So, you’ve just had a really bad customer service experience while shopping at one of your favourite retailers. What do you do? Do you lodge a complaint? If so, how do you do it and who do you complain to? Do you voice your complaint via Social Media? Do you make a phone call to the Manager of the store? Do you pay a personal visit to the Manager? What about when you purchase a product and it fails to live up to your expectations, or breaks upon first use? Do you complain to the company?
On the flipside, do you let a company know when they have provided you with outstanding customer service or a fantastic product that you just can’t live without?
More often than not, we tend to share our complaints with people rather than our accolades. We are much more likely to criticize than to praise.
I’ve had more than my share of great customer service experiences over the last couple of months. I’ve already written about one of them on this blog. I had another one yesterday. I was grocery shopping at my local Loblaws store. While the cashier was ringing up my order, she scanned one product that rang up at more than a dollar higher than the sale price I had seen on the sign in front of the product display. Turns out, the sign was from “last week’s sale”. Needless to say, I was already salivating as the cashier was discussing the price check with the other staff member. The words “Scanning Code Of Practice” (SCOP) were flashing in front of my eyes. Yes, I ended up getting the product for free. What was the best part of this experience? In my opinion it was the fact that the cashier admitted the mistake and then proceded to inform me that I would be getting the product for free – as per the SCOP. Wow! I didn’t have to jump through the usual hoops to ask for the product for free!! This was the first time I had benefited from the SCOP without having to ask for it (and sometimes argue!). Kudos to my Loblaws cashier for actually knowing about the SCOP, and automatically giving it to me. That to me was great customer service.
Coming up in the next few weeks, I will be writing about another well-known company I recently had reason to contact due to problems I had experienced with their product. I wrote to them thinking they would acknowledge my email and then quickly file it under “trash”. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did they acknowledge my complaint promptly, but they went “above and beyond” and provided me with one of the best customer service experiences I’ve ever had.
Stay tuned to this blog for more!
What about you? How do you deal with your complaints? Your great customer service experiences? Do you speak up?
Above image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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