Nobody likes dealing with customer service. Assuming the best, you still had to contact customer service because something went wrong. It doesn’t matter what the product or service is, most of us do everything we can to avoid having to make that call.
I’ve been in and around service departments for a handful of products over the last couple decades, from UTVs to riflescopes, and I’ve talked to dozens of industry professionals about their service department, customers, and products.
Out of all of these experiences and conversations, there has been one particular fact that has always struck me as both remarkably consistent and somewhat surprising. Regardless of the product, right around 80% of customer service calls and returns are directly related to customer error.
In my experience, this 80% number is never more than a percentage point or two off the actual number. Most people I talk to in the industry share the same number with alarming frequency. It’s not that there aren’t products out there requiring service or that are defective, but for the most part, four to one in fact, defective or broken products are due to user error.
Before we go any further, let me be crystal clear about something.
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