Ugh, I get that stuff so often . . .
Can't think of any specifics right now, but it's terrible. And it's ESPECIALLY common with large, international corporations.
There are very few examples of truly good customer support on the large corporate scale, and plenty of examples of ultra-poor customer support.
And OH YEAH - we're helping make it possible. All of those CRM apps? Yup, they're paving to way to make it even more possible to ignore customers by making a machine do all the work. The best CRM is a friendly smile and a good attitude, not an automated piece of junk.
OH, we can automate customer relationship management, right? That'll make everything better, you know. We're too big to use humans, and they cost too much. We'll save money and everything will be all right.
Trust us.
Giving customers the cold shoulder - in the holy name of profit. Who dares defile the name of profit?
It was about 12 years ago when I called 1-800-Flowers for a delivery for my dear friend. She’d experienced a tragic miscarriage and I aimed to send her an “It’s Your Day” Bouquet, a 1-800-Flowers staple. My idea was to send her something beautiful, cheerful and to let her know that I was thinking of her since I was helpless and 2,000 miles away. I placed the order in the morning and in the afternoon I received delivery confirmation. I didn’t immediately hear from my friend but a few hours later I called her to check in anyway. She hung up on me. I called back. She screamed unrecognizable obscenities into the phone. I called one more time and she’d calmed enough to enunciate a clear, “How could you?” I was startled. I didn’t expect a Nobel Peace Prize for sending her flowers but I thought she’d at least appreciate the gesture. She’s a pretty reasonable gal, even in a state of sadness, so this was utterly confusing. Then she explained: 1-800-Flowers did not deliver an “It’s Your Day” Bouquet. What was delivered was a vase of blue and white flowers and tied to it was, none other than, an “It’s A Boy!” balloon.
I was mortified. Bewildered. Angry. After swearing on my life that this was not some sick idea of a joke, I called 1-800-Flowers. I did a three-way call so that my friend could hear the entire transaction. It turned out that 1-800-Flowers got my order right but the local florist screwed up its deliveries. My friend received the right card, wrong delivery item. It was a nightmare. 1-800-Flowers immediately jumped into overcompensation mode, offering me coupons and free flowers, and then proceeded to barrage my friend with flower deliveries for a few days in order to try to bring some sunshine into her day. Neither one of us wanted coupons or flowers. I had vowed never to order through them again and my friend just wanted to forget the whole scarring experience. Yet the barrage of apologies continued.
I remembered this story today as I ordered a 1-800-Flowers surprise for another friend of mine — thankfully a much happier occasion. I wondered how this customer service issue I had 12 years ago might’ve been addressed had I been such an avid Twitter and Facebook user at the time. I most likely would’ve taken my rage to the interwebs, as might have my friend if she chose to expose the personal experience that caused it, and I bet all heck would’ve broken loose on the 1-800-Flowers Twitter feed. I imagined it as, “Please DM us so we can take care of this right away!”
The medium for securing customer service attention has changed, but I have to wonder: are companies really listening to their customers? In the old days of 12 years ago, if you were slighted you would call, send a letter, or even an email form and then a coupon would show up days later. United Airlines, which was deserving of many complaints at that time in my life, was notorious for its vouchers. The company didn’t listen when I said “I never want to fly your airline again!” Instead, it tried to give me coupons so that I would forget my frustration and take another flight in the hope that it might be good.
