Three examples of Customer Pseudo-Service:
- A prescription was not filled. After first contacting my provider and finding that the prescription has been submitted more than a week before, I contacted the pharmacy. Discovered that they needed additional authorization. Had not done so. Had not contacted me. Beginning to process after the call. Contacted a week later. Still in process. Still have not heard from the pharmacy. Has been over a month since the prescription was first submitted.
- Purchased an item online from a local store. Chose the option of picking it up, choosing one of the time frames offered by the online system. Went to pick it up. Was not ready. Was informed that despite the requested time it was not guaranteed and that we needed to wait until we were emailed that it was ready. Got the notification later that day. Here is the kicker: we were required to pick it up within 24 hours of the original pick up time. Get it. Not 24 hours from when they had it ready, 24 hours from when we requested it to be ready. Ain’t that special.
- Purchased an item online for local pickup. Placed order in early afternoon. Generally speaking, this vendor notifies me of the order being ready within an hour or so; a couple of hours at the most. It was for a box of fasteners so it was not a major order. I did not hear all day. In fact, I did not hear from even the next morning. At midday, I called the store and asked about the order and while I was waiting they picked the order so we could pick it up. I was informed that the online order person had not come into work that day and they did not think they had been to work the day before so that was why the order had not been picked. Thus someone did not show up for work and there was no backup.
We have two major issues at play here as far as I am concerned. First is the lack of checks and balances in the systems in all of their systems whereby there was a way to communicate to the customer what was going on and communicate to the employee/associate/team member/whatever you want to call them that there was an issue that needed to be resolved or that there was a breakdown. Second is that there seems to be more of an attempt to give lip service to customer service that there is to give true customer service. Whether it is that the business is too big, the employees are not trained properly, the employees are not authorized to resolve the issues, the employees are unaware of the issues, or the employees just do not care it does not matter.
If you notice a commonality in all of the above is that this is phone/online services provided by brick and motor companies. Is it any wonder they are losing ground to online-only companies who live and die providing these services seamlessly.
