Customer Service

I just read a fascinating article about the general increase in customer complaints.  As a social media manager, one of the things I work on for my clients is to help them with these online customer complaints.

With one client, they wanted me to address--reply to--a bad Google review.  The secretary of the business said, "Go see.  All she writes are bad reviews."  It's true.  This potential customer--not even a customer--who we'll call Jane,  has handed out 5 bad reviews out of the last 7 places she's reviewed.  Like so many nowadays, this woman uses Google review, Yelp and others to complain.

As Jay Baer put it, "If nothing else, social media and always-on Internet access has made us all passive aggressive. I have witnessed people sitting in a restaurant and tweeting negativity without first speaking to waitstaff or a manager. Hotel managers have told me that they are seeing more Trip Advisor reviews than front desk complaints."

It's not to say that I haven't ever used the internet to complain.  I have.  But the reality is, the internet allows us to escape "proper channels."  That's not really a great thing.  I have no problem using Twitter or something else as a channel of last resort, but many of us are going Internet first, face-to-face solution second if at all. 

When I read Jane's reviews--a source of constant negativity--I pause and think, do I want to be like that?  

I've been thinking about approaching a company I'd like to help with their Facebook page.  As I've researched them, I found a shocking Google review.  In it, a customer complains because some shutters that had been installed had lost a couple of nails.  Rather than taking care of it, she, "decided to wait to see if any more nails would come out."  They did.  Over a years time 10 nails finally came out of the shutters.  Then, to her absolute outrage, they wouldn't fix a problem since their warranty was only for a year.  

Does anyone else see the absurdity in this?  Of course, if part of the supporting mechanism--in this case, nails--is coming out, more will come.  Why would you wait at all, let alone a year, to solve this problem?

In Mormonism, we believe in something similar to karma.  It's called "restoration."  In Alma 12:13-15 it reads, "...The meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish--good for that which is good; righteous for that is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful.  Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly,  judge righteously, and do good continually...then shall you receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; you shall have a righteous judgement restored unto you again; and ye shall have good rewarded unto you again.  For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored."

As we send our reviews out into the world, what is it that we want restored?  Wouldn't it be amazing to create a campaign of compliments?  To grab our phones and quickly add online praise to companies for doing good things?

So here's the challenge--go right now (you're already online) and compliment a company.  I'm giving props to Sportz Dogs, McNeil Printing and Cascade Golf Center for starts.  

Doug

It was an otherwise normal piano lesson.  Our teacher, who has become a dear friend, was continuing to work with Anson while we waited for the next students to arrive.  The phone rang and Ange picked it up.

Her husband, Doug, had had surgery on Thursday to repair a hernia that he earned as a Good Samaritan, helping push a car out of the snow over the winter.  He's just that kinda guy.  The phone call was from the doctor who performed the surgery.  Thanks to HIPA laws, he couldn't tell Ange anything and although Doug wasn't home yet, he was expected home momentarily.

I hold Ange's baby girl, Annie, during piano lessons--at least as long as Annie will let me hold her.  Ange and I hand her off and take turns jotting notes in our piano notebook and running the CD player when our hands are empty.

Since we were essentially done with the lesson, Ange was holding Annie again.  As the doctor talked to Ange on the phone, she handed Annie off to free her hands to get his number and take some notes.  I worked with Anson for a few minutes on the piece Ange had started him on while bouncing Annie on my hip, but he was growing restless and I sent Anson outside to play.

I was standing in the living room holding Annie, when Ange hung up the phone with the doctor and Doug walked in the door.  They immediately called the doctor back with Ange teasingly saying, "Can I hire you for 5 minutes to watch my kids?"

The next students arrived and I entertained them explaining about the doctor and Doug's surgery.  The mother of the next students looked up abruptly.

"I just got a text," she said.  She lowered her voice a little.  "It says that they just got bad news and the lesson is canceled."

The other piano mother and I exchanged looks.  This is really bad, our look said.  Matthew, Doug and Angela's 11-year-old son, said, "I wonder what the bad news could be?"

The other mother ushered her kids out and I was left with Doug and Ange's kids and a lot of silence.  Baby Annie was going limp as she finally fell asleep.  I didn't know where to lay her--her bed had been moved--and I didn't want to go poking around the house, invading Doug and Angela's privacy.  Not at a moment like this.

With the other students gone, the silence was palpable.  They had to be off the phone by now, their boys Matthew and Jonathan, were nervous.  I was looking for words to say.  Something that would comfort them and not be a lie.  I wanted to say, Everything is going to be OK.  But I knew it wasn't.  And they knew it wasn't.  A shift had happen and agony hung like a fog in the air.

"Annie's falling asleep," was the best I could come up with.  I don't know how comforting it was, but it was honest.

Ange laughed from the other room.  I could hear them blowing their noses.  They were trying to pull it together.  They had to come out and face me and the boys.

Their eyes were understandably red and the tears hadn't really stopped when they joined us in the living room.  Doug immediately headed for more tissues in the kitchen.

"Annie's asleep," I said to Ange my face full of questions that I didn't dare to ask in front of their boys.

With my body sheilding Angela from view she mouthed to me, Doug's got cancer.

I'm so sorry, I mouthed back.

"What's going on?" Matthew wanted to know.

"Oh," Ange said casually despite the tears in her voice, "we're just having some Mommy and Daddy time."  She gathered up Annie and headed to the basement to lay her down.

I headed to the couch to gather the piano books up.

"Is it the appliances?" Matthew asked Doug.

"No," Doug said, still sopping at his face.

"The house?"

"No."

"Money?" Matthew wasn't giving up.  Something was the matter and he wanted to know what it was.

"No," Doug said realizing that unless he told Matthew that the questions would be relentless.  "I'm sick."

I looked at Doug on my way out.  "I'm so sorry," I said.  Doug nodded.

Then Matthew asked the question that we all wanted to know, "Why?"

With his voice choking back a sob, Doug said, "I don't know."

On Saying No...

I'm reading a book called, Amazing Things Will Happen by CC Chapman.  I won the book from a promo on condition that I would write a review on Amazon.  I haven't finished the book and hence haven't written the review, but I had to blog a bit on his chapter called, "Learning to Say No."

As my social media clientele has increased, my time has become committed to doing the things I promised to do for them.  As a stay-at-home (now work-from-home) mom, this has some serious impacts on other things I can do.

Among them, my time commitment to PTA--what I have time to actually do is decreasing.  Certainly, this takes people by surprise as I have had to say no to things I might have said yes to two years ago.  CC covers a lot of import things in his chapter, to it I would add saying no when someone is trying to force you to say yes.  I think men tend to be a bit more upfront, but women can be kinda tricky.  Whether this is intentional or too much of beating around the bush, is up for debate, but feeling really forced happens.

I had an experience recently in which someone said, "Perhaps you could do something small like (info about small thing)."  "Perhaps I could," I replied.  And BAM, unbeknownst to me, I had just signed up for something.

I had only meant that if the stars aligned and the job was reasonable, small and the timing perfect, I could help with something--not necessarily *that* thing and definitely not in the near future.  To my surprise, I received a follow-up email thanking me for "signing-up" and then more emails about doing this thing that I didn't want to do.

I had a whole internal struggle.  Should I just find a way to do it or should I say no since I had never intended on signing up in the first place?

Ultimately, I said no.  I explained that I already had serious time commitments and just couldn't do it.

As soon as I pressed, "Send" on the email, I felt lighter.  It's like sorting through your stuff and getting rid of everything you don't use.  Your drawers shut, your shelves are useable, you're not tripping over stuff that you don't need but somehow hang onto.

A friend of mine told me that after her year of being PTA President, she realized that she could spend the same amount of time doing good, only she'd get paid for it.  I couldn't have agreed more.  And, though at the time, I couldn't have imagined what I'd be doing this year, that was the end I had in mind too. But it also means that I no longer have the time for a huge PTA commitment. Which means learning to say no.