Opinion: Poor communication insures the loss of this customer’s business
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio
“All I want for Christmas is good customer service
Good customer service
Yes, good customer service.
Gee if I only received good customer service,
I wouldn’t have written this whiny column.”
Pardon my butchering of a classic Christmas song performed by Spike Jones and his City Slickers, but it was an easy holiday tie-in with which to launch my sad-but-true tale of crappy customer service.
This summer I decided to get some custom printing done for the Nelson County Gazette. My designer suggested a local company, an excellent idea. The quoted price was acceptable; in August I placed my order.
The vendor said I would receive a phone call or an email to come in and proof the designs before printing. Rather than leave partial payment, I opted to pay the bill in full.
Once they had my money, I never heard another word from the business. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Days passed, weeks passed. “Dang, they must be busy!” I thought to myself. No phone call, no text, no email.
I finally remembered to stop by the business one day when I was in town: “Is everything OK? Have you gone out of business?”
No, nothing was wrong. While I was there, I OK’d one set of proofs; however there was a problem another set of proofs. I was told they would let me know when that proof was ready.
More days pass, weeks pass — without a word from the company.
I finally stop in; by this time one product was finished and I took them with me. The second job printing proof required changes. They promised to make the changes and contact me when the items were done. I left my email a second time and checked they have my phone number correct.
I never heard a thing from them. More days and weeks pass.
This week I stopped by the business and I picked up the final part of my order — four months after I placed it.
I’m not blaming the company for the four-month delay; however, I expected the vendor to contact me when they needed me to stop in to OK the proofs or pick up my order. In this day of instant worldwide communication from the palm of your hand, is it too much to ask to be called/emailed/sent a text letting one know that an order is ready? I don’t think so.
Had I been a pain-in-the-butt pest of a customer, I’m confident the level of customer service would have improved. I also believe if I had not paid them in full they would have been motivated to contact me in order to collect the balance due.
I won’t name the business because they did good work on what they did. But their handling of my order made me feel that they did not value the business I brought to them — rather than take it to an out-of-town competitor or less expensive mail-order company. As a result, I’m not planning to use this company in the future — but if I do, I’ll know better than to pay the full amount in advance.
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