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On Customer Service (long rant ahead)
Sep. 11th, 2002 09:33 amContrasting customer service experiences:
-- On 28 August, MAB and I ordered a bunch of stuff from Staples - a bookcase, a telephone, a case of printer paper, some printer cartridges, a new desk chair for me, and a CD holder for me for work - and we were told that it would be delivered that Friday, 30 August. That was what we expected - even though Staples says that if you order by 5 PM your delivery will come the next day, since we were ordering furniture (the bookcase) we knew the delivery would be delayed (Staples delivers furniture to our neighborhood on Fridays). So MAB stayed home from work to wait for the delivery. The best Staples can usually do is guarantee delivery between 9 AM and 5 PM, so he was stuck until the truck showed up with our stuff. And around 1:30 PM, the truck arrived. The guys brought up the bookcase, the paper, the cartridges, and the phone, and then left. We we got a phone call from Staples that Friday explaining that the CD holder was going to be delayed due to it being out of stock and that it would be shipped separately by UPS for delivery on the following Wednesday, so while I wasn't thrilled, it was OK. But, I hear you asking, what about the chair? Well, I had the same question. I called the main Staples number and followed the menus to check on a current order. I was told that the chair also had to come from another warehouse and therefore it, too, would arrive by Wednesday at 5 PM, brought by UPS. Again, I wasn't thrilled, but I got a promise from the customer service rep (CSR) that if we left a signed, dated note, UPS would leave the chair even if no one was around. And I got the UPS tracking numbers on the chair and the CD case.
Fast forward to Tuesday. Since I have the tracking number for the chair, I check periodically during the day to see if the packages have been at all in transit, checking on the status of the UPS packages on and off as I have free time. While the CD case has been picked up and is slowly working its way toward us (as have the envelopes that we ordered on Sunday), the chair hasn't moved out of "billing information received" status. Grumble, snort. I call Staples to ask what the deal is, and they say that UPS says the delivery is still scheduled for the following night, but if it doesn't arrive, I should call after 5 and they'll find out what happened to it. So on Wednesday, I again spend the day tracking the chair, the CD case, and the envelopes. By 4 PM, the envelopes and the CD case are reported as having been delivered (which MAB discovered to be true when he arrived home from work), but by 5 PM the chair still hasn't moved out of "billing information received" status. So when I get home Wednesday night, I call Staples. At this point, I've talked to a slew of low-level CSRs, and I'm tired of it. So when the first CSR gets on the phone, I ask to talk to a supervisor. I'm put on hold for about 5 minutes (now, anyone else out there think that putting an already irate customer on hold for a long time is a bad idea?), and then I get this chick who says she's the supervisor. I tell her the long, sad tale of my chair, and she says, "Oh, well I'll have to check with UPS, but they're closed after 5 PM." Hey, lady, it was Staples who told me to call after 5 PM so that UPS would be done with their delivery day. _And_, to add insult to injury, she calls me "Naomi" about 4 times. So I finally get a promise from her (along with her full name) that she'll call UPS first thing in the morning - they open at 7 AM, she says - and that she'll call me as soon as she knows something. She warns me that it might take a couple of hours for them to track the package, so I shouldn't expect a call before 9. I'm not happy, but I say OK.
By Thursday morning at 11, I still haven't heard anything, so I call Staples again and ask for the supervisor chick directly. They can't figure out who she is, since she didn't give me a direct extension, so I end up telling the whole story again to yet anotehr CSR. This one, however, sympathizes with my plight and understands my frustration and says that she's very sorry to have to put me on hold but she'll try to find out what's going on. She puts me on hold for a couple of minutes then comes back to tell me that she's sent an urgent message to UPS to look into it and then she asks for my phone number so that someone can call me the minute they know something. I'm so pleased at her competence that I ask for her full name so that I can send a commendation to Staples' corporate office for her. Unfortunately, she isn't allowed to give out her full name, but I speak to her supervisor who says that she'll put the CSR (whose name is Joan) in for a commendation and that Joan will be sent a little tchotchke and a "good girl" letter. Works for me. I thank Joan's supervisor and hang up.
Not thirty seconds later, my phone rings. It's the stupid supervisor from last night (Kelly) - finally getting off her butt and calling me; so much for "first thing in the morning" - telling me that she knows what the deal is but it's not good news - UPS has lost my chair. Yeah, right, I think; UPS doesn't have a record of ever having received the chair in the first place, according to the UPS website. So, I ask Kelly, what now? She says well, usually they'd just ship out another chair. However, this was the last chair of that type in the whole US (again I think, yeah, right) and therefore she can't do a damn thing. I tell her that's completely unacceptable and that she'd better ship out a comparable or better chair for delivery on Friday. I'd already told her on Wednesday night that Staples' incompetence was making me strongly consider switching to OfficeMax, and I'd begun to scope out what OfficeMax had available by way of chairs. Kelly hemmed and hawed but finally agreed that they'd ship a chair out to me for delivery on Friday before 5. I said that wasn't acceptable, either - it had to be delivered before 3, as the office was closing early for Rosh HaShannah (actually, the "office" is MAB's and my apartment, but Kelly didn't know that). She said she'd have to check if that was possible and that she'd call me back. After a short while, she called me back and said that the chair would be delivered by a Staples courier on Friday before 3 PM. And - surprise, surprise - it was. I now have a new desk chair. But there's an OfficeMax catalog on its way to me, as well, and MAB and I are considering placing our next office supply order with them.
--Today, for the third day in a row, I had to wait an extraordinary amount of time for the bus I take in the morning. The bus is supposed to run every 10 minutes or more frequently at the time of day I take it, but I've had to wait 20 minutes every day this week. So I called the main T complaint line, and they registered my complaint and also gave me the phone number for the guy responsible for that line (the T has this new-ish "Write to the Top" program for people to register complaints; the different bus and subway lines are divvied up among a bunch of top guys). I called that guy's office and got immediate satisfaction - the woman who answered the phone said she was going to dispatch a mobile supervisor to monitor the bus route and see if they can figure out what's causing the delays, and if they can't figure it out, they'll add more buses to the route to compensate for the delays.
Now what I don't get is that the T is a monopoly - they're the only ones providing bus service to our area, and therefore there's not much recourse if I don't like the service. Staples, however, is just one of many office supply places I could use (beside them and OfficeMax, there's Office Depot and W.B. Mason that I can think of right off the top of my head). So why is it that the monopoly provides more satisfactory customer service than the company that depends on my business and the business of people like me for its survival?
-- On 28 August, MAB and I ordered a bunch of stuff from Staples - a bookcase, a telephone, a case of printer paper, some printer cartridges, a new desk chair for me, and a CD holder for me for work - and we were told that it would be delivered that Friday, 30 August. That was what we expected - even though Staples says that if you order by 5 PM your delivery will come the next day, since we were ordering furniture (the bookcase) we knew the delivery would be delayed (Staples delivers furniture to our neighborhood on Fridays). So MAB stayed home from work to wait for the delivery. The best Staples can usually do is guarantee delivery between 9 AM and 5 PM, so he was stuck until the truck showed up with our stuff. And around 1:30 PM, the truck arrived. The guys brought up the bookcase, the paper, the cartridges, and the phone, and then left. We we got a phone call from Staples that Friday explaining that the CD holder was going to be delayed due to it being out of stock and that it would be shipped separately by UPS for delivery on the following Wednesday, so while I wasn't thrilled, it was OK. But, I hear you asking, what about the chair? Well, I had the same question. I called the main Staples number and followed the menus to check on a current order. I was told that the chair also had to come from another warehouse and therefore it, too, would arrive by Wednesday at 5 PM, brought by UPS. Again, I wasn't thrilled, but I got a promise from the customer service rep (CSR) that if we left a signed, dated note, UPS would leave the chair even if no one was around. And I got the UPS tracking numbers on the chair and the CD case.
Fast forward to Tuesday. Since I have the tracking number for the chair, I check periodically during the day to see if the packages have been at all in transit, checking on the status of the UPS packages on and off as I have free time. While the CD case has been picked up and is slowly working its way toward us (as have the envelopes that we ordered on Sunday), the chair hasn't moved out of "billing information received" status. Grumble, snort. I call Staples to ask what the deal is, and they say that UPS says the delivery is still scheduled for the following night, but if it doesn't arrive, I should call after 5 and they'll find out what happened to it. So on Wednesday, I again spend the day tracking the chair, the CD case, and the envelopes. By 4 PM, the envelopes and the CD case are reported as having been delivered (which MAB discovered to be true when he arrived home from work), but by 5 PM the chair still hasn't moved out of "billing information received" status. So when I get home Wednesday night, I call Staples. At this point, I've talked to a slew of low-level CSRs, and I'm tired of it. So when the first CSR gets on the phone, I ask to talk to a supervisor. I'm put on hold for about 5 minutes (now, anyone else out there think that putting an already irate customer on hold for a long time is a bad idea?), and then I get this chick who says she's the supervisor. I tell her the long, sad tale of my chair, and she says, "Oh, well I'll have to check with UPS, but they're closed after 5 PM." Hey, lady, it was Staples who told me to call after 5 PM so that UPS would be done with their delivery day. _And_, to add insult to injury, she calls me "Naomi" about 4 times. So I finally get a promise from her (along with her full name) that she'll call UPS first thing in the morning - they open at 7 AM, she says - and that she'll call me as soon as she knows something. She warns me that it might take a couple of hours for them to track the package, so I shouldn't expect a call before 9. I'm not happy, but I say OK.
By Thursday morning at 11, I still haven't heard anything, so I call Staples again and ask for the supervisor chick directly. They can't figure out who she is, since she didn't give me a direct extension, so I end up telling the whole story again to yet anotehr CSR. This one, however, sympathizes with my plight and understands my frustration and says that she's very sorry to have to put me on hold but she'll try to find out what's going on. She puts me on hold for a couple of minutes then comes back to tell me that she's sent an urgent message to UPS to look into it and then she asks for my phone number so that someone can call me the minute they know something. I'm so pleased at her competence that I ask for her full name so that I can send a commendation to Staples' corporate office for her. Unfortunately, she isn't allowed to give out her full name, but I speak to her supervisor who says that she'll put the CSR (whose name is Joan) in for a commendation and that Joan will be sent a little tchotchke and a "good girl" letter. Works for me. I thank Joan's supervisor and hang up.
Not thirty seconds later, my phone rings. It's the stupid supervisor from last night (Kelly) - finally getting off her butt and calling me; so much for "first thing in the morning" - telling me that she knows what the deal is but it's not good news - UPS has lost my chair. Yeah, right, I think; UPS doesn't have a record of ever having received the chair in the first place, according to the UPS website. So, I ask Kelly, what now? She says well, usually they'd just ship out another chair. However, this was the last chair of that type in the whole US (again I think, yeah, right) and therefore she can't do a damn thing. I tell her that's completely unacceptable and that she'd better ship out a comparable or better chair for delivery on Friday. I'd already told her on Wednesday night that Staples' incompetence was making me strongly consider switching to OfficeMax, and I'd begun to scope out what OfficeMax had available by way of chairs. Kelly hemmed and hawed but finally agreed that they'd ship a chair out to me for delivery on Friday before 5. I said that wasn't acceptable, either - it had to be delivered before 3, as the office was closing early for Rosh HaShannah (actually, the "office" is MAB's and my apartment, but Kelly didn't know that). She said she'd have to check if that was possible and that she'd call me back. After a short while, she called me back and said that the chair would be delivered by a Staples courier on Friday before 3 PM. And - surprise, surprise - it was. I now have a new desk chair. But there's an OfficeMax catalog on its way to me, as well, and MAB and I are considering placing our next office supply order with them.
--Today, for the third day in a row, I had to wait an extraordinary amount of time for the bus I take in the morning. The bus is supposed to run every 10 minutes or more frequently at the time of day I take it, but I've had to wait 20 minutes every day this week. So I called the main T complaint line, and they registered my complaint and also gave me the phone number for the guy responsible for that line (the T has this new-ish "Write to the Top" program for people to register complaints; the different bus and subway lines are divvied up among a bunch of top guys). I called that guy's office and got immediate satisfaction - the woman who answered the phone said she was going to dispatch a mobile supervisor to monitor the bus route and see if they can figure out what's causing the delays, and if they can't figure it out, they'll add more buses to the route to compensate for the delays.
Now what I don't get is that the T is a monopoly - they're the only ones providing bus service to our area, and therefore there's not much recourse if I don't like the service. Staples, however, is just one of many office supply places I could use (beside them and OfficeMax, there's Office Depot and W.B. Mason that I can think of right off the top of my head). So why is it that the monopoly provides more satisfactory customer service than the company that depends on my business and the business of people like me for its survival?
