When you say "We both know the answer to that one" I presume you mean I fob people off in which case I'd rather not engage with you. I am a professional, I do my job well and I care about the customers I deal with even when they are rude and abusive.
Sorry, I didn't mean it as a personal insult.
I don't know what industry you're in so cannot comment specifically.
Rather I comment in general terms on the organisation and behaviour of businesses in the current climate. I refer to the general obsession with cost cutting (or profit maximisation) at the likely expense of service quality, rather than your specific job within your specific company. Within any industry there will be good and bad companies. Within any company, even a bad one, there will be individuals who still perform well despite the situation they find themselves in. Some 'banks' have an excellent reputation for their call-centres, others not so.
Complaints are different than 'customer service'. The complaint usually happening as a result of perceived service failure. If you're authorised to resolve complaints in a certain way and that results in a win-win situation, excellent. But, perhaps, in some companies, the emphasis is not on achieving a win-win situation?
My experience, as an employee, and as a customer, is that centralised customer service today is a less satisfactory experience than localised service (with a person you perhaps recognised e.g. local bank staff making local decisions) of old. Perhaps I simply do business with the wrong companies, but I suspect not.
Of course it could simply be that time has moved on and cost-cutting would have had the same impact on localised service, as it appears to have had on centralised delivery.
The managers / consultants that I came across personally in local government, with an agenda to push centralisation / call-centreing of everything / outsourcing, were very interested in the costs of everything (and how to reduce those costs) but had, shall we say, rather less interest in the impact of their proposals on service delivery. Media articles suggest the same applies elsewhere in the country.
I am quite sure that it is possible to deliver world-class customer service from a call-centre (wherever it is located) but, as has been pointed out, it comes down to costs - or the price customers are prepared to pay. Businesses seem to focus on costs rather than service delivered - until it is too late and customers have 'walked'.
I am quite sure an automated response from East Coast is perfectly adequate for some situations, e.g. delay / repay claims. But the OP made a specific point to East Coast, for which an individual response seems entirely reasonable. Customer service needs to be empowered to seek and receive those responses. It needn't cost much or take much time - an email (automated through CRM systems) to 'on-board catering' 'service failure' 'on-board service' 'train 1A11' '15/2/15' then individualised text 'customer enquires why no refreshments offered to First Class passengers between Grantham and Leeds'. A response should not be that hard to produce either, no-one is asking for a full page of A4.
In the good old days, the General Manager of Southern Region BR (or was it Southern Railway) expected a report (from the stationmaster) on his desk for every train that was more than 5 minutes late. Result - people did their best to ensure that trains were not late, thus avoiding the necessity to send a report to the boss and a subsequent telling off.
If East Coast (or anyone else) wants to avoid the expense of properly dealing with complaints, then prevent the complaints in the first place by providing the expected service!
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Don't say anything, let them have their rant, do not interrupt under any circumstances whilst they are ranting. If you interrupt, I find it makes the situation worse, and many start their ranting from the beginning!
Let them finish, I find they will then respect you more when you start explaining and answering concerns and actually listen to you. It also gives more chance to look up what they are annoyed with if you let them go on!
Indeed, I always found that if you interrupt (even at a suitable pause in conversation) it just gives the ranter a second wind. Just make sure you keep listening to what they are saying rather than glazing over, letting your eyes drift elsewhere, or start thinking too hard about your response before they have finished.
