Yes, my subject is a little brutal, but I have seen the message over and over again of “Due to COVID–19, our customer service will be delayed,” and I just don’t get it.  Sure, I understand the standpoint that some companies are overwhelmed, but these are typically the same companies who ALWAYS have horrible delay times and unhappy customer service people. With millions of people unemployed, one would think these companies could hire a few extra people and make their customer service EXCELLENT during these times instead of worse. 

I think treating the customer the way you want to be treated is now more than ever the golden rule that we should be living by in the service industry. We should take extra value in the fact that our customers are coming to us for their needs in a recession economy.  We should go above and beyond to make their experience top notch. What we should NOT do is use this as an excuse. Most of the companies I see doing this are the bigger companies, especially the banks…the same banks the American people bailed out of the last crisis. I hope we small business owners take note, and choose to provide exceptional service during these times and stop doing business with these bigger entities that treat everyone poorly in both the good times and bad.

Yes, COVID–19 has hurt a lot of us, our families, the economy, and on and on, but COVID–19 isn’t an excuse for your customer service to be even worse.