Precisely my opinion. No company in the world has ever shipped every product it makes, in perfect condition, on time, exactly as expected to a customer who will see it as a faultless service. Never. Not one. And trying to get that is an impossible task that just can't happen. But every company can do something about the way they deal with the problem - again, even if the response isn't perfect for absolutely everyone. Customer service is, as we all know, the new term for what used to be the complaints department. There's nothing wrong with having that. Every large chain and shop in the world has one, no matter how unofficial or casual and on-the-fly it's organised. The ENTIRE purpose of that department is to deal with mistakes (the customer's, the company's, the courier's, whatever) and make people happy.
The problem is that in the modern era, customer service is seen as something that COSTS sales, rather than makes them. A good company spends money on customer service, whether that be in staffing, refunds, repairs, or things that lose them profit in order to satisfy their original promises, in the same way that countries spend money on education - it seems a waste until you consider the alternative, which is to have nobody happy when something goes wrong. I have lost count of the number of companies that have forgotten this and lost track of it and see customer service as some necessary evil to keep unhappy customers off the sales lines. And that's EXACTLY the wrong attitude to take.
I ordered two, quite expensive, beds last year to go into my new house. They were identical and arrived together. One was perfect, intact, had all the bits and thus I *KNEW* what was supposed to be in the box. The other was missing 38 components (out of 138 in total) yet showed no sign of damage or theft from them. I'd taken them off the van with the delivery guys and the boxes were both sealed. Now, at this point there is quite obviously a problem. But I spent three hours shouting down the phone to get the company to send me a £5 bag of screws, dowels and tiny plastic bits that were valueless without the bed. They fought me at every turn, quoted nonsense law that didn't exist ("we can't send you the screws to that address because of data protection and we don't know if you're the original buyer" - 20 minutes after I'd given THEM the name, address, invoice number, delivery docket number, etc., that it was the same address they'd send the beds TO in the first place - and the pack of screws was worth precisely zip). Many, many hundreds of pounds worth of bed (including the complete one) was on the verge of being sent back to them, at their expense, and the credit card transaction reversed because they would rather fight and not admit defeat than send out a £5 bag of screws to the address on the invoice that they'd delivered the bed to.
I don't *care* that the screws were missing. Those things happen. The bag falls out before the box is sealed, or the box-packer has a coffee break and forgets where he got to, or someone falls ill and the guy who takes over thinks that product is complete, or whatever. Who cares? What I care about is what you do, and whether I have a reasonable complaint (i.e. if I'd admitted to snapping all the posts in anger when putting the bed together, it's probably NOT a justifiable cause for complaint - except perhaps on the complexity of their building instructions!). And wasting hours of my time, including my phone bill, quoting nonsense at me, getting me riled, and to the point where I'll cause you many, many, many times MORE expense than any fix you'll ever carry out for would ever cost - it's just not good business sense. Hell, I even moaned on their Facebook page - in a huge public post on their front page that they didn't ever bother to delete / reply to - and in their store and definitely put several other customers off purchasing from them.
Customer services costs you money. But it's a damn sight less costly than the alternative.
I said how Craig might feel that doesn't mean I feel the same way..
