» Tuesday, 22 January A.D. 2008
lessons in customer service
Two lessons in how not to serve your customers.
Example the first: due to our recent almost-but-not-quite house purchase, we needed to go month-to-month on our apartment lease. Doing this carries a small price premium (~15%) over a long-term lease. Since we are now in negotiations to purchase a house that we will not actually live in until July or so, we thought it would be a good idea to try to negotiate a short lease that would save us a bit of money.
The apartment complex office was perfectly willing to do a six-month lease. However, they cautioned us that they needed to check with management: the managing company has this funny policy that only a certain number of leases can expire in a single month. If you were to be the N+1'th person for a particular month, you would need to negotiate a longer or shorter lease as necessary.
This policy makes perfect sense for the managing company: they want to ensure a steady income from their properties. But it's a slap in the face to their customers. If, like us, you cannot do a longer lease, then you must do a shorter one and then pay a month-to-month fee for the extra time--which, in our case was only a month. Still, that's extra money that we should not have had to pay. It's not my problem to ensure that you have a steady cash-flow from month to month. Dumb.
The second example comes from one of those wonderful credit card companies that sends special offers in the mail. In my case, the company in question is Chase, parternering with Continental Airlines, who has sent me the exact same credit card offer at the rate of once every week and a half for about four months. I don't need another credit card, thanks, and so I wind up throwing these applications away.
Upon receiving yet another one today, I was peeved enough that I called the application number in hopes of getting myself off whatever crazy mailing list they have. My call was taken, very kindly and professionally: what's the ID number on the offer, name, address, that sort of thing. I was rather pleased with how easy the call was.
Until the end of call, at least. The customer service person informed me that my request was in the system and that I might continue to receive offers for up to 90 (!) days past this point. My brain wanted to lambast the guy for taking so long, but I politely thanked him for his time and courtesy instead.
C'mon guys! We can order things from Amazon and get them delivered anywhere in the world in less than two weeks. Cisco (and probably other companies, too--Cisco was just the first) can close their quarterly financial books in a day or less. What on earth can possibly be holding up my request such that it could take three months to process it?
I can think of two reasons: number one is that Chase really is such a lumbering company that that ninety day figure is accurate. Maybe they have to communicate with all sorts of partners and send my request all over the place. Again, not exactly customer focused. Number two is that the number is a worst-case scenario; they know that if they were to say, “hey, it'll take two weeks.” and something screws up along the way, there will be a customer who receives a new card offer a month after the initial request. And that customer will be peeved and will call Chase to give them an earful. Still not customer focused: Chase should have a better hold on its internal processes and/or tighter rein over its partners' operations (think Wal-Mart or Dell here).
I should note that both experiences contained their pleasant points--getting such a short lease from the apartment complex and a painless “take me off your list.&dquo; process. But nestled in the middle of both are these two sour notes that do little for my good opinion.
posted by Nate @ 7:09PM