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ИИВ1ВИЩ Customer service
Level
of difficulty: >»Q
Before you read
Have you ever taken something back to a shop because you weren't satisfied with it? What happened?
Reading
Read this article from the Financial Times by Lucy Kellaway and answer the questions.
Can't get no satisfaction
Instead of making extravagant claims in their guarantees, companies should concentrate on giving customers excellent service.
A man I know recently bought a large, green sponge bag* from the US retailer L.L. Bean. He took the bag with him on a business trip, and hung it on a light fitting in a hotel. The strap of the bag was made of plastic and it did what plastic does when you put it near a source of heat: it melted.
What is the moral of the story? Don't hang your sponge bag - or anything else for that matter - on a light. But this man didn't see it like that. As one of the,City of London's top corporate lawyers, he wasn't going to be defeated by a melted strap on a sponge bag. So he composed an e-mail to L.L. Bean, quoting the company's guarantee, "Our products are guaranteed to give 100 per cent satisfaction in every way". He suggested they replaced the bag. L.L.Bean replied to the effect that the guarantee was only meant to cover "defects in the appearance and performance of our products during normal use". And so the e-mails, getting more angry now, flowed backwards and forwards. The lawyer pointed out that the company promised "satisfaction in every way". The guarantee was not qualified, and certainly did not specify that the customer had to be reasonable, he said. There was no warning that the bag should not have been hung on a light. He was NOT SATISFIED, and therefore he was due another sponge bag.
In the end, he got his free bag. "We value you as a customer, Mr X, and all of us at L.L.Bean welcome the opportunity to serve you," alleged the final e-mail from the company. So what is the moral of the story now? In the. world of small print, the lawyer was quite right, as lawyers so often are. The company had promised satisfaction, he was not satisfied: the case was cut and dried. Back in the real world, I am more inclined to side with L.L.Bean. One wonders about high-powered lawyers who spend their precious free time on missions to get a free sponge bag - when the opportunity cost of all that time would have secured a lorry full of the said items.
Companies should discriminate between reasonable and unreasonable customers. The customer should be king, but only if he; behaves himself. The real moral is that the cult of customer service is in a mess. The balance of power between customers and companies has swung too far towards the customer.
From the Financial Times
' A sponge bag is a small bag to carry the things that you wash with.
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