When I started delivering packages for Amazon back in the day, the first thing they drilled into you was to be “customer obsessed”.
Yeah, right. You’re paying some slacker kid 20 bucks an hour so that Karen gets her meds and that will complain when you don’t deliver to the back door like she requested - the door that requires you to swim across a moat filled with alligators and oh, don’t worry - the dog doesn’t bite.
That kid’s not obsessed. He just wants to toss your package on the front porch and “dip”, as they say. He might be obsessed about his McDonald’s lunch or the rap music coming from the stereo in the van but despite what Jeff says: He is not customer obsessed.
Jeff might be, and some of his underlings might make an effort, but the final mile folks? They could care less.
And there’s the rub: nobody really cares. The kid in the Amazon van is just trying to pay rent and feed his kids.
Jeff is too busy polishing his boat to notice.
This leads to the big question:
Where has all the service gone?
I got to thinking this as I waited almost 2 hours for an annual inspection to be done on the car. This should not have taken this long. I drive an electric car. There are hardly any parts to check.
No motor, no exhaust, no..nothing. A big battery, some brakes and some wheels with tires on them.
I did all the right things: I booked the appointment with the AI bot and have a reservation for the service. I showed up five minutes early. Not too early, and not late…juuuust right.
I even joked with the guy at the desk that this should not take long.
It took long.
What happened? Welcome to the new world where nobody gives a f***. What’s the worse I was going to do? Leave a bad review on Google? Act like a Karen and end up on Tik-Tok?
Take my business down the street? They may have a different mission statement but the kid in the back rotating tires is getting paid the same so the fucks given are the same too.
The folks at the desk are not getting paid any great amount so they stopped caring because the small regional tire shop is now bought out by a national chain who I bet has their own slogan about customer service that the CEO is the only person who knows what it is.
The poor guys in the back actually doing the work are even worse off and I bet flipping burgers pays more than slugging tires so they’re in the IDGAF category too.
The only people that “care” are the CEO’s with their slogans and they haven’t had to take their own car for inspection in well…ever, I bet.
Another example of crappy service:
After 13-ish years of being married 1 BW’s ring was missing a small diamond and seeing as how I bought it, it was my responsibility to get it fixed. I can do this.
I talked to the AI bot and got things figured out and sent it in a pre-paid box and shipped it off to the online store. So far so good.
Then we wait. and wait and wait and wait.
Nothing. I go online and it states that it will ship back to me that day. Perfect.
I wait a few more days and still no ring. I ask the bot again and now it tells me that today is now the day the ring will ship. Okay weird, but shit happens. I wait.
Still NO ring. I check the BOT again and it once again states that swear to god - today is the day it will ship - pinky promise. Yeah, sure…
I decide the bot is obsessed with fucking with me at this point so I jump through all the hoops and get a person who reads me the exact same thing that the stupid bot has been telling me. They have no new information and no way to check. At this point her diamond ring is “in the system”, but that’s all they can tell me
In the end it all worked out and a day later BW’s ring is back on her finger and she’s happy so I'm happy.
But that’s not the point.
What I'm not happy about is customer service overall. It’s not about my 2 recent experiences. It’s the fact that good customer service happens so few and far between that at this point I have a better chance of seeing a double rainbow than I do actually getting what I was told I would get when I plunked down my money.
Money is getting less and less valuable so when and if we do have any we stop now and think about where we want to spend it. Lately I have rarely seen service so I might as well save my money
Everything is so shitty. Streaming services that delete shows, Prices rising and rising but the value for the dollar is getting worse and worse. Even a Big Mac Value Meal is pushing ten bucks these days.
My last rant: I pay for a music streaming service that offers 3000 gajillion songs. They have the album I wanted but only about 3 songs are listenable. All the others are grayed out. What the hell is that? I paid for all the songs, not 3 out of ten.
Just one more example of a where the slogan is much better then the implementation.
I know, I know….
My satisfaction is important to you - or at least that’s what the sign on the wall says.
TH and Co.
Until Next Time,
TH and Co.
why she puts up with me I will never understand.