Slightly Off KIlter

How long has it been since you have received really good customer
service? It’s harder and harder to come by, I’ve found, and wonder if
your experience is the same? What does it mean to you to be served
well? Who do you think of when you think of really good customer
service?

…

Customer support and assistance is hard enough to find in our banks
and department stores, but I have found the world of technology to be
especially challenging. Unless one is a techie it’s often hard, at
least for me, to both understand what the computer gurus are saying
and then to know how to respond to them.

[ excerpt from the Journal Companion newsletter for Journal Magic

I have to say that it’s certainly true that good customer service is the exception, not the norm. Really good service is rare; excellent service is rarer still. Mostly, I feel lucky if the service is adequate. There aren’t a lot of really great companies (or people) out there to tell your friends about.

If you’ve got a Macintosh, BareBones Software, makers of BBEdit and MailSmith, provide _stellar_ customer service. Every 6 months or so, I write a thank you note to the president of Bare Bones Software, thanking him and his team for a job very well done. I’m sorry to say that I’m usually reminded to write this note by an abysmal experience with some other company.

Our local Credit Union is quite good. They are very small and have only a few tellers, so it’s not uncommon to have the same teller again. The tellers make it a point of learning the customers’ names and greeting them by name. They’re pretty sharp and they tend to be efficient, but they still smile, ask “Is there anything else I can do for you”, and generally make the process friendly.

Our favorite diner works diligently to have great customer service. There are only a few waitresses who share the different shifts. There are a LOT of regular customers. The owners and the waitresses know that regular customers need to be happy customers; someone isn’t going to come back 5 days a week if they aren’t happy! So the waitresses learn customers’ names (and we know theirs). They learn customers’ regular orders “Hot tea tonight?” and they make sure the customers feel well cared for. Even the kitchen staff has been known to wave hello or goodbye.

Spouse has spent most of his professional career as a contract programme, but for 10 years he dabbled in self-publishing, producing and selling technical books and manuals. His view on customer service was to make things right if possible. So if a customer called and said “The book was damaged in shipment” or “The CD in the back of the book doesn’t work, Rich would send out a replacement, no additional questions asked.

I recently placed an online order with Franklin Covey, reconsidered one item after the order was placed, and phoned the next day to cancel the item. The Customer Service rep who took my call assured me that the item was canceled… but when the shipment arrived, the item was in the box. So, I called Franklin Covey again. The Customer Service rep who took this call couldn’t find anything in the computer to indicate that the item was ever canceled; nevertheless, she issued a credit for the amount. When I asked about sending back the item she said “Don’t bother; it will cost more to take it back than it’s worth. Find someone to give it to”. Wow. No hassle, no trouble.

In the case of technical support, I’m afraid that it often doesn’t help to be a techie either. The real problem is that many “tech support” folks don’t really provide technical support. Their job is to read the manual to users over the telephone. Some of them seem to do keyword lookups based on a word in your question. A fellow member of a online user group once referred to this as the Roulette Wheel Method of Technical Support.

Dear Customer


I understand your handheld computer is making a buzzing sound when you
reset it.


To reset your handheld computer, insert a paper clip in the small hole on
the back.

The question and the answer have several words in common, but the answer doesn’t address the question. My favorite response is of the form “Hellooooo? Any humans there? Did you read my note?”

It doesn’t always get better even if I do reach someone who can think, at least a bit, for him or herself. I’m a techie with 20 years of experience. It doesn’t make me happy when the response assumes that I am a very naive user who cannot read and needs to be told where the on/off switch for the computer is. Sigh.

That’s another thing I like about good technical customer service. They start out assuming I’m an intelligent user with a problem that probably cannot be solved by a quick thumb through the menus or the manual.
They only “dumb things down” if it appears necessary. It’s an approach I prefer.