Customer service - huge whinge

I've been thinking a bit about customer service lately. Why? Don't know, really. Just one of those things that pops into your head and won't leave until you've given it some of your attention.

Partially, this train of thought comes from the appalling customer service I received whilst purchasing a new printer at Dick Smith Powerhouse at Lidcombe (hey, I never said that I was going to be impartial and not name names!). Appalling. A bunch of people less capable of giving any level of customer service I have yet to find.

But my faith in the future of customer service gets it's biggest shake-up from the blog that I read, maintained by a fairly well known historical pattern drafter. If you know me (and didn't stumble upon this blog by accident on the way to the fridge)* you will probably know who I mean. Now, this woman runs her own business, researching and drafting historical patterns. She also sells an enviable range of useful notions and whatnot that would be extremely handy to a reenactor. Kudos to her. She is doing something that brings her fulfilment, and servicing a niche market that has been largely ignored. What really bothers me is what I perceive to be an extreme lack of professionalism in the way she conducts her business.

Let me elaborate...

Many, in fact, there are times when one could say most, of her blog entries are whinges about how irritating and stupid her customers are, with moans and bitches about her suppliers chucked in to spice things up a bit:- They are stupid, they have unbelievably unrealistic expectations (whoo, try saying that 3 times really fast...), they make complaints about things that she couldn't possibly have any control over, don't they know how internet shopping works, oh my god, haven't you been listening to my fornight long gripe about about the printer ink saga, whaa, whaa, whaa...

You know what? Fair enough. Everyone has got the right to whinge about things that annoy them (this entry is a case in point), and with the advent of the interwebs, we can share our woes with a worldwide audience (unless it's on this blog, which gets about .0002 readers). How does that saying go? "A trouble shared is a trouble halved", or is it more along the lines of "A trouble shared is a good way of spreading the misery more evenly"... So. Go for it, knock yourself out - blog all of your whinges if that makes you feel better.

But... There's always a but.

If you are going to offload your complaints about your customer base onto the World Wide Web, shouldn't you be just a weeeeeny bit circumspect about the way you go about it? Maybe think about an anonymous blog (ooh, going out on a limb here!), or perhaps make it friends only. Noooo, that would mean that all your sycophants couldn't leave comments about how terrible it must be, poor you, to put up with these IDIOTS who buy your products, how they are soooo stupid, and how you are such a saint, and I want to be you when I grow up... Bleech. So, not only do you make your blog entirely public, but (and this is the bit I really like) you link it to your business web page, so that all of those morons that you (deep breath) have to put up with in order to run your business, can click on the link on the page that they buy their products on, and go to your journal where they can read about how stupid they are.

Does that strike anyone else as rather counterproductive? Many companies spend millions on advertising and PR to tell everyone how fabulous they are. What they generally don't do is maintain public forums where they tell the world that their customers are idiots. Of course their customers are idiots! Stupidity is what people do best. Nobody likes to be reminded of it, though. When it all comes down to it, customers are human beings, with all of the quirks and faults and ridiculous idiosyncrasies of our race. Nobody reads to the bottom of the page to see the fine print; we all want our stuff right now, goddammit; we don't want to pay for it before we have to, and if we can see our way clear to getting something for nothing we will jump at it; and most of all, we want someone to blame when things go wrong - particularly if we are at fault. That's just human nature - to think otherwise is not going to get you anywhere.

Word of mouth and repeat business are the building blocks of small business. If you whizz on your customers from a great height, you are going to get neither. True, she names no-one, but I bet that if the customer being related to in the post read it, they would be able to make the connection from a thousand paces. I don't think that I could bring myself to purchase any of her products (which is a shame, cos some of her stuff is quite nifty) , because I find her really unprofessional.

It's a good thing I'm so perfect, eh?

Enough vitriol for tonight. I think I have used up my blogging quota for some time!

See you next time something really pisses me off.

* Assuming of course that there is anyone at all who reads this blog, except me. I am the world's worst blogger after all...