From time to time, when my company is mentioned in a TV segment, I try to obtain the clip from VMS, a company that can find the clip for you and provide it in a digital format. It's a pretty handy service but over three years of working with them, I've had spotty customer service and often slow delivery times on time-sensitive projects. But nothing quite like this has ever happened...
A recent episode of a popular television show featured one of our products, so I emailed my contact (for anonymity she doesn't deserve, I'll call her Celia) to request a clip and a high-resolution image of the product. I made sure to specify that I needed a high-resolution image or screenshot, because I wasn't sure if VMS had the capability to do this.
This original email, sent first thing in the morning, went unanswered; I only found out through a phone call I placed to the office later that day that Celia was working on it. When I asked about the feasability of getting a screenshot from the digital clip, Celia confirmed that it shouldn't be a problem because all VMS video clips are high quality. Satisfied, I asked her to please call me when the clip was ready.
First thing Tuesday morning, having not heard back from her, I sent an email checking on the status of this time-sensitive project, which elicited two responses at 10:30 a.m. and 3:20 p.m. Both emails made the misleading promise that the clip should arrive "shortly."
When I finally received the clip 24 hours later, on Wednesday afternoon, neither I nor a freelance graphic designer were able able to obtain a screenshot from the video. This was very frustrating, given that I had specified this need in my original email, and that Celia had assured me it would be possible. I called and left a message with the receptionist for Celia, requesting help getting the screenshot ASAP, but received no call or email back. On Thursday afternoon I again emailed Celia, and received the following response:
“I sent another email to rush the order.
You should have received it by now that's why I'm still in the office. [my emphasis]
You should be receiving it shortly.”
This email was sent at 5:15 p.m. 5:15! Please, don't let me keep you chained to your desk until all hours of the night. 5:15! It's inhuman to work that late! The bold-faced rudeness of this email truly shocked me.
Two more emails sent Friday and Monday received no response. I finally got the screenshot from some manager at VMS who told me quite snippily that Celia had sent it on Thursday, and that it must be in my junk mail folder. Obviously, it wasn't. Plus, if Celia had supposedly sent it, why didn't she respond to my frantic emails to alert me that it was ready? The worst part was that the image I finally did get 1) is terrible quality and 2) arrived too late to be used in a timely fashion, rendering it irrelevant.
Almost immediately, I emailed the manager back, detailing my exchanges (or lack therof) with Celia over the past week, and expressing my extreme disappointment with how this project was handled. That was almost 24 hours ago and I have yet to receive a response.
Now, to be fair: our products aren't on TV too often so we're not one of VMS's biggest accounts. However, I don’t feel that any customer deserves to be treated with so little respect. Not calling a concerned customer back after repeated messages is inexcusable.
I'll also concede that Celia's job is pretty terrible overall: high-stress, demanding customers, lots of mind-numbing video to slog through... But most service-oriented jobs have unpleasant elements like these, which can be handled one of two ways: with a bad attitude, leading to poor performance and increasing stress levels, or with a positive attitude, leading to happy (or at least informed) customers and less stressful situations. You can bet that I will think twice before I call Celia for anything in the future. Check minus for VMS.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Cross-train your brain
Preface #1: This post might stretch the definition of customer service, but I feel that the line between customer service and marketing is a bit blurred in some situations, so I'm going with it.
Preface#2: I love Healthworks. LOVE.
What I found very strange was that the sign listed classes that were cancelled for the weekend. This meant that in order to find out what classes I could take, I had to look up at the huge bulletin board, find a class I was interested in, and then refer back to the single-spaced, 12-point font list of cancelled classes to see if my class made the cut. This struck me as incredibly ineffecient and kind of lazy. With a tiny bit of extra effort, whoever made the sign could have simply created a list of classes that were still on the schedule. Instead, something intended to be helpful and informative ended up as a confusing and time-consuming mess. Because I would probably give up my firstborn child for this beautiful, clean, spa-like facility, I'll let this one go... check for Healthworks.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
InDesign and OutSourcing
Yesterday I spent almost an hour on the phone with Adobe Customer Support, trying to fix a problem I was having with InDesign. I'm not a graphic designer and my company does not currently have a designer (or anyone who knows design software) on staff, so my 2 semesters of graphic design in college make me the resident expert and problem fixer. I tried unsuccessfully to solve the problem with our internal IT person, and finally resorted to calling the 800 number.
After navigating through a few automated menus, my call was answered (promptly, I'll give them that) by a woman who must have been sitting in the middle of a congested call center somewhere in India. The background noise was really distracting right off the bat, and sometimes I couldn't tell if she was talking to me, someone nearby, or if I was just hearing the person next to her on another call. This in itself was maddening.
The first thing I was asked to provide was a name, telephone number and email address. Name - easy enough. Phone - had to repeat it twice, slowly. Email address - total nightmare. Granted, the domain name of my company is long and consists of two words whose spelling is very similar. However, I lost count of how many times I had to repeat the spelling of my email address. It took a solid three minutes of excriciating "a like apple, b like banana" spellings to finally get it right.
Once all this information had been recorded, and knowing that it was being used to find a record of past service calls and/or identify my registered Adobe product, I explained that I had never personally called Adobe before, and that the product (Creative Suite 2) was registered to my company under the name of someone who no longer worked for us. After a few moments of confusion on her end, she asked for the name, number and email address of the person to whom the product was registered. I gave it, but no records were found.
I again reminded the woman that we may have never called for support before, so we might not be in her database. I asked if there would be anything else she could use to identify me, and she then asked for the registration number of the product I was using. Since I had InDesign open on the machine in front of me, I looked up the 20-digit number and read it off to her. Three times, slowly, until she got it right. She said it seemed as though there were some numbers missing, so I read it again. Nope, she said, there should be 24 digits to the registration number, and this was only 20. I figured I must have looked in the wrong place and asked where I could find the number.
She then proceeded to walk me through a number of steps that not only didn't work, but didn't apply to my specific version of the software. She was asking me to open menus and options that did not exist in the version I was running. I'll spare you the details, but she finally informed me that the 24-digit number could be found on the box that came with the software. Knowing it was a longshot that this was still in the office somewhere, I dispatched our IT person (who was standing next to me this whole time) to find it.
Miraculously, he came back with a box - but it was for CS3 (which we run on different machines), not CS2! I explained this to the woman on the phone, reminding her that we had legally purchased copies of CS2 and CS3, and is there any way we can use the registration number for CS3, just to get me thorough to a tech support person? Remember, I'm STLL talking to someone who is simply trying to verify my account. I haven't even begun to solve my real problem yet. She said that that definitely won't work, but that we could try it. The four readings that it took to get this 24-digit number recorded correctly took more patience than I thought I had left, and brought me straight to the end of my rope.
The IT guy, sensing disaster, stepped in and grabbed the phone before I had the chance to hurl it across the office and give someone a concussion. He talked to her for a few more minutes while I calmed down, giving the details needed to create an account for our company. When he put me back on the phone, the woman told me that although we had given the necessary information to receive support for CS3, since we were calling about an issue related to CS2, the tech support department wouldn't really be able to help me, but I would be able to ask some "general questions" about Adobe products. At that point I didn't even care who I was transferred to or what they could or could not tell me, I just wanted to be done with her, so I grunted some kind of reply and was released.
As my call was routed across the Atlantic Ocean back to Adobe tech support in the US, I glanced at the clock. 45 minutes on the phone trying to verify a product that my company had legally purchased multiple times for different people in the organization. Absurd.
My exchange with tech support was mostly unremarkable except for the fact that the bored and sleepy-sounding guy I spoke with seemed to be holding the phone about 10 feet in front of his face, only bringing it closer when I said politely (four times) "I'm sorry, I'm having a really hard time hearing you." He didn't really solve my problem, but he gave me an idea of what the problem might be and how it could be fixed (the solution will require the assistance of a freelancer who knows InDesign a bit better than I do). I was on the phone with him for less than 15 minutes.
Now, I realize verifying that a product is legal is an important step for a company whose software is pirated every day by people around the world. According to Adobe's own web site, the economic loss associated with software piracy is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. That may be something you want to try protect yourself against, but why put the burden on your customers who are calling in for help using your product? From what I remember from my hacker friends in college, it's easy enough to obtain a legit registration number for a piece of pirated software anyway. Plus, if I did own an illegal copy of the software and received friendly, quick and helpful support for that product, I'd think it would make me much more likely to actually purchase from the company in the future.
Regardless, I think taking down these ridiculous, time-consuming, and bang-your-head-against-a-wall frustrating barriers to service might also bring down some of the costs of running Adobe's customer service department. If phone operators could spend less (or no) time trying to clear someone like me to receive the help I need, maybe there wouldn't be the need to have as many operators. Of course, when you're hosting your call center in India, I guess your cost per person isn't really that big of a deal anymore... but I'm not going there... not today at least. Check minus for Adobe.
After navigating through a few automated menus, my call was answered (promptly, I'll give them that) by a woman who must have been sitting in the middle of a congested call center somewhere in India. The background noise was really distracting right off the bat, and sometimes I couldn't tell if she was talking to me, someone nearby, or if I was just hearing the person next to her on another call. This in itself was maddening.
The first thing I was asked to provide was a name, telephone number and email address. Name - easy enough. Phone - had to repeat it twice, slowly. Email address - total nightmare. Granted, the domain name of my company is long and consists of two words whose spelling is very similar. However, I lost count of how many times I had to repeat the spelling of my email address. It took a solid three minutes of excriciating "a like apple, b like banana" spellings to finally get it right.
Once all this information had been recorded, and knowing that it was being used to find a record of past service calls and/or identify my registered Adobe product, I explained that I had never personally called Adobe before, and that the product (Creative Suite 2) was registered to my company under the name of someone who no longer worked for us. After a few moments of confusion on her end, she asked for the name, number and email address of the person to whom the product was registered. I gave it, but no records were found.
I again reminded the woman that we may have never called for support before, so we might not be in her database. I asked if there would be anything else she could use to identify me, and she then asked for the registration number of the product I was using. Since I had InDesign open on the machine in front of me, I looked up the 20-digit number and read it off to her. Three times, slowly, until she got it right. She said it seemed as though there were some numbers missing, so I read it again. Nope, she said, there should be 24 digits to the registration number, and this was only 20. I figured I must have looked in the wrong place and asked where I could find the number.
She then proceeded to walk me through a number of steps that not only didn't work, but didn't apply to my specific version of the software. She was asking me to open menus and options that did not exist in the version I was running. I'll spare you the details, but she finally informed me that the 24-digit number could be found on the box that came with the software. Knowing it was a longshot that this was still in the office somewhere, I dispatched our IT person (who was standing next to me this whole time) to find it.
Miraculously, he came back with a box - but it was for CS3 (which we run on different machines), not CS2! I explained this to the woman on the phone, reminding her that we had legally purchased copies of CS2 and CS3, and is there any way we can use the registration number for CS3, just to get me thorough to a tech support person? Remember, I'm STLL talking to someone who is simply trying to verify my account. I haven't even begun to solve my real problem yet. She said that that definitely won't work, but that we could try it. The four readings that it took to get this 24-digit number recorded correctly took more patience than I thought I had left, and brought me straight to the end of my rope.
The IT guy, sensing disaster, stepped in and grabbed the phone before I had the chance to hurl it across the office and give someone a concussion. He talked to her for a few more minutes while I calmed down, giving the details needed to create an account for our company. When he put me back on the phone, the woman told me that although we had given the necessary information to receive support for CS3, since we were calling about an issue related to CS2, the tech support department wouldn't really be able to help me, but I would be able to ask some "general questions" about Adobe products. At that point I didn't even care who I was transferred to or what they could or could not tell me, I just wanted to be done with her, so I grunted some kind of reply and was released.
As my call was routed across the Atlantic Ocean back to Adobe tech support in the US, I glanced at the clock. 45 minutes on the phone trying to verify a product that my company had legally purchased multiple times for different people in the organization. Absurd.
My exchange with tech support was mostly unremarkable except for the fact that the bored and sleepy-sounding guy I spoke with seemed to be holding the phone about 10 feet in front of his face, only bringing it closer when I said politely (four times) "I'm sorry, I'm having a really hard time hearing you." He didn't really solve my problem, but he gave me an idea of what the problem might be and how it could be fixed (the solution will require the assistance of a freelancer who knows InDesign a bit better than I do). I was on the phone with him for less than 15 minutes.
Now, I realize verifying that a product is legal is an important step for a company whose software is pirated every day by people around the world. According to Adobe's own web site, the economic loss associated with software piracy is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. That may be something you want to try protect yourself against, but why put the burden on your customers who are calling in for help using your product? From what I remember from my hacker friends in college, it's easy enough to obtain a legit registration number for a piece of pirated software anyway. Plus, if I did own an illegal copy of the software and received friendly, quick and helpful support for that product, I'd think it would make me much more likely to actually purchase from the company in the future.
Regardless, I think taking down these ridiculous, time-consuming, and bang-your-head-against-a-wall frustrating barriers to service might also bring down some of the costs of running Adobe's customer service department. If phone operators could spend less (or no) time trying to clear someone like me to receive the help I need, maybe there wouldn't be the need to have as many operators. Of course, when you're hosting your call center in India, I guess your cost per person isn't really that big of a deal anymore... but I'm not going there... not today at least. Check minus for Adobe.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
It's chocolate, it's peppermint - it's delicious!
This past weekend, I went to the lovely Entertainment Cinemas at Fresh Pond for a showing of the new Tina Fey movie "Baby Mama." After buying tickets and finding a seat, I returned to the lobby to find some snacks. As I stood in line contemplating the selection in the glass case in front of me, I noticed a conspicuous absence of Junior Mints. Blast! As my turn approached, I vainly searched for a sufficient alternative. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a plethora of Junior Mints in an another case, approximately 10 feet away. Catastrophe averted - just in time for me to step to the counter and make my selections.
Me: "Hello. I'd like a box of Junior Mints. I see you're out here but I think there are some in that case over there."
Cashier (snarky): "Yes, but they're over there."
Me (confused): "Um, yes. Can I have some please?"
Cashier (sighing, suddenly exasperated): "I can't leave the cash register." ::points to register::
Me (looking around, seeing no one else in line behind me): "Ummm.."
Cashier (rolling eyes): "You have to go over there." ::points to adjacent register::
For the extra few seconds it would have taken the cashier to explain up front that she couldn't leave the register, she would have saved herself from feeling frustrated and me from feeling utterly confused. Another obvious option would have been for the cashier to ask her fellow snack counter attendant to pass her a box of Junior Mints. Unfortunately, none of these things happened, but at least I didn't miss the previews. Check minus for Entertainment Cinemas Fresh Pond.
Me: "Hello. I'd like a box of Junior Mints. I see you're out here but I think there are some in that case over there."
Cashier (snarky): "Yes, but they're over there."
Me (confused): "Um, yes. Can I have some please?"
Cashier (sighing, suddenly exasperated): "I can't leave the cash register." ::points to register::
Me (looking around, seeing no one else in line behind me): "Ummm.."
Cashier (rolling eyes): "You have to go over there." ::points to adjacent register::
For the extra few seconds it would have taken the cashier to explain up front that she couldn't leave the register, she would have saved herself from feeling frustrated and me from feeling utterly confused. Another obvious option would have been for the cashier to ask her fellow snack counter attendant to pass her a box of Junior Mints. Unfortunately, none of these things happened, but at least I didn't miss the previews. Check minus for Entertainment Cinemas Fresh Pond.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Live chained to the script... or die
Rich suffered through a nightmarish interaction with Bank of America's customer service department this morning. An erroneous check that his roommate had written to him (and then cancelled) was somehow subtracted from Rich's checking account twice, putting him in the red.
After fighting through the automated phone system to reach a live person (tip: next time, try http://www.gethuman.com/), Rich reached an operator who seemed completely unable to deviate from the script, ignoring everything he said. Somehow, she figured out that one of the charges didn't belong on the account, and removed it. Hooray! Mission accomplished! You'd think the story was over, but this was just the beginning of what BoA shockingly thinks is a great marketing opportunity.
Rich continues: "When she was done she immediately launched into a pitch for a pre-approved credit card. She talked for two minutes without a pause or a chance for me to interrupt. While she was talking, I thought to myself, 'I called to have BoA fix their mistake that overdrew my account, and they ended up trying to sell me something!' When I was finally able to reject the credit card offer, she wanted to know why. She then told me that I had been selected to participate in a survey and asked me to "please stay on the line" before quickly transferring me away without another word. I waited on the line for about 20 seconds, realized that there was no reason for me to do this, and hung up."
While there were a few mistakes made here by the BoA representative, the thing that disturbs me the most is that she seems to have no power to judge the circumstances of the call and adjust her actions accordingly. Many companies like BoA don't empower the people who answer their phones to truly interact with the caller to solve the problem. If BoA doesn't trust their own employees to make sound judgements that will delight their customers, why did they hire these individuals in the first place? I can just imagine the giant, threatening sign looming over each operator's cubicle, reminding her to "Stick to the script!" Check minus for BoA.
After fighting through the automated phone system to reach a live person (tip: next time, try http://www.gethuman.com/), Rich reached an operator who seemed completely unable to deviate from the script, ignoring everything he said. Somehow, she figured out that one of the charges didn't belong on the account, and removed it. Hooray! Mission accomplished! You'd think the story was over, but this was just the beginning of what BoA shockingly thinks is a great marketing opportunity.
Rich continues: "When she was done she immediately launched into a pitch for a pre-approved credit card. She talked for two minutes without a pause or a chance for me to interrupt. While she was talking, I thought to myself, 'I called to have BoA fix their mistake that overdrew my account, and they ended up trying to sell me something!' When I was finally able to reject the credit card offer, she wanted to know why. She then told me that I had been selected to participate in a survey and asked me to "please stay on the line" before quickly transferring me away without another word. I waited on the line for about 20 seconds, realized that there was no reason for me to do this, and hung up."
While there were a few mistakes made here by the BoA representative, the thing that disturbs me the most is that she seems to have no power to judge the circumstances of the call and adjust her actions accordingly. Many companies like BoA don't empower the people who answer their phones to truly interact with the caller to solve the problem. If BoA doesn't trust their own employees to make sound judgements that will delight their customers, why did they hire these individuals in the first place? I can just imagine the giant, threatening sign looming over each operator's cubicle, reminding her to "Stick to the script!" Check minus for BoA.
Netflix treats me like the Pope
I received the wrong Netflix DVD in the mail earlier in the week, which has never happened before. I went to the web site, and within seconds was able to figure out how to report the problem. It was super easy and I received a confirmation email within minutes that my report had been received and that someone was on it. Not only did I receive the correct DVD the very next day, but I received more good news in the email that came this morning:
- Netflix apologized for the error, which they had meticulously documented: what they did wrong, when it happened, and how and when it was corrected
- I was issued an automatic 5% credit on my account
- I can keep the erroneous DVD for as long as I like ("please feel free to take your time watching it")
- Another apology at the end and a toll-free number I can call with any concerns
From a company like Netflix that always exceeds my expectations and has an excellent, easy-to use product to begin with, this kind of stellar customer service shows how far above and beyond they will go to make me happy. To me, Netflix is really a service company that also happens to sell me something I find valuable. Gold star for Netflix!
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