Tag Archives: Customer service

January 23, 2019 · 11:38 am

The Easy Way Out For Whom?

It seems as if I’m writing a series of posts inspired by my having decided to purchase a new house. I guess when we shake up our lives a bit we get inspired, or at least we get confronted by how some businesses are a lot better than others in many ways.

Today’s tale is yet another head-shaker. One of the things I found myself needing as I planned out my new digs was a few pieces of furniture. Like many people, I took to the internet to browse online and I found things at both Wayfair and Ikea that were priced well and seemed to be of good quality. The closest Ikea store is three hours from me and Wayfair only operates online, so I did my ordering via the web.

The orders showed up pretty much on time. There was a delay in the Ikea boxes due to the fact that I wasn’t at the new house to receive them. Of course, while Ikea told me the time window in which things would arrive, they never said someone had to be there. A call to customer service and we rescheduled delivery for a few days later. If you’re telling the customer when the boxes will arrive, why not also tell them they need to be around while you have their attention? Wayfair’s deliveries were just placed on the porch without incident.

That, however, is far from the end of the tale. The real fun began after I opened the boxes. I needed to assemble the furniture and of course, the first step is to make sure all the pieces and hardware had arrived safely. They hadn’t. In two cases, one from each company, a key piece of the item was damaged and not just cosmetically. I needed replacement pieces before I could go any further.

This is where the head shaking begins. Ikea’s website says:

If you are not able to visit the store, and only one piece of the unit is damaged, call us within 365 days of the purchase with your receipt information and we will be happy to deliver the missing items within 7-10 days.

Wayfair’s policy is:

Through our online portal you can:

  • Order free replacement parts (e.g. table legs, missing screws)
  • Replace the entire item for free
  • Get in touch with Customer Service

Be sure to complete this process within 30 days of your delivery date.

No problem in either case. I contacted them and told them exactly which parts were damaged, even using the part numbers out of the assembly manuals. Want to guess what I was told? Neither company ships parts. Instead, they would ship me a complete item. I could then take the damaged part from the box and throw away or donate the rest. Huh?
These are not small items. A large bookcase from Ikea and a desk from Wayfair, each of which weighed around 100 lbs in the boxes. How is it possible it costs less to send a complete item than to have some system for having inventory replacement parts? I get that these items come pre-packaged from many manufacturers. I’m also sure these companies can track which parts of which items often show up damaged (that’s what data is for, right?). Why not order a stock of those parts instead of devastating your margins by shipping two complete items and only getting paid for one?
Many of us in business do things because it’s the easy way out. We don’t take the time to question a system that seems to be working even though it’s not optimal. When things have “always been done that way” or when a report shows up regularly and heads right to the recycling bin, we don’t ask ourselves “why” often enough. The system these two companies have doesn’t really work for anyone except the folks in the warehouse and the shipping companies. The margins are bad. The customer has to dispose of a lot of wood and packaging they don’t want or need. But I guess they think it’s working. Are you making the same mistake?

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January 7, 2019 · 12:50 pm

When You Don’t Know What Business You’re In

I started 2019 by buying a new home. When I say new, I mean brand spanking new as in “just built.” As I’m preparing to move in, I did what most folks would do first these days and called my local Cable TV/ISP to come set up the house. The builder did a good job of preparing the house for both cable TV and for wired internet and phone. There is a large junction box in a closet with both coax and Cat 6 wire running to most rooms. The living room and master bedroom both have conduit running into the crawl space for wires to be run easily. Frankly, I thought the hardest part of getting everything set up would be joining the coax and network wires that were hanging out of the side of the house to the main feeder lines. I was so wrong, and the reason why I was is quite instructional for any of us in business.

Hooking the house to the main lines was easy. Then, the tech set up the cable modem and router for my high speed (400MB+) wifi network. So far, so good, The problem came when I asked about connecting the wires that were in the closet to a switch or the router. None of them have caps – the little plugs – on them. “I don’t do that,” he said. But how can I connect the rooms to the network? What about putting the coax wires into a splitter for cable in the various rooms? At least that would help me identify which wires ran to which rooms. No help there either, even though he is the cable installer.

The final bit of laziness came when he informed me that he couldn’t run any cable through the conduits. He said he couldn’t find the conduit opening in the crawl space even though he pushed a long rod down the conduit and then went to look for it in the crawl space. I went down the next morning and found the openings in about 2 minutes. Yes, it was late (4p) on a Friday afternoon and I’m sure he wanted to get out of there, but still.

So here are some things we can all take away. First, the fact that the tech had no idea how to run wired internet tells me that the cable TV companies still think they’re in the cable TV business. Any look at the numbers will show you that people care far more about broadband and their ability to stream than they do traditional cable TV. If you are an Internet Service Provider, that you need to provide the damn service, and that includes wiring houses. I want my smart TV’s wired in, along with my game console. It’s a much better experience than via wifi, even high-speed wifi.

Second, the techs are customer service people along with being technicians. This guy was very nice but did nothing to solve my problem. To make matters worse he never left any paperwork so I have no way to know what exactly he did do. I can’t even tell you what my VOIP phone number is. Any company representative that deals with customers in any way should be trained to do so properly. They must have a focus on solving problems, not on creating them. And they certainly should never lie.

My ISP doesn’t know what business it’s in. They still think they are proving cable TV. They also still don’t understand how the power in all businesses has shifted to the customer. Let’s all agree to start 2019 by rethinking what businesses we’re really in and how we provide it to our customers, shall we?

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November 12, 2018 · 11:59 am

Thank You For Your Service

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day. I don’t typically post on Sundays but I did want to honor all of those who served by putting out something, even if a day late. This is my post from 2009 (yes, I’ve been at this for quite a while) and I like it as much now as I did then. Thank you for your service if you served and please remember to thank a vet, even if it’s a day late.

Today is Veteran’s Day, a holiday which was created to commemorate the end of “The War To End All Wars.” While that part didn’t work out so well, it’s a worthy celebration of our men and women who have served and are serving in the Armed Forces. My Dad is one of those vets. He fought – as Archie Bunker used to say – in The Big One – WW2. And while he’s taught me a lot over the years, he and his fellow vets teach us another really valuable business lesson to go along with all the others.

Veterans Day 2007 poster from the United State...
My father got out of high school and went into the service like most of the young men (and many young women) of his generation.  They put their country ahead of themselves realizing that the answer to “what’s in it for me” lay in the preservation of the principles on which this country was founded and which made everything else in their lives possible.

The really inelegant analogy I want to make has to do with how we approach business.  While the stakes in business aren’t nearly what they were and are for the vets, there are still people making that same decision today both in and out of business.  That decision is to put something else – your customers in the case of business, your country in the case of vets – ahead of yourself.  I’ve written a lot about everything from lousy customer service to marketing messages that shout “me me me” and not “you you you.”  That’s so 1999, isn’t it?

Converse, don’t spew.  Listen, don’t talk.  If I can’t get you to engage in a conversation and put others first because it’s smart, how about to salute the vets?

Any takers?

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