How to win friends

[phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org]

>
> imho opportunity lost for them, they could have given you a small
> discount, apologised for the inconvenience, thanked you for your time
> to call.
>
> that one act alone would have won you over, instilled trusts and in
> spilt of their crappy website you might have provided a lead through
> word of mouth

I do customer support for our company and my approach is to apologize to
the customer for the problem: up front. Then, if it does sound like a
solid problem with our stuff, I promise to fix it and get back to them. We
turn around bug fixes in a day or two.

I encountered a bug on another company's web site (it wouldn't take a
credit card security code beginning with zero). The first email to them
went into a black hole somewhere so I was a bit crabby in the second email
to them. The second one got a support guy to reply. He apologized
profusely for missing the first email and for the problem and got it fixed
in a few hours. That's the right way to do it.

Engineers and programmers understand that 'bad stuff happens' and are
almost always willing to give the company a chance to fix it. But they
sure don't like being told that it's the customer's problem or being
stonewalled or being ignored.

P.


-- 
Peter Hiscocks
Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto
http://www.syscompdesign.com
USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator
647-839-0325

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