Let me tell you a tale of good customer service.
It was my birthday recently. My boyfriend, under enourmous pressure, realised that what I really, really wanted was some gem molds.
so he found them on a UK gadget site (we live in the UK at the moment), ordered them, saw the credit card debit, and received the dispatch notice. A week later there was no sign still of the parcel (unusual - normally stuff arrives within about 3 days - even from the states). So he emailed them. Another couple of days and no reply, no sign, so he called them and it went straight to answer phone. At this point he googled the site, and found a number of reviews espousing that the site was a scam and that you'd never get your goods.
It was now 2 days before my birthday, so he confessed to me that it had all gone horribly wrong and I wouldn't be getting a present this year (again.. but that's a whole other story)
I thought it was over and done, but he couldn't leave it alone, so he decided to email all the suppliers he could identify on the site - working from the ones he'd ordered and up, letting them know that this supplier was advertising their goods, but not delivering.
To their credit they all replied, and promptly, although mostly with the answer that they couldn't be responsible for their suppliers. Notable exceptions were Dosh Wallet and Fred Products who showed genuine concern about misrepresentation.
Dosh Wallet were great, and I unhesitatingly recommend, Fred however went above and beyond. A representative called my boyfriend, assured him that this particular site was a supplier, not a fraud, and contacted them on his behalf to find out what was going on. It turned out that they were moving warehouses, and this lead to the delay. Although this really is no excuse for not either putting a note on the site, or in an email, and for not replying to customer service calls or emails. Within days my boyfriend had a response to his mail, and within 3 weeks the goods had arrived (and almost what he'd ordered! One product was a static bath light rather than a colour changing one - but close enough)
We thought it was all and done with, and I was happily telling everyone that they should be buying fred stuff for all their christmas presents, then a mail arrived from the rep at Fred. She was upset that she felt mislead because my boyfried hadn't actually ordered a Fred product. Actually, Fred was one of his first mails as he was under the impression that the giant gem mold he'd ordered was made by them). She wasn't rude, but it did leave a slightly bad taste in my mouth that one of the companies I'd been recommending to all and sundry for fantastic service was now upset that a customer (in good faith) had informed them about a site representing Fred that the customer had good reason to believe was fraudulent.
The moral of the tale? If you want to be known for good service, provide it and be graceful. Revoking it after giving it just makes you memorable for all the worst reasons. My male cousins will be getting Dosh Wallets this year for Christmas. I would have been getting Fred products in preference for everyone else, but now I just don't know. I need to decide if the great service at first makes up for the bad/uncomfortable feeling I got after. It seems to me, that if I were a supplier then I'd like to be associated with good retailers. If I heard that a retailer upplying my goods was upsetting customers, then I'd want to know about it so I could do something about it and whether the person reporting it was buying my stuff or not shouldn't matter. When I was younger I worked for a large PC shop in the UK. The manager impressed (somewhat pointlessly given the shop's reputation) that customer recommendations were important, that one bad recommendation counted six times more than one good one, and we should endeavour to make our customers happy. He was right. Fantastic service by Fred really was eclipsed by one (understandable on a personal level, inexusable on a professional) email from a rep at Fred. This blog entry is no better - but you at least get a balance opinion I hope.
Something else I did learn from all this is that silicone gem molds suck for ice. (I knew this for other ice cube trays, I don't know why I didn't apply it to gems in my head) The problem is that water expands as it freezes, and silicone gives enough that you get little bulbous gems (that are often a pain to get out of the mold). They're fine for chocolate and jelly, but it's telling that the publicity photos for Fred's cool jewels ice cube tray only show the bottom of them - omiiting the bubbly top. You'll buy silicone molds for ice once, but after that, you'll swear by plastic ice cube trays (or plastic bag ones) - save the silicone for things that don't expand!
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