Alright time for me to vent about what happened on Tuesday that taught me a serious lesson about “customer service.” Here is the back-story.

There is a company we use to manage our online mailing list (which has thousands of our leads/customers in it). I’ve been using them for easily over 4 years and have loved their service. Between multiple accounts, I easily spend $100 a month with them.

There are MANY services that do what they do, but where they’ve always beat their competition was in “GREAT” customer service - well boy did THAT go to the crapper this past Tuesday.

As you know we had a product launch that I was busy building up for and working 24 hour days - no joke. The entire launch was built around buzz that at a CERTAIN time this product would launch (the way video games do it). Well, that morning around 10 AM, I wanted to send out a preparatory “reminder” to all of our huge prospect list that the product was coming - get ready to order.

I place the message to go out at 10 AM, by 1 PM nothing has gone out. Considering we’re getting close to launch, I had to just cancel the pre-buzz mailing. So, I realize that it seems this company is backed up today and I immediately put in the one to go out AT launch time.

3 hours pass by and we get 600 freaking visitors to the site when we launch (these are just the ones that remembered we were launching). Complete and utter disappointment - the entire BUZZ RUN RUN RUN effect was gone. I contact the company’s “amazing” support representative just 100% sure that they would immediately help me.

In basic words he said “No, you have to wait like everyone else…” - Yes, not a big deal so far, rules are rules, but this is where I got fuming mad:

This guy has the audacity to actually COPY AND PASTE the freaking user agreement into the chat window - the amazing thing is that I had not yet even started arguing, I can see if I was throwing a fit that he would take it to “legal jargon” - I know, you’re probably thinking it’s still not a big deal.

Well, here’s why I was so upset.

This guy on the other line couldn’t care LESS about my situation, was not even ready to listen to me about HOW IMPORTANT this was and my month’s work was in it, not to mention my entire team. I JUST WANTED TO BE HEARD. I’m a DEVOTED customer who just wanted to feel that he cared (even in the end if he didn’t help me).

Maybe he PRETENDS and acts like he’s running around to help, hell, at least make me FEEL good (even if he’s lying to me - not that I encourage that).

He was cold, unappreciative and to me, a complete a-hole. By the way, it was not just him - I tried to get help 3 different times and no one would help me.  Forget helping me, they would not even tell me WHEN my mail may go out (roughly) - their answer, “sir the user agreement says within 12 hours…”

The other thing that really got me is that I have some pull in this industry and have sent this company HUNDREDS of leads for free without collecting any finder’s fees.

4+ years as a customer and having promoted them profusely, I can’t - for even one day - get a minor exception and have my mail sent out?

Lesson Learned:

No matter how big you get, build in systems that immediately allow your support representative to see more about you as a customer (your track record and loyalty). There is always grey area in every rule and the nature of the beast is just that you need to respect that. Sometimes your customers are not “playing you” and truly need you to help - help them there and they are yours for life.

Disrespectfully shrug them off and your 4+ years of great work is down the toilet and that customer is off looking for another solution (as am I).

Sorry [company name deleted], we had good times together, but you really let me down when I needed you the most. 

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Tags: Customer Service

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 4:16 am and is filed under Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.