Give 'em the pickle!

I just gotta vent, having spent an hour on the phone after dealing with an uncooperative manager at the commissary. Part of that hour was spent talking with a so-called customer service representative who had no clue how to listen, and later with his supervisor who had remarkable listening skills.

There are two keys to customer service which all but guarantee satisfied customers:

1. Listen. Actively try to glean the customer's underlying message so you can deal with it and not with what you mistakenly think is the problem.

2. Give 'em the pickle. Your company will spend more money not giving the pickle and will likely lose that customer (and other potential customers he turns off to your business) than you'd spend giving the pickle! So...Give the damn pickle!

If you don't know what I am talking about in re pickles, Google "Give 'em the pickle."

[/vent]

Good things to remember! I think probably most professionals would benefit from having great customer service skills whether that's their actual position/responsibility or not. Come to think of it, most people in general would probably benefit from those skills both inside and outside of the workplace. Good luck getting people to actually USE them outside the workplace, though lol

did you get the pickle ?

Not the initial pickle--not yet. The CSR supervisor gave me some other pickles. (I tested her by making all manner of demands. She met them all.) However, she works for a different company and has no dollars to give me back.

The original manager could've handled the situation by simply doing precisely what I would have done: Going to a register, doing an adjustment on the item, doing a price override due to a price discrepancy, and handing me a dollar. Done.

I actually would have gone a bit further. I would've have expressed my dissatisfaction with the rewards cards continually not working as advertised, and vowed to get to the bottom of the problem, making this "other company" fix it! I would also promise to keep the customer informed of my progress if he wanted those updates.

I used to run into similar difficulties for my customers when I managed the electronics department. We sold protection plans that had our name on them but were sold and managed by "another company." Occasionally, this "other company" would screw over a customer. One time, that "other company" insisted that the power cord (which could fully disconnect from the CPU case) was an "accessory" and, therefore, not covered! I didn't care that this was not my company. That plan had my company's name on it, and this was MY customer.

I called that "other company," and with almost no fuss, got the customer's problem solved. (I think the initial decline was an over-zealous CSR trying to save the company a few bucks by refusing the bun, and not just the pickle! The person to whom I spoke was just as shocked as the customer and I were at the refusal of service).

When a customer comes to me with a problem, it doesn't matter one whit to me if his problem is with another department or with some "other company" providing a service on behalf of ours with our name on the "package." He has a problem with MY company, and I will move Heaven and Earth to fix it.

It is just a freakin' pickle. Give it to him! And throw in some friendliness, understanding, and a smile.

Any chance we'll get to know what the companies are?

Edit: Well, I guess it doesn't matter, since it probably has more to do with the individual manager than the company. And I wouldn't ask you to post their name online haha. Never mind

The companies that have me in a pickle are the commissary (technically, the Defense Commissary Agency) and a contractor running its Commissary Rewards Card program (I don't know the name of that company). The company I work for is incredibly customer-centric and is called the Exchange (technically, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service). The warranty company whose plans (EPPs) we sell is National Electronics Warranty, LLC. They sell excellent plans, and I stand by them 100%, which is one reason why I go to bat for my customers on the rare occasions when they run into difficulty with NEW. That company knows that, if I lose confidence in their product, I could not in good conscience continue to sell their product with the fervency I do now.

Unfortunately, EPPs are not available for guns, ammo, magazines, etc. So now I cannot sell their product with the frequency I did in electronics. The plans would sell themselves when someone was buying portable electronics (like iPods) for a teenager. The plans covered accidental damage from handling!

eye95 said:

The companies that have me in a pickle are the commissary (technically, the Defense Commissary Agency) and a contractor running its Commissary Rewards Card program (I don't know the name of that company). The company I work for is incredibly customer-centric and is called the Exchange (technically, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service). The warranty company whose plans (EPPs) we sell is National Electronics Warranty, LLC. They sell excellent plans, and I stand by them 100%, which is one reason why I go to bat for my customers on the rare occasions when they run into difficulty with NEW. That company knows that, if I lose confidence in their product, I could not in good conscience continue to sell their product with the fervency I do now.

Unfortunately, EPPs are not available for guns, ammo, magazines, etc. So now I cannot sell their product with the frequency I did in electronics. The plans would sell themselves when someone was buying portable electronics (like iPods) for a teenager. The plans covered accidental damage from handling!

Click to expand...

{HIJACK} That rewards card program is not worth the plastic it's printed on.

Most of the time I have the *exact same* coupon in my Sunday supplement, and I don't have to make a special trip to someone's website to "download" it.

I expect a rewards card to load automatically with the savings, and the commissary's is somewhat less than useful to me. I've been using it almost a year now, and I think I've saved less than $10.
{/HIJACK}

"I don't want a pickle,
I just wanna ride on my motorcycle,
And I don't want a tickle,
I'd rather ride on my motorcycle,
And I don't want to die,
I just wanna ride on my motorcy.....................cle."

Sorry, just had to throw that in.