Context: Ruriko, the author's wife, is Japanese, and has different expectations about customer service than most Americans: [...]
Context: Ruriko, the author's wife, is Japanese, and has different expectations about customer service than most Americans:
Ruriko and I, discussing how to help a third party: Ruriko: Oh you should call customer service for them. Me: It is because I want to help that I will not call customer service. I will write for them. Ruriko: Phone much faster and you can get company to agree on resolution.
Me: In this country it is very important you have a written record of agreed resolution. Ruriko: So call and ask for a receipt after it’s done. Me: No, if you don’t have the written record, it might not happen. With fairly high probability. Ruriko: What so the company *forgets.*
Me: Well it will look from the outside as if the company is forgetting. Internally it can be a miscommunication, the rep not having a clear pathway to achieve the agreed-upon resolution, or the rep saying something to get you off the phone for metrics. Ruriko: Saying right thing?
Me: Could be fibbing. Ruriko: Clearly they cannot lie at scale. Me: Contingent on being in the small percentage of customers with rare problems the likelihood that an offered resolution is confabulated is actually fairly high. Hence, paper. Ruriko: This is madness. Me: I know.
Third party (TP): They kept telling me “We’re sorry. This almost never happens.” Me: Second part is true as it goes, relative to total number of customers. TP: But why say that when it actually did happen to me. Me: Cheap way to mollify you. Many similarly situated customers…
Me: … will assume that these things just happen and they have no standing to complain. TP: They literally said “Sometimes these things happen.” Me: Yes. Now one can act regarding them as if they are simply the weather. Or one can act to resolve them. The resolutions cost money.
[...]
An aside about “weather”: There are some factors in life and business which are genuinely out of our control. Weather is the canonical example, at least prior to widespread geoengineering. Many customers berate employees about the weather. This is uncouth and unhelpful.
But some employees and companies generalize from “The weather is out of our control” to “The consequences of weather are out of our control.” This is self-evidently absurd. We all exist in a world which has weather; you can plan for it.
“And extreme weather?” Is weather, and can be planned for. Not having a plan is a choice.
I guess this is super specific to America, since things seem different in Canada? Often the only way to get anything done in a timely manner is with a phone call. Kinda wild that things are so...
I guess this is super specific to America, since things seem different in Canada? Often the only way to get anything done in a timely manner is with a phone call. Kinda wild that things are so different; hopefully that culture doesn't creep up north in due time.
Relatedly: the worst customer service interaction I've had has been with Amazon (which I've since stopped ordering from), where I needed to hunt through various support methods in order to return/refund the incorrect item they shipped. Eventually, the trick was to get a callback from a text support chat, and they refunded me without asking for the item back. Then I took the cash, and walked to a local retailer, never to return.
“And extreme weather?”
Is weather, and can be planned for. Not having a plan is a choice.
I don't know why this statement bothers me so much. Some of my social circle like to do something similar, and pin blame on insufficient research by individuals, for subjects as far ranging as:
catastrophic data failure (your choice not to know about backups),
wildfires burning your house down (your choice not to practice good forestry + retrofit your home),
getting a debilitating infectious disease (your choice not to work somewhere remote, to avoid the office),
and etc. I think I'm just venting a little XD but whenever this stuff happens it feels like everyone stops their root cause analysis at a place that's convenient for their argument. Maybe it's OK to blame companies/governments/organizations/etc., and not individuals, for a lack of foresight?
Context: Ruriko, the author's wife, is Japanese, and has different expectations about customer service than most Americans:
[...]
I guess this is super specific to America, since things seem different in Canada? Often the only way to get anything done in a timely manner is with a phone call. Kinda wild that things are so different; hopefully that culture doesn't creep up north in due time.
Relatedly: the worst customer service interaction I've had has been with Amazon (which I've since stopped ordering from), where I needed to hunt through various support methods in order to return/refund the incorrect item they shipped. Eventually, the trick was to get a callback from a text support chat, and they refunded me without asking for the item back. Then I took the cash, and walked to a local retailer, never to return.
I don't know why this statement bothers me so much. Some of my social circle like to do something similar, and pin blame on insufficient research by individuals, for subjects as far ranging as:
and etc. I think I'm just venting a little XD but whenever this stuff happens it feels like everyone stops their root cause analysis at a place that's convenient for their argument. Maybe it's OK to blame companies/governments/organizations/etc., and not individuals, for a lack of foresight?