s service.

On his fourth trip out he slipped dad a post it note with a phone number. It was the state public utility commission. My dad called on Thursday.

That Saturday, the district manager knocks on our door. He informs us of how sorry the entire Bell family is for the trouble we’ve had, that they have teams tracing lines from the central office to our house and will have the problem identified and fixed by Sunday, and that we will receive a rather significant discount to our bill over the next year to help “make it right”. His only ask was that we call the PSC and let them know if AT&T had solved the problem to our satisfaction.

[everybodyknows]

A state regulatory responsibility, IIUC. What state are you in?

[et2o]

What regulator did you call?

[twunde]

It was almost certainly the state public utilities commission PUC, which depending on the state may have a different acronym (PSC is also common). These regulate telecom, water, and energy companies including ESCOs (companies that in theory reduce your energy bill by charging you a different rate than the local monopoly). For companies regulated this way, PSC complaints are extremely effective.

[csydas]

Frankly, I'm not sure how this is customer service so much as either:

- A promised warranty being fulfilled

- A battle of attrition until Macy's gave in

I'm sure there are more nuanced options also but I'm not going to take the time to guess each one as frankly I'm just not quite sure what the definition of Customer Service should be from this post. Should we focus on "The device was used to its limits and still replaced"? That Macy's actually honored a guarantee?

I have a very dour view on customer service since my particular line of work is B2B with IT professionals and it's rarely a pleasant experience with many regions, with the US (yes, nationally) and the UK (yes, basically all of it) being some of the most challenging customers to deal with simply because of their expectations and definitions of Customer Service.

The majority of the time they're not even aware of the terms of their support contract and constantly are pushing the boundaries of support or from the get-go are just far beyond anything that should be reasonably expected, and the amount of complaining and legal threats really takes an emotional toll on my team (since a lot of them do really want to help).

With the EU clients, the same boundary pushing happens, but I find there's usually much more of an honesty about it. Usually one of three things comes from our EU clients:

- The client openly admits they know we don't provide support for said thing, but they really have no other source for help

- The client honestly tells they had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and humbly asks if there's anything we can offer to help out

- The client honestly had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and closes out the case of their own volition

I'm not sure that I can say which result has the best "customer experience" for my clients, as in each case they don't get what they expected from the case they open. US/UK clients tend to add a 4th option:

- The client doesn't care what is/is not supported, they want a resolution

I can easily say which of the 4 outcomes is the most time consuming and emotionally draining for everyone involved.

I think that the idea of service is really misunderstood; service workers are not slaves, and while management __should__ work to make them do their job and honor the business' obligations, management also needs to help clearly define the boundaries of such obligations and explain how to gracefully deescalate situations that toe or exceed these boundaries.