I don’t know whether he coined the term, but the popular Consumer Warrior, Clark Howard, frequently refers to contact centers as “Customer-No-Service.” We all have our horror stories of waiting forever to get a hold of a live person only to be transferred and, in many times, disconnected before we ever get our issue resolved.
Having been a card-carrying member of the contact center industry for over 20 years, I am very acquainted with how customer service departments operate (and don’t). This insider view sets me up for disappointment every time I need to contact a business for help. Well, yesterday, my expectations were exceeded in two back to back encounters with WordPress and Vistaprint. As a result, I’d like to take this opportunity to sing their praises.
My first KUDOS goes to WordPress. I did something to screw up the mapping of my website, rendering it un-searchable for almost the entire day. After trying to help myself by reading their on-line FAQ’s, I still was confused (no fault of their very detailed documentation). I submitted a ticket and within the half hour had my issue completely resolved by a guy who goes by the name of “MACMANX” and refers to himself as a “happiness” engineer. Thanks, MACMANX! You sure engineered MY happiness!
My second KUDOS goes to Vistaprint. I was trying to order two sets of business cards, but couldn’t get both sets to show up in the shopping cart (notice the trend of user issues..?). Anyway, I finally surrendered and called their customer service line. I was preparing to be lulled to sleep by their hold music when Claudia answered the phone right away. Not only did I not have to hold, she immediately knew how to fix my issue and stayed on the phone to make sure all was good on my end. But what was even better is that Claudia took the time to actually connect with me on the call (within the contstraints of what was a very reasonable talk time, of course). After reading “In this Life I Will…” on our business cards, Claudia shared that she wants to do BIG things with her life and said that she would get in touch with me. Now that MACMANX has fixed my domain mapping issue, I expect to be getting a visit from Miss Claudia very soon.