Customer Service Highs & Lows

Customer service can be so hit and miss so I wanted to highlight where I have received great customer service and where the customer service hasn't been so good recently.

I will start with Glossier.  I have made a few orders since they arrived in the UK (you can read about the products that I bought here) and I have referred a few people, so ended up with some store credit to use.  Unfortunately, the store credit was in US Dollars rather than Sterling, so I couldn't use it when I ordered through the UK site.  I emailed Glossier, to see if they could transfer the credit to sterling and within about 1 hour they had replied and transferred the credit into Sterling (on a £1 for $1 basis which I was not expecting).  Absolutely fantastic service.  A couple of days later I placed an order using the store credit and paid the remainder with my credit card, but there was an error right at the end saying that the order had not gone though (no idea why this happened).  I went to place the order again, but realised that the store credit had disappeared).  Again, I emailed Glossier letting them know what had happened and within a couple of hours they had sorted everything out and put the order through (with free postage and packing).  When things go wrong this company really excels at customer service and sorts out any problems straight away without any muss or fuss. 

Yesterday I was driving on the motorway in heavy rain when my windscreen wiper blade broke (luckily it worked intermittently, so I could see the road ok).  I was close to town when this happened, so just headed to Halfords and picked up the wiper blades that I needed (they had an easy to use computer which tells you exactly which blade to buy).  I asked at the checkout if I could have the blades fitted there and then and within 5 minutes it was all done and only cost an additional £4.  Again really happy with the service.  I am sure there are some of you out there thinking wiper blades are so easy to fit, why didn't you do it yourself?  In all honesty I don't know much about cars so I would rather have someone fit it for me and for £4 I am not going to quibble.  The guy that fitted the blades was really helpful and friendly too and almost apologetic when he told us that we would need to wait for 5 minutes before someone would be free (more like 30 seconds in the end!).

I normally go to the self service checkout at Asda, but as I had a couple of coupons and the manned checkouts were pretty empty I decided to use them instead.  The older gentleman that served me couldn't have been friendlier and we had a bit of a chat and a joke while he put everything through (very efficiently too).  The coupon wouldn't go through at first, but he sorted it out straight away, without  calling for a manager and making everyone wait longer than necessary.  Really nice chap, who made a boring job much more interesting.

  

The only not so great service I have received recently was at M&S.  I do lots of surveys to collect vouchers (you can find out what survey sites I use here) and usually the vouchers need to be printed out.  I always make sure that I print the vouchers on good quality paper and make sure that the bar code is easy to read, but twice recently the checkout operators have not been able to scan the vouchers.  They then typed in the bar code which came up as invalid and said that the voucher must have already been used.  I politely told them that it definitely had not been used and could they try it again, which they did, but still it came up as invalid.  In one instance I offered to read out the code and it still came up as invalid.  At no point did they offer to get a manager to sort the problem out and were not very helpful at all.  In the end I walked away as there was nothing that I could do and even I had started doubting myself as to whether I had already used the vouchers.  To make absolutely sure I decided to go through the self service checkout and use the voucher myself.  Well what do you know the voucher worked first time (although it would not scan I just typed in the code).  Come on people if I can do it, so can you, all it takes is a little concentration.  I know everyone makes mistakes, but it's the computer says no attitude that gets me.  Anyway lesson learnt, I will always use the self service tills when I have a voucher to use. Update: In all fairness to M&S I popped in yesterday and used a voucher at the self service checkout.  As expected it didn't scan and as I was about to start keying in the barcode, the lady that was monitoring the self service checkouts quickly came over and offered to read out the code whilst I typed it in.  It didn't go through the first time as it looked like we had missed a number, but she happily read it out again and the voucher went through.  Great service on this occasion I think.

Well that's all the customer service tales that I can think of for now.  Let me know if you have had any great customer service experiences lately (or any bad experiences).

Leigh

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