Peace of Mind Organizing

A study in contrasts

27 December 2010

I had a couple of customer-service experiences in December that have given me food for thought.

First the good:

I purchased my holiday cards from Paper Source, the fabulous online store. I needed more cards and placed a second order in early December. I received a shipping notification, but left town to visit my parents a few days later and didn’t notice the cards hadn’t arrived.

When I returned and discovered no cards, I checked the UPS tracking site and saw that they’d been left on the porch. It was apparent that the package was stolen from my urban porch (the first time that’s happened in 19 years of living here).

So I called Paper Source, explained the package had been stolen and asked what could be done. The kind customer service agent offered to send them to me again, overnight, at no charge.

I was blown away. The company was at no fault, yet they were willing to invest about fifty dollars in creating an extremely happy customer. The box arrived the next day as promised, with a hand written note inside saying how sorry they were that the package had gone missing.

Contrast that story with this one:

I ordered a wireless headset for my landline from 101phones.com. It arrived a week later with a part missing that rendered it unusable. I called the company and was told I’d have to return it for exchange, which meant it would be another week before I’d have a working headset. The kicker: I would have to pay for shipping to return it. They messed up, I’m paying for shipping. I argued. They insisted. I was angry. So I asked for a refund, rather than an exchange. I’ll never shop there again.

Paper Source invested fifty dollars and got a raving fan in return. 101phones.com wasn’t willing to invest five dollars to pay for shipping the return and therefore lost the sale and the customer. They’ll never get an order from me (or probably anyone who reads this).

For my business, I want to be Paper Source.

I have policies for my business that provide important boundaries and accountability for my clients. But I do make exceptions on occasion and this customer-service experience will help inform those exceptions.

I’ve never been one to nickel and dime clients, and Paper Source has taught me what an impact that can have.

So there’s a business lesson here, but mostly I just wanted to tell you how much Paper Source rocks. If you need beautiful paper products, by all means shop there.

Tagged with: customer service, paper source

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