| Frankly, I'm not sure how this is customer service so much as either: - A promised warranty being fulfilled - A battle of attrition until Macy's gave in I'm sure there are more nuanced options also but I'm not going to take the time to guess each one as frankly I'm just not quite sure what the definition of Customer Service should be from this post. Should we focus on "The device was used to its limits and still replaced"? That Macy's actually honored a guarantee? I have a very dour view on customer service since my particular line of work is B2B with IT professionals and it's rarely a pleasant experience with many regions, with the US (yes, nationally) and the UK (yes, basically all of it) being some of the most challenging customers to deal with simply because of their expectations and definitions of Customer Service. The majority of the time they're not even aware of the terms of their support contract and constantly are pushing the boundaries of support or from the get-go are just far beyond anything that should be reasonably expected, and the amount of complaining and legal threats really takes an emotional toll on my team (since a lot of them do really want to help). With the EU clients, the same boundary pushing happens, but I find there's usually much more of an honesty about it. Usually one of three things comes from our EU clients: - The client openly admits they know we don't provide support for said thing, but they really have no other source for help - The client honestly tells they had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and humbly asks if there's anything we can offer to help out - The client honestly had no idea we didn't provide support for such things, and closes out the case of their own volition I'm not sure that I can say which result has the best "customer experience" for my clients, as in each case they don't get what they expected from the case they open. US/UK clients tend to add a 4th option: - The client doesn't care what is/is not supported, they want a resolution I can easily say which of the 4 outcomes is the most time consuming and emotionally draining for everyone involved. I think that the idea of service is really misunderstood; service workers are not slaves, and while management __should__ work to make them do their job and honor the business' obligations, management also needs to help clearly define the boundaries of such obligations and explain how to gracefully deescalate situations that toe or exceed these boundaries. |