The good. The bad and the ugly. We have all had customer service experiences that fit inside one of these categories. Whether Clint Eastwood’s good, Lee Van Cleef’s bad or Eli Wallach’s ugly, dealing with customer service can sometimes be a dreadful experience. Today we are making Tucco and Angel Eyes proud. Sorry Clint. So saddle up and get ready to laugh or cry or have a meltdown. Either way it should be fun.

Before you dive into these horror stories, see how you can reduce your hold times while increasing customer satisfaction. 

3 Bad Customer Service Experiences for the Wall of Shame

1.    Imagine what can be done in 6 hours. A lot, right? Well, for one man, 6 hours were spent at the Verizon store. George (name changed to protect the innocent) and his fiancé bought new phones and were set to get a family plan. How romantic… or so you think. After returning to the store 4 times, being told different conflicting information and waiting 6 hours, the couple ended up with 2 deactivated phones that they then needed to repurchase at a cost of over $400, George finally had enough and sent a letter to the Regional President asking him to credit their account for the full cost of their phones. Let’s hope the top brass makes things right for the young couple.
2.    A bride to be and her bridesmaids were once window-shopping outside of a bridal store before they decided to go in and purchase items. When they entered the store, a rude sales assistant jumped to the conclusion that they were not there to buy anything and rudely said, “I knew you girls were a joke the minute you walked in!” After the bride to be filed a complaint to the head office, she got a response stating that the shop targets “a very fashion-forward customer”, inferring that she does not qualify for that elite category. Way to make a bride-to-be turn into a bridezilla.
3.    Plot twist! It’s not always the customer representative that causes bad customer service experiences. Sometimes, it is the customers themselves. A not so nice lady stormed into an Apple store and opened with complaints that her phone would not turn on anymore. The complaints were more in the form of loud profanities than actual complaints. The Apple representatives stayed calm, cool, and collected. The lady did not. When the Apple store tried to go above and beyond to help her, she said, “Frankly, you guys trying to go above and beyond in terms of helping me makes me sick.” Let’s try not to think of what else makes this rude customer sick.

Don’t Underestimate the Key to Success

Having a good customer service experience is not to be overlooked. Research shows that 52% of people who reported having a good customer experience were more likely to purchase more from the company. A whopping 55% of people reported that after having bad customer service experiences they switched to a different company for whichever product they were looking to purchase. Another interesting thing to note is that 56% of people will never use the company again after having had bad customer service experiences. As frustrating as some customers may be, keep in mind that a key to success is giving them a good customer service experience.