Last year I wrote a post explaining that when having trouble with retailers (or, I guess, any company), failing an initial success you should take your complaint straight to the top. The reason this works is because people in head office have little time/patience to deal with petty complaints and will just sent the order down the lines to comply with your request. This all, of course, assumes that you have a valid claim for complaint/exchange/refund/etc. in the first place.
Well, it seems that this method has come through again!
I won’t reveal which company it was to ensure this post remains impartial, but in summary: I was denied an exchange/refund of my faulty product at the store level, so I called head office. A day later, I got a call back saying that the company was willing to organise a replacement product for me, citing it was, “for customer service” reasons.
What are “customer service” reasons? What the company was trying to tell me was that they were replacing the product in good faith, not because I had a legitimate claim but because they wanted to ensure ‘the customer remain[ed] happy‘. Apart from that attitude being incredibly unprofessional and childish, it also proves the exact opposite of what you’re claiming to do. It shows you don’t care about the customer and are just complying in order to make the issue disappear. Not that it matters to me because I get what I want, but it shows cracks in the overall ethos of a company which strives to please its customers.
What this goes to show is that even though comanies may not take customer service seriously, they will do what they can to make problems go away – they just need a little nudge in the right direction first. But what does it show for the overall state of customer service in the retail industry (or any industry for that matter)? I know it’s not the first time I’ve reluctantly received a refund.
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| Image source: http://www.theshoespoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/converse_all-stars.jpg |
