7 Organizations Known for Best & Worst Customer Service

While organizations are renowned for the numbers their sales team makes every quarter, customers remember them by something else. For a customer, they distinguish between companies based on the service they provide.

Companies that offer exceptional customer service will always be remembered by their customers.

Today, let's look at different companies that are known for their excellent or bad customer service.

Before we jump into knowing about these companies, the first thing to be understood is the importance of customer service.

Why is Customer Service Important?

Customers judge a company based on the way they're served during each interaction.

Companies should provide excellent customer service to each of their customers. Customers who've received wonderful customer service would always mention this to their social circles.

Now that we've understood the relevance of customer service let's look at the impact of poor customer service.

Also, keep a lookout for our free NPS scoring template in this blog.

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What is the Impact of Bad Customer Service?

Any business that offers poor service to its customers can see a negative impact. This impact can present itself in a few different ways. Let's look at some of them.

We'll use the same example to illustrate these impacts.

Imagine that you're ordering a pizza. You've two options to order from - A, where they make the best pizza, but it takes a long time to deliver, and their service staff are rude and impolite. The other option is B, where the pizza isn't as good as A, but delivers in a really short amount of time, and their staff are courteous whenever you talk to them.

1. Increase in customer churn

Wouldn't you prefer ordering food from a place that delivers really fast and tries to resolve any problems in a simple and polite manner?

When the customer service team doesn't prioritize customer satisfaction, there is an increased possibility of customer churn.

2. Increased customer acquisition costs

Taking the same pizza ordering example as mentioned above, all customers who've ordered food from A would prefer going to a different pizza place.

When companies face customer churn, it becomes difficult to acquire more customers. This is due to an increase in customer acquisition costs.

3. Decreased customer loyalty

A customer who likes the pizza made by A might decrease their frequency of ordering food when every customer service call becomes really difficult to find a solution.

Such incidents can lead customers to become less loyal to a business.

4. Reduced customer satisfaction

When you look at all the aforementioned impacts, it becomes evident that the root cause is a decrease in customer satisfaction. When customers have repeated incidents of poor customer service, it leads to them becoming unhappy with the way they're being served.

Now that we've seen the impact of poor customer service let's look at a few companies renowned for having the worst customer service, as well as those offering excellent customer service.

What Companies are Known for Their Customer Service?

Customer service is a major reason for customers to stick or cancel their purchases with any company. Every business must strive to provide the best customer service they can.

Now, let's look at some of these companies.

1. Comcast

Comcast is a media conglomerate primarily known for Xfinity, NBCUniversal Media, and Sky.

Comcast was infamously known among the American public for having terrible customer service. It didn't help that their product line kept facing frequent outages that came with unnecessary lag times.

Amidst all this negative publicity that Comcast had, it went viral when actor Ryan Reynolds recorded a call of him trying to cancel a subscription without success.

Once this was made public, Comcast made a public apology to Ryan Reynolds and the innumerable number of customers who had previously shared one of the worst customer service experiences they had faced.

2. Apple

The American Customer Satisfaction Index showcases Apple as the leading company by customers in the personal computer category.

This was primarily attributed to the top-quality customer service provided by their customer support team.

The good customer service provided by Apple has made its customers stay loyal and act as repeat customers.

3. AOL

AOL started by becoming an email service provider when they started out. AOL further expanded with other online services like instant messenger, video search, news on stock quotations, sports, and weather, along with MapQuest - an online map and directions resource.

It became a trademark of Yahoo.Inc a few years later.

The ownership of AOL has moved to Apollo Global Management, a Las Vegas-based company known for reviving defective elements of global conglomerates.

Despite this change in ownership, AOL is still known to be one of the companies with the worst customer service. A user once complained that AOL billed his father, who passed away six months ago.

Customer service teams from AOL refused to delete the account and reluctantly asked to speak to the person in question before deleting it.

4. Google

Google's commitment to providing customers with the best support possible is evident in its customer satisfaction score.

Google has maintained the top position among competitors in the search engine category with a score of 82.

5. Walmart

While Walmart is globally known to be one of the most significant American brands in the supermarket industry, customers have a different story to tell.

The way Walmart responds to any customer usually ends up being a negative experience.

Once, a customer hit his head on a rack and fell with a huge bruise. When he reached out to the staff at Walmart to call 911 as he was feeling dizzy, they refused and told him off by saying that the bruising was odd.

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6. Hilton Hotels Corporation

Hilton Hotels Corporation is a well-known business in the hotel industry. Their commitment to improving customer experience is maintained throughout their global branches.

One of their innovative approach to improving customer service is the Hilton Technology Room, where customer feedback is collected using the latest technologies. These feedback is used to improve their customer service.

7. AT&T

AT&T Corporation is a US-based telecommunications firm.

AT&T is infamously known for service problems that bring problems for all their subscribers.

Many customers still call it to be a company with one of the worst customer service experiences.

8. Papa John’s International

Papa John's is a company in the service restaurants category that surpasses their rivals, such as Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and Domino's.

The company's growth can be attributed to its approach to providing superior quality pizza along with fantastic value together for the best customer experience.

9. Sprint

Sprint was one of the biggest players in telecommunication in the United States. Many customers report Sprint to have complaints ranging from rude support agents to non-operational plans, which are impossible to cancel.

10. Convin

While Convin has been providing its services in the highest quality, the major factor that pulls customers towards them for renewed subscriptions is the high quality of support provided.

The support team has prioritized every customer request, which is represented by the high nps support rating given by users.

Download our free NPS scoring template.

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Improving the Way You Serve Customers

Now that you've seen the importance of customer service, the best approach to ensuring your agents behave properly during customer interactions is by evaluating their performance and using intelligent coaching methods.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is an example of bad customer service?

Talking rudely and using foul language when conversing with customers is an example of bad customer service.

2. What is unreliable customer service?

Unreliable customer service refers to agents not being able to resolve customer queries.

3. What are the 7 qualities of bad customer service?

• Lack of empathy
• Rude attitude
• Difficult to reach for help
• Poorly trained agents
• Lack of resolution
• Lack of human contact
• Not using the right channels