How many of you are completely p***ed off with todays customer service, hate the thought of phoning a call center  knowing you’ll never speak to the same person again! Has it ever clicked that when you do make more than 1 call to a call center that everyone has the same name? And when you are connected to an Indian call center they always say how nice the weather is? How do they know, they’re 9 hours ahead of us, it’s probably 3am and pitch black outside!!!

My apologies, it gets me really mad. To my customers who are reading this, you know I like to provide a personalised service, I like to help you as much as I possibly can and will go out of my way to do so, I’m a very friendly person and will answer your call day or night. No this isn’t a tacky plug to entise you to call so I can sell you a service you don’t need, this is me, who I am, and what I believe in., good customer service, the one thing that the UK has lost and forgotten about. And note that I say the UK and not the world, well as a regular holiday visitor to the US and recently a trip to Japan, these countries know about customer service, and one with a big smile, nothing is too much trouble, why can we not do this????

Which now brings my ramblings to a point (thank God I hear you cry!). I have recently purchased quite a few memory modules, not only for myself but for other customers, I was familiar with a company by the name of Crucial but had never used them, after checking prices locally I found that Crucial offered the best value, and so the first couple of orders were placed via there website, I chose the free shipping option, and the memory arrived promptly. My next order was required a little faster, I visited a customer Thursday, discussed the memory upgrade and arranged to return the following Wednesday to fit it, I was a little slow of the mark and didn’t order the memory until Saturday, I decided to pay the extra for Special delivery, if you’re not familiar with Royal Mail’s extra services special delivery guarantees delivery the next day by 1pm, this used to be 12pm but they extended to 1pm after adding a 9am service at a higher cost, I was quite aware that ordering on Saturday would not guarantee a Monday delivery as the terms of the service don’t include weekends, so I expected the item to be shipped on Monday to arrive Tuesday morning. Well as you can guess, the reason for writing this post is that it didn’t arrive on Tuesday, so I telephoned Crucial to enquire, I was informed that there terms for special delivery were 48 hours from placing the order, and that my order was to be posted that day to arrive wednesday or Thursday, all was fine until the woman had stated “or Thursday”, how can a next day delivery be the day after next??? I wasn’t going to challenge this, I had faith that the package would arrive. The postman usually appears somewhere between 10 and 11am, and my appointment was booked for 12pm. At 12 I had to call my customer and re arrange as the package hadn’t arrived. At 1.15pm came the knock at the door I had been expecting, with a smile on my face I Signed and timed the delivery document, I knew I could claim back the postage for the failed guarantee. I immediatly telephoned Crucial and requested they refund my delivery charge, as they held the proof of posting document they would need to supply this to Royal Mail to claim the postage back. This is where I once again entered call centre hell! I was once again advised that their special delivery terms were 48 hours and not next day and that the 48 hours was from posting and not ordering as I’d previously been advised, another gripe my mine with call centres is consistency, everyone is a robot, forced to read from scripts or not allowed to manouver outside of strict guidelines, common sense has been taken away from these people, or maybe they just employ people without common sense in the first place, but why do their guidelines differ so much to suit different situations as they arise?

I wasn’t going to let this go and so entered into a verbal battle to dispute the use of Special delivery, how can a company use a service that is clearly stated as 1pm next day and promote it as 48 hour? The woman was not going to give up, but neither was I, and so to call a truce, she agreed to refund the postage charge, although she stated that Crucial would not seek to claim the money back from Royal Mail (why not?), and that it was a “gesture of good will”. We’ve all heard that one before, there’s no gesture or good will, its red tape crap! As you can see this really frustrates me and my blood is boiling just writing about this subject.

One of my reasons for feeling this way is that before starting Simple PC, I was once a call centre worker, the exception being they didn’t like to call themselves a call centre, they wanted to give each individual their own style and voice, which did work for a very short while until the business grew, the only mistake they made was trying to keep the same values while smuthering everyone with red tape! It doesn’t work, take it one way or the other. And so the people who achived true business goals were undermimed by the people who hit paper targets that brought no value to the company. Its so easy to brainwash people and pull the wool over their eyes.

Once again I must apologise for my rantings but why must we put up with this? Please leave a comment with your views and experiences, I can’t be the only person who believes in true customer service.

And back to the Royal Mail, well, as Crucial didn’t want to claim the money back, I thought I’d do it on there behalf, thats right I’ve doubled my money and damn right I should too, just for putting up with there poor excuses and customer service! 

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