Subscribe
About

Off your chest

Hellopeter.com has given South Africans a fantastic opportunity to air their gripes about bad service.
By Georgina Guedes, Contributor
Johannesburg, 28 Mar 2006

I have always been offended by signs in customer service reception areas that say: "If you like our service, tell everyone; if you don`t like our service, tell us."

The implication that I should somehow enter into a contract of silence with a company that hasn`t provided me with the good service I deserve in the first place strikes me as bizarre.

A customer/service provider relationship isn`t a friendship in which both parties are supposed to love each other in spite of their faults. If company representatives provide me with bad service, I am perfectly entitled to badmouth them. I don`t owe them anything if they`re having a bad day; the entirety of my relationship with them is based on the precept that they will provide me with what I want, how I want it, all the time.

However, I do also make a point of always letting the company know of any problem I may have with it. And if I receive a satisfactory response, I always let the people to whom I griped know that my issue has been resolved. I`m like a one-woman consumer watchdog show.

A customer/service provider relationship isn`t a friendship in which both parties are supposed to love each other in spite of their faults.

Georgina Guedes, editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

So I am delighted that hellopeter has got the local market complaining vociferously on a public forum that demands response from the originators of bad service. Users of the site can log on and write their report of whatever bad experience they`ve had, and the site will then the company, which can give a response, or not. But it looks pretty bad when a company leaves the response block blank.

Interestingly, in spite of this, a variety of companies choose to do just that. And the site has a smiley face/frowny face rating system for this reason. Topping today`s list of most complained about company is Big Concerts, which is hardly a surprise, considering the fiasco that was the Massive Mix concert last weekend, and topping the list of good companies is OUTsurance.

The site also encourages its users to report good service, which is a fair enough request. Hilariously, there is a weekly competition for the recipient of the best compliment, the prize for which is an autographed copy of site owner, Peter Cheales`s book "I was your customer".

I think this misses the point a little, since the business book itself is hardly a desirable item, and is being sent to people who obviously already have the hang of customer service. Surely it would make more sense to send the book to the "Zero of the Week" instead.

Despite the site`s air of self-promotion, it is a valuable medium for a country that is so beleaguered by bad service.

Share