The Lighthouse

the lighthouse

09 July 2009

Customer service? Is that from the Greek for "not now, can't you see I'm sorting fliers"?

I posted about my technological woes. I've been mulling over an encounter I had in the course of attempting to sort out my hardware issues. It was with the store manager of the place I bought the thing from...I'll call it Paperclips. It's a large office supply store...you know the one I mean. Well, I knew that I have a one year warranty, and also that they advertise themselves as offering quick, friendly and easy "computer solutions", including computer repair. It made sense to me to go and see them as a starting point at least.

I explained in my limited layman's terms what happened to my computer, and made it very clear that the thing wasn't working. Mr. Manager kept asking in various ways if I'd checked online, either for technical help, the number of the company who manufactured my brain-in-a-box, or for the owner's manual. Several times, I had to remind him that I could no longer go online, because my computer was down and that was the reason I was in the store. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered him while he was doing the very important job of sorting fliers. He said he had to ask those questions, and I wondered why. Why did he have to ask those questions instead of think for himself?

Turns out they don't do the work there themselves anyway, and there certainly wasn't anyone in the store who could help me by even opening the thing and taking a peek at it. Mr. Manager finally looked up a couple of numbers and wrote them down for me, but I left feeling very disatisfied with the experience. Why do stores feel they must be all things to all people, meaning that essentially they can offer no expertise to anyone, or real customer service when it comes to that. I wasn't even born then, but I sure do miss the days of attentive store clerks, home delivery, store personnel knowing their customers, reliable products, pride in a job well done.... sigh. It's rather humbling to be less important than a pile of fliers.

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