Customer Service

After writing the last post, thought I should write about today.

Was busy, lost in Google Analytics for a client, trying to work out how on earth Google could be so far wrong with the number of visitors they are recording on two separate sites against the other traffic stats. (If Google was right, nearly every single visitor bought a product, which is so blatantly not true) when....

Knock at the door.

Open door to find a lady on the doorstep, with a dog.

"Can you fix computers?"

Said the lady, obviously.

Methinks: here we go again. "Um, yes". (Wonder who has grassed me up now).

"Mine has stopped working. I can't get on the Internet."

I was having a bad day and if I were a doctor, a casual observer would no doubt have said that my doorstep/bedside manner left a lot to be desired. And I've lost a veneer off my front tooth and currently don't actually want to open my mouth in public either.

But, this is a small village and what goes around comes around so fire brain up into diagnostics mode and suggest the basics, through a semi-closed mouth - turn it all off at the plugs, make a coffee, try turning it back on again.

"I've been trying that since Sunday."

Hmmm. I know BT have been pratting about up the village - work ongoing for over a year now since the big storm - and also there is an email doing the ISP rounds about major BT infrastructure work due this week. "Sunday, you say. Who are you with?" "Pipex. Could you come and look?"

"Yep. But, um, not now."

I'm in the middle of "Mum, where are you?" texts as I'd ignored daughter 2's pleas to drive 5 miles to collect her from school to buy the ingredients for Thai green curry. After all, I was WORKING and determined to crack this Google analytics problem for a PAYING client - the one who will be paying for next month's ingredients. (For food which somehow won't even make it home, and will never be cooked here either, ever).

Sprog 2 is now sitting outside the Co-op in the rain.

Then I face the really awful question. "I recognise the dog, but errr, where exactly do you live?" Followed immediately by the pacifier, "I can be there at 7ish, I just have to go and buy ingredients for my daughter's cookery at the Co-op first". (And pick her up....).

How can you recognise someone's dog and be absolutely clueless about where in this tiny village they live? Had either twin been available (other one is grounded after dyeing the almost finished, after 5 years, newly decorated bathroom - floor, bath, sink and surfaces - bright and indelibly pink last night in a failed attempt to dye her black hair), they could have told me instantly.

Not that I would necessarily have listened as I am still incandescent about the stupidity of the hair dye incident. In fact, I am almost the same "seething" colour as the bathroom, really.

So, bought the ingredients, rescued daughter, (not in that order), failed abysmally to correctly read the ingredients on some new form of hurried supper - panini from the Co-op - and nearly blew the microwave up. "Remove from plastic packaging and remove the sauce sachet" should have been in MUCH bigger writing. Put supper in oven for rest of family, and walked casually up the street to what felt like a far-flung outpost of the village, and arrived wheezing on the doorstep.

Within 2 minutes of sitting down, I was cursing all ISPs for their abject failure to support their customers, and British pharmawotsits for not letting us just buy an inhaler over the counter like every other country I have ever been to.

And also that my wifi doesn't work through the trees around this house so I can just get online and find the answers for what suddenly appears to be an ISDN line, not ADSL. (Jeez, that's what they did with ISDN? Stuck it into rural homes and called it broadband?? I must check.)

Speak to her husband on the phone, who also cannot remember where they might have put the paperwork for a connection they had every right to assume would not just go pear-shaped overnight, and silently curse Pipex and most ISPs (except SWBB) a little more.

Am as honest as it is feasible to be in between wishing I'd remembered to get a box of Ventolin inhalers in Bolivia, and say, call me on this number if the customer service department can't help.

When offered anything financial for walking up the village, I obviously refused. After all, I hadn't solved the problem and it was a lovely evening, and exercising legs and lungs (occasionally at least) appears to be something I ought to be doing daily.

Some 2 hours later, am totally unsurprised to get a phone call asking for further assistance.

I'm not being rude but this lady is from a generation where you maybe feel embarrassed to ask for help from a company / supplier of product as it feels like you could be asking too much from them.

(Say this to me in 20+ years time and I'll abandon my pacifist principles, hit you, and then spend the evening boring you shedless with examples of CRM and customer service working, until you come round!)

Actually I don't even know that it is a generation gap thing. I think many of us are so totally fed up with being put on hold, trying to communicate with customer service reps who don't even speak our language, being treated like idiots etc that we seek, and pay for, local help. Hence my post the other day about this virtual sales agent....(scroll down!)

So, I've looked up all the Pipex info, written it down, and am wandering up there again tomorrow. With my tooth covered in Tippex and a better bedside manner. And, depending on how long it takes me (and the fact I probably have an entire new bathroom suite and floor to buy), and with a quick prayer to the god of computing and Internet, I think I'll charge half for me, and ask her to give something to the Primary School. And I'll go in the car instead of walking, until I can renew my Ventolin 'script. However environmentally friendly that might not be.

And when I get home, I'll spend the evening writing complaints letters to Pipex, ThinkBroadband, and Sunpat about customer service.

The last because it is bloody time they redesigned their jars so us consumers can actually reach the last bits of peanut butter from those stupid ridges at both the top and bottom of the jar when we get home and need summat to eat. Or at least give us some vouchers to buy the special knife you must need to get into those nooks and crannies. Because that Sunpat jar is a prime example of 21st century poor customer service.