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entries for 2002/8/26
they did it again...
Well, I drove across town to my old place today, because the Salvation Army assured me that my bed would be picked up. Of course, wehn I originally called this morning, they told me that they don't make pickups on Monday. I told them they had scheduled me for Monday. They said they'd call me back. They did. The lady said she would
bring someone in to pick up my stuff today. So I drove across town.
Then someone else called and told me that no, there really are no drivers around to pick up my stuff today. Could they come by tomorrow?
This is what you call poor customer service. I mean, okay, it's no big deal. It cost me some gas and some driving time. So what? I'm not angry, but I will say that this has left me with a very unfavorable view of the Salvation Army, and next time I see them ringing bells outside of the grocery store, I'm going to think twice about donating. They might mean well, but I can only assume the money
will go to feed their clunky old bureaucracy, rather than actually helping people get back in the workforce.
Most likely, I just caught them on a bad day. The trouble today is a direct result of one driver not showing up this weekend. But because their system allows this sort of thing to happen, and doesn't provide a way of dealing with it (like telling the scheduling folks that nobody works on monday), the whole organization looks stupid.
The lesson is that service matters, and even one bad experience can alienate a customer. I think with my own business, that's doubly important. People expect really bad service from web hosts, so any time I screw up even a little bit, it looks 100 times worse. That's why it's so important to automate things...