Customer Service

USA is considered one of the best in customer service. But the customer service here has deteriorated compared to 10 years ago. But still it is better than many countries in the world. The high level executives are more interested in top notch customer service than the actual customer service rep. Here is what happened:

On December 6 I went to a famous electronic retail store and made arrangements for a home theater installation in my home. They gave a due date of December 15 between 8 to 12 PM. I asked them to give me an earlier date if there was any cancellation. They said they would if there was a cancellation.

On December 9 evening I got a call from that store and said they have rescheduled the appointment for tomorrow (December 10) between 12 to 4 PM. On December 10, no installer came. And, no telephone calls. Therefore at 7 PM I called the store. The customer service rep did not give any satisfactory answer. He said he does not know why the installer did not show up and he would write an email the next day to the dispatcher and get a new installation date. I asked if the installer missed the due date is it not his responsibility to come the next day. He said he does not know.

After I hung up, I was so mad at the poor customer service. I wanted to do something. I could have approached the local store manager and fixed the problem. But since I was very mad, I wanted to take it to their Headquarters. I browsed through the corporate headquarters web page of that electronic store. There was a list of names of CEO. President, Executive Vice President, CFO, and other Vice Presidents. But there was no email address. Then I looked at the business card the sales rep gave me on December 6 when I first went to make arrangements for the installation. It had his email address. It is like this. firstname.lastname@storename.com. Suddenly I had this idea.

I wrote an email explaining the situation. I selected the Executive Vice President’s name at random. For his email address I put hisfirstname.hislastname@storename.com. I took a chance and sent that email. I thought it would come back as “mail undeliverable”. I waited for 10 minutes. It did not come back as undeliverable. Now I was glad I was able to correctly guess his email address.

I was not 100% sure if I would get any help. There are many reasons. First, if my email goes to his “spam”, he or his secretary would delete it. Second, if he is on vacation or tour, he may not have time to read my email. Then I went to bed.

That store’s headquarters is located in the East Coast whose time is ahead by 3 hours. On December 11 I got a call at 7 AM from that store’s Director of Executive Complaint Resolution. That Executive Vice President must have told the Complaint Resolution Director to take care of this problem. She profusely apologized for the inconvenience. She said she has contacted their installation manager for California and asked him to send an installer to my home immediately. She then gave her personal cell number and asked me to call her if no one contacted me by 4 PM California Time.

From 9 AM I started receiving several phone calls from several people apologizing for the inconvenience and every one promising me that they will send an installer today to my home. Finally the installer showed up at 2 PM and installed my home theater.

Here is the best part I like. That Electronic Store waived all the charges. Installation was done for free at no cost for me.