Customer Service...anyone?

Don't you just love a good customer service experience? It seems like it doesn't happen as often as it used to.  In one of my first jobs, I had wonderful bosses named Ted and Deb. Ted and Deb taught us, by example, that  it was important to keep the service in customer service, since after all, that's what we were providing (well, through the sales of ice cream, lobster rolls, and chicken patty sandwiches). At the same time, they also taught us by example that the customer did not always have to be right. If a customer was being rude or completely unreasonable, it was OK to get one of your bosses so that they could diplomatically tell the customer where to go to, um, find what it was they were looking for. Over twenty years later, I still find this to be an incredibly valuable life skill.

These days, my time for making phone calls is limited. In fact, I only call customer service numbers when there is absolutely no other way to resolve an issue, since I know that it's close to impossible to resolve something over the phone with two or three kids screaming, fighting, repeatedly calling my name, or having a syrup and peanut butter party happily playing in the background. Recently, though, I called the cable company and made changes to save money on our monthly bill. They were so amazing over the phone and were more than happy to save us money. But then I got my bill, and it wasn't exactly what they said it would be. There were some undisclosed charges to make these changes, as well as a difference in the amount that they had told me. So, I did something very brave and called them, with the kids screaming  happily playing in the background. I explained the issue, and the first person I spoke to said that, while all of those charges were, according to them, valid, they would give me a twenty-five dollar credit "to resolve the issue". Now, some days I would take the twenty-five dollar credit and be done. But the actual amount in question was thirty-five, and that particular day, I just wasn't going to take the twenty-five dollar credit. Plus, I know when I am being paid to go away--something I would happily do if they were actually paying me the amount in question. But they weren't. So I asked nicely to speak with a manager, who was, I'm pretty sure, sixteen.

The sixteen-year-old manager clearly never had anyone like Ted or Deb as a boss, because he was, among other things, incredibly rude. He told me that all of the charges were valid and that I didn't get the information about additional charges because I didn't ask for that information. But after going around and around with him, with B and O screaming and tearing the house apart  happily playing around me, I realized that it felt like, well, arguing with a teenager, and that I just did not have one more second to waste on this.  I nicely said "I don't agree with this, but just go ahead and give me the twenty-five dollar credit and we'll call it a day". And sixteen-year-old manager boy on a power trip said "Well, I can't do that. That was to resolve the problem. Once you asked to speak with a manager, that offer no longer stood."

I can't really explain what happened after that, other than that I decided that I was done being nice to rude sixteen-year-old manager boy on a power trip. I told him his customer service skills were a joke. I told him we would be switching to another company. I told him his lack of professionalism was appalling. And then, because in a moment of weakness I apparently decided to stoop to his sixteen-year-old level, I told him, rather loudly, that his cable company and their so called customer service sucked.  Then there was a pause. A really long pause. I was about to hang up, when he said "Ma'am, um, I can't close your account over the phone today. If you call back, we can handle that in our customer service department". I hung up. I did not call back. I sent a rather pointed e-mail where I may have happened to mention a blog I have where I write about these types of things and I may have implied that said blog has a much larger readership than it actually does and explained the issue, did not get a satisfactory response, and eventually I got over it. 

Today, in the mail, I got a cable bill. Low and behold, it has a twenty five dollar credit. Huh. I wonder how that happened. Who knows what conversation took place before someone decided to issue that credit, but I'm guessing it was along the lines of,  "Give her the credit. She's crazy".

Yesterday, I had a slightly different kind of experience-- one where I was floored by how helpful the company was trying to be. After our refrigerator motor caught on fire a few weeks ago, I sent an email to the manufacturer, making them aware that a fridge we bought in 2001, a two door model with a top freezer, had caught on fire a week earlier. I wanted to make them aware in case they needed to notify other customers, especially since the man who delivered our new fridge mentioned that he had seen this happen before. Here is part of the response from them:

Thank you for contacting our Customer Experience Center.  We regret the incident described in your email. Please provide the information requested below, retain the refrigerator, and disconnect the power to the appliance (unplug or flip the circuit breaker off), do not attempt to operate the unit, and advise all household users not to attempt to operate the unit until it is inspected and deemed safe to operate or repaired/restored to safe operating condition.We appreciate your taking time to write. Please return this email and provide the following:  address where appliance is located,
model number from appliance model/serial tag, date of purchase from purchase receipt, dealer (name only) where purchased.

Wow! How helpful are they?! And they even told me to unplug the fridge. Thank God for that. Otherwise, I might still be sitting here with a burned out refrigerator STILL PLUGGED IN...while my home was in ashes around it. If only I had retained the refrigerator, so they could have come and examined it. Darn, wish I would have known. I would have just kept it next to the new one. Of course, I'd have to tell my three children to NOT OPERATE THE UNIT UNTIL IT CAN BE RESTORED TO SAFE OPERATING CONDITION. And by the way kids, don't worry about the fact that the motor caught on fire. I'm sure they can just fix that. They were trying to be helpful though, so I thought the least I could do was respond to their email. So I did:

Hi-
I bought the refrigerator from (XYZ Dept Store) 10 yrs ago. Since it was ten years ago, I do not have the rest of the info on the model, nor do I have the receipt, since, after all, it was ten years ago. While I appreciate your specific instructions, we decided that we should probably unplug the model when it caught on fire. Actually, the fire department helped us with that decision. And, since it caught on fire, we decided it was probably just a good idea to get a new one. I would love to give you the address of its current location, but it is now gone from our home since, you know, it caught on fire. We had it sitting out front for a few days, but the neighbors weren't really liking that, so it's gone now. Thanks for your interest in helping us.

I don't know if that was the right email to send. I mean, I could have at least included the address of the local dump in case they want to go look for it. I guess I could have been a little nicer and not so sarcastic. But really, I think I handled it well. It's not like I told them their appliances suck.

Give me some credit. That would have been crazy.