What Has Happened to Customer Service?
See the picture? That is how I feel right now. What the heck has happened to GOOD customer service?"
I have an account for my real estate business, with an office supplier, where I can buy office supplies. Duh!
Anyways, my account rep calls me to both keep in touch regularly and also he tells me, to try to understand my office supply needs. So when he asks me what his company can do to make things better, I make a suggestion about their website and their ordering process. I work in a mall and delivery instructions need to be precise or my order isn't delivered or it's delivered to the wrong place or it's late. So to avoid any of these negative circumstances, I suggest that this company change their online ordering screen to show me that they have the correct delivery instructions. They tell me they have them, but I DON'T SEE THEM IN PRINT ON THE SCREEEN. Because I am not a big company, I don't order office supplies weekly or even monthly. It's usually a few months in between that I place an order. And I am busy, so I just might forget that this company supposedly knows where to deliver my orders. If they had the instructions showing correctly on the screen that I see, I would be re-assured but NO, they don't. So every time I go to place an order online, I have to go through this crazy scenario of reminding them where exactly to deliver the items, they tell me they know, but again, these instructions don't show on my screen.
So this rep tells me I should tell customer service this suggestion when I order. I have told them each time, but silly me, I thought by telling my account rep, my suggestion would hold more weight with the company. Don't they want me as a customer and a happy customer at that? If they make their site more user friendly and easier to use, won't that help their company and show me that they actually listen and care what their customers have to say?
I could tell this account rep really didn't give a hoot and just wanted my suggestion to go away. You know if you really care about me as your customer, then listen to me. See what can be done and then get back to me with your explanation. If you have your agenda as to what you want to do and don't care what I say, then don't waste my time by calling me to promote your specials. Telling me you have paper on sale now means bugger all when I just ordered a box of paper recently and if you looked at my order history you would know that and you would also know that I don't use a box of paper within one month and won't need to order more paper for months.
And to think I was going to try to send more business to this company by putting this rep in touch with my company which has not one person, but over 100 people that could be potential customers. Oh well, his loss.
Posted by Pauline Relkey
on March 18, 2011