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Mar. 7, 2005 What bites me, and is probably a huge irritation to most people, is the way customer service representatives and service people pretend to know how you are feeling when you are really ticked off at their company with the service they are providing. This, as you can tell, just happened recently to me. It wasn’t the first time, but with all of my experiences and all of the pains I have been going through over the past years, I had enough. Let me talk to you about the initial incident that started my irritation. Last week, our oven broke down. It happened so suddenly, I didn’t even believe it. There were no prior hints from this darn unit telling me that it needed fixing. It just started beeping on its screen “F1”. Fine and dandy. I thought it would not be a problem fixing this oven since we bought it from a “reputable” company. I spoke with the customer service of the company and they said, unplug it for ½ an hour, plug it back, and it should fix it. If it doesn’t, call us back and we’ll book the service call for it. She had all the details booked into the system just in case this happened. Well, I did this plug-in, plug-out thing twice, thinking I might have not left it unplugged long enough the first time, and it didn’t work. So I booked the service call. The service call was crazy. The customer service said to me, “the fellow will be coming to see you in the morning and he’ll give you a call first thing to give you a 2 hour time slot that he should be able to make it in.” Did that happen? No. I sat at home, waiting for the guy. He didn’t call, didn’t come in the morning. Nothing. I called in twice to the service department, once at about 11:30am and customer service assured me that he’d call me in a few minutes after they hung up from me. He didn’t. I called once again just after 1:30pm or so, and I was livid because not only was I missing out in work, and costing my workplace money, but the service guy didn’t have the courtesy to call me and let me know that he was having troubles with his other calls and that he’d be late. That time he called me and said he should be by between 2:30pm and 3:00pm. You know, it wouldn’t hurt to give your customer a call and let them know that you’re having issues and you’re late because of it. It appeases them and makes them feel like you actually have them in mind and you care. Otherwise, it really ticks them off if you let them hang like that. I’m a pretty calm person, but if you push me too far, I will tell you what I think. The only reason why I didn’t blow up on this guy is because when he actually got through my door, you could tell he was having a darn awful day. His face was red, he look exasperated, and he said, “Sorry about that, nothing has been going right all day for me.” So being the sensing individual that I am, I let it go. What I did say to him was, “Well, I was expecting you in the morning and I’ve been here all day.” Well, apparently didn’t know that he was supposed to call in the morning. Neither did any of the customer service people that I had talked to that day. The end of this service call that stopped at 4:30pm is that I had to wait a week for the parts to come in and then book a service call. Arrrgghhh! Will it not end? I also found out that not only was the oven gone, but the stove was gone too—my husband had unknowingly locked the whole oven, including stove, by flipping the breaker off downstairs. That meant we had to order not only the oven timer, but the lock switch as well to get the whole unit working. Down for a week without an oven. What next? So let me give the big Customer Service departments out there a bit of a wake up call. “Hello, we are the customers that you are suppose to service. We are human beings and we have lives. Here are some very practical points for you: 1.)If you say you are going to call at a certain time, please call at that time; 2.) If you are going to make it at a certain time, please make it at that time; 3.) If you are late for a scheduled appointment, whether from another customer, or traffic, or personal issue, or for whatever reason, please have the courtesy to call no matter how bad of a day you are having. You expect us to be nice, please at least have some courtesy towards us so we can have the incentive to be nice; 4.) If we are in a bad mood when you do arrive, it’s most likely that you have not met the above standards (pending that this is a regular service call; 5.) And lastly, if you have met all the above three requirements, and we are nasty, well, then you can declare us unreasonable, or there is other matters which my topic today does not cover (such as late parts orders, nasty customer service representatives, etc.).” These are just a few simple things. If us, the customer, is reasonable, we are usually not so bad to deal with. I do understand that there are very ill-tempered and poor mannered, insensitive customers out there, but if you cannot realize that they are not the norm, then you should not be servicing customers. A good customer service person will not get mad; they just deal with it and go on. Then, when they get to the next person, they treat them like a clean slate. That is my column for today; look for my next column in continuation of customer service. Till next time. ------------ About the author: Barbara has been writing short stories for the enjoyment of friends and family for years. She has published three books, Collection, Collection II, and Pawn: A Novel. Barbara lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and enjoys writing, reading and tending to her other field: accounting. Websites: http://www.barbaraannamarjanovic.com http://www.authorsden.com/barbaraannamarjanovic Email: blueswan28@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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