Customer service — or the lack thereof — isn’t new. It goes back centuries, one might even say eons, and no, that isn’t based on assumption.

The first documented customer complaint happened slightly more than 5,800 (not a typo) years ago

What could be the world’s first complaint about shoddy service is on a clay tablet that was first sent about 3,800 [BCE; they forgot to add 2,018 CE years to the total–ed] years ago in southern Mesopotamia from the city of Ur…

Here is an excerpt from it.

Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:

When you came, you said to me as follows: “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”

What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? (…) Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.

What I found most interesting is that the complaint wasn’t limited to the shoddy product or the initial lies in service of making the sale.

It sounded angriest at being “treated with contempt.”

Update the product and delivery method and it could be a template for almost any 21^st Century customer unhappy with a product or service.

Decades ago rotten customer service was more a function of little-to-no training and draconian scripts, but the advent of technology raised rotten customer service to new heights — think Ma Bell and Comcast.

And it was tech companies that added contempt to the rotten customer service recipe in ever larger doses.

If contempt is yin, then arrogance is its yang.

And there is no question that tech companies excel at arrogance.

Image credit: The British Museum

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2018 at 1:15 am and is filed under Communication, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: customer care, customer expectations, superb customer service, unhappy customer, world class customer service
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