Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Customer Service-A Thing of the Past

I'm ranting about the lack of customer service. It seems like the days of "the customer is always right" are long gone. It is hard to find a company that really wants to take care of there customers.
Early this year my wife and I decided to hire a yard company to help get our grass into shape. We have mostly weeds growing and thought it would be nice to have a good looking lawn with no weeds so we decided to use Tru Green. After talking with the salesman we set up a schedule for them to come and treat our yard. The first appointment came and went with no problems and Tru Green would even send reminder notices in the mail to let us know when the next appointment would be. This was great for us because we have two dogs and on the day of Tru Green's visit we would have to leave them in the house.
The problem with Tru Green started when they did not show up for an appointment. No big deal, stuff happens. The appointment was rescheduled and again Tru Green was a no show. This time I called and talked to a person and rescheduled the next appointment. The day came, we left the dogs inside and you guessed it, no Tru Green.
After three no shows I decided to discontinue the service. While canceling my account the girl said she figured I would cancel and did not even offer an apology or try to keep my business. I told my wife that they must have plenty of business and don't have to worry about keeping customers.
I didn't think any more about it until last week. Tru Green sent a letter inquiring why we left so my wife decided to call and tell them why we left. The next day at work, she emailed me and said she had called Tru Green and they were not nice on the phone. The conversation went like this.

TG- Hello.
Wife-Could I speak with So and So?
TG- Why?
Wife-We are prior customers of Tru Green.
TG- Yeah? So!?
Wife-I got a letter and he wanted to know why we left.
TG- (short) We will pass it on to him.

A week later we still have not heard anything back. We will never be customers of Tru Green again and I would not recommend them to anyone else.

1 comment:

Outsource Call Center said...

Nice post! Customer service is vital to the success of any business. Despite how good your product or service is, customer service can make you or it can break you. So you better treat your customer in a very nice way.

-fern-