The StarShine Company

Today was a frustrating day, but at the very least I can remind everyone how important customer service truly is.

Saturday I placed an order with one of my suppliers.  Earlier today, I received a message from them that I no longer qualified for certain pricing, but that they would send my recent order regardless.  I contacted them and asked for clarification on the terms, and how I could again qualify for the special pricing.  In their response email, the customer service representative said they would no longer be able to send out the current order until I sent them more money.

O.O!!

Now, I’ll admit, I made a mistake and really didn’t qualify for the pricing as they said, BUT originally they told me they’d send the items anyway.  They went back on their word, and weren’t going to send out my order after just having said they would?!  So I had to cancel it.  I was perfectly fine being corrected, and even if they would have contacted me at first and said they wouldn’t be able to do it, it would be a different story.  But as a business owner, no matter how big or small your business is, you can’t change your mind mid-transaction.  Not only is it unprofessional, it’s bad business sense.  Providing good customer service is worth a whole heck of  a lot.

They refunded my purchase price and lost a customer, a customer they had for years and spent a WHOLE LOT of money with them.  As a business owner myself, I’d never, ever, EVER, go back on my word… I’m a little shocked that anyone would.

Anyway, the main purpose of my post isn’t to complain (I did enough of that to my husband), I just wanted to remind everyone who runs their own business how important customer service can be.  Now you don’t have to do cartwheels and bend over backwards, you just need to keep your word and provide the best customer service you possibly can, because it could be the difference of keeping a long time customer, or even future customers.

When it doubt, put yourself in the customers shoes and ask yourself, what would make me happy if I were on the other side of this situation.

. . .

And if you are curious, I found a new place that was more than happy to work with me (aka let me spend my hard earned money at their store).  They even offered to send out free samples for me to check out and make sure they’d work for me and my products.  Now that is good customer service!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.