Hanging on the telephone

Customer satisfaction is plummeting as businesses struggling to shake off the pandemic search for an Al answer.

- PETER GRIFFIN

New Plymouth couple Dianne and Grant Dobson learnt the N perils of basing their business on Facebook Marketplace last month when their account was shut down without notice or explanation. "Arrange With Style" specialises in decluttering and downsizing, selling unwanted items on behalf of others and taking a commission for its efforts. Although the Dobsons have a website, most of their trades happen on Marketplace, Facebook's free listings site, which is accessible via app and website. Repeated appeals to have the page reactivated were met with automated messages. The account was restored nearly three weeks later but only after an RNZ story on the couple's plight went viral.

When my own Facebook account was hacked in March, I was in a similar position until contacts at Facebook owner Meta's local public relations agency pulled some strings on my behalf. 

Any goodwill we once showed towards the companies in our lives - the retailers, utilities, and financial service providers who scrambled to shift their services online during the pandemic - seems to have evaporated in the past year. Chronic staff shortages and lingering supply-chain issues have played havoc with many business operations.

The "please respect our staff" signs behind the counter in retailers and restaurants advertise the simmering tensions. We've faced escalating prices for essentials such as fuel and groceries, turning sentiment against companies that seem to be profiting handsomely from our misery.

Surveys around the world reveal languishing levels of customer satisfaction. One of the biggest annual surveys, the 2023 Forrester customer experience index, which polls 96,000 US consumers on 221 brands, has seen scores slump for a second consecutive year. Only luxury car brands showed any meaningful improvement.