Customer Service and YOU

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Is customer service alive?

Let me clarify that…..is good, helpful customer service still alive?

Some say yes, while others may say no.

I am going to share with you a couple of stories on how Customer Service is dying and how it is still alive and kicking. 

Customer Service is Dead

In December 2007, I bought my husband a 2008 Chevy Corvette for Christmas. Dont ask me what type it is. I have no idea, I just let him pick it out. Well late January this year, one of his headlights went out. To make a long story short, we discovered that the light didnt go out.  The entire casing for the light was malfunctioning. The whole thing needed to be replaced. Since the vette is still under warranty, he put in a service ticket for the headlight casing to be replaced at the place where we bought it. We were told that the part would be here in about 2 weeks. 

Two weeks go by and no phone call. He call up customer service and was immediately put on hold for a long time. He got switched to different people. Come to find out the part was never ordered. Ok, thats fine. Mistakes happen. No big deal.

I make my husband call them after a week full well knowing that the part isnt going to be there but just to make sure the part was ordered. Guess what? It was not. I about flipped out. I asked to speak to upper management to complain. I was put on hold and switched around to different people. When I did speak to someone, not only were they unfriendly they were almost belittling me. Complaining did no good. You would think after buying such a car from them, they would care how their customers were treated. 

Btw, the vette was fixed today.

If you have a story about bad customer service, you might find this forum useful or funny…depending how you feel. You can submit your story to Customer Disservice. 

Customer Service is ALIIIIIIIIVE!!

I have an iPhone and I love it. I am addicted to it. When I am bored, I whip it out of my pocket and entertain myself. I have an app (application) on my phone called State Plate Hunt by Jeremie Weldin. You can find out info about it here (iTunes link) or here. Basically, you can keep track of what license plate you see while out on the road. Living in New Orleans, we get alot of out of towners. I have seen plates anywhere from Alaska to New York. I also went on a family vacation to Orlando and found tons more plates there too. I found all but 10 plates! It took me awhile to find all of them. I even found a few Canadian Provinces. I went to install the latest update for the app. Once the app installed, I went to launch it. When I did, I totally panicked. All of my plates were gone. The new update did not keep my old info. 

I immediately emailed the developer. I explained to him what had happened. I expected to get some sort of response in a few days or so. Wrong. I immediately got a response. He apologized and said he will look into it and let me know when he comes up with a fix. 

Yeah right. He is going to fix my problem? Pffftt. Whatever. 

Just a few days ago, I received an email from Jeremie saying that he fixed the problem and submitted the update to Apple and that it should be available within a week. Wow. Just wow. I emailed him on Sunday about my problem and received a fix on Tuesday. Now, talk about wonderful customer service. 

I wish more companies/people were more like this, more caring and doing more on follow-ups. Apparently, Victoria’s Secret is like this. Now that I got your attention, you can read about how they did a nationwide search for a pair of panties. 

I ask you, what has been your experience with customer service? Have you received bad service lately? What is your take on this topic? Or if you are a company, what are you doing to make sure you have decent customer service?

Tagged as: Banter, Interweb