FAQ | Customer Service Hell

Who are you, and uh...why are you doing this?

I'm a regular ole guy who has worked in Customer Support my entire career and I just really, REALLY hate when it's done poorly, as you've probably figured out already from the rest of this website. I always fight back when I find myself on the receiving end of such service, and I've found myself in many a battle with companies big and small who have tried to screw me over with bad support over the years. Having been through this myself, and knowing how angry these situations make me, I had an epiphany one day and figured, "You know what? I want to help other people fight those battles too, and I want to make sure that they know which companies are really failing at this." And with that, the concept of Customer Service Hell was born.

Being in Customer Service has also instilled a large sense of altruism in me in general and I enjoy helping people as much as I can! That's why you'll see me replying to multiple tweets a day with my @SadCustomers handle during my spare time and even reaching out to executives when it makes sense to. I'm happy to do it and I hope that it has a positive overall impact in the customer care universe.

Cool! There's gotta be a lot of bad support out there, right? How do you narrow it down to just 5?

Indeed there is! But we've gotta narrow it down to the worst offenders somehow to showcase just how bad they are. I certainly don't have an exact science for this, but my three main criteria to evaluate for bad customer service are:

Volume of complaints
Average Response Time, and
Average Resolution Time

While there are a lot of companies who do customer service poorly, the first criteria pretty much limits this to large companies that get a lot of Twitter mentions. As much as I'd love to find every company that is doing #2 and #3 badly, it's darn near impossible unless the complaints come to fruition.

Once the volume is there (and countable), the other two metrics separate the companies who do customer service only OK from the ones who really suck at it. Looking at the current Top 5 list, not only do Airbnb and Uber get a ton of complaints, but many of those complaints reference a) how slowly the support agents are responding, and b) how some of the cases are dragging on for weeks. That's a sure sign that they both belong on this list. The other 3 companies will fit the bill as well in some capacity.

As far as ranking the companies from 1-5, it's not always easy! Some of those are just a judgement call, but it really comes down to which one I am more likely to get a resolution from, if ever, without wanting to pull my hair out.

Gotcha! But what's up with the little Satan dudes?

This is Hell isn't it?!? I figured that we had to throw the Devil in here somewhere, and what better way to do it than to showcase how evil each of these companies' support metrics are?

The Satan-Meter is pretty straightforward, albeit, a bit scary:

- Not bad at all actually! Slightly impish, but for the most part, OK

- Still not too bad, though we're starting to see some devilish tendencies arise

- Could be a lot better, and support services are starting to noticeably degrade in quality

- Support is clearly negligent in more than a few areas, and it's enough of a reason to avoid this company

- We've reached peak Support Hell. This company does not value its customers very much and have turned a blind eye towards them

Typically companies on this Top 5 list will have at least a Satan Score™ of at least 4.5 or higher depending on their level of negligence.

Sweet! Would you ever increase this to a Top 10 list? Or maybe more?

Honestly, I am really considering it given how much poor customer service I see every day. It's certainly not just limited to these 5 and there are many other egregious offenders out there.

Stay tuned.

How often are you going to update this?

As much as possible! And I may even add a blog at some point, who knows.