Am I the only one who thinks Customer Service is on a long term decline
One Special Dish where I let off some steam
SPECIAL DISH: We need a customer service revolution for every company, but especially for SaaS products
About 2 years ago when I was first jotting down ideas about technology that I wanted to write about, I started inventorying every societal effect for a multi-decadal accumulation of technology impacts that we have experienced. As I’d spent a 40 plus year career implementing IT in a variety of business organizations, I had had a front row seat to watch the variety of repercussions. The more technology compounded itself, the larger the swath of changes I observed. From the deep suspicions of anything computer related in the first paper to computer projects, to the blasé “what’s new in my tech world” of today.
One of the most unusual fallouts is the gradual but pernicious denigration in customer service, across a large number of industries, not just technology. Now some people would just say I’m being curmudgeonly, but that is a cheap conversation stopping cliché. I just have over 4 decades of observation across a wide variety of customer service situations. I have a much larger base for comparison.
When I did finally start writing, I chose to do it in a tart and sarcastic manner because we really live in an era of self parody, which just begs for satire. More serious issues, took a backseat because I didn’t know how to frame them properly in the writing style I had chosen. But this is one of those “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” articles. Unfortunately, I have a little choice but to take it until things change. Or I just stop using software.
Let me deal with the triggering event for this article as quickly as I can. It deals with the horrific customer support that everyone’s darling Canva doesn’t provide to customers. A lot of Canva’s love vibes are because the founder is female and it’s considered one of the great digital success stories, nearing $3 billion in revenue. I can tell you from multiple experiences, that they’re not spending even a tiny fraction of those gross revenues on support.
I have long thought - as a multi-year Canva user who also uses several other graphics packages - that underneath the covers they had some architectural and data issues. Now I spent 25+ years designing and implementing large business applications so I have a bit of clue as to the red flags to look for. In the prime of my days developing content, I was using up to 100 different software products. Again, I know of what I speak.
About 6 months ago I wanted to change my primary email for all my software. Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? For the other 60 other software accounts, piece of cake. Canva however wasn’t able to make that happen. I had to set up a completely new bogus email to get my service restored. Suddenly this week, all web browsers would no longer recognize this new email and I couldn’t access any of the designs that I have come to rely on. I started hyperventilate because I realized I’d have to contact Canva support again. A few tears were shed; swear words shouted. I won’t bore you with the details - it is still an open and festering issue more than 3 days later - but communicating with them is a combination of a Kafkaesque short story blended with the impersonality of the worst AI you’ve ever ever interacted with. Hands down they’re in the bottom three software vendors I’ve ever had to deal with.
Steam released so back to the main theme: the slow slipping away of customer service. I think there are two forces at work here. First, ongoing digital transformation means that we are in an era of automating customer service processes (see last week’s newsletter for how well that is going for RBC Visa). I believe that because of the urgent haste of most of these implementations, they are not robust enough for the dynamism of customer interactions. Not sure where the project champions and sponsors of these transformations are, but it certainly isn’t on the side of the customer. In addition, when “complete“, organizations underinvest and/or outsource the rest of their customer service team (the humans who used to help you). Let’s be really clear: This is a drive to reduce expenditures at the cost of customers, not to help them.
How are they able to get away with this?
That brings me to the second point. It is a truism to say that there is an inverse relationship between age of the user and speed of adoption of new technology / software. Marry this together with the repugnant MVP (minimum viable product with a distorted definition of viable from a customer’s viewpoint.) concept that is so pervasive in the software industry. Presto you have first wave users who are young with a low expectation of customer service . They’re fine hacking and whacking at something that doesn’t really work properly. After about 15 years of this, you realize that people below the age of 40 have much reduced expectations about customer service. When combined with e-commerce and WFH, direct interactions with other people have been greatly reduced. The younger accept less as a part of their lives. These lowered expectations mean that literally every industry can start to deliver poorer service. A generational change in what to expect from our business organizations.
At the heart of this is the ubiquitous Software as a Service concept (SaaS). Here is the business model most new tech companies - which are all copycats - are pursuing:
get something out as fast as possible (MVP)
give it away free at first because people can’t have high expectations for free
get them committed to it (this marketing mumbo-jumbo is called Stickiness)
add a little more value
change to freemium with the stuff people really want in priced plans (add slight annual discounts to look nicer)
embark on a merciless email and social marketing wave to have users convert to paying plans
make it nearly impossible for anyone to find the website or app location to be able to stop the recurring plan payment
That is one foolproof IPO and stock market money making scheme. You have trapped customers where the switching costs are high (they can’t cancel easily anyway) and you just keep billing them year after year. Supposedly this is so great for the customer because they’re getting upgrades to the software all the time. That stops pretty quickly except for patches. I use several SaaS software products whose code base hasn’t changed substantially in many years.
Now for customer support in this ingenious little game. Let’s have the users do it themselves by reading online manuals that almost never cover the topic of the problem that they are experiencing. Then they have use some automated ticketing system that rarely works properly, for the customer.
Think I’m making too much of this? Where are we in the AI cycle? The products are mostly free although they’re gradually adding in plans. There are so many mistakes in the products (detailed frequently in this newsletter) but hey, can you expect anything when you’re not paying anything for it? I could go through dozens of other software products that I have used or I’m currently using to support my contention.
You are not a customer; you are a non-stop paying entity.
Let me finish with two more examples. I have been using 1Password for a few years now. Given that I have hundreds of user IDs and passwords this is an essential way to keep them all straight and secure. Three weeks ago on one of my computers it just stopped working. That meant I couldn’t get access to anything from my bank to my government accounts. I scrambled quickly and filled out the support ticket. Now I think of this product as being mission critical, unlike Canva which just makes your graphics look good. It took nearly 4 hours for this to get resolved. Not good enough.
I want to end on a positive note because there still is the odd company who get it right. I was a pioneer user of the video recording and presentation application called mmhmm. This is one of many products from the All Turtles studio, started by Phil Libin. He was a co-founder of Evernote. Over several years, as they went from beta to a well established product, their customer support was always superb. I had two different account difficulties as I shrank the headcount in my last company (they bill by team size). They cheerfully reduced the cost of my plan, including refunding me the difference in plans one year. In all other support calls I have ever had over many moons, I have never had another company address price. Or refund. Certainly not the darlings over at Canva. Hello Adobe Express (which can convert many of Canva’s exported designs) I want to be a new…..customer.
Off now on vacay. Hopefully I will be able to keep publishing but depending on wifi the timing might be a bit off. Always interested in comments and feedback
Wonderful article, David! It was great to read your thoughtful challenge to the poor service standards that many consumers might sadly be expecting to encounter. In some companies, customers will need to pay a premium price to access a 'human' servicing channel over digital-only. A tiered customer service offering might be part of the solution in the future, although it's still no guarantee of a "good" service but it may force a higher degree of accountability.
I'm a huge fan of being able to get answers quickly and find them myself. However, it frustrates me to no end when I end up in a loop or when you chat with someone online who clearly has no vested interest in helping you solve your problem.