Good customer service can be hard to find. Conversely, bad customer service is easy to spot and, when especially ugly, it can go viral. With social media becoming a worldwide connector and a general display of the way modern generations communicate, the performance of customer service agents is increasingly hitting the internet as a result.
Whether it was good, bad, or ugly, 2019 was a heck of a year on social channels. From outbursts in restaurants, to caring agents looking after customers in airports, to racial incidents between customers that agents have to diffuse — all have had a place on the world stage, serving as instructive examples.
In this article, we round up some of the good, the bad, and the ugly customer-service interactions of 2019, and detail what people and companies can learn about the incidents to do better in 2020.
Picture it: A young American family booking a flight to a city in another country via Air Canada. Imagine them having to wait for more than 20 minutes before a customer service agent gets on the phone, only to then be transferred to another department.
It seems like, every month, Apple is coming out with a new product or service for its customers to take advantage of, a gadget or a gizmo to “improve” their lives. A steady stream of people visit Apple stores to view, purchase, or try out some of its convenient gadgets hands-on. If you’ve ever walked through a mall where an Apple Store is present, you’ve seen the phenomenon: A mass of people congregating within its glass walls, standing at the product kiosks, handling items with interests and speaking with customer service professionals about the latest and greatest in Apple technology. When you have hundreds of people walking through the doors at any time, one can only imagine the demand on its customer service professionals.
