Just another fight

A let off steam kind of post…

Things go wrong. It happens.
Sometimes it’s someone’s fault, sometimes it’s bad luck or bad planning, and sometimes there doesn’t appear to be any good reason for it.

Things go wrong. It’s how you put them right that matters.

Companies can make things better is by handing the situation promptly, efficiently and politely. An apology for the thing that has gone wrong is nearly always a really good starting point.

I’m a member of a international courier scheme. When I put it like that, it sounds quite nefarious, but it’s really not. It gives me access to addresses in several (or more) countries around the world. I can then buy stuff online in those countries, get them delivered to that local address and from there, they get forwarded to me in Cape Town. It costs a bit to join (a one-off fee) and then you pay a certain amount for each shipment. It still works out cheaper than direct delivery, and it’s via a courier, so it’s trackable and (ahem) more reliable.

I used this system to ship some goods in from the UAE. My Emirates airmiles were about to expire, so I cashed them in online here and got myself a pair of headphones and Mrs 6000 got some cosmetics. They were then shipped to my address in the UAE (just down the road from Emirates), I paid a handsome fee to the courier and then the goods should fly through Johannesbeagle to me in the Mother City.

All was going well. The package from Emirates arrived at my virtual address in Umm Ramool, Dubai on the 18th November. From there, 8 hours later, it went to the courier company’s “Dubai Express Hub” and then was shipped (ironically almost certainly via Emirates) to Johannesburg, where the record says it arrived at 13:20 on 20th November – only about 40 hours after they first got hold of it.

This is impressive. This is how it’s meant to work.

Then there came a long delay in Customs. This happens sometimes, and you can keep nudging the courier, but it’s often out of their control. However, I nudged several times, and then once more forcefully, and suddenly like a plunger in a blocked toilet, a mere 16 days (eish!) after it arrived in Johannesburg, my package was Cleared from Customs:

And lo, there was much celebration and joyfulness and singing and dancing and making of merriment in the streets of Cape Town.

Sadly though, nothing happened after that, despite my repeated phone calls to the Johannesburg office. I was assured, time and again, that they would chase it up and call me back, that it just needed to get to their office and then they would have it in Cape Town the following day. But no-one ever called me back. It still hasn’t reached their office.

It took until today – and my 12th phone call to the courier company regarding this shipment – for someone to tell me that the package had likely never arrived in Joburg. That it was part of a “courier bag” which had gone missing on or around the 19th. That shipments from Dubai “usually take a day” to get here and this one had (already) taken over three weeks. Throughout the previous 11 phone calls though, no-one had bothered (or dared?) to tell me that my package was missing. No-one could be bothered to take responsibility.

Half of me is pissed off at the apparent deceitfulness, the other half is pissed off that no-one is willing to try and make things right. I, as the client, am the one doing all the hard work to sort out the mess caused by something going wrong with something that is very much their bit of our agreement.

But customer service in South Africa is so very poor, and it’s cases like this that are not just an illustration of how bad it is, but also an example of why it can be so bad – because the bar is set so very low. I could be having this problem with any one of 10 other local courier companies as well, or any one of 4 local cellphone companies, or any one of 1 local online shopping companies – not one of them stands out from the crowd.
And precisely because of that, not one of them has to.

I’ve aired my displeasure on Twitter now (my last resort and something I really hate to do), and finally (surprise surprise when you go public) someone has actually called me for the first time. There may even have been a mumbled apology. They’re looking into what’s gone wrong and they are going to update me tomorrow.

Fair enough – I’ll give them that chance.
Only now, it’s not just how they put things right that matters, but how they put not putting things right in the first place right.

I’ll keep you updated.

Social Media & Public Customer Service

There’s obviously more to running a business’ social media account than there seems to be. Otherwise we’d all be at it. But it seems that some businesses don’t really get it. I think it’s one of those things that your business either does, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then (maybe) you’re missing an opportunity and (almost certainly) you will make some people on Twitter very annoyed:

“OMG! Like, [Brand X] isn’t even on Twitter! Talk about backward! Ugh!”

Those individuals are perhaps forgetting that there’s a whole other world out there that doesn’t rely on social media in the same way that it relies on oxygen, and gets on with life just fine.

But if your business does do social media, then the expectation is that it has to be all in. There is no halfway house here. That’s even worse than not doing social media at all. And you’ve got to do it correctly. History is littered with horrendous social media own goals from just about every company ever, as the hoards of Offendatrons seeking outrage at the slightest misinterpretation or misplaced word in those 140 characters are ready to jump – loudly – all over your case.
Yes, social media is the public face of your company to anyone using Facebook or Twitter, and if you mess up there, you mess up in front of (potentially) hundreds of thousands of individuals, some of whom may once have been future customers.

Oops.

Fortunately, there’s always another social media outrage bus to jump onto, and the public’s memory is short, meaning that these ‘scandals’ don’t last long.

But what if you were to use these facts to your advantage? What if you were to brand all your company’s easily-distinguishable, bright red vehicles with your twitter handle, inviting public engagement, and then used the public face of twitter to appear caring and on the ball when negative comments came your way, but then – once people had swiftly moved on – actually did nothing about addressing the problem?

Step forward then, catchily-named Sport 24 hrs Taxis – they’re @Sport24hrsSA on twitter. And I was “rather disappointed” by the quality of the driving and maintenance on one of their vehicles last week. When I contacted them on twitter, they replied within 5 minutes. Evidently, Sport 24 hrs Taxis are one of those “all-in” companies who “do” social media.

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Impressive response time. And  taking it private sounds like a plan, because actually no-one else really cares about the outcome, which will surely be something along the lines of “Sorry about all that. We’ve told the driver not to use his phone while driving and we’ve fixed the brake light”, right?

There was a hitch though – Twitter rules mean that I couldn’t DM them (send them a direct message), because they didn’t follow me on the popular microblogging service. Silly people.

Still, there are other ways to get in touch with me, as I let them know, (right after I had made the kids some dinner):

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And so they got in touch with me and they said “Sorry about all that. We’ve told the driver not to use his phone while driving and we’ve fixed the brake light”.

Except: no.
No, they didn’t. 

I’m here to tell you that once their public facade had appeared caring, helpful and concerned, I’ve not heard a single word from them on any forum. No contact whatsoever. I’m using this blog to let you know that as far as I’m aware, they’ve done absolutely nothing about the broken brake light on Taxi 26, nor have they addressed the issue of the driver using his phone and weaving all over the road at 80kph past UCT. Because surely if they had done anything about it, they would have dropped me an email or contacted me on twitter to tell me that they had. No?

So, if you publicly comment on a company’s service on twitter and they tell you that they are going to follow up, please hold them to their word and make sure they do.

And, don’t be fooled by a company responding promptly to and promising to follow up on a negative comment or observation on twitter, because the quick public response followed by fokol aksie in private approach is all too easy to use when you want to make it look like you care, but you actually don’t give a toss.

Probably someone else…

Incoming email reply from local restaurant manager begins:

You are, unless I am much mistaken, Mr @6000 on Twitter. I follow you via our [local restaurant] account and I am a fan of your twitter persona and your most entertaining and informative website.  We shall see to it that [another local restaurant] and several others become so as well. That way, they may all learn something from you.

Oh blimey. My reputation precedes me. Although it’s a bit of stretch to just think “microbiologist” and “6000.co.za email address”, and assume that we are one, the same, and have a numerical pseudnym on a popular social media platform (although we are, and we do).

To be honest, it’s an even bigger stretch to call this blog “most entertaining and informative”, but hey, I’ll take it.

More customer service like this, please.

The best way to keep your word…

…is not to give it.

And yesterday, I did promise an end to the short blog posts and a return to something of normality. And then today happened.

Today wasn’t great.

Today was very busy and full of people letting me down left, right and centre. The dreaded South African customer service strikes again. Our daughter also got sent home from school, sick. [sad face]
Thus, it’s gone half past eight before I’ve even thought about having time to write stuff. And even now I’m having to get up and look after the dog because there’s an SAAF Oryx helicopter doing bumps and runs at 2 Military Hospital just down the road and it came over so low that it almost took my chimney off and blew the puppy away. Seriously. I just collected it from the garage roof.
It’s just been one of those days.

Talking of the dog, it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory of late, either. It has covered itself with soil from underneath my lawn though. Repeatedly. But every cloud has a silver lining, and that silver lining looks likely to shine on one of the readers of 6000 miles… Should another hole “mysteriously” appear in the garden*, I will be offering a one-of-a-kind, bespoke Beagle-skin waistcoat (it won’t stretch to a full jacket, I don’t think) to a competition winner picked at random from my readership. I may even commission a silver lining, literally.

The rest of the week looks frankly terrifying equally busy, but I have high hopes and expectations of getting some decent blogging done in between the disasters and the loadshedding.

 

* PRO TIP: They’re not mysterious at all – the beagle is digging them.

Some good service

Sadly, SA is not noted for its customer service. Or rather, it is, but not in a good way. That’s why when I have some good customer service, I like to tell people about it. And this week has been a revelation in what other countries would call “service”, but what we here in SA call “fantastic service”. These companies should be celebrated and rewarded. I will do the celebration bit here, you sort out the rewards bit by doing business with them.
Companies must adapt or die. As this unnatural form of natural selection proceeds, so poor customer service will die out like the dinosaurs (but without massive meteorite involvement) and good customer service will evolve to be the dominant species.

Hi-Q Wynberg
After my op, I wasn’t allowed to drive for a while. And when I did want to drive, my car wouldn’t start. Even trying  to jump-start it via its big sister didn’t work and I deduced that it needed a new battery. Cue a call to Andre (021) 761 7063, who did exactly what he said he would, exactly when he said he would and got me back on the road.
Nice.

Geysol
Having decided that we needed to save money on electricity (who doesn’t?), we turned to Geyerwise for assistance. They got one of their distributors – Leon from Geysol (076 036 0623) – to pop around and fit our unit for us. One prompt, fast, friendly, helpful and clean job later, we are saving money on our electricity. How much, I’m not sure yet, but I’ll let you know. I’m hoping that the unit will pay for itself inside three months. After that, it’s pure saving goodness.

ADM Home Appliances
With two kids and an annual Cape Town winter, a tumble dryer is a luxury necessity. And it’s only when it goes wrong that you realise how much you rely on it. Not so much yesterday, with its 29.5°C temperatures – more on days like today with its 29.5mm+ of rain.
Ours went badly wrong last Friday and so we called in Deen from ADM Home Appliances on (021) 797 2321. He came, he saw, he took the machine away, he gave us a quote, he fixed the machine and he brought the machine back. What’s not to like?

Pool Doctor
Ironically right next door to my friends at Hi-Q (see above), Pool Doctor (021) 761 9121 dropped in right when they said they would to sort out my leaking pump. Then they sorted out the leaking pump and my pool is looking ready for summer already. This seemed like such a good idea in yesterday’s sun. Today, I’m going to see how the overflow works.

So, if you need bits for your car, to save money on your electricity bill, an appliance repaired or your pool sorted out – please give these guys a call and do your bit to promote decent customer service.