You Catch More Bees with Honey Than With Vinegar

In these times where everything is so expensive, customer service has never been so important.  The lesson I learned growing up about customer service actually came from my mom.  As I have alluded to in former blogs, my mother is bat-shit crazy.  However, I did learn a few lessons from her.  When I was about 10-years-old, I lived in Michigan.  Michigan gets its water from the ground–if you dig about 6-8 feet anywhere, you will hit water.  We call it well water and it smells like rotten eggs.  There is a lot of sulfur in it. Because of this, everyone has a water softener.  You just need it.  Back in the 70’s, there would be a guy who would come to our house once a month to change our water softener.  He was from the company Culligan and I think it was a different guy each month.  Well, one month the guy came in and I guess he was very rude to my mom.  Maybe he called her bat-shit crazy:)  Anyway, once he left, my mom called the company to complain about his behavior.  I guess the company wouldn’t do anything about it, so my mom told them to come get all their equipment out of our house and she would go to another company.  Looking back, this was a good lesson to learn–don’t allow for bad service from any company.  Things were expensive back then too and we had little money, so mom wanted to make sure we got our money’s worth.  I still practice that philosophy today.

In the past week, I have dealt a lot with customer service–from our local dry cleaners, to Amazon, to Camping World.  With all of these experiences in a short amount of time, it made me think about what makes a company good.  It is customer service.

“Karen” was a good name for me in the past.  Because time was always my enemy, I wanted things my way, right now.  Sometimes I won; sometimes I lost, but most of the time I was not kind in making my point–hence “Karen”.  Nowadays, I am older and retired, so I have time.  And I am nicer.  It is true about the whole “get more bees with honey than vinegar” phrase.  And my oldest daughter knows this…

We got her wedding dress dry cleaned, even though she never wore it yet.  She bought a 1970’s vintage wedding dress, so it needed to be cleaned.  When I got the dress back from the cleaners, there were two major stains on the dress–from the cleaners.  After many tears, we took the dress back to the cleaners.  Instead of being pissed off, my daughter took the approach of an upset, teary-eyed almost bride and her dress was ruined.  It worked.  The owner was very sympathetic and felt he could get the stains out.  He was also very apologetic.

When Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994, it was totally an online bookstore.  But Bezos had bigger plans and his company grew for several reasons–many products offered, lower prices, quick shipping, and customer service.  Now, it is a multi-billion dollar business because of these standards.  I am a big Amazon fan for many reasons, but customer service is one of the biggest.  For example, I wanted to return a mother-of-the-bride dress.  It didn’t fit and I could get free returns along with free return shipping.  The company I bought the dress from through Amazon sent me a return label but they wanted me to pay for shipping.  I G-Chatted Amazon and complained.  Immediately, they let me know that they would make the company send me a free shipping return label.  After about 3 days, I still didn’t receive it.  I chatted with Amazon again.  Amazon refunded my money right then and told me to keep the dress–donate it if I didn’t want to keep it.  Wait, what?  I got my money back AND kept the dress?  Wow!!  We did donate it to one of Joe’s high school students for prom.  Win, win for everyone!  I had another problem with another product this week (actually, I was fighting for my youngest daughter).  For some reason, the computer monitor she needed didn’t get delivered with the other product she ordered.  She needed the monitor TODAY but they said they wouldn’t deliver it until tomorrow.  Tomorrow was too late.  Back to chatting with Amazon…

Finally, we needed to replace a radio in our camper.  It is an old camper, so they didn’t make the exact radio anymore.  We went to Camping World and a salesman helped us at the customer service desk.  He went and got a radio for us and told us to try it to see if it worked.  Joe tried it in the camper.  It didn’t work.  I took the radio back.  Another salesman told me I couldn’t return it because it was on clearance.  Yes, that is their policy and I do agree with it.  If it is on clearance, you are trying to get rid of that inventory.  But since we did not get the radio off the clearance shelf (the salesman got it for us), the box does not say clearance on it, and my receipt did not say clearance or sales price, I didn’t know it was on clearance.  In fact, my receipt even said “refund price” if I returned the radio!!  After many discussions with the salesman, I got nowhere.  As I went back to my truck, pretty pissed off, it said on the bottom of my receipt, “If you are not happy, I’m not happy!”  And it gave the CEO’s number and email.  Ok, Marcus, I will be calling you first thing in the morning!!

And the results are in…

Wow, what a week.  But it was pretty successful.  Here is how my week ended….

I picked up the wedding dress from the cleaners on Wednesday.  So far, it looks like all the stains are out.  I am cautiously optimistic.  I will be totally happy once the dress is in my daughter’s hands and she says it looks good.  That will happen in June.

Amazon ended up canceling the to-be-delivered monitor with a full refund.  Lizzie bought another one that was delivered that same day.  Another great thing about Amazon is their delivery.  To purchase an item and have it delivered the same day–remarkable!!

Camping World called me (I didn’t get a chance to call Marcus:).  The manager of the store offered a full refund.  I didn’t have to do anything.  However, I am a little freaked out about how the manager got my name and number…I didn’t leave it when I left the store.

As you can see, it was a crazy week but very successful.  Accidents, mistakes, non-delivery will happen.  When a company does all it can to take care of you, listen to you, and help you solve the problem, then that is a company who has my business for life.  Right now, a lot seems to be going wrong in the world.  When you have customer service around to make your life easier and nicer, it makes such a huge difference.