Warning: The following is not related to recruiting, but it is related to ensuring customers like you.
An emergency came up for my wife's client on Saturday morning. She's leaving town on Wednesday morning and needs to reorder product for the next six weeks.
She's in Washington state, and we're in Provo, Utah.
We had the inventory on-hand, no problem... but getting it from here to there was a daunting concern thanks to the Fourth of July holiday on Tuesday. That meant we had to get product out the door and shipped overnight that day.
After several phone calls, we spoke to a cheerful agent at the United States Postal Service which let us know that, thanks to the holiday, packages shipped Saturday by noon would, indeed, reach their destination by Monday, guaranteed.
Perfect. And, since the USPS option was $30 cheaper than other shipping methods, we went for it.
But that's when it all started to go wrong.
First of all, not all Post Offices appear to be open on Satudays. No problem--if confusing your clients about your hours is okay with you. Nothing says customer service like making your clients work hard to do business with you!
Next, after standing in an incredible line (of course. The line-length is inversely proportional to the urgency of the need you are trying to fill), the sole counter agent punches into his computer and promptly tells my wife that that there is no express service leaving that day, and the earliest the package would get to Washington would be Wednesday.
After explaining to the counter agent what the phone agent told her (that service was in altered-operation due to the holiday), the agent smugly told my wife that he'd never heard of anything like that before, and it just didn't make sense.
About that time, he completed the keystrokes he needed on his computer to determine the postage, etc, only to find that my wife's explaination seemed to be true.
"I don't know what this is doing," the agent said, "but it's telling me it'll go out today and arrive Monday.... but I still don't think it makes sense..."
The end of the story here is that the customer-service agent believed he was smarter and more-important to the transaction than the client. This is a fatal flaw. I like companies who offer to consult and direct me in my choices, but this fellow made the telephone customer service agent out to be a fool and made my wife feel both embarassed and upset.
Three customer-service lessons to learn:
- If your customer-service agents don't believe in/understand your service offerings (or changes to them) you are going to cause your customers grief.
- If you cause your customers grief, they will either:
- Change vendors, or
- Become bitter that they have to manage their relationship with you instead of the other way around.
- They will take every chance (even blogging) to tell others about their experience with you in order to save them grief (and give themselves some personal resolution to the grief you caused).
UPDATE: After all of that, we determined that USPS did, in fact, deliver the package on Monday, but my wife's client was not home.
Even though the box "no signature required" was checked, the carrier did NOT leave the package there and took it back to the post office.
Maybe it's policy, I don't know. But that's our frustration all around this issue -- we don't know the service options, the requirements, the ways the service is implemented at different locations, etc, etc. In short, we don't know what to expect. Wing-and-a-prayer service is hardly a good way to develop customer loyalty!
Now, the client is out of the country, with no way to get her package that she paid $45 to deliver "EXPRESS, GUARANTEED".
The postal service assured my wife that the package will be returned to her and that she will receive a full refund of the shipping fee.
Great, except for one thing--that's NOT what we wanted.
Maybe there should be a box on the shipping label that reads: "Leave at addressee's doorstep unless in danger of life-and-limb"
Alas, I am sure nothing will change with the USPS except that postage rates will keep going up (yeah, throw more money at the problem--that's always been a great business model!).
Posted by: Robert Merrill | July 6, 2006 9:30 AM | Permalink to Comment