Customer service must be dead. It’s more and more common to read about how poorly companies are treating their customers and it’s small and large businesses alike.
I had a terrible customer service experience this week. My son is being treated for acne and the medication dries him out from the inside out. Yikes, right? He has to have blood work each month to make sure he’s not drying out from the inside out too much. We don’t want to kill him; just dry him out a bit.
We were referred to LabCorp by his doctor. I’ve never been a huge fan of LabCorp because I think they overcharge their patients and the staff must not have good pay or benefits because they always seem pissy.
Today was not an exception.
See, LabCorp has really upped their shitty customer service game by installing “check-in” kiosks in their labs. This must mean they know their staff is a bunch of dick tips. Or, this is their crappy attempt at streamlining the check-in process.
It doesn’t streamline the process at all. It completely removes the human interaction!
We weren’t greeted upon entering the lab. I walked to the kiosk and saw two options: Check in with an ID or Check in with a drivers license. Since this appointment is for my minor son, he has neither.
Naturally, I asked the woman behind the counter what to do and her response was a curt, “you can check in manually.”
Uh, what? I’m a friggen’ UI developer and I didn’t see the manual check-in link on the tiny little kiosk screen.
Oh, wait, there it is. Hidden as a text fucking link in the bottom left corner.
I finally manage to get him checked in and then we proceed to wait for about 15 minutes. Watching people (mostly elderly, mind you) come in and struggle with the kiosk just as much as I did. See, I’m not an idiot!
One gal couldn’t check in at all and the woman behind the counter could barely bother to help. Sullenly, she walked over to the kiosk and barked orders at the woman, who was clearly already struggling and was now being chastised because she can’t use modern technology.
The story doesn’t end there. After watching person after person who arrived after us get taken back, I finally decided to ask when it was our turn.
She asked if we checked in. Uh, yeah, you were a total bitch to me about it, remember?
When I pointed this out to her she then changed her story.
“I called his name.”, she said in her most go-fuck-yourself voice.
What? No, she didn’t. Neither my son nor I heard her call his name.
I see his name on the check-in sheet.
I point this out to her.
She changes her story again and says she called out his name, his fucking last name, mind you.
His last name! She whispered his last name, twice, in a waiting room full of people and walked away when nobody replied. She didn’t do her fucking job. There is a fucking room full of people waiting for lab work and she doesn’t use her outside voice to call patients? Try a little harder sweetie; do your fucking job, you lazy bitch.
Yea, I lost my shit on her. I told her not one person in that room has been called by their last name. Every person in the room was called by their first name. My son doesn’t go by his last name! Who goes by their last name?
She told me if I didn’t stop yelling at her I could leave.
Yup, you read that right. She fucked up and when I called her out on it she threatened to kick us out of the clinic.
She threatened to kick out my minor son, she threatened to refuse to draw his blood because she made a mistake and I called her out on it.
This is the state of customer service in our country right now.