Would you pay more for something if it came with a guarantee of good customer service? This was a question asked by one of our Tweeps, Friends, or Connections awhile back (sorry we don’t remember which one), but I know Rich answered it with a resounding YES! If you are not sure why, look no further than his blog about his experience with United Airlines and Thrifty Car Rental a couple years ago. In brief, it involved a chaotic cattle call when boarding the plane, small seats, rude stewardesses, and a rental car company at the airport that did not have any cars (read the full story here).

We should not have to pay more for good customer service, but, as Rich said when he wrote his article on poor customer service, companies know it is easier to keep a current customer than to bring a new one in, and, I would add that there are several types of products and services where poor or no customer service truly is the norm: (1) those that can lock you into a one or two year contract; (2) those that ultimately work for someone other than you; and (3) those that provide a necessity for which there are few alternatives, or a limited window of time in which you need to make your decision to buy or not to buy.

The above is nothing profound or new. We all know this. We all learned this the hard way at some point. And we all have the misfortune of being reminded of it every now and again when we move into a new apartment, experience problems with our smart phone, fly on plane, need to have the cable guy come, need to have our car fixed…the list goes on.  But one area where customer service is generally non-existent is in the realm of social media.

Now, as a social media consultant, I can understand this to some extent.  Mark Zuckerberg cannot get on the phone with every person who becomes confused upon Facebook’s monthly change to its privacy policy. Nor can even a low-level representative from LinkedIn take a call from every middle-aged small businessman who wants to be walked through the setup of their profile until it is at 100%. Nor should the above be expected, especially from a free service. Instead, what you get are links to endless discussion boards, that can be difficult enough to navigate even for the experienced social media user, and the occasional opportunity to post or email a question that someone may or may not respond to in a timely manner with information that may or may not be relevant.

Honestly, I cannot complain about this given that social media consultants such as myself make their money by filling this need. However, my opinion changes once you begin to pay for your service, whether for ads on Facebook, a premium account on LinkedIn, or the expanded services of a social media management tool like Hootsuite.

One company that does customer service right is the email marketing service Constant Contact. If you are having problems with your account, you can get a representative on the phone almost immediately throughout most of the day, Monday through Friday. This even applies to people still using a trial account! But not all paid social media services guarantee this level customer service, although I have heard good things about Google Ads and mixed things about LinkedIn’s customer service for premium members.  But, generally speaking, one need not go any further than the discussion boards of some of these social media and social media management tools to find people saying things along the lines of “I have a premium #&*$^@! account and I can’t even get someone to respond to my emails with an answer that specifically addresses why I can’t even use the basic features.”

The quote is a composite, but it gets the point across, and it is comments like these that make me, as a social media consultant, reluctant to recommend purchasing paid services from many social media and social media management services other than Constant Contact. As Rich once told me during a discussion concerning whether to upgrade one of our social media accounts, “If I’m paying them, I expect to be able to call them and reach a real person.” Another way to put that is, “Let’s not pay more for no customer service.”

So let me ask you, would you pay more for something without some guarantee of customer service? Have you? What was the experience like? Let us know.