It pays to know when someone has a problem with a product or the store selling it. Kim purchased 2 pre-paid Visa cards (total $500) from her local Shoppers Drug Mart to give to employees but it turned out they hadn't been activated properly by the cashier. Now, who should take care of this problem...Visa or Shoppers??? Apparently Shoppers doesn't take responsibility and told Kim she'd have to call Visa to settle the problem. Kim stood her ground and asked for the store manager who was very unsympathetic and who also told Kim she'd have to go home and take the matter up with Visa because, even though Shoppers' employee was at fault for not activating the cards, it just wasn't up to Shoppers to make matters right. Bullfeathers! Poor customer service!!
Kim is a tougher individual than most of us and continued to stand her ground, saying she wasn't leaving the store until they fixed the problem. The store finally got Visa on the phone and they confirmed to Kim that the cards had not been activated properly by Shoppers but that they would make sure the cards worked within a few days. At least Visa was polite and efficient in dealing with a very angry customer, unlike the Shoppers' manager.
To my way of thinking, if all it was going to take was a phone call to Visa, the Shoppers' manager should have been the one to apologize for it's own inefficiency in the matter and offered to call Visa on the spot to correct it. That's what customer service is all about, isn't it?
I had my own little episode with poor customer service a few weeks ago. Since I've moved, I wanted to deal with a bank closer to where I live so I called a Scotiabank nearby and asked if they could make an appointment for me to see one of their financial advisers. The customer service rep I spoke to got immediately defensive saying she couldn't possibly disturb them at that moment because they were with customers. I repeated, probably half a dozen times, that I didn't want to speak to one that moment but just wanted an appointment some time in the future. The idiot woman I spoke to continued telling me she couldn't disturb them. It was all I could do not to lose my temper with this lady but I finally got her to allow me to leave a message for one of the advisers. I never heard back from them!
3 days later, I dropped in to another branch of the same bank, spoke to a very pleasant and efficient customer service lady who went out of her way to accommodate me, and left with an appointment for the following Monday to see an adviser. Damned good customer service at that branch!!
If business owners ever wonder why they're losing customers, they should spend some time in their establishment watching how their employees treat the customers. Rude service will ruin your business and that's a fact.
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