New App Aims to Keep Callers Happy

“There's an app for that” will likely go down in history as one of the most overused phrases around, yet also one of the most eerily apt. For a while, it was being applied to virtually everything from phone calls to travel reservations and beyond. Now, it's getting a new application as a means to make customer service calls go more smoothly thanks to a new app called Service.

Service represents something of a growing trend: an app or service that will do the waiting for users. With Service, all users need do is input certain issues being experienced into a menu, and a representative takes these issues to the company of choice for resolution. Getting a user's money back, exchanging items, getting credit for less-than-stellar service and more are all available to Service users. Free for download, the app requires the user input name and telephone number, and extra information as necessary depending on just what it is Service is to do for the user. Since Service is currently out to build a reputation, it's all free to use, at least for now.

Originally developed after Michael Schneider, Service's CEO and founder, watched a bad customer service experience take place in front of him one day. The person involved bought a five-hour Wi-Fi pass on a plane flight, but discovered that all the power ports near his seat weren't working. That person spent the last 20 minutes of his laptop's battery life trying to file a customer service complaint, and that got Schneider to thinking why it was so hard to actually get through to customer service.

Oddly, Service isn't new. Just back in October, we heard about Airpaper, a service that would cancel a user's Comcast (News - Alert) service on the user's behalf for just $5. With Service joining in the fray, we may well be looking at an era where dealing with customer service on someone else's behalf is now a viable subcontract option. This says terrible things about the state of customer service, of course, particularly that it's such an ordeal that we're willing to pay people to handle it for us. In Service's case there's no payment involved, at least for now, but that will likely change down the line. We've heard plenty of ways to make customer service better over the years, so why is customer service still such a trial that people are willing to pay to get out of dealing with it?

It's the kind of rhetorical question that every customer service department should be asking. Some need to do so a lot more than others, but everyone could stand a refresher course as we look to 2016 and the future of customer service. One that, thanks to an app called Service, may be addressed increasingly by proxy.

Edited by Rory J. Thompson

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