I’ve been having a lot of bad experiences as a customer recently.  I’ve had to contact technical support and customer service more in the last 2 months than in the previous 2 years, I think.  And, to my dismay, most of those experiences have been substandard.

You can skip this part

Bear with me, I’m going to list a bunch of annoyances. Or you can skip this paragraph. Verizon Wireless, who have previously shone in the customer service department, didn’t even try to troubleshoot my problem logging in beyond telling me to use Internet Explorer 7.  Nevermind that I’ve used Opera and Firefox to log in the entire time I’ve had my account.  Seagate’s support website is an absolute disaster: it’s difficult to find a contact form, then the form repeatedly fails on the required “have you read all these articles in our knowledge base?” escalation step.  Zenni Optical took over twice as long as promised to deliver my glasses and, even though I asked several times, never told me why my order was delayed.  I won’t bore you by recounting the uninformative e-mails I received and the rude comments the representative made.  A teller at my bank, Envision Credit Union, refused to let me purchase a money order (which I needed to pay my rent)–after letting me change my PIN and deposit my paycheck (putting it out of my reach) because my driver’s license  expired.  There I am, right in front of him, having already made 2 transactions.  I could have verified my identity in a number of  other ways, but apparently uptight adherence to their policy supersedes both the policy’s purpose in protecting me and their implied obligation to provide me with service.  Envision also failed to reply to two e-mails I sent prior to that.  Shoes.com still hasn’t replied to my e-mail, sent over a week ago, about the fact that they sent me the wrong size of shoe (which is frightening given their “No Exchange” policy [I ended up with no refund & no replacement shoes]).

Customer service is part of design

I’ve worked directly serving customers, in some form or another, most of my life.  My first job was concessionist at a movie theater, my second retail sales at a video game store, while my third and fourth involved phone and e-mail tech support.  I know the frustrations.  It sometimes seems that people never read directions.  Answering the same question over and over is tiresome, that’s inescapable.  It’s hard to keep smiling when you know that a customer is being deliberately difficult in an effort to “work the system” for get special treatment.  When you are talking to that customer–the one that hasn’t paid for 3 months and is insisting, while insulting you, that s/he should not only continue to receive service, but also should have the past due balance waived–it’s hard to keep in mind that, really,  “special treatment” should be the rule.  As a customer service representative, you shouldn’t be frowning at the idea of special treatment, you should be happily providing special treatment to every customer with whom you interact!

In the “real world”, though, policies and procedures are in place to do things like protect the customer from fraud and  ensure the efficiency and accuracy of support responses.  Making exceptions can do more harm than good–doing “too much” for one client can mean not doing anything for 3 more clients who are waiting on hold in your call queue.  Your manager may not appreciate it as much as the client, either.  I understand that, too.  That doesn’t change the fact that the customer service representative’s responsibility is to service, not stall.

All the bad experiences I’ve had lately have made me wonder what kind of experience most clients have with their freelance web designers and web developers.  After all, there is a stereotype applicable to each that doesn’t bode well for providing good customer service!  For web designers, we have the temperamental artist (I’ll dust off my beret).  For web developers, we have the socially inept nerd (and on go my thick-rimmed glasses!).

Certainly I think that freelance web designers/web developers occupy a different position than a technical support employee.  You hire a freelance designer/developer, hopefully, because their portfolio of work convinces you that they are an expert in their field.  A freelance designer or freelance developer acts as a consultant in addition to a contract employee.  Often a freelance designer/developer is understood to have specialized knowledge.  This makes some conversations easier, but it doesn’t really change the fact that a paying customer has the right to make the final decision.

Ideals aside, one of the advantages of being self employed is being able to decide what jobs you want to take and how much grief you are willing to put up with, isn’t it?  So when the freelance designer vehemently disagrees with the decision, when the freelance developer is having a bad day, or when the customer is being a jerk, what inhibition aside from good manners will assure a freelance client of good customer service?

On the other hand, a freelancer (even one suffering pangs of artistic integrity!) has a front-row seat to the effect of bad customer service on his/her income.  If a freelance developer depends on his/her freelance employment for the majority of his/her income, a customer service failure could be economically fatal!  But there’s no guarantee that a given freelance designer will have significant customer service experience or a philosophy that holds customer service in high esteem.

So I wonder how well customer satisfaction ranks among clients of freelance designers.  If you are a freelance designer yourself you can ask, or gauge by your repeat business and referrals.  I’d also like to ask freelance designers and developers how much attention they give to their customer service skills.  How important do freelance designers and freelance developers consider good customer service during the fulfillment of a freelance contract?

Having been a customer and a customer service rep, I know how overwhelming the frustration on both sides can be and I also know how easy it is for failures to occur, whether those failures are deliberate or accidental.  How often do customer service horror stories occur in the career of the average freelancer?