Confirming what most
GetHuman.com users already know,
Facebook, despite all the rave reviews and the $1 billion valuation, recently came in last for customer service for social media and e-business companies. In the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index,
Facebook received a score of 64 out of 100, on par with the airlines and the cable companies...the worst offenders of poor customer service. While the poor score is no surpirse to readers of this space, the company that conducted the survey, ForSee Results, was able to not only inform the company of it's poor result, but they were also able to get a quote from the company. That's no small feat for any person who has ever tried to get an answer from
Facebook.
According to the unnamed
Facebook representative, when asked for a response to the company's poor result, he claimed "We haven't reviewed the survey methodology in detail, but clearly we have room to improve. Building a simple, useful service is the best way to earn and sustain the trust people put in us. That's why we spend so much of our time and energy focused on improving the products we offer and introducing new ones. We look forward to the next survey." Um, hey buddy, room to improve? How about not adding new applications or improving the existing ones and oh I don't know, adding a phone number that people can call when they need an answer? Right now
Facebook has canned online responses where customers can choose to solve their problem from a list of frequently asked questions. Unfortunately, if the answer is not in one of the drop down menus and you need to contact the company, you are out of luck. One of the biggest complaints we get is about a lack of response from
Facebook.
The good news is that the company is becoming more aware that while the current valuation is nice, in a company where the product is driven by people, if those people are unsatisfied, they will go elsewhere. Clearly the current setup in the customer service department is not working for
Facebook, so hopefully now that the company is more aware, they'll begin focusing on the customers needs and will clean up what is one of the worst customer service departments that we recieve requests and complaints about. As we've seen in other fields, companies are becoming more aware of the impact of effective customer service, and are choosing to invest more money in them to retain happy customers, and for a while it appeared that
Facebook just did not care. Hopefully this is the dawning of a new day for the company.
To read more about the recent survey,
Facebook Phone Number & Customer Shortcuts, Ratings & More ›
Posted by GetHuman on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:43am