I had an experience at work this morning that has left me convinced that customer service has died, and I just missed the funeral. To attempt to shorten a long story, I will summarize:
1) I place an order for a customer with a relatively new vendor ($10,000 or so) and ask when the customer can expect to receive shipment.
2)Delivery date comes and goes, no product. I call customer service who tells me I will have to track the shipment to find out.
3)Track the shipment and make sure it is delivered - two days late and forcing the postponement of a training on the product.
4) Customer notifies me on a Monday (shipment was delivered on Friday) that a very large item was missing. Call customer service, no help.
5) Get more info from the customer the next day and call back the vendor's customer service. They act surly when they realize that the error is on their part and they forgot to include the item in the shipment. I ask them if they can overnight ship - they tell me NO. I remind them that the mistake is theirs and after much excuse making, they agree curtly to ship it out that day for next day delivery.
5) Vendor's customer service calls me later that same day - tells me they do not have any of item in stock and it will go out by end of the week at the latest for delivery the following Monday (yesterday)
6) Customer notifies me this morning - still don't have the item. I call customer service who tells me that it actually did not ship out til yesterday and I again will have to track it.
7) I call shipper to track, find out it was never overnighted, is still halfway across the country and ask if there is any way, for any fee that we can get it to the customer today. They tell me no, but they will do their best to have it there tomorrow.
8) Vendor's customer service calls me and yells at me for posing as their rep (I did not) and authorizing extra fees (I did not). Makes a million excuses about why it was not shipped out last week etc. But in the end, THEY STILL DID NOTHING TO HELP CORRECT WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY THEIR ERROR. When I reminded the customer DIS-service rep of this, she just said, I am sorry you feel that way. She is lucky that she was hundreds of miles away from me at that moment cause if she was only across town, I would have had to go over there and strangle her. ARGH!!! She would not be worth going to jail for, but just the visual is making me feel better. I told her that I understood that everyone makes mistakes but people fall into two categories 1) they own up and do their best to correct the mistake and 2) they just make excuses and do not try to rememdy the situation. Unfortunately, her companies customer service staff seems to fall into the second category. Too bad, no more business with them if I have my way.
Has Customer Service Died - I Must Have Missed the Funeral
February 6th, 2007 at 05:39 pm
February 6th, 2007 at 05:47 pm 1170784052
My coworker and i were just walking back to the office withour lunches in our hands. THREE men walked out, one guy held the door for the other guys and then let go when we went to walk through.
Sorry you're having such a rough day
February 6th, 2007 at 06:50 pm 1170787853
February 6th, 2007 at 07:30 pm 1170790213
Very wise to discontinue business...the only way to make your opinions known.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:59 am 1170809964
About 2 years ago, one of our very long time vendors sent some raw material with mismatching lot numbers on their paperwork, making the parts unusable even though we had them in-house.
After a few days of our puchasing dept getting the runaround, I called the vendor myself, and they HUNG UP on me!!!!
Needless to say, I quickly found and qualified another vendor.
About 2 weeks ago my supervisor got a call from that same person who hung up on me, asking why we haven't been ordering from them...She sent them an email 'reminding' him of what happened.