Why Customer Service is an Oxymoron

Ain’t it the truth? If you want your real estate business to explode overnight, just go on vacation. What can happen in early January, you may ask? Oy. But between my laptop, my iPad and iPhone, I am never without communication of some sort. Unless, of course, I leave my phone in my at home, but then I still have my Apple Watch.

That photo above is of the rabbit in the terminal at the Sacramento Airport. I know lots of people in Sacramento don’t like it, but I find the structure attractive and invigorating. It makes me think my plane will be on time. Even though that is a fallacy and there is no logical reason to believe it. Because if a flight can be delayed, it will happen and they often don’t tell you. But that is to be expected.

See, this is the problem. We have become so accustomed to bad service, delayed flights, lost luggage, it’s become the norm. The standard. In fact, there are people alive today, living in this 22nd Century who do not know that at one time receptionists used to answer the phone and those same people would transfer you to a department if you needed help. Employees in that department worked at the company. They cared about their job, and they cared about their customers. They would actually solve your problem or die trying.

Today, that person is overseas somewhere. Pretty soon there will be no person at all. Nobody will answer your call, and nobody will help you. We have inferior and bad customer service but at least by god we have some semblance of customer service. And everybody is happy because there are few of us left alive who remember we once had good customer service. Do you remember when department stores had employees who were elevator operators? They wore a uniform, white gloves, and a little monkey hat. They ran the elevator by closing the criss-crossed metal doors and raising the arm that made the elevator go up and down.

Every customer who crossed the threshold to get on the elevator was greeted, and when you left you were wished a good day.

No, of course you don’t remember elevator operators because if you are a Millennial, you were not born yet. If something doesn’t work, you throw it away today. You don’t expect excellence from a company because you have no idea what it is. You’ve never seen it. And that is a shame because you are missing out on a great pleasure — the right to complain and bitch about it.

When we stop complaining, we have lost the battle.

Fortunately, clients never complain about The Elizabeth Weintraub Team. We under-promise, over-deliver, and superior customer service is our #1 goal.