A Customer Service Comedy of Errors

Maybe my expectations are too high.  Growing up at the tail edge of the baby boomers I can still remember when all gas stations where full service; “the customer is always right” or “‘Le client n’a jamais tort” – take your pick; when you counted on Service with a Smile; and We Try Harder Because We Have To.  It would seem we don’t have to any more.   Sure the local mega-mart has a kindly old man at the door greeting you with a cart so we can all feel good about the predatory pricing, toxic merchandise, low employee wages, child labor law violations, product selection in support of particular ideology and discrimination against women.  I do suspect it is more than just customer courtesy that we sacrificed for low prices and next day delivery.

Maybe it is a combination of faceless technology and outsourced global helpdesks but as the system that supports the customer becomes more complex and further divested from consumer needs a simple mistake quickly becomes a comedy of errors.  My most recent SNAFU involves a major American-based multinational electronic commerce company, headquartered in Seattle, Washington.  Oh, let’s just call them AwesomeDotCom for the sake of anonymity.  It was late on a Thursday night and I was ordering protein bars for the kids to pack the next week for lunch breaks at their summer jobs.  I am pretty particular about protein bars.  For me, they have to have at least as much protein per gram as sugar.  They can’t have artificial ingredients, preservatives or other questionable fillers.  On a fixed income, I only buy what is on sale and must qualify for free prime shipping (a feature of AwesomeDotCom – not to mention any names.)  So this night I found an item and clicked the buy-now button only to see a moment later that both Luna and Cliff bars were being offered at a better subscribe and save option.  So I quickly went to my recent orders and attempted to DELETE the item I had just confirmed with one-click.  But the status on my order was set to some version of “already shipping” and I was unable to cancel from within my own account.

Ok, fast forward to recap this one as it appeared in the reality show known as God Has A Sense Of Humor Why Don’t You?

• I placed a call using the “call us – and – we’ll call you” program provided by Awesome.
• The pre-programmed tele-agent returns my call and instantaneously places me on hold for almost an hour.
• At midnight I give up on the phone-tree and decide to send an email to their helpdesk.
• The next morning I receive a response from the A-Team:

• Whaaaa?  Did the item ship?  Was I going to be getting a refund?  Who’s on first?
• Next day I receive another email from Team Awesome.  Confirming the refund has been processed and they give me a phone number for RightOn the delivery agent (name changed) to refuse delivery.
• RightOn takes my 2,560 character order number and tracks package to a warehouse down the street and tells me they will have the foreman pull the package before it gets on the truck.
• Five days go by and I begin to wonder where my Luna and Cliff bars are …. You see where this is going don’t you?
• AwesomeDotCom tracking history shows that ALL of my packages have been refused.
• I call RightOn and they admit that it was probably the case that warehouse just decided to pull ALL OF THE DELIVERIES for me that day.  They assure me it’s not a problem and that they’ll make notes in my account that will inform AwesomeDotCom that  it was their error.
• Insert appropriate self-loathing as the egoic mind yells these things wouldn’t happen if I were “well” and could get to the damn store myself.
• I phone AwesomeDotCom and this time I get a live agent …. who doesn’t appear to be a native of Seattle Washington.
• Said agent says that she can’t process a refund until the packages arrive back because *I* cancelled the orders.
• I explain the RightOn error – again, and she places me on hold to talk to call RightOn for verification.
• When she returns she tells me that RightOn told her that I canceled the order and they won’t be able to refund my purchase.
• I ask if it might be possible to have a three way conference call with RightOn, so that we can bring in the other agent that I just spoke with.
• “I just make a note in your account that maybe you didn’t refuse package.  Why don’t you just go back on line and re-order.”  She tells me.
• I try for a few more moments to bring us all on the same page … but eventually sigh and open up my browser window and re-ordered my Luna and Cliff bars.

Somewhere along the line of improbable circumstances, I just felt like my experience didn’t much matter.  I even blamed myself, because after all it was MY initial error in placing the wrong order.  And these things don’t happen often.  Right?  Well ok, maybe it’s just this week.

Today I received a call from my online grocery delivery company – Vons.com.  Debbie knows me by name.  It would be nice, kind of like the local grocer knowing the names of all your kids and waves to you at soccer practice.  But Debbie knows me by name because she calls me every couple of months to tell me that my credit card has been declined.  Three guesses what credit card we use?  Yes, my Visa card is with AwesomeDotCom.  So I get to Chase up that tree once again.

• Press 2 now if your card has been declined.
• Can you confirm the following transaction?  If yes, press 1 now.
• Thank you.  Good-bye.
• Good bye?  Wait, I want to talk to a person.
• So begins the long on-hold process
• “How can I help you?”
• I begin to explain my situation …
• “I’ll need to transfer you to our fraud division”
• Back to the waiting game.
• I explain to “fraud” that I’ve been placing orders with Vons for over five years for roughly the same amount each week.  But yet every couple of months my credit card is declined.
• “That shouldn’t happen.”
• I agreed.
• “You should sign up for our fee service to text message you?”
• Turns out she was saying FREE … no getting back those 90 seconds.
• I explain that I was already enrolled in the text message alert system.
• The fraud-agent confirmed that I was.
• Did you text me this morning?  I asked.
• “No it doesn’t appear that we did.”
• I don’t think you really have that service then.  You take our information … but you really aren’t providing a “service” in the traditional sense if you don’t call.
• “Well we can call you at your home phone?”
• You have my number on file right?
• “Yes.”
• Did you call me today to tell me you were declining my groceries again?
• “No”
• Yeah, I don’t think that service is working either.  Please, this happens with frustrating frequency, can you see if there is an actual programmer or a manager I can speak with?
• Back to the queue … with Taylor Swift You Belong With Me … I start humming along and my daughter bobs her head with the music.
• Call waiting … It’s Debbie again seeing if she can run the card for a third time.
• I confirm she can and in the process LOOSE my spot in the queue as the phone disconnects from the credit card company.
• Go back to step one … explain that I need fraud division … re-tell my story to fraud agent – beg with tear in my eye for a supervisor.
• Back on hold … Taylor Swift is now middle aged and performing in Airport Hotels.
• Ta-Da!  A technical manager comes on the line, apologizes for my troubles and insists SHE can recode my account so that this won’t happen again.
• But first … she’ll need to do a few “security questions”
• She programs in the Fraud-Detector-101 to spit out a list of multiple choice questions.
  • “Which of these names have you used?”
    • Jones
    • Buckingham
    • Krimmer
    • Dallas
  • I answer correctly
  • “Which of these occupations did you once have?”
    • Pharmaceutical representative
    • School teacher
    • Nurse
    • Astronaut
    • Or none of the above…
  • I have no idea what titles she rattled off, but I knew I wasn’t any of those things in this lifetime.  So I answered none of the above.
  • “Which of these street names did you have?”
  • Beg pardon, did you say street name?
  • “Yes.  Which of these street names did you have?”
  • I must have been on low blood sugar (you know lack of groceries and all) because the only thing I could think of was some kind of “gang name” or “screen name” reference.  Really?  Why would they need to know that I go by Earth-MaFa62?
  • She rattles off a list of names.
  • I answer none of the above.
  • “Ooo, I’m sorry you didn’t pass that one.”
  • I felt like I was a contestant on a game show and had just lost the grande prize.  Had she said WHAT STREET DID YOU ONCE LIVE ON I may have been able to give a nod to Doreen.  But I thought it was just some street chick name.
  • “I’ll have to try some alternate questions.  Do you know how much your mortgage is?”
  • No.  Not really, it’s on autopay through my bank.
  • “Do you know who you have your mortgage with?”
  • Is it Chase?
  • “Ok, we’ll go with that.”
  • Turns out my mortgage is with a different bank entirely … but apparently she had had enough of me too and conceded to go ahead and make the changes so that Debbie doesn’t have to call me anymore and so that my family can eat more than just the protein bars being delivered from AwesomeDotCom.

When I was a Zen manager in an IT department each new staff member I hired received a printout of my credo “A User Is” and a copy of the “Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz.  It was my personal mission to make our community feel comfortable and confident regardless of their particular problem or need.  Foregoing computereeze and concentrating on practical advice with annotated examples helped bridge the knowledge gap and allowed us to excel (only small back office pun intended.)

I think perhaps it is the language or culture gap that I miss when I interface with the plethora of outsourced oversees support specialists that run the helpdesk for most of our retail markets.  Or maybe our technology systems have grown so far from the needs of the customer stakeholder base that it truly feels I am at the mercy of a cyborg when I call with a problem.

In all honesty, my experience in large is that each of the humans I come in to contact with are kind people, it’s just that they seem unempowered to resolve my problem.  As a conspiracy theorist I might venture that this is by design, as most consumers give up in frustration after the long hold with mind numbing techno-musak (no offense to Taylor Swift) and endless looping phone trees.

So maybe we don’t try harder, we can’t see if they are smiling on the other end of the phone line and it clearly doesn’t matter who is right … if each of us can see the comedy of the game and choose for ourSelf to BE of Service regardless of these new paradigms and practices … well then maybe we won’t feel as trapped the next time we find our self in helpdesk hell.