Service
- The action of helping or doing work for someone
- An act of assistance
- Assistance or advice given to customers during and after the sale of goods
And that’s from the dictionary.
Lately I’ve received appallingly bad service and really good service. All online.
Bad first. At an upscale gift shop (IRL) I bought a set of 9 Colour-Change Pens + 1 Magic Pen for Dane. He’d seen something similar advertised on TV, but I don’t want to buy things via TV-shop. Upon arrival home, we promptly try the pens and NOTHING HAPPENS! Not just a tiny winy little bit, but nothing at all. We think we’re probably idiots (don’t say anything) and try with a friend of ours who’s really into craft work and that sort of things. But no, they really don’t work at all.
I wrote a nice and polite e-mail to the company behind the pens, Pockoshop.com. Nothing happened for a week. Wrote again, this time slightly sarcastic, quoting their homepage:
Our customers tend to be fun loving people with a great sense of humour (you’ll need it) and with an unbelievable imagination.
What I wrote was of course that we didn’t realize that we needed that much of a sense of humour… We haven’t heard anything yet.
A while ago I wrote to Liberty to ask whether they stocked a particular line of German porcelain. They already stock 2 other lines by the same manufacturer, so it wouldn’t be at all strange. Did I get a reply? No. But did they have the audacity to put my e-mail on their mailing list? Oh, yes.
Now good. I ordered stuff from the online bike-shop Chainreaction twice. They ship same day, no hassle, no cost. Goods arrive next day. Order confirmation, shipping confirmation, all neatly in place. And I regularly order stuff from Ethical Superstore, where I buy organic cleaning supplies and other things. They answer inquiries same day, ship within 48 hours and if something is not in stock, they ship it later without charge. And I sent an inquiry to Homeplug before I actually bought them, to make sure they’d work with Mac. Answer within 24 hours. The goods delivered at my door next day. The best one last: I wrote to a small manufacturer of homeopathic allergy medicine, which we’d bought in Australia. He answered the next day, that unfortunately he couldn’t export his goods to the UK because of the strict rules surrounding natural medicinal products and didn’t know of any similar products available here, but he’d send me some, if I wanted?
On Gretchen’s Happiness-blog I recently read a wonderful story about customer service. You can read it too, i guarantee it will make you smile.
