Your Customer Service Sucks

Hint: It’s not about the speed or the size of your company. Sometimes it’s not even about the accuracy of information. It’s how you deal with people.

I had an unfortunate phone call this morning with a local airport shuttle service. The backstory:

I’m leaving for New York on an early morning flight. Portland’s TriMet isn’t going to be up early enough for me, otherwise I would go public all the way. I have a meeting to prepare for on Monday, and if I miss my flight I won’t make it. Other than hanging out in Union Square and having beer with friends, the trip would be a complete waste of time and moulah.

You might see how I want to make sure I get to the airport on time.

In other cities I always use Super Shuttle. Their rates have been good, I can reserve online, and they confirm, confirm, confirm. E-mail, text page, and a phone call if you want it. In Portland, Super Shuttle doesn’t exist. I’m not even going to ask a friend to get up at 5 AM on a Sunday. That would suck for them.

So I Google my options for airport rides and come up with this Ride and Fly service that gives you a list of local options. They’ll make the reservation for you. Great.

I called the local company (no names) this afternoon to confirm things. My expectation was to have someone look up my info promptly and tell me that someone would be here to pick me up. Basically, I wanted to make sure that someone else besides me and my wife knew that I needed a ride.

What I got was a guy answering his phone, sorta out of breath. “Hello, yeah?” I told him I need to confirm my reservation. “Uhhh… okay. I uhhh… gotta get to my computer. Hang on.”

Umm. Sure.

“Okay, I’m checking my e-mail, I don’t see anything. What’s your name?”

Confidence slipping. Name given.

“Yeah, I’m checking e-mail. Ummm… I don’t see…”

At this point I’m not feeling like he knows what the heck he’s doing. Checking his e-mail? How about checking a Reservation System? Do you have one of those?

So I tell him that I’m getting a little concerned.

“Tell me a little about why you’re concerned here.”

Are you kidding me? I tell him that I’m leaving tomorrow morning at 5 AM and my concern is that he doesn’t already have a ready list of people to pick up in the morning, close at hand. He’s “checking his e-mail” and a 5 AM ride tomorrow doesn’t even sound familiar to him.

That’s where I’m concerned, Dude. Do you need more than that?

“I don’t understand why you would be concerned. I have to look it up. You know, it could take a minute here.”

Yeah, I get that. I’m not in a hurry. What I don’t get is why if you’re a 24 hour shuttle service you don’t have someone on dispatch with ready information for a 5 AM Sunday pickup. In fact, now I’m a little more concerned that you don’t understand why I would even be concerned.

I told him that unfortunately I need to cancel; I think I should find another service. Thanks anyway, bye bye. I hang up.

The dude calls me back.

“Why did you hang up? I have your info right here (tells me info). Is that right?”

First, I hate it when people use caller ID to call me back after I hang up. Creeps me out.

So, I asked him to repeat it and he literally shouted it back at me. I told him that was right, but I’m going to use another service. He didn’t understand why, he’s got everything right there. He was just doing some yard work and came in, had to get to his computer.

“We’re a mom & pop shop, you know. This is how it works, we have to check the e-mail. You don’t have to be impatient.”

I told him that it wasn’t the length of time it took to find it, it was that he didn’t sound like he had a system or even knew someone needed a ride tomorrow morning. I explained that I’m used to calling Super Shuttle and they have someone on the phone ready to take my confirmation number, so I was a little nervous because it sounded so difficult for him. It made me doubt the reliability of the service.

He told me he was a “little miffed” at me because he has all my info right there now. What more do I want? I shouldn’t be concerned about anything, he’s been doing this for fourteen years. Who am I to question his reliability?

Yes, he was miffed at me (am I paying him or is it the other way around? I forget).

I got snappy just then and said a couple of things about what I thought of his reliability in finding my (rhymes-with-ducking) reservation. Then I really did hang up on him, while he yelled at me some more. Fun. What a lovely afternoon this is turning out to be.

Afterwards I called another service. What’s funny is that the new guy sounded a little distracted, but I could hear a dispatch radio in the background. He made my reservation on the computer after asking me to wait for a moment. I didn’t really mind the waiting. Really. It was his attitude I appreciated, along with the fact that he sounded like he worked at an actual business instead of me interrupting his otherwise lovely day outdoors with my credit card.

What rankles me the most about the first call now is that I lost my cool when I should have just let him lose his all by himself. I’ve got to work on that, admittedly. Definitely. The fact that I’m even taking time to blog this probably means that I thought too much about it already, but those are the things I think about.

However, I learned (and confirmed) a few things about my approach to dealing with clients:

1. Don’t argue with a client, even if you’re right. Confidence and firmness gains smarter client. Argumentative posturing equals lost client!

2. If your client is concerned for any reason, it has to be about them, not about you. Your opinion of whether their concern is valid is irrelevant.

3. Complacency kills.

4. Don’t assume your client knows your process. You may be ultra-confident of the outcome, but until you’ve worked together, they may have nothing to base their confidence on except your humble assurances.

I’ll probably think of more on the plane. Anyone else have thoughts on this?