Day 32

Regular viewers will remember the customer service fiasco presided over by SSE, who were previously named and shamed on this blog for their appalling customer interaction ability (the jury's still out on whether this goes to to Ombudsman - we will have to wait and see).

Hot on the heels of SSE's dog's breakfast of a customer service provision, today's contender is Oliver from Oracle Finance, whose unsolicited marketing call yesterday went something like this:

Oliver: "Hi Charles, how are you feeling today?"

Me: "Well, not so good actually, Oliver"

Oliver:  "Oh, what's the problem then?"

Me: "Well, I have cancer and am currently having chemotherapy"

Oliver: "Whoa!, I was only calling about business"

Me: "Then why are you asking after my health? - particularly when you are clearly not ready for the answer?"

Oliver: "Well, we are supposed to ask customers how they are"

Me: "One; I'm not a customer of yours, Two; if you are making a business call, don't pretend to be interested in my health (which you clearly weren't anyway), Three; What does your customer service manual tell you to say next?"

Oliver: "Er, umm, er, ………umm………"

To my mind this illustrates what's wrong with this country. The 'customer service' gurus think it's clever to ask after a total stranger's health, but are clearly expecting nothing other than a 'fine, well' type answer. 

Tor was in a well-known supermarket yesterday and the 'customer service operative' asked her how her day was going. Are they really ready for the truth here? I mean, it's perfectly possible to offer good customer service without using potentially dangerous health questions as a marketing/customer retention tool. 

It's not just people with a critical/terminal illness the marketeers have to worry about. I mean, The Mental Health Foundation states that 1 in 4 people will have some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year:

http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-statistics/

You would have thought that all of this would suggest that asking marketing/customer service health related questions to total strangers is a no-no, but until they can get Jim Henson out of the marketing department, I guess we're going to be seeing a lot more of the same…..

Memo to Tor: Hmm,……...maybe he was actually just trying to chat you up?