November 26, 2009

I believe there is no end to the stories of lousy customer service. In fact, I have another one to tell, and it’s only one of many. This blog could be devoted to tales of customer no-service and never run out of material. We all wonder why in this economy would a company take a chance on losing what few customers are actually buying by not improving customer service, don’t we? It’s a mystery to be sure.

My experience was with the paper supplies company Xpedex. They’re pretty big, and the store here in Salt Lake City evidently doesn’t care how it does business. I went there the other day with a fair size order for envelopes after having been told on the phone that yes, sure, absolutely they had what I needed. Well, not exactly.

The store was fairly crowded, and since I had never been here before I wandered around looking for the envelopes I needed. It struck me after ten minutes there was not one sales person to help the customers. No one to be seen anywhere. Finally I saw someone! I quickly grabbed him and explained what I was looking for as promised by whoever I spoke to on the phone.

He had no idea what I was talking about. We walked over to the general area of the envelopes. As I continued to explain my needs, he was looking over the shelves as if he was seeing them for the first time. He would grab a box here and there and ask me if that was what I meant. Now, I was pretty clear on the sizes and colors and he could read the boxes as well as I could, yet he kept handing me the wrong ones.

This went on for a while. Finally he said what I had suspected, that he really didn’t know much about envelopes. So why didn’t he get someone else to help me right away? I have no idea. And now I had wasted more time than I had to give that afternoon, so through clenched teeth I muttered thanks and then left that store as fast as I could.

I wrote to Xpedex that evening about my experience. Have I heard back? I think you know the answer. Will I ever shop at Xpedex again? Are you kidding?

Recent reports say that the recession, while technically over, is still weighing heavily on the minds of consumers. They’re not spending very much right now and it’s expected that will continue. Every business in America, large and small, should be making sure the customer experience is fantastic in every way. This is no time to be complacent. But some businesses will never get that and they’ll be the first to complain about how it’s the economy, not them, that’s to blame. Natural selection will take care of that and we’ll never miss them.

By the way, I found my envelopes at Paper Plus. Great customer service and they helped me find exactly what I needed. Yes, I’ll be back.

November 6, 2009

Crazy policies exist everywhere, but in government they’re a way of life. As I contemplate the prospect of the current administration running the health care system in America, I offer this example of an existing government agency policy that should give you pause. Maybe this is too easy, as my example is the TSA. Yes, those Einsteins at the airport who frisk grandmothers on walkers. Here’s the scenario:

I wanted to bring some silverware on the plane with me from my mother’s home in another city that included the usual forks, knives and spoons. This was real silver and I did not care to take the chance of checking my carry-on and wondering where it might go or even be opened and stolen. And that does happen. So I found the TSA website and read the list of approved and not-allowed items, looking for silverware, and specifically the knives. What I found was that rounded-end butter knives are allowed (are there any other kind of butter knives?), but nothing is said about dinner knives. Which are also rounded. Knives of other categories are listed, but regular, ordinary dinner knives are absent.

So I wrote an email asking if my silver dinner knives were acceptable and by the way, why aren’t they listed on your website? The reply: we don’t make general policy for every item and leave it up to the local TSA officers on site to make the call. Take your silverware to the airport and if they say it’s allowed, it’s allowed. If they say no, then it’s not.

What? It’s an arbitrary decision? You just can’t make a policy decision on dinner knives so you leave it up to the whims of the local personnel? Were you too exhausted after determining butter knives were OK to go the next step to dinner knives? So if I encounter a TSA screener in a bad mood he might take it out on me? “Sorry, no dinner knives allowed! Now if they were butter knives you’d be fine, but nix on the dinner knives.” It’s a crap shoot, then?

I know it’s easy to pick on the TSA as the absurdities of their regulations are well-known. But here we go again. We continue to allow this and that’s a shame. We have given up and go along with some of the most ill-conceived policies and poor service imaginable, all courtesy of a federal government agency. We throw up our hands and say “Well, that’s the government for you. What do you expect?”  Think about that as you consider the prospect of government-run health care. We know already what will happen because we’ve seen it all before.