{"id":17568,"date":"2012-11-01T10:02:02","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T15:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17568"},"modified":"2012-11-01T10:02:02","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T15:02:02","slug":"the-art-of-bad-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/11\/01\/the-art-of-bad-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of (bad) customer service"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Lileks<\/a> had to do the leg work himself to track down a part to fix his stove. After finally getting it, he wanted to express his frustration to the company that sold the stove (but didn’t carry the replacement part he needed):<\/p>\n

So. I called Centerpoint, asked to speak to a manager, and had a nice friendly conversation about the fact that I found the part with elementary googling, and I had to pay for it and wait to be reimbursed.<\/p>\n

Manager: we have supply channels and have to set up payment contracts and we can\u2019t find anything, and what\u2019s more blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n

To which I said I understood, but the fact of that matter was: I found the part in seconds, which means someone entered the part number into your system, it came up null, and that was it. They\u2019d done their job. They\u2019d checked the box. Move on to the next. So what I get as a customer of your service is that you don\u2019t really look for the part. You search one closet and call it quits. Apparently there\u2019s no leeway for your people to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n

She understood my dissatisfaction, of course, but<\/p>\n

AAHOOHGA<\/em><\/p>\n

NEVER \u201cBUT\u201d YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF MY DISSATISFACTION.<\/p>\n

Lie to me. Lie to me over and over: I understand your dissatisfaction AND I will be adding this company to our database. I understand your dissatisfaction AND I will be sending my boss a letter about expanding our searches and allowing for more individual initiative on the part of the part-procuring people. I understand your dissatisfaction AND apologize you\u2019ll have to carry a $476 charge on your card while we process your request. I don\u2019t care if none of that\u2019s true. Just say it.<\/p>\n

I still think they\u2019re going to try to wiggle out of this somehow. I think my wife was right: they don\u2019t want to fix it. They don\u2019t want to pay for it.<\/p>\n

All it took for me to be that cynical was a manager invested too deeply in company policy. I would have trusted them more if they\u2019d lied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Lileks had to do the leg work himself to track down a part to fix his stove. After finally getting it, he wanted to express his frustration to the company that sold the stove (but didn’t carry the replacement part he needed): So. I called Centerpoint, asked to speak to a manager, and had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,57],"tags":[97,86,156],"class_list":["post-17568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-humour","tag-advertising","tag-criticism","tag-fail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4zm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17569,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17568\/revisions\/17569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}