The Solution for Bad Customer Service: Cell Phones

Could the solution to bad customer service be just mouse clicks away?According to Bob Rosner at ABC News getting good customer service might not be that difficult anymore.The solution comes in a little device that most people use on a daily basis:the cell phone.That’s right, cell phones can be used to help us capture bad customer service and hold those people that give the bad service accountable.Take for instance the well known issue of Michael Richards (a.k.a. Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld).Richards’ racial blowup at a LA comedy club has been the talk in celebrity news for awhile now.The reason this situation became so popular is because Michael Richards was caught on video with a cell phone from someone in the audience.Now given it would have been talked about if the people from the club would have complained, but it would not have gotten the publicity that comes when pictures and videos hit the internet.The only thing missing was an audio response from someone saying “smile Michael, you are on candid camera.”Now if more people would use their cell phones to catch bad customer service people might start watching how they treat people.Now I know there is a lot of good customer service, but there is also a lot service from people who treat you like a criminal.Therefore, we could use cell phones to broadcast videos on YouTube as an incentive to all those who deal with customers to be respectful and courteous.This could also put a stop to the erroneous claims by companies that the situation is being “taken care of”.In the Michael Richards situation the owner of the comedy club said that he was going to ban Richards from getting on stage until he apologized.Well, the next night before Michael Richards had apologized he was on stage at the same club.However, once the video was posted and more attention was drawn to the situation the owner actually carried out his comment on the ban.There has been many times that if I had a video camera on my cell phone I could have caught some nasty customer service, but then again I probably would not have thought about it until now.So keep your cell phones handy and be ready to capture any situation you might encounter so that maybe, just maybe, we could have customer service that is actually beneficial to the customer.