Right now, I'm thinking about customer service--the good, the bad, and the non-existent. I have had the occasion several times lately to request information or service from several on-line companies. I love being able to e-mail a company at 10:00 p.m. in my pajamas if that's what I need to do.
First, I ordered a birthday gift for my 5-year-old granddaughter from Fat Brain Toys. I forgot, until after the order was placed, that I had an online discount. I e-mailed them and they applied it to my order. Sweet!
Next, I had trouble with my Roomba battery, but corresponding with iRobot is difficult. They will respond with a strange-looking message and instructions to write "only" between these two lines asking for detailed numbers and codes. You might get a follow-up response, but mine just told me what I already knew. No help was offered, but I can buy a new battery.
I have occasionally ordered on-line from Avon. This time part of my order consisted of some eye pencils. Just a day or two after I placed the order, I got an advertisement offering them for half of what I paid. I e-mailed Avon to see if they could give me a credit because I hadn't even received my order. No deal; they do not offer sale prices on things already ordered. That bothered me, because nearly all retail stores will honor a sale price on something purchased just a few days before. Avon gets a demerit or two.
This morning I was reading on my Kindle and it froze. I couldn't change the page, go to the home screen, and even turning off the switch did nothing to the display. I logged on to Amazon and went to the Kindle section. There was the coolest thing. I put in my phone number and within 10 seconds my phone rang. Within 20 more seconds, I was talking to a live human who spoke lovely English. He told me how to find the reset, what to do, and stayed with me until it was working again. Amazon gets bonus points!
It seems logical to me that businesses would want to keep customers happy, but there sure is a difference in the way they think it should be done.
3 comments:
so true...customer service is so important and non existent in most big stores...gone are the days of small shops owned and run by the same person
Thanks for the heads up, now I know who to go to and who not to go to for good customer service. Two out of four...not bad. We got half way satisfied instead of all the way frustrated. I'm glad how it worked out.
Have a good weekend, Jo.
Glad to see you got some things done happily.
As for politics, Jo, we are going to have an unexpected house guest either tomorrow or next week. He's flying military space available so we don't know when to expect him. He is a very strong STRONG conservative and he is our friend. We've not seen him or his wife in 30 years or so. Where did the time go?
Anyway, he'll be staying with us for a while until his wife joins us also. You know what a liberal I am (my husband even more so) so you can see what an interesting time we're due for.
:-)
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