Where are Customer Service Rating Systems?

mugnyte asks: "There are various ways to watch single complaints congeal into a groundswell of 'market issue' (Badware add-ons, Sony root-kit, AOL un-install, etc) via blogs and google numbers, but I'm finding no sites that rate Customer Service on an ongoing basis. I'm looking for something like the home-service-industry Angie's List or perhaps Tom's Hardware guide, but on the topic of Customer Service. Is there anyone doing the hard work to gather and legitimately rate companies by their quality of service?"

Re:BBB

[eggoeater]

I love the BBB; filing a complaint with them usually resolves the issue.
Unfortunatly, the BBB doesn't really rate "customer service".
eg. Metrocall really screwed up my account about 10 years ago and it wasn't until I filed a BBB complaint that it got straightened out.
Obviously this has nothing to do with customer service and the BBB doesn't want to get complaints that "some customer service rep was rude to me."
The BBB deals with situations in which a specific outcome is desired by the plaintif (eg. Correct the balance on my account; refund my money; etc..)


I'm a techie at a LARGE call center in a finance company. We use Gallup surveys to rate our customer service and then we publish those scores. Customer service is important in commercial and retail finance; that's why we publish those scores. Finance will sell you a product (mortgage, checking, brokerage) but the company doesn't make money unless you keep your account open.

Unlike finance, most companies don't see customer service as a money-making opportunity. (Many times, it isn't.) For instance, if you buy a video card from company X, then they already have your money. Once company X has your money, their incentive to make you happy is gone. They will provide you with the cheapest customer service they can and they sure as hell aren't going to spend a fortune on things like quality coaches and Gallup surveys.

Here's the moral of the story:
Good customer service is VERY EXPENSIVE for any company and, because there's very little brand-loyalty left in the consumer market, it rarely leads to repeat customers.
Good customer service is only viewed as a necessity for companies that need to keep you as an ongoing customer.
The finance industry, and other "service" industries, has figured out that retaining customers is far cheaper then aquireing new ones.

Reputation systems

[Colin Smith]

Going to be big, eventually. Try epinions.com or rateit.com. The problem is their rating systems are still very crude indeed.

At some point someone will come up with a reputation system which will allow everything down to individuals to be rated. Perhaps different aspects of a product, service or individual. Possibly classifying the user by their ratings as well in order to more closely predict what someone will like or dislike, just because you like coke doesn't mean that the next guy thinks that pepsi is rubbish, or that the democrats are crap because you're a republican. Hmm, least squares regression I reckon.

 

Re:google?

[Meshach]

Wouldn't anyone ambitious enough to look for others' customer service experience just google first? If there something to vent about, someone has already done it on the web.

The trouble with this stratagy is you are getting a selective bias: only persons who have had a exceptionally bad experience will actually write about it in a publically indexed blog. If all you go by is google all you will get is the horror stories.

A better stratagy would be to look for some third party statistics on the service offered