When Customer Service Fails

Customer service is everything in your business—or at least it should be. Do you realize that word of mouth spreads faster than any form of advertising? That people trust the opinions of friends, family and co-workers over any positive publicity stunt? And that without good customer service, you could lose business? It’s true.

And here’s a prime example. A month ago, an online photography site had a 40% off sale on canvas prints. One of my colleagues, excited about the sale, notified everyone in our 200+ online business group about the sale. Everyone ordered a minimum of 2 canvases—some ordered three! Then we waited.

Three weeks passed and no product arrived. Anxious to see where her product was, my colleague went online to check on the status of her order only to discover that it had been REFUNDED! She received no email, no phone call, and no explanation. Just the simple words, “refunding” next to her order.

She emailed the company but received no response. So she phoned the company who told her that her prints were not sized properly and rather than contact her to correct the issue, they simply chose to refund the order. She immediately told our group about the issue and advised each one of us to check on our orders.

Surprisingly nearly everyone had the same thing happen—each with difference reasons, the head was cropped, the file size was incorrect, the borders around the photo were not allowed, etc. One gal managed to get the customer service rep to tell her that they had a back log of orders and could not fill them all and that accounting was having a difficult time keeping up but everyone should be refunded shortly.

So I decide to check my account. Sure enough, it was being refunded. I check my bank account and there’s no refund. In fact, an entire month after the order was placed, and three weeks after the order is supposedly being refunded I receive a charge in my bank account for $76!

Furious, I email customer service. I explain that I had already emailed them regarding the refund status on my order and how unprofessional it was to cancel orders without any explanation or attempt to remedy the situation and how no one has contacted me. I also explained that I wanted to see the refund in my account immediately and that I would never do business with this company again. Still no response. Looks like a phone call is now in order.

After speaking to a few members of our group, members who have ordered from the company in the past, all have said the quality of their 4x6 prints were good and they never had a problem—that is, until they decided to order a canvas print.

It’s highly likely that the company wasn’t prepared for an influx of orders—which if fine if you handle the situation properly, explain why a delay in shipment will be in effect, request corrections be made to files that were not suitable for canvas prints, and provide a coupon code for a future order as an “apology for the inconvenience”. But that’s not what happened. And because of the way they handled things, they essentially told their customer base that their business didn’t matter—that their customers didn’t matter.

If you want to keep your customers happy, communicate with them. Explain what the problem is—on your end or theirs—and work together to find a viable solution. Don’t just ignore your customers—that’s a surefire way to lose customers and gain bad publicity.