What makes a customer service experience great? What does it take to make you happy when things have gone sideways?
Every single eCommerce company in the world has customer service issues, it’s what they do about them and how they handle them that makes them different. Are you put on hold for hours at a time? Do you have to get past the first person to have anything resolved? When you get off the phone do you feel better or worse.
At CorkSport, we really try to treat every person who calls as if they were us having issues. I’ll share my latest story as an example.
I ordered a wireless AC router from an un-named company, we’ll call them “Sysknil”. I ordered this item on a Thursday, probably after the shipping cutoff so I didn’t really think about it. I had a busy Friday so I didn’t even check on it or really remember about it. On Monday, I went to check the status of it to see where it might be or when I could expect it. I was met with a message that said it was processing/picking/possible ship. Obviously, I was a little bit confused by that status; which one was it? I decided to call and just ask if it had been shipped or not. I have a bit of experience with shipping so I assumed the item had shipped but the tracking hadn’t been updated. When I called I sat on hold for almost 15 minutes. Then I was finally picked up by a gentleman who after asking nicely said he could not tell me the status of my order but would forward my question to the shipping department and they would call me back in 24-48 hours. I told him that I was without a router and I needed the internet. I would like to know now so that I can either know that this is shipped and wait for it or cancel the order and go out and buy a router in a physical store. He told me that was the only option available. I asked to speak to his supervisor.
At CorkSport, if you are ever put on hold for even 5 minutes, ask for Joel and I will get involved and get you to the people that can best help you.
Enter the supervisor
I sat on hold for another 10 minutes and was passed on to the supervisor of the day. In the beginning he asked all kinds of questions about the order and what I was looking for. I could hear all kinds of typing so I really felt like I was getting somewhere. He kept telling me “don’t worry about that because shipping is going to call you back”, and “you don’t have to worry about that, I will forward your message”. If I wasn’t “worried”, I would not have called. After another 10 or so minutes… I was transferred to the manager.
At CorkSport, everyone here has the power to help you with any issue you are having. If it’s trouble with an install or a part that just isn’t working out for you.
Manager
The Manager quickly took control of the conversation (after a brief 10 minute wait). She quickly ascertained my issue and then was able to calmly tell me that if I could hold on, shipping could be notified and would get back to me… in 24-48 hours! At that point, I was boiling mad, I kept it all inside and mentioned to her in my best Zen-like voice, that I was not able or willing to wait that long and that I was concerned that I might not be available for the phone call (God forbid I go to sleep and have my ringer off). She then asked if I should cancel the order, I tried to remind her that I couldn’t really cancel the order if it had already shipped. She breezily told me if I wanted to cancel she would just have the package turned around. That was one of the final straws for me, I know for us, stopping a package is at LEAST $25.00 or more. The fact that she was willing to light $25.00 on fire, rather than putting me on hold and calling someone in shipping and just asking them about the order told me all I needed to hear. I cancelled the order and let them eat whatever they were willing to eat as well as losing the sale.
Now I realize I am only seeing this from my side, but that’s exactly how every customer sees things. We just want people to help us, and if they can’t help us, at least feel like they did the absolute best that they could have. I didn’t get that feeling from Sysknil. I really felt they did whatever they could to get me off the phone. Being in the industry, I really feel like as long as you are being reasonable, you should be treated well. If I called up and said I wanted free shipping and a 2nd router for free I would assume that I would get none of those things and a “Have a nice day sir”. But no… I just wanted to know the status of my order and they wanted me to wait for up to two days to get that information.
At CorkSport we make it a priority to treat your issues as our issues. We won’t be perfect, but we’re trying every day to make sure you get taken care of the way we would like to so that you don’t have to feel the way I did recently. To us here at CorkSport, our customer service is just as important as our parts and we want to prove it to you. If you ever have an issue that you feel wasn’t resolved to your satisfaction, email me at joel@corksport.com and I’ll do whatever I can to make it right. This isn’t just lip service or an empty promise, if we have an issue we want to know about it and we want it to be the last time we ever have to deal with it, for both our sakes.
Cheers,
Joel
