Customer Service

See this picture? If you live in the Netherlands, it is a vicious lie. I promised a post about the customer service, or lack thereof, a while back and here it is. 

Every day I am more and more amazed at the lack of customer service in this country.If you were to walk into a shop in the States, you would be greeted by at least one person and in some shops 3-4 people. Anyone play The Buckle game? Where you had to walk through to the back of The Buckle and back to the front without getting greeted by the crazies that were employed there and worked on commission?   Here, you are rarely greeted by anyone and typically the employee stands at the back of the store and acts annoyed if you bother him.

Another example is customer service phone lines. If I call my cell phone provider because the service they are providing is sketchy or I have a problem with my bill, I am charged 10cents a minute just for calling them! Now, I know most of you have sat on hold with a cell phone company plenty of times and you can attest that it is not a 5minute phone call! And it's not just cell phones, any customer service line you call, you are charged.

In restaurants, you rarely see your waiter. Now, to be fair, this is not strictly due to poor customer service,  but they also do not want to intrude on your private meal, which is sometimes nice but when my mouth is parched and I'm ready for the check, I need my waiter!

When talking to a Dutch person about the frustrations regarding customer service, the typical response is " why would you want someone to fake niceness or that they really care?" Hmm.  This is where the problem with a more socialist society comes in. There is no competition. They know the government (i.e. Dan's 42% taxes he pays out of his paycheck each month) will bail them out and that it's very difficult to lose a business.  Everyone is paid similarly, regardless of the job(obviously there are some exceptions) so you don't have the extremely wealthy(because they tax the crap out of you! ) and you don't have the extremely poor. However, you also don't have healthy competition, which results in poor customer service and poor business management. 

I have taken for granted how nice it is to have someone to call when you have a problem with their product.  This is their way of life here and it's not out of the ordinary to them. Maybe that's why I've had more than one Dutch person tell me how friendly Americans are and how we'll talk to anyone. We may be faking it some days but we'll make you feel like you are our #1 priority. . .and that's how I like it.