Why do I need it?

You could be serving thousands of customers a day. Most don’t have any problems, but there are still hundreds of them who need to use your customer service. You are dedicated to customer service and almost all of them come away happy. Some companies shrug off one or two customers who can’t be helped, but isn’t it always the biggest orders, someone with a big social media presence, someone who really relies on you, or is already having a bad day? Worse still, sometimes people get lost in the system and you don’t even know how many people are dissatisfied. Cursedomer Service gives you a controlled way to increase the chances of finding these problems before they affect your customers.

How does it work?

I become one of your customers and document all of my experiences. In a practical sense I will be a real customer, purchasing your service in the same way as any other customer, and engaging with your customer services when needed. The difference is we have a business relationship and I cannot be disappointed with the service I receive! I will share everything I can with you to help you prevent the same problems I face from happening to your other customers. This is a detailed form of feedback that your regular customers are under no obligation or incentive to give.

A typical example for an online shop would start with me buying something from your shop. When I receive it, I will ask for a no fault return (available on most products for 14 days as part of distance selling rules), starting my interaction with your customer service. Problems can arise at any point though, even before an order is made, there is no set script and my offering is bespoke to your business. I can cover services too, and an online shop is just an example.

Please note that I am not advertising quality assurance or exploratory testing. I may still use any obvious quality problems, or problems found using your service out of curiosity, as a useful entry point to your customer service.

What makes you different?

The curse.

Please see a very abbreviated history of my customer service woes:

• Problem with university halls billing system putting my graduation at risk, had to overpay and fix afterwards.
• Internet cut off and charged for 2 years of service up front after company marked my account as cancelled by mistake. Refunded then charged full amount again 3 further times before problem solved by deleting all record of my account over a year later.
• New hob arrived with fault. Arranged replacement 4 times and always rescheduled on the day of delivery, until system error discovered and arranged manually 3 months later.
• New sofa arrives not as described, company denies all responsibility, take up section 75 claim with credit company. Credit company loses my claim 3 months later, only discovers when I ask for an update. Told to wait, there is no ETA, and not to ask them for updates. When I call 3 months later they have lost the second claim. Ongoing.
• Every year I have to call the council to tell them my partner hasn’t been a student since 2015, and to correct my post code. Using your council tax bill as proof of address is difficult when the council itself uses the wrong post code.
• Couldn’t change energy provider for 2 years because my current provider wouldn’t authorize it even though I have no outstanding bills. I was told to make sure I paid my next bill and try again. It turned out it’s because I had a meter with 3 serial numbers unique to the current provider and they would only authorize transfer of all three at once even though other providers could only request 2 serial numbers. The new provider had to find this out with no help from the old provider.

Many smaller purchases often include lost returns, impossible to cancel subscriptions, double billing, missing files, no updates without chasing, vendors and contractors blaming each other and getting nowhere, &c.

What is included?

As well as finding problems in your customer service, I fully document the experience from a customer’s perspective. You can use this information to cross reference with your own records, pinpoint what triggered the problem, and even find other customers who could be affected.

Documentation includes:

• Time of purchase.
• Screenshots of website product pages, checkout pages, and confirmation pages.
• Non-sensitive payment details used (for example card type, billing and shipping address, cardholder name).
• Amount charged to card.
• PDFs of all confirmation and follow up emails.
• Phone numbers called.
• Time of call.
• Call duration.
• Time on hold.
• Phone menu interactions (numbers pressed, speech detection).
• Incoming call numbers.
• Incoming call time.
• Incoming call duration.
• Voicemail recordings and transcription.
• Scanned letters received.
• Return shipping tracking details.

While I do keep a note of the names of customer service representatives I talk to for continuity (if given), these will not be part of my documentation. Similarly I will not comment on the attitude or helpfulness of customer service representatives. Cursedomer Service helps you find problems with your systems and processes, and will not place blame on individuals, or help you reduce staff costs.

What are the origins of the curse?

While the curse has had a powerful effect on me from the very beginning of my adult life, I suspect the source is something much earlier in my childhood. I did live in a gothic haunted house between the ages of 2 and 7. At the age of 14 I handled a witch bottle I found under an uprooted tree after a storm, before I knew what it was. I have a feeling that the curse wasn’t intended to be targeted specifically at me, rather that I have picked it up somehow. It also feels like the effects have dulled over years of being idle before I awakened it, or possibly the intention has been lost in translation when applied to our modern world. Something that was much darker now only skirts the edges of being intolerable, fating my participation as a consumer to dissatisfaction.