Remember in those days when you went to buy an item at a nearby store and you were pretty sure any issue with the product was your damn problem to solve after you left the premises. Whether the product was of poor quality, defective or not exactly what you wanted, you had to sort the issue out on your own. Awkward it may look but it is the plain truth of where we have come from and how the relatively recent history of Customer Care looked like.
With the evolution of the customer care experience and services, great miles have been covered and here we are celebrating the fruits of our technology and our brilliant heroes. Today, you can buy a product that is worth thousands of dollars and still be assured of free money-back-guarantee. When you recall how you rubbed shoulders with store owners in the 1990s, you wonder how the hell on earth you can be promised a refund, replacement or even have a repair done for free.
They say, we can never appreciate the past without living the present. Perhaps this may be too much to process based on the fact that today’s corporate world has taken customer experience seriously unlike in the old days. You could either adapt, adopt or be left behind. Online systems have taken over and various customer experience systems have merged into one system.
Wondering how it started with sending physical mails to using mobile apps that let you connect to the whole world anytime anywhere? Let me take you through the phases of customer support history and its evolution over the last decades. Before that, let's dig deeper into the finer details of how it all begun.
Where Did It All Begin From?
It is out of the industrial revolution that the notion of customer experience was born. This was around 3000 B.C. The industrial age needs couldn’t be met without proper customer services. People from different corners of the world exchanged goods and therefore needed skills on how to treat their customers. It was this early when traders realized that the manner in which they treated their customers influenced their business success. Where trade begun, customer service started there or laid the foundations of what we have today.
Customer care hasn’t started today or in the early 1990s. It is a phenomenon that started carving its own niche much earlier until 1760 when it started getting worldwide attention. Between the years 1760-1820 words such as “scale” and “customer care” started getting common amongst traders. Despite the fact that we enjoy today’s multichannel customer support engagements, a cursory look reveals the ups and downs of customer service evolution. One of the greatest milestones that will forever remain in the history books was the 1750 B.C Complaint. It was the first customer care complaint to be recorded in the British Museum records. It was written by an ancient Babylonian customer named Nanni and sent to Ea-Nasir following delays and delivery of poor quality copper ore.