Customer Service Is Not a Department, It’s An Attitude*
Posted by Heather | Posted in Customer Service, Relationships | Posted on 10-03-2010
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I have a customer at work — a small business of five employees and while we don’t do much business with him, they have placed two orders with me since January.
The first order was placed Januray 21st, the second mid-February. The latter order came in within the week and was installed. About that time, I found out that the first order had slipped to back order status and would be delayed (for the second time) to March 5th.
Keep in mind that the customer needs the product to deploy a new accounting software that will change the way that they do business. The server had been ordered and installed; the software was sitting there unused because they are waiting on the last piece of the puzzle.
On March 4th, I emailed the customer to let him know that the following day, I would be tracking down that order. I sent word on the 5th to find out where it was and received no response.
On Monday, May 8th, I still hadn’t heard back on the status, but I heard from my customer. By the end of the day, I got word that the product was delayed again until June 6th. A cancellation was eminent.
I emailed my boss, sent the SOS if you will, that we needed to get creative to make this right for the customer. Together, we ran it up the flagpole to the owner of the company and pulled in all the resources that we could and when I called the customer back, I had to relay the bad news about the delay, but I presented him with a solution.
Was it what he wanted? No.
Would it work just as good if not better than the original product?
Yes.
Had he cancelled after the solution was offered, I would’ve understood. But I can’t, in good conscious, tell someone that it can’t be done. There’s always a solution.
I don’t post this to toot my own horn.
I post this because I think it’s important to always put the customer’s needs first. There might be times that you can’t do exactly what they want. Things happen.
But you can always get creative, making you look like the rock star in the end.
How do you feel about customer service? Do you think that it has to be a dying art? How can we revive it?
*not my quote… I saw it online… credit, anonymous
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great post! i do think customer service is a dying art. most of the time customer service means calling a phone bank and getting a random person that doesn’t even deal with the products on a regular basis – a person who has some sort of script to follow and only limited responses/solutions to offer. or even in every day life, some employees can’t be bothered to answer questions in the store or help me find what i need. they just point and walk away. i think a lot of people/companies have lost track of the reality that it is the customers who provide the paychecks.