Customer Service: getting it right the 1st time

One of my gigs when I was in college was customer service, usually in a call center. While the pay sucked, it was also an eye opener for me, and helped me understand what it's like to be a consumer, and someone helping the consumer. One of the things I had pounded into my head was the mantra of "get it right the first time." Basically, if you serve a customer right and satisfactorily in the first place, you earn their respect, trust, and repeat business. Along those lines, I've come to expect the same mantra from those who serve me. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? I feel that if I'm paying for a service, I expect good service, otherwise I'd just do it myself or go elsewhere. Unfortunately, it's all too often that bad service is the norm. It's a mixture of a number of reasons from lack of communication, lack of training, not enough pay for the employees, the list goes on. My one biggest pet peeve in customer service is outsourcing. It's not that I don't want people in other countries who make pennies to our dollar to be employed. I do, but what bothers me the absolute most is the language barrier and lack of communication. The fact is, communication is integral in customer service. If you hire employees who cannot understand or communicate with your customer base, then you're going to run into problems, and lose business. I think hands down my absolute WORST experience with outsourcing was the time I lost my credit card and had to call Citibank to cancel it. At the time I had two credit card accounts with Citibank and the customer service rep with a thick Indian accent who couldn't properly understand the reason for my inquiry canceled the wrong account. This poses to be a HUGE problem especially since you are dealing with people's sensitive information such as credit, social security number, and ultimately identity. Needless to say, I was absolutely LIVID when I found out they canceled the wrong account. It created a heap of headaches for me as account cancellations affect credit, and I had to essentially reapply to have my account reopened. I demanded the CSR to transfer me to an American CSR who could understand me. That was years ago and to this day, I still feel bad about the incident because I felt like I insulted that CSR for not speaking English well. Unfortunately, it had to be done. I needed to be able to properly and clearly communicate with the person helping me with a sensitive situation and problem. The fiasco could've been avoided had Citibank not outsourced, and kept their customer service local to the market they intend to serve. But I digress...

No wait...there was the time my HP laptop died during a warranty period. I sent it back for repairs per their CSR's instructions. They did not fix it and sent it back to me. I sent it back to them and they sent it back with my hard drive completely wiped clean and with screws loose rattling inside the laptop.  When I called to complain, they told me I should've backed up my hard drive before sending it in for service.  Right, because I could've done that with a dead laptop that wouldn't even boot up. Uh huh.  Yeah that was a nightmare I won't soon forget.  I'm not sure which was worse...having all my data wiped or the wrong credit card canceled.

My experience with HP was also my first experience with EECBs.  (If you are not familiar with EECBs otherwise known as Executive Email Carpet Bomb, then please, click on the link and read more. It's important and very useful to familiarize yourself with EECBs.)  I happened upon an EECB accidentally. I'd ranted about my experience on a message board I frequented back then when a member, who happened to be a HP employee read my rant.  She sent me a private message asking me for permission to forward my complaint to Executive Case Management (which I had no idea what the heck it was at the time, but it sure does sound fancy, doesn't it?) who would take care of me.  I figured there was nothing to lose, so I went ahead with it.  Within a couple of days I got a call back from an executive CSR who had more power than the ones lower on the totem pole, listened to me, fought with me on the phone for over an hour, making me late to a dinner party, then offered me an extended warranty worth $230 for free.  It didn't bring my lost data back, but it was better than nothing should the laptop croak again....which it didn't.  It just nearly got recalled for an exploding battery...

Anyway...

The reason why I'm reflecting upon customer service again is because I had a customer service experience tonight that made me wonder, are companies and businesses really able to provide "good customer service on the first try?" Do they really care to, or does it just sound good to people?

A few weeks ago, I used my Swag Bucks Amazon gift cards to treat myself to a cake decorating set. I was so excited about it and planned on using it to decorate the cupcakes I had planned for my kids' birthdays coming up. When I finally got it, I played with it and noticed one of the metal pieces had paint sloughing off. That is not normal or safe for a product that's meant to be used with food. I contemplated keeping it because Amazon's return policy is kind of annoying in that they make you pay for the return shipping, but I knew I wouldn't use something with peeling paint with my food, so I called Amazon's customer service to see what I could do. I basically wanted them to spring for all the costs of shipping because they'd sold me a product that's just not safe to use. The CSR I spoke with was really nice, understanding, and assured me that I would not have to pay for any shipping charges involved. She helpfully emailed me a return label and instructed me to just drop it off at any UPS Store. Easy enough. I was thankful and did as instructed. I got an email earlier today letting me know that Amazon had received my return and they'd start processing it soon. Tonight I get an email from Amazon informing me that they've processed my return and have credited my account. I looked at the amount credited and they'd charged me a return shipping fee! Needless to say, I was miffed and annoyed. I called customer service to see what can be done about the discrepancy, and thankfully, the CSR who helped me was kind enough to make it a nice and smooth process for me. He requested a credit back onto my account. Now I just have to wait 3 days for the credit to show up. Yes, it's a bummer because I was hoping to get all the credit I was promised back so that I could use it to make another purchase I'd been eying. Oh well, c'est la vie. At least I'm getting the credit back eventually.

So the whole thing just lead me to wonder: do companies and businesses really care to make sure customers are served right the first time? Perhaps my incident with Amazon could've been avoided if there was better communication.

Edit: I got an email notifying me that the shipping refund has posted to my Amazon account. It was called "Goodwill Refund."  That made me chuckle.  Whatever, as long as I got my refund back.  Hopefully the "Goodwill" status doesn't affect any future returns/refunds I may request.