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Customer Service?

Customer service is one of the things within a company that everyone says to do well. You see television advertisements  about how your local car dealership has an internet lounge while you impatiently wait for your car to be serviced or the plumber who boasts “30 minute response time”- with the exception of mealtimes, nap time and overnight. Recently the phone company was challenged by the cable company to deliver phone service to homes in our area. In my own house, the phone went out about a month ago. We called the phone company, to fix it and were put on hold for an hour. We finally got someone who then told us it will be three days until they can fix it and the only time they can be at our house is between 9 and 2. We said, “Are you kidding me?” We basically gave up. We switched to the cable company and saved $70.00 a month and are happy.
Last evening my daughter and I went to the local mall to get her snow boots because last year’s boots instantly were too small for her 8 year old feet. We went to the mall on a quiet evening so that we could go into a store and be the only shoppers. However, we found that we had to constantly battle for attention with the clerk’s phone as he or she texted away. Eventually, we just walked out without buying the boots. My daughter was as equally annoyed as me because she liked the boots. I was annoyed because I just really do not like to shop.
We ended up at a Sports Authority sports store where we got our boots and went to pay. At the register we noticed that on the bottom of our receipt, if we filled out a survey and gave the store a “Very good” for customer service, we would receive a $10.00 coupon. Enough Said.
I got an e-mail from one of our top 5 customers last night and it was stated in plain language:
“You are correct – the last few weeks we have received in many ******* along with the remaining ******.  I appreciate everyone at Royal Master working so diligently to get these out to us.  Also, Alan has been doing an excellent job in going above and beyond in checking out the delivery schedules and expediting items in for us when we are in a desperate need for something.   We do appreciate it!Thanks again & have a great weekend!”
Where does a consumer go to when they are dissatisfied? There is no undercover boss going to magically appear and fix everything. Does the consumer accept it as the way the company does business or would they like to know what is wrong so they can fix it? Where do you go? The phone company does not advertise a “If you are dissatisfied with us talk to the CEO” phone number. The store with the texting clerk is earning a paycheck, but the owner of the store does not know that I will never come back because of my experience. But I bet the owner would like to know that he lost a customer over a very fixable issue.
The point of this blog is not to get annoyed about the situation again, but to just say if you have a good experience at a store or a company they always like to hear about it. If it’s a bad experience the company wants to hear about it even more. Where do you go where someone will listen and care? That’s the key question.
John Jr
Johnjr@royalmaster.com
Vice President
Royal Master Grinders.