You know how sometimes you have customers who have genuine reasons to be upset - heck, genuine reasons to be really angry - but they keep it together and stay polite and civil, because they don't want to be sucky? I like those people. I do my best to make those people happy, and if I can't succeed I genuinely feel bad.
Then there's the people who think that anything that they don't like, no matter how petty or stupid, gives them licence to rip you up one side and down the other, because hey! They're the almighty customer, which means they're practically God and we should be down on our knees begging for their forgiveness! I don't like those people, and frankly, if they stay unhappy I don't give a flying ffffffffruitcake.
We got one of each this morning.
First there was Nice Customer With Genuine Problems. We've been working on her very large order for... er... rather more months than it should have taken, and everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Some of it is our fault. A lot of it has not been our fault, but even when it's our materials suppliers or subcontractors that have screwed up, we haven't caught the errors as soon as we should have and we have been, frankly, terrible at keeping Nice Customer informed of what's going on. For the last couple of months we've been doing better, and it looked like we were on track to get practically everything completed and all sorted out this morning...
...but one of our materials suppliers dropped the ball in a big way, and a subcontractor made a Thing using the wrong Stuff (not their fault, they had no reason to believe that it wasn't what it was labeled as), and we didn't realise what had happened even though we had ample opportunity to, and the poor woman had a big delivery of Not The Right Stuff arrive for installation right when she was hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
She was really, really angry. I do not blame her in the least; we screwed up, and screwed up big, at the end of a long string of screwups. And yet she was still polite and controlled when she was talking to me, and she paused the conversation and walked away when she got to a point where she didn't think she could stay polite, and she made a point of telling me that she's been really happy with the customer service that K and I have been giving her, and... basically she's a class act and a lovely person and I will fix this for her if I have to build her Things myself.
Ahem. Anyway.
Not long after that conversation, while I was still calling three different places to find out exactly what had gone wrong and how fast we could fix it and coordinating pictures and evidence to back up a polite "Hey, Supplier, you kinda buggered that one up big time, how about you send us the replacement Stuff to remake this order gratis?", the Not-Nice Customer With No Real Problem called.
(As I'm sure you can imagine, the timing did not make me any happier with him.)
Anyway, he opened with both barrels. We installed his Things yesterday and he is disgusted! Disgusted with our complete lack of professionalism! It is obvious that we take no pride in our work! He-- okay, you get the gist, that's almost a direct quote from the start of his tirade. He kept going for a while before I could get out of him just exactly what horrible, terrible crime against customerkind we had committed.
There is a slight snag in the material of one Thing. Okay, that's a real reason to not be happy, but it doesn't merit the vitriol he was yelling at me. We will fix it.
One of his other Things is slightly crumpled. He made a point of telling me he had been very patient and waited a whole twenty-four hours (!!!) to see if the wrinkles would smooth out, but they hadn't and rawrrrrblarghle he and his wife can't be expected to get out an iron and smooth out a Thing that should be perfect on delivery rawr spit... For crying out loud.
There are a couple of short thread ends sticking out at the ends of seams. Well, yeah, that is a Thing that Happens, and apparently he and his wife are also incapable of operating a pair of scissors to trim them off if they offend them so. Believe me, if they'd been obvious we would have trimmed them off ourselves.
And finally, what he seemed to be most upset by - he brought it up first, and last, and in the middle, and attached most of the ranting about 'lack of professionalism' and so forth to this complaint... there were some loose scraps of thread clinging to the backs of his Things, and he had to clean them off. HOW COULD WE.
...
......
.........okay, I try to be polite at all times, but the closest I could come to giving this guy an apology was saying "I'm sorry you're not happy" and not actually telling him what I thought of his terrible horrible problems to his face. I booked our installer to pick up the Things, and the first appointment slot we had was a week from now (which, hey, gives his crumpled Thing a more reasonable amount of time to smooth out), and that was even more proof that we are just complete incompetents who take no pride in our work. He and his wife have waited SO LONG for their Things (actually, we delivered within our original perfectly reasonable ETA, thankyouverymuch) and now they have to wait another whole WEEK to get their Things FIXED OH MY GOD THE WORLD WILL END. Maybe his wife will get tired of his grousing and take a pair of scissors to the terrible horrible thread ends that are sticking out a whole half-inch.
So. I'm currently sitting at home drinking good schnapps out of a Japanese teacup (big enough you get a good drink, small enough you can kid yourself you aren't really drinking more than a shot) and feeling a bit better about my day, and when that twerp's Things arrive for us to 'fix' we plan to gather around and mock his life choices. That'll be fun.
Then there's the people who think that anything that they don't like, no matter how petty or stupid, gives them licence to rip you up one side and down the other, because hey! They're the almighty customer, which means they're practically God and we should be down on our knees begging for their forgiveness! I don't like those people, and frankly, if they stay unhappy I don't give a flying ffffffffruitcake.
We got one of each this morning.
First there was Nice Customer With Genuine Problems. We've been working on her very large order for... er... rather more months than it should have taken, and everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Some of it is our fault. A lot of it has not been our fault, but even when it's our materials suppliers or subcontractors that have screwed up, we haven't caught the errors as soon as we should have and we have been, frankly, terrible at keeping Nice Customer informed of what's going on. For the last couple of months we've been doing better, and it looked like we were on track to get practically everything completed and all sorted out this morning...
...but one of our materials suppliers dropped the ball in a big way, and a subcontractor made a Thing using the wrong Stuff (not their fault, they had no reason to believe that it wasn't what it was labeled as), and we didn't realise what had happened even though we had ample opportunity to, and the poor woman had a big delivery of Not The Right Stuff arrive for installation right when she was hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
She was really, really angry. I do not blame her in the least; we screwed up, and screwed up big, at the end of a long string of screwups. And yet she was still polite and controlled when she was talking to me, and she paused the conversation and walked away when she got to a point where she didn't think she could stay polite, and she made a point of telling me that she's been really happy with the customer service that K and I have been giving her, and... basically she's a class act and a lovely person and I will fix this for her if I have to build her Things myself.
Ahem. Anyway.
Not long after that conversation, while I was still calling three different places to find out exactly what had gone wrong and how fast we could fix it and coordinating pictures and evidence to back up a polite "Hey, Supplier, you kinda buggered that one up big time, how about you send us the replacement Stuff to remake this order gratis?", the Not-Nice Customer With No Real Problem called.
(As I'm sure you can imagine, the timing did not make me any happier with him.)
Anyway, he opened with both barrels. We installed his Things yesterday and he is disgusted! Disgusted with our complete lack of professionalism! It is obvious that we take no pride in our work! He-- okay, you get the gist, that's almost a direct quote from the start of his tirade. He kept going for a while before I could get out of him just exactly what horrible, terrible crime against customerkind we had committed.
There is a slight snag in the material of one Thing. Okay, that's a real reason to not be happy, but it doesn't merit the vitriol he was yelling at me. We will fix it.
One of his other Things is slightly crumpled. He made a point of telling me he had been very patient and waited a whole twenty-four hours (!!!) to see if the wrinkles would smooth out, but they hadn't and rawrrrrblarghle he and his wife can't be expected to get out an iron and smooth out a Thing that should be perfect on delivery rawr spit... For crying out loud.
There are a couple of short thread ends sticking out at the ends of seams. Well, yeah, that is a Thing that Happens, and apparently he and his wife are also incapable of operating a pair of scissors to trim them off if they offend them so. Believe me, if they'd been obvious we would have trimmed them off ourselves.
And finally, what he seemed to be most upset by - he brought it up first, and last, and in the middle, and attached most of the ranting about 'lack of professionalism' and so forth to this complaint... there were some loose scraps of thread clinging to the backs of his Things, and he had to clean them off. HOW COULD WE.
...
......
.........okay, I try to be polite at all times, but the closest I could come to giving this guy an apology was saying "I'm sorry you're not happy" and not actually telling him what I thought of his terrible horrible problems to his face. I booked our installer to pick up the Things, and the first appointment slot we had was a week from now (which, hey, gives his crumpled Thing a more reasonable amount of time to smooth out), and that was even more proof that we are just complete incompetents who take no pride in our work. He and his wife have waited SO LONG for their Things (actually, we delivered within our original perfectly reasonable ETA, thankyouverymuch) and now they have to wait another whole WEEK to get their Things FIXED OH MY GOD THE WORLD WILL END. Maybe his wife will get tired of his grousing and take a pair of scissors to the terrible horrible thread ends that are sticking out a whole half-inch.
So. I'm currently sitting at home drinking good schnapps out of a Japanese teacup (big enough you get a good drink, small enough you can kid yourself you aren't really drinking more than a shot) and feeling a bit better about my day, and when that twerp's Things arrive for us to 'fix' we plan to gather around and mock his life choices. That'll be fun.
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