Customer service is one of the jobs I've worked, and probably one of my least favorite ones. Even as a teacher nowadays, I'm basically working in customer service, mostly for the kids, but especially for the parents, who sometimes require more patience than I needed working at places like Academy Sports or on my college campus.
Recently, I had an experience that made me think about this. I was using Amazon's customer chat service. Usually, it goes smoothly, but sometimes language differences can make explaining the problem difficult. However, it typically works out without issues.
I had a product delivered on July 11th, and I spoke to customer service on July 16th, so about five days later. The product was a pack of 40 individually wrapped Sun Chips bags. During my kids' tennis practice, we brought a few bags along and noticed that a couple of them were completely deflated and stale. I contacted my wife at home to check the rest of the box to ensure I didn't accidentally pop them. Even if I had, they wouldn't have been stale already. She found that there were maybe five or six more stale bags, so about seven out of the 40 bags were almost guaranteed to be stale.
At this point, since my kids' tennis practice was actually a tennis camp, being two and a half hours long, I decided to hop on my phone and contact Amazon customer service. I wanted to let them know that the Sun Chips they delivered five days ago were stale. We opened a few bags, and there were a few more deflated ones in the box, which we assumed were also stale.
I started the chat and explained the situation to the first representative who greeted me. They asked for additional details and then disappeared for about 25 minutes. I figured they might be busy with other customers, so I waited. When they finally came back, they told me I didn’t need to return the goods and that I could keep or donate them, and they would issue a refund. I agreed, and then waited another 15 minutes. Suddenly, I received a copy-pasted message with a bunch of product details that clearly weren’t mine. Then, the chat disconnected.
Then came in, well, let’s call him Bob. Bob says, "Give me a couple of minutes to review the details of the previous conversation." I said, "Sure, no worries." He comes back a few minutes later and asks, "Why are you contacting us so late?" And yes, that's verbatim. I was confused and replied, "Sorry, what do you mean by 'so late'? I only got this product about five days ago." He responded, "Yes, five days late.". I said, "Hey, sorry, maybe there's a misunderstanding. I'm not sure how this is late. These were individually wrapped bags of chips, and we didn't open the box until this morning."
Yes, this is the bird that pooped on my head
He then asked me to send a picture of the problem. At this point, I was already kind of annoyed (I forgot to mention a big pooped on my head during this conversation), so I asked again, "Hey, just want to clarify why you're saying I'm contacting you late. We just opened them, and I'm within the return window." He didn't answer my question and repeated, "Can you send me a picture of the problem?" I replied, "I can when I get home," and then he disconnected. Clearly, he was annoyed with me. My guess is he probably had a negative interaction with someone right before my chat, which I understand. However, I have to say I'm glad this was a chat. If it had been over the phone, I'm sure I wouldn't have been as nice. With the chat, I definitely deleted my messages once or twice before sending them.
At this point, another person came in, took care of everything in a few minutes, and I was done with the conversation. However, the whole process took at least an hour.
On the other hand, I've had some interesting conversations with store managers, particularly when I worked customer service on the sales floor at Academy Sports + Outdoors. They had hired me to work in the shoe department, and the only type of shoe I knew anything about was running shoes because that was basically my entire background.
We had a customer come in asking questions about running shoes, and the other salesperson on the floor said, "Hey, can you come talk with this guy? I know you know about these shoes." I was like, "Yeah, cool," so I spent maybe 30 minutes with him. It wasn't a busy day, there was hardly anyone else around. The customer tried on shoes, bought a pair, and seemed happy with the experience.
The experience left me feeling pretty satisfied. I thought, "Hey, I gave this guy good customer service. I actually enjoyed our conversation and helped him find a pair of shoes." Since I was new and this was essentially a probation period, I assumed the manager would be pleased with how things went. However, I was completely wrong. The manager pulled me aside and told me that if someone asks for the best shoes, I should direct them to the most expensive pair in the store, which at that time was about $200 (this was in 2010).
These aren't the shoes in questions, I just wanted to show of my new shoes I got for cheap.
No ifs, ands, or buts, regardless of what type of shoe the customer needs, if they seem unsure, my goal was apparently to sell them the most expensive shoe. By the way, I didn’t benefit from selling the priciest shoe, as there was no extra compensation for that. Plus, I wouldn’t have done it for the money anyway, because if that shoe didn’t fit the customer, they wouldn’t be coming back to me. This approach would mean no repeat sales and, consequently, no more money coming in. But I digress, the whole experience left a sour taste in my mouth. I only lasted a couple of weeks at that job before finding a much better opportunity on my college campus.
With these two stories in mind, I’m curious, what interesting experiences have you had with customer service, either as a customer or while working in the field? I'm sure there are some great stories out there, whether they’re funny or frustrating. Hopefully, they’re not still frustrating for you, or at least you didn’t have just one. I’d love to hear more about any memorable customer service experiences you’d like to share!