Customer Service

Greg and I are always discussing an organization's customer service skills. Greg is in the customer service industry and he takes great pride in trying to defuse tempers and please customers...with a smile on his face. Recently I've had several incidences dealing with customer service that have made an impact - some negative, some positive - but it's made me start really thinking about where I am going to spend my money. I would think in this day and age, with the economy the way it is, that businesses would go out of their way to offer exceptional customer service.

I had to work out of town Friday. I am doing a lot of merchandising work these days and my job for Friday was setting up a store. After I dropped Greg off at work I was going to hop on the interstate and start my 45 min drive to the store in Alabama. We live two miles from Greg's office. After I pulled into his office complex and dropped him off, I would have ordinarily headed back out to the main road and taken a left, driven two miles (passing our house) and gotten on the interstate. However, I decided I wanted to grab breakfast before I got on the interstate...we were out of milk at home due to Dakota's late night snacking...grrrrr.

So that got me to thinking...do I go to the left and run through McDonald's drive through which is right at the entrance to the interstate or do I continue on straight and drive 3 miles, go to Chick Fil-A (which has awesome customer service!) and then keep going straight for another 7-8 miles through traffic and red lights to get on the interstate at another on-ramp? Yeah, well if you guessed Chick Fil-A you guessed right.

I've had two bad experiences at THAT McDonald's lately and I told myself "forget it! I am not going there anymore!" Between my house and THAT McDonald's there is an Arby's, Capt D's, Subway, Taco Bell, Chinese Fast Food, Sushi place, and a Mexican Restaurant...do I need them?? Heck no!

Good Customer Service
I ordered something online from Drugstore.com and after waiting a month for it to come in I received an email one day that my order was canceled. When I looked at my credit card statement it looked like I had been charged for this order so I called customer service to ask them about this. They assured me I had not been charged (and after further inspection I saw where the charge was reversed) but after talking to the customer service rep for a few minutes and letting her know I really was not very happy with the way this was handled...the fact that I had been waiting every day for this order to come in and then just out of the blue they canceled the order with no explanation...she apologized profusely and gave me a $20.00 credit for future use. I was really surprised! I wasn't expecting anything. I just wanted them to know I wasn't happy with this.

What happened during this phone call though was because of her great customer service skills and her listening to me express my frustration and then offering me a $20.00 credit she completely changed my opinion of Drugstore.com. I had no intention of ever shopping there again BEFORE I made this phone call. When I got off the phone with her, I was smiling and actually looking forward to spending my credit!

Last example - remember my flowers from Flowerama I told you about the other day? Greg and I talked about it more and he called them Saturday. Long story short - they apologized and told him to come back in and they would replace the flowers. I pulled the dead flowers out of my other 3 vases and I divided my new roses and lilies up between the older flowers. Their comment..."we're sorry about this and we want to make it right." Great customer service!

Aren't they beautiful?

Walmart Troubles

My daughter, Felicia, lives in Hawaii. She knows how much I love my black labrador retriever. For my birthday she wanted to give me a statue similar to this one with our last name engraved on the plaque instead of "Welcome". She ordered it from Walmart.com and had it sent to my local Walmart through the site to store shipping program they offer.

I received an email yesterday letting me know my order was ready to be picked up. In the email I see that I am getting a Labrador statue...14" tall but that's all I know at this point.

I go to the store to pick up my birthday gift and the salesclerk brings out this small box and proceeds to open it up and pulls out an engraved nameplate and looks at me and smiles. "Okay, that's nice...where's the rest of it?" I ask her

She says "This is the only box." So I said "Well, is there more in that box? Because on my paper right here it says there is supposed to be a 14" Labrador statue and I don't believe that will fit in that small box." She says "No this is all there is. You'll have to call Walmart's customer service to find out what happened to the rest of it."

WHAT?! EXCUSE ME?! Aren't YOU Wal-mart customer service??~~~I leave there with an 800 number to call. So on my way home I call this 800 number and it literally takes me 20 minutes to get through to a real live person!! By this time my temper is starting to simmer just below angry. I explain the situation to the customer service representative on the phone and after waiting a few minutes for her to access the order she tells me "Hmmm, it's showing online that this item is no longer available. I'm sorry, we are out of those."

I ask "Okay, what do you plan on doing about this." She says "Was there anything else you wanted to order?" I explain once again..."I didn't order this to begin with, it was a gift FOR me so I have no idea what's on your website." She says "Well if you have access to a computer perhaps you could find something else we could replace this with and we'll ship it to your home for free." I told her I would look at the website when I got home and see what I thought - I got her name and information and hung up the phone.

Once I got home and looked at their website I decided it was too much trouble to try and find something online when I could just go in the store and pick up something I wanted (I can always find something in the store! LOL)

So today after Dakota and I meet with our homeschool group at the park, we go into Walmart for me to get a refund. I go to Walmart's Customer Service (not to be confused with Walmart.com's customer service, mind you!) and am quickly told that since I only brought in the emailed paper that was good enough yesterday to pick up my package....and not the little receipt they handed me yesterday....they are unable to help me. I said "WHAT?! You can't use this order number and look this information up on your computer....like you did yesterday!?"

"No, ma'am. But you can go back to the Site to store area where you picked it up and see if they can help you?" I march back there and the same lady who "helped" me yesterday is back there and she remembers me but guess what? She can't help me either...BECAUSE...once I leave the store I have to have a receipt to get a refund. If I had just requested a refund yesterday while I was standing there instead of leaving the store and making that telephone call I could have eliminated all this aggravation. I told her this is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of...why on earth they would even ship the stupid thing without the rest of it is beyond me and now I have to make another trip back home and back to the store with the receipt....she started talking and apologizing and I just grabbed my box and walked off before I went off on her. I know it's not her fault but I was beyond angry and I was just about to be as un-Christlike as ever so right in the middle of her profusely apologizing I walked away.....

I really hate it when stores do stuff like this!

Really nice waitress

Dakota & I went to Jerry's Drive-In Restaurant yesterday after our homeschool Christmas party. He had never been there and I had only been there one time myself so I thought it would be a nice treat for him since I've heard they have Pensacola's BEST hamburgers and Dakota absolutely LOVES hamburgers!

After ordering our drinks, we start looking at the menu and only then do I see the sign on the menu that they don't accept credit/debit cards....only cash and checks. OH NO! You've got to be kidding me!? I NEVER EVER carry cash and I don't write checks. I quickly pull out my wallet and thank GOD I have a $10.00 bill in there...don't know where THAT came from? I tell Dakota our dilemma and the fact that we have already ordered our tea and coke which is $3.00 of our $10.00 available....if I had realized this 5 secs earlier we could have ordered water (grrrrr!) and he is looking at the menu and decides he wants a cheeseburger and cheese fries.

It turns out that Jerry's is pretty cheap so with our drinks and what he wants plus tax & tip it only came up to about 7.85 so we decided to stay and I let him order his food. I had nibbled on stuff at the party and wasn't as hungry as he was plus I'm not a red meat eater so nothing really enticed me here anyway. But when the waitress came to take our order and I told her what Dakota wanted she said "You don't want anything?" I said "no thank you...I didn't realize you guys didn't take credit cards and I'm limited on my cash so I'll wait til later." She said "Oh, I'm so sorry!"

His food came out within 5 minutes and when she brought it out she asked me if I would like some fries or something...her treat! I thought that was so nice of her. I declined though - I really wasn't that hungry and after seeing the huge portion of fries on my son's plate I knew he wasn't going to eat them all and I would be sharing with him! LOL