Saturday, April 6, 2013

Why Customer Service Isn't Important...

Beazley Books has a few sidelines like prints, small antiques and custom matting. We train cadaver dogs too but that’s another story. Staying on top of it all has driven me to drink, so when a regular customer came in this morning and saw me sipping my breakfast Guinness and asked, you got another one? That was a little presumptuous so I said, no, and he says, did you grow up in an orphanage or something? Well I grew up with four brothers and that’s a lot like living in an orphanage so that was very perceptive of him. Then a woman called and demanded to speak to the manager and I immediately detected evil (I can do that with small dogs and the elderly). I replied in my best Oxfordian English, this is he, and sure enough, she says that she spoke to a very rude man on the phone yesterday. What did he do now?, I asked, and she said the man was just unspeakably rude (for the record, all I told her yesterday was that I didn’t want to buy her box of Harlequin romances and that she should consider burning them for warmth). Well, I said, the man you spoke to is schizophrenic so you never really know who you’re talking to when you call the store…..he’ll be in this afternoon so why don’t you come in and slap him. She hung up on me, and if you’re thinking that it’s not a good idea to invite angry people to hit you, you might be right.

9 comments:

  1. This is why it's always good to answer the phone in a voice other than your own. Ideally bookstore owners should learn and practice at least twenty different voices, to choose from as the fancy strikes.

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  2. A perfect example why you could accept volunteers; volunteers are expendable and can be regarded as the guilty culprit in those tough situations:)

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  3. A perfect example of the(non-drinking) aged lunatics you must deal with. My sympathies.

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  4. Here in Australia, customer service is an important part of a business. That is why many companies sign contracts with an AAustralian telecom company for their 1800 numbers. That is to keep their businesses easy to be reached. Providing convenience to customers will always be a part of customer service.

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  5. Training cadaver dogs...really caught my interest...the customer service story was engaging yes, but do you plan to blog about the dogs?

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  6. Thanks for sharing such a brilliant post.

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  7. Wow very entertaining post Ive notice that there are many How to get 1300 Number that giving to a business to give them many clients. Most busineses are using smart numbers to easily remember by their clients.

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  8. Don't go in asking for knowledge of the books. You'll be told to F-off.

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