Conner's Blog

How do you get me upset? There aren’t many ways, but one is to provide me with awful customer service and then respond to my complaint in a childish manner. So here begins my tale of an attempt to get a camera repaired by Darn Toothy Sam.

Back in October I was out with a friend and dropped her point and shoot while taking a picture. Unfortunately, the lens was out and it ended up getting bent. After attempting to repair it ourselves and deliberating between buying a new camera or getting the broken one fixed we decided to get it repaired.  I checked a few different repair services and finally settled on Darn Toothy Sam due to it’s price and the fact that it is based in the Minneapolis metro area.

So I shipped the camera off on 11/18 to be repaired. According to their website they take 7-10 days once they receive the camera to repair it and send it back. Taking business days as the 7-10 days I expected to receive it sometime in the first week of December. Well that week came and not only did I not receive the camera, but I hadn’t heard anything at all about the camera yet.

On December 3rd I sent a status request using the company’s online form. I didn’t hear anything back for four days so on December 7th I sent an email to their listed email address for inquires.  Still no response so I called. One number did not provide a voice mail box and the other number was never answered though I was able to leave a voice mail. They also have an online chat function that for the first 2-3 days of perusing this never appeared active when I checked it. I emailed once again, and finally resorted to hunting for them on Twitter and Facebook to attempt to solicit some sort of response.

Finally on day five of attempting contact I checked the website and lo and behold the chat function was working. I logged on and chatted with someone named Eric who was sort of helpful. He told me the part for the repair had come damaged so they had to order another part. I requested an email when the part arrived and a response from management both of which were promised.

Two days later the camera shipped. It required a signature confirmation and it took me until Friday to pick up the camera. It works like new and I am satisfied with the quality of the repair. I received one written apology for the delay in the repair from the owner, but that wasn’t until I had to work my butt off to speak to someone. At no point did anyone offer to do anything for me other than mail the camera once it was repaired and let me know when it was shipped.

I should note that I paid for this using Paypal, I filed a dispute after the initial four day wait for a response as it was becoming my only recourse. This is the final message I received before I closed the complaint on Friday.

Thanks for the nice messages on Twitter. It’s interesting how we stole your camera and yet shipped it back the day after we got in the part and fixed it.

We attempted to deliver your item at 4:40 PM on December 12, 2009 in MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55405 and a notice was left. You may pick up the item at the Post Office indicated on the notice, go to www.usps.com/redelivery, or call 800-ASK-USPS to arrange for redelivery.

I responded to this final message

The problem was your lack of communication. You took longer than the promised time and did not give any indication of why this was. Once I attempted to contact you it took THREE days to get any sort of response from you despite multiple calls and emails. I appreciate the fact that it was delivered and repaired as promised but your overall lack of responsiveness leaves me unable to recommend your services to anyone. Additionally your response to this dispute has done nothing to help solve your glaring customer service problems.

The three days is actually incorrect, it actually took over 5 days and took me logging onto the website and finding the chat function working. I wrote the dispute response before I checked my email logs.

The whole reason I’m writing this is to either encourage Darn Toothy Sam to reach out to me and prove that they actually give a damn about customer service or to discourage anyone from using their service.  It’s quite disheartening to send someone money and a camera and not be certain if they even received it or are planning on repairing it.

Do you think I overreacted to their delayed response or was I right to be upset? Have you ever had a camera repaired, and if you had where did you get it repaired?

Hi Omar, Todd, and the rest of the crew:

I’m writing this letter because  I’m a huge fan of your beers. From Coffee Bender to Cynic, they are all delicious.  I’ve introduced a few friends to Furious, a couple to Bender, and one or two to Cynic and I intend to continue this.  You have a rabid fan base, and a growing market share.  I know there is a big waiting list for liquor stores that want to carry your beer. I’m happy for you, you’re local, a good company, and very much not mainstream. All of which make you awesome.

But you have a problem.  Your public relations or lack of PR is hurting you.  You may not notice it, and you may not notice it for years to come, but it will come back to bite you if you want to grow.  In the last few months, I’ve had three experiences that would have possibly kept me from continuing my patronage of your beer if you weren’t local and didn’t brew such good beer.  Now neither of these directly affects the quality of the product, but it does impact the perception of your company.  In a few years, if you want to continue to grow, this may be important.

The first happened a few months ago, around the time you released Hell for the second time.  First, at the time I, a new Surly drinker, thought this was your first release of this beer.  I headed off to Moto-i, excited to try out this new brew.  Well my friend and I walked into the bar, and it was apparent from the start that no one quite knew what was going on.  Only one bartender really knew what the plan was, the signage was minimal, and things just didn’t seem organized.  Things went smoothly overall, thanks to some great staff at Moto-i, but I was disappointed in the event, I expected a bigger deal to be made of the beer, maybe some giveaways, or at least some effort to make it a party.  Again, maybe I should not have had these expectations, but when an event is billed as a “Release Party”, the party aspect seems like a legitimate expectation.

The second thing that happened followed this very closely.  I’ll admit I was disappointed in Hell.  I wrote about it on my blog, and then commented on a post written over at The Captain’s Chair.  I stated that though I liked Hell, I was disappointed because I had expected something crazy and instead got a light, though tasty, beer.  During a back and forth on the Captain’s Chair’s post though, we continued to get defensive responses that seemed to complain about the perception we all had and that it’s not fair to you for us to have this perception.  Those of us commenting really wanted to give you advice to help and instead we got defensive answers.  Of course, the readers of Captain’s Chair are going to be big fans so I doubt you lost any drinkers, but an exchange like that with less enthusiastic fans might lose you a few customers.

Finally, Monday night I went to the Darkness Release Party at Hell’s Kitchen.  From the moment I walked in the door, it was obvious that at yet another release party, no one really knew what was going on.  Our bartender only knew he was selling Darkness, from what my companions said when the Surly reps came in the door you seemed confused and didn’t know how the bar was laid out.  Other than a band in the restaurant side, you wouldn’t have known anything was going on.  Also, like at Moto-i, no one from your brewery stopped by to say hi, even though I was at a table of six people all enjoying Darkness.

So, here is what I recommend.  Hire someone who knows a thing or two about public relations and event planning.  Your events should be exciting.  When you bill something as a release party it should feel like a party.  Giveaways are not necessary, but at least make those who set aside a Monday night to enjoy a glass of your beer feel like they are not just there to buy your product.  You also need to work on your public responses.  It is great that you do your own PR and you want to keep you voice as inline with your company culture as possible.  Just try and do this without sounding defensive.

I also think you need to look at your marketing.  As I mentioned when I wrote about Hell, I had a misperception due to the name that caused me to be unimpressed with Hell.  This would have been easy to avoid had you either named it something differently, or just spent a little time promoting what you were trying to do with the beer.  You are a company that has built itself into a box by brewing big beers.  You can get out of that box, just make sure your customers know when you step outside of that box so we aren’t surprised.

I am no expert so my advice may be complete crap, but I hope it’s not.  Keep up the good work and keep making great beers, just pair it with some better events and public relations.

Warmest Regards,

Conner McCall

There has been quite a lot of chatter the past few days about newspaper comments and what to do about them.  If you’re like me you probably rarely read the comments in the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press, let along CNN or other major media outlets.  I do occasionally read them but always walk away shaking my head at the insanity.  This isn’t to say there are no good comments on newspaper sites, but when people are calling sources pedophiles, as Dave Bauer mentions in his recent column, something is wrong.

Newspapers are put in a tough place though, they need traffic to sell advertisements and comments are one way to get pageviews.  Yet unmoderated comments don’t work and moderated comments lead to calls of censorship.  What are the papers supposed to do.  Here are a few ideas I’ve considered while reading these articles.

1. Pay to comment.  How about $5 per year to comment.  Pay walls are annoying but if your giving your content away for free why not make people to pay for the right to participate.  Even better why not charge $5 and then for every 5 comments that are starred/faved/voted up by fellow paid commentors you get a dollar to go toward next years fee.  Take it even further and for every 5 comment flagged/voted down by fellow commentors you get a dollar taken away from that pot.   If enough comments get voted down you have to pay the difference to rejoin next year.  If you get more than $5 in votes up you can choose a charity the newspaper donates the excess to.
2. Disable comments but actively seek out and link to blogs and other sources that comment on your stories.
3. Recruit local bloggers as commentors and moderators.  Local bloggers are your best source for insightful comments and they also have experience dealing with comments that cross the line.

The largest issue I see with newspaper comments is that those who can add a lot to their discussions are writing on local blogs.  When I want to comment on a newspaper story I either use Twitter or blog about it here.  I don’t comment on their site because the quality of the comments are so poor.  It’s not fun to comment on a story only to have the next comment be someone claiming Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery or posting rude comments about Michelle Bachman.

Personally I see forcing commentors to pay to comment as being the best solution, it’s one reason a site as large as Metafilter has grown so successfully.  People who are willing to pay to comment are usually going to add something useful, even if all they pay is $5.

Any thoughts on the issue, let me know I may not be a newspaper tycoon, but I love a good discussion.

The last few weeks I had been fighting the itch to search for a new job.  When I say fighting, I mean it, I’m content in my current job.  I have a secure position which is something I’m thankful for every day.  I get to help people and get a few really nice perks that would be hard to give up.

But I tend to get the urge to search for jobs occasionally.  A few things recently prompted this latest search; first, one of my best friends had an interview a few weeks ago for a new position, second, Emily wrote about her recent job browsing.  Those things, along with the fact that until I got this job I was job hunting for 18 months straight.  When you are looking for a job for that long, you tend to keep your eyes open, even if you really don’t need to look.

So last night I finally gave in and jumped on a few job search sites to see what is out there.  Looking through job listings I realized a few things.  First, most job postings are written by people with little marketing skill or by a someone using MadLibs and a collection of buzzwords.  Second, as far as I can tell there aren’t any jobs that excite me.  I would love to get back into a full time technology job.  The funny thing is, I wish I could do what I currently do in my present job in my downtime for a full time gig.  Right now, I basically just put together little tools that solve everyday problems.

The last thing I put together was a little app that backed up some settings that are pretty vital to productivity but our Help Desk won’t help anyone back up.  We had a rash of computers fail recently and everyone was a little panicked about losing these settings.  It took me about 15 minutes to put it together and if anyone needs to use it, it will easily save them 15 minutes of headaches trying to get things back to where they had them prior to a crash.

So what do I want in a job?  I think I would love to work for a larger company.  I want to be separate from the IT department and work directly with every other employee.  This way I could see their every day frustrations or time wasters.  Instead of putting them into a business process needs document, I could just sit down and try to solve the problem using the multitude of free tools available.

Now I know this will never happen, once a company gets large enough for a position like this to be viable, management is going to be  worried about “security”, “support”, and “measurable results” all things that this wouldn’t really offer.  But, if someone is looking for a “Duct Tape Tech Solutions Creator” for your company, let me know, I would love to put my skills to work for you.

Image Courtesy Flickr user Muffet.

Inspired by comments to  my post on Customer Service Rules.

You walk into a retail store/restaurant/bar/grocery store, what do the sales people expect of you?  Here are a few tips to get the best service when your out spending your hard earned money.

• Remember the sales people are people -  Just because they work in sales doesn’t make them a lesser person.  Treat them with respect, they want to help you, make it easy for them.
• Educate yourself – Don’t walk into Radio Shack looking for that thing that connects your DVD player to your TV.  Sales people aren’t mind readers, if you don’t have at least a passing familiarity with what you want, expect them to sell you the wrong product.
• Don’t waste their time – If you’re having a bad day and need to talk to someone, get a haircut or go to a bar.  Don’t walk into a store and spend 15 minutes talking to the sales person without intending on to buy anything.
• No swearing, yelling, or name-calling – Even if you do these things regularly, if you can’t shut it off in the presence of those you don’t know, don’t expect respect.
• Get off your phone – If you are really that important, maybe you should pay more.
• Listen – You expect the sales person to, so you should to.  If they tell you they can’t do it, don’t have it, or it will be in next week, don’t ask them if the item will be in tomorrow.
• Stand aside – Especially if it’s busy, if you want to look a product over and can see the salesperson has other customers waiting, tell them it’s okay if they take care of the other customer.
• Be clear – Sales people are generally good at deciphering things, but don’t ask for the thingy from the doohickey, that’s just incomprehensible.
• Be appreciative – A simple thank you can make anyone’s day.

Getting great service isn’t always possible, sometimes no matter how forgiving you are your experience will be horrible.  Still, it’s a good idea to remember you are in a business transaction, if the opportunity cost to the sales person is too high because your a pain, they aren’t going to give you their full attention.

I’ve been having some horrendous customer services experiences as of late.  In frustration I’ve written down my 11 rules for sales.

1. Smile -  Nothing dampers my mood to buy faster than a sales person who looks like he’s about to go on a shooting spree.
2. Listen and pay attention – Do not assume you know what’s going on.  If you hear someone talking about cell phones and cameras and whether something works on one when it’s labeled for the other one, don’t assume it’s a memory card.  They could be talking about LCD screen protectors.
3. Don’t lie – This should be obvious, but I’ve had it happen.
4. Don’t make things up – If you don’t know the answer either find someone that does or look it up.  If you cannot figure it out let the customer know.  I’m more likely to come back if I know you’re willing to admit you don’t know.
5. Don’t just read the box – I’ve had several experiences where sales associates didn’t see Linux written on the box and just said it wouldn’t work.  I’ve asked them to do a quick Google search for me and have always been denied.  Google is your friend; just tell the customer that unless the manufacture supports it, you can’t provide any support.  Chances are, if they were willing to purchase it unsupported by the manufacture, they wouldn’t come to you anyway.
6. Know your co-workers – When I used to sell computer components, I knew which one of my fellow employees would know the answer to certain types of questions.  Everyone has their area of expertise, don’t hesitate to use them.
7. Never ignore the low cost items – Your customers usually want to spend as little as possible.  Show them the lower priced items, and then tell them what benefit they get by spending a little more.  No one enjoys looking at a $400 laptop and having the salesperson push a $1200 laptop.
8. Never answer the phone – Ok, maybe never is a bit much, but if you have customers in the store let the phone ring.  The customers in the store can buy something now, the person on the phone is most likely price shopping.
9. Learn to handle more than one customer – This may seem like bad service, but if done right you can do it.  Pay attention and know when to say “I’ll give you a minute to think about it” or similar.  Walk over to the unattended customer and let them know your there.  Just acknowledging the customers presence goes a long way toward making them happy.
10. Know your competitors – This does not mean you should go wander through their stores on a weekly basis, but you should know who would have something you may not have or be able to get.  Also knowing things like who has the best cable prices will earn you repeat business, even if it is not for cables.
11. Break the rules -  If your customers aren’t walking out the door happy change something up.  What worked yesterday may not work today.

I recently applied for a new position within my company.  I had applied for this position previously, but failed a written test necessary for consideration.  Thankfully, the position reopened this month and I was able to retake the test, and this time I passed easily.  The second part of the selection process is a behavioral based interview (BBI).  This is what I was doing today.

The BBI was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done.  A few factors played into this.  First, it’s not like a normal interview.  You don’t just sit down and discuss your work experience, what you feel is your best strength, and other such nonsense.  Instead, they ask you specific questions and want specific answers.  They want you to talk about what you did in a specific instance to illustrate that you have a specific quality.  The interviewers give you a score based on your response, and you need to score well to advance.  Secondly, all of our current supervisors recently had to pass this exam (don’t ask, it’s a long story).  Out of seven individuals, only two passed the first time around. This shows just how difficult the process is.

I walked into the interview this morning incredibly nervous.  I ended up doing ok in my estimation, but I don’t know how I actually scored.  I will be honest and say that if I don’t pass the interview I won’t be surprised.  I can retake it again and the process was great experience.  On the other hand, I would really like the opportunity to advance my career and passing this step would put me in position to do this.  I also hate when I hear I fail, so even though I’ve prepared myself, I still know it will hit me hard if they tell me I didn’t pass.

One of the things I realized when preparing for this process, was I don’t do well at tooting my own horn.  Granted my friends will tell you I think I know everything, but in all honesty, I don’t ever think about things I did as exceptional.  I hardly ever remember things I did that showed my leadership capabilities, or times I had a disagreement with my manager.  I let things like that just happen and don’t remember them.  I think I need to start keeping a list of the things I do so I can refer back to them in these situations.  Do any of you keep track of times you stood out in your job, even if you don’t think you went above and beyond what needed to be done?

I don’t normally just re-post a single link but this deserves all of our attention.  Over at the Empty Envelope, this post went up today linking to a discussion on Etsy.  If you don’t know what CPSIA is, you should look into it and write your legislators.  Child safety is important but when laws are enacted that not only hurt low income families but impact hundreds of small business owners, fill our landfills, and cost our economy even more jobs, it’s not a good law.  Please read.

With retailers already cowering in fear over the results from Black Friday already, this is a good time to step back and look at this unofficial national holiday.  Every year millions of people wake up early, drive to the mall or Big Box Store, and spend, spend, spend.  People will be injured and feeling will get hurt, someone will go to jail, and there is always the sad possibility that someone will be killed.  Of course, this year spending is expected to fall.  This appears to be somewhat of a surprise even though hundreds of thousands of people have lost jobs this year.

I know that the retailers will start freaking out after Friday; stock prices will drop, CEOs will be fired, and we will hear that the end is near.  What should really happen is Congress declaring a national Blue Law on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  The only thing that should be open are grocery stores and Chinese takeout places.  I’m not an economist but I think forcing people to drop the retail habit would be a healthy way to go.  It may cause our recovery period to take longer, but if consumer spending was no longer the prime economic indicator, we would be better off.  It might even force corporations to start trying to sell good and services to other countries, something that this country stopped doing.

Instead, people will do what they always do.  They will go out to get the “best deal” of the holiday season and put it on their credit card.  What does this say about our country?  If anyone really understood why we are in this mess, everyone would stay home Friday, enjoy spending time with their family, avoid crowds, save gas money, and save on interest payments.  One of the major causes of this crisis is everyone took on too much debt.  We went from a culture that saved, allowing banks to lend our savings to people and businesses to a culture where a good portion of our money was tied up into overvalued and mysterious financial instruments.  Spending is only a short-term solution; we need a solution that leads us to saving again.