Everyone has had a terrible experience with a business or organization. There’s no way to avoid them, but some of them are quite common. Here’s the top five customer service mistakes that absolutely tick me off.

1. Exaggeration.
Dealing with companies/organizations that exaggerate their knowledge and success, is really a quick way to a horrible experience. When you constantly stump those who are supposed to be fully knowledgeable, it quickly turns into a hectic scene. I’ve personally dealt with a few of those types of companies that bloat what they think they know, and then have no answers to my questions. No business should claim outstanding ability if they don’t posses it; moreover, they should all be honest about their limitations.

2. Language barriers.
Calling a company and getting redirected to the other side of the world is almost always unpleasant. When you’re calling a local place language barriers can be just as intimidating and annoying, they can cause people to avoid certain brands and products. Walking into a store and realizing no one knows a lick of English is also very unpleasant. Unless you receive clear and concise answers customer service is useless.

3. Long wait times due to lack of customer service reps.
Being put on hold for 30 minutes isn’t cool; waiting for a representative in person isn’t either. Waiting minutes and minutes on end to simply chat with an online representative can also prove to be tricky, and when email responses take days to get, that option isn’t much fun either. Most of my grr-moments can be attributed to lack of CSRs, businesses sometimes forget or can’t expand their customer service abilities as their company grows –not cool.

4. Runaround when canceling services.
Time and time again lists of the worst companies tied to companies they simply avoid having you cancel their services. AOL is the most notable and has gained a reputation for being so pushy when annoying when someone calls to cancel their service. Allot of companies seem to fail to fully realize that if they can’t do something as simple as discounting a service, chances are it’ll be the customers last time dealing with them –ever.

5. Being rude.
Everyone has dealt with at least one simply rude CSR. They say “EXCUSE ME BUT—” and really mean “shut up I’m going to do what I want,” or so it seems. There is absolutely no excuse for rudeness. Customers and clients won’t stick around if this is the case.

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Whataburger is often the target of my tweets, blog posts, [dry] jokes, and general fast food admiration. From an every-day consumer point of view Whataburger is simply good food made “just like you like it.” But there’s more to the Whataburger brand than their slogan.

Whataburger knows its roots, in fact you can walk into just about any Whataburger around and proudly see their photo’s of the first couple of restaurants and their flagship location in Corpus Christi, Texas. Being a native Texan myself; and growing up with Whataburger minutes away, I feel like the place is more ours –so to speak, than other burger joints. Whataburger locations have a way of truly making it feel like you are part of something special, something Southern, and specifically something Texan.

Locations aside their advertising is simply a great embodiment of that down-home feel the locations give you. From the male providing the TV advert voiceovers; which I’ve come to refer to as the “cool-Whataburger-voice-guy,” to the use of video clips from Whataburger locations with nothing around but Texas landscapes, really give off a feeling of that they are a natural and an almost expected component not only blends in, but truly belongs.

Their advertisements also aren’t the habitual fast food ads targeted towards kids, teens, and as of lately, minorities. Whataburger breaks past that with a simple message that sums up to their promise to give you what you want, the way you want it, fresh and always tasty –their target audience simply being folks who like a good meal served up in packaging so boring you know it’s the food that keeps us coming back again and again.

Whataburger just might be the quintessential fast food place with brand positioning like no other which seems to be the key to turning employees and customers alike into brand ambassadors, further building their brand image.

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Being a full-time student really puts me in a horrible position in terms of the amount of time I can devote to blogging. While I can get on here and blog about the latest thing to tickle my fancy, I try to avoid topics that don’t allow me to go in-depth.

To kick things up a bit, during spring break I’m going to dive into the to-blog list and gather a set of topics that’ll hopefully shed some light for just about everybody who happens to stumble upon my blog. From a today’s look at the Whataburger brand, to a later post on brand loyalty, and workplace communications, there’s a lot on my mind.

So grab the feed, follow me on twitter, or bookmark the blog.

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