All I want is a Hammer, Internet Connection, and a basket order. That’s all I am asking for

Customer service calls, when done right, can be a sweet
thing.  (c) 2017 P.Lynne Designs

Customer service is not what it is cracked to be these days.  I am mean really people, I am tired of the automatic response unit, or ARU for short. I call it, Siri’s evil twin (Or Galaxy’s and Cortana’s, whoever you deal with on your device).  Here are the problems with the ARU and customer service.  Yes, it does help route the call in the direction that it is supposed to go.  That is the purpose, BUT it also does not allow you to talk to a human.  Here is my story (short, sweet, and to the point, I promise):

I have AT&T Uverse, the vain of my existence.  I had Time Warner Cable (Now Spectrum, as I am reminded of constantly from the commercials that play a million times a day), but when they kept on charging me over the amount that I was willing to pay, I called it quits in 2013, and got Uverse.  I have no problems with the cable (TV) nor phone, but I have had problems since month 5.  This has been an off and on problem.  There have been times when I would be connected, and then no connection.  Technicians would come out and say things like, “You have old wiring, let’s fix this”, “you have an old modem, let’s fix that”.  Finally, someone came out a year ago and solved the whole problem by rerouting the whole system.  So, I thought.

The problems came back 5 months ago.  Since at that time, I was a night owl, staying up until 6 or 7 in the morning (being an entrepreneur does that to you sometimes), I noticed that this interruption would go on throughout the night.  It would stop my work, video watching, and my Facebook gaming to a screeching halt, and 5 minutes later, act like it never did that.   Since I have been going to bed and waking up like normal folks for 2 weeks now, I have notice that it is doing it during the day too.  I have talked to customer service like a dozen times, changing passwords, rebooting the computer, and so on.  I use MS Outlook to send and retrieve emails, and now I have gotten to the point where I can send an email, but I cannot retrieve them.

I called an hour ago, and the Uverse ARU has a funny way of saying, “you are not speaking to a rep today. Not on my watch.”  Here how the convo went:

It goes through the normal “Hello, I see you are calling about the account associated with (xxx)xxx-xxxx.  Is that correct?”

Me: Yes

ARU:  How can I Help you?  You can speak to me in complete sentences (You really can’t, but eh).  What seems to be the problem?

Me: Internet Connection (there is no sub-category for cannot retrieve my emails on MS. Outlook 2016)

ARU (after repeating everything I said in its own little special way): I will run some tests to see what the problem is.

ARU: Still processing tests, please wait….

ARU: Still processing, sorry for the inconvenience….

At this point, I do not want to bore you, but this went on for 15 mins.  Finally, it said (and I am not joking) …. Wait for it…. This is getting good …..  “REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER”.  I have made a note on your account, and within 24 hours, and you have the same problems, give us a callback, and we will resume where we left off.  (Phone goes silent).

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  WHAT KIND OF TEXTBOOK CROCK IS THAT?  I could have done that myself without calling.  No transfer to a human, nothing.  I rather do chat online than this mess.

Note to companies everywhere:  get rid of your ARUs.  I know they are a wonderful convenience for your company, and it helps with efficiency and your quotas, but how does it help with mine, when I have not retrieved what I needed in the past two weeks.  I need to be as efficient with my business as you need to be with yours.  If you want to increase efficiency, HIRE MORE PEOPLE WHO ARE WILLING TO WORK.  NOT IN INDIA, BUT THE UNITED STATES.    

Sorry, it turned into a rant, but that is the second problem, not enough people, who have a basic high school diploma are hired to work in these companies.  For some reason, and I do not need to know this fact, but it is an individual problem that people who did not receive their HS diploma or GED are not able to get a decent job, such as a customer service center call.  These companies feel that they need to hire someone in India and buy expensive equipment like ARUs to screen calls than to help people who need it the most.  A person should be able to articulate and understand how to give a solution to a situation, and I am sorry, but half of these people who are hired in these companies have thick accents, which can be hard to understand.

A hammer

I cannot find a hammer to save my SimCity’s mayoring life, and I have 24 hours (actually I have 22 hours) to find one. (I am also on my Ipad)

OK, it is a virtual hammer.  I have the real thing.  I have everything I need for the moment to build a building in SimCity BuildIt, but I really want a stupid hammer.

So, if you are not a gamer at all (I am not talking Mortal Combat, which I will never touch, I am talking about cute games here), you do not know what I am talking about, so let me give you a rundown of the game:

You are the mayor of your city.  You build it up, but you also have residents, businesses, things you can find in your “real” city (I named mine “Nope” at first, then recently changed it to “Walt Disney World 2”).  Anyway, I am on level 26, and I need a hammer.  I can buy from other players a hammer if I see one, but no one is selling one right now.  I call it my fun frustration.  I have tasks to fulfill within 24 hours or I have to start the process all over again, which this is my 4^th time.  Oh, by the way, you have to please these people who take up residence, and 53% of the people are pleased with me being mayor at the moment.  

One the things I do not like about this game is it keeps going when you are not running it, and the other thing is if you run out of play money, you can use real money to buy play money and points, but I have not gotten to that point in my life yet.  I need my real money for real things in life, not a stupid virtual hammer.  I did that once with Cityville two years ago, and I still feel guilty for doing it since that time.

LOOK, I FOUND 5 OF THEM.  NOW I CANNOT PUT THEM IN STORAGE.  WAHHHAAAA!!!!

The hunt continues….

I will now return you to your regular reading channel.   Hope you enjoyed the commercial for SimCity BuildIt.

The changing of the guard, Basket style….

On the other hand, customer service can be a good thing.  I liked it when I was working at a call center. I want to give a shout out to one customer call center who has deserved it lately.  It is the Longaberger customer call center. 

Recently, our back office, websites, and other things received an upgrade, and if you have ever serviced customers in any direct selling company, such as Avon, Younique, Tupperware, et al…, you know what it is like to have customers who want their orders, and they want them two seconds after they have placed the order.   Well, the Longaberger system needed updating, but to me, TPTB (the Powers that be), waited to do that at the wrong time to start replacing back office stuff, especially around tax time. (I have put in a request to find my sales reports as we speak, which is the reason why I know the “send” portion of MS Outlook was working).

Anyway, I cannot find sales report (not uploaded), and so on.  I wrote them an email a couple weeks ago about an order I put in, and Customer service was on it.  They gave me the answer I needed without an ARU.  They have one, but another consultant told me about emailing them instead.

So, thank you, Longaberger Customer call center.  You rock. 

Meanwhile, I am still searching for hammers.   I will continue that game later.  Ohhh, Pinterest items.

Just in time for Christmas

(Warning:  Some of the links below may contain affiliate information.  I may receive a commission for that link. For a full explanation, please see my disclosure page. Thank you.)

Shopping at Longaberger Homestead
(c) 2016 P. Lynne Designs

Here is your PSA for the week courtesy of my Facebook Status:

This is your PSA for the Week...Please, please, please be patient. I know many of you out there at the last minute are present hunting. Why? These employees are stressed as it is. I have been there. Yes, stores should be well stocked, but sometimes their buyers underestimate the crowds this time of the year. They go by what their numbers were for the same or similar item last year (2015). They have no idea as they sit in their ivory towers and laugh at the rest of us, shouting "glad I do not have to deal with this". Be glad you have to the money (or the credit, which you shouldn't) to get the item. Trust me, I have worked at a department store and a scrapbooking store, and I always hated the week coming up to Christmas.
I got yelled at for an item not being there when the customer wanted it, an item not on sale, and why can't they get a refund for an item (or raincheck).
At the same time, for the employee, please, please, please, be patient. Customers do not read minds. If a customer is asking you for something, anything, do not brush them off and talk to them down to a child's level. Do not scream at them. Stay professional at all times, don't let them see you sweat. Do not discuss your work affairs around a customer who is just trying to get home or to the next place to shop. No one has time to hear that mess.
OK, Bye, I smell a blog post cooking. Stay tuned...

Patience

The dictionary defines patience as “lack of complaint” and “staying power” (I need to explore that a bit), while my thesaurus says that the similarity words are endurance, tolerance, persistence, and stamina to name a few. 

I will admit to some that I sometimes have a lack of patience, especially when it comes to driving.  I want to get where I am going, but I am less tolerant of those who text or talk on their cell phone, and they are headed towards me with said phone in hand.  I am not in the mood of being totaled again, especially when the cause of my accident last year was me taking my eyes off the road for a second to reach for my donut.  I was not that hungry, and the donut stayed in the car, as I was being carted off by the ambulance.  Trust me, the text or phone call is not important, and neither was me eating as I was heading towards another SUV.

Patience at Christmas Time…

Starting with Black Friday until this week, thousands of people have shopped in the stores, malls, and online, hunting for that perfect gift.  This is a plus for a store. Black Friday, which is the one day of the year where stores operate in the black (making profit) as oppose to operating in the red (losing profit).  If you are a Star Trek fan (which I am), the retail sector would be the Ferengi species, who always want to get something for profit.  In the retail industry, it means sales, sales, and more sales. I wrote about my experiences as both a consumer and a business owner in this post.  It was not easy, but I made it through.  I did not get any sales, but I see the error of my ways and will try to do better next year.

As a consumer, we are a particular breed of customer.  This is the type of person, who is always looking for a bargain or a deal.  They are the ones armed with coupons, sales papers, their cell phone tuned to the latest app, or their tablet and laptop.  They do not want to pay full price for even a stick of candy (I am always armed with my phone and Ipad, the only way to shop, LOL). 

Retail stores are particular too.  They want you to come to the sale, but in addition to the sale, they want you to say, “Oh, I meant to get that last week, but while I am here, let me get it now”.  Are you familiar with the end caps (end of the aisle shelves)?  The shelves at the registers?  The endcaps usually hold the sales.  You go in for the sales and if you do not have time to go deep into the store, you can turn around and be enticed to buy something at the registers.  Retail stores do not like it when a person buys one item.  I also call the shelves at the registers, “shut the kid up” shelves because if you are standing in a long line, and your kid is constantly nagging, you can grab a candy bar, give to the kid, and they are happy.  I had to do that for a niece or nephew once or twice.  Two more points if you are hungry as well.  This is happy money for the store.  This is one of the reasons why a clerk as you if there anything else they can help you with.  They are not being nice for nothing.

This time of the year is trying for both customer and retail.  Not sure what I mean?  Re-read my status at the beginning of this post.  Not too many people can say that they survived the Christmas seasons of the past in retail, and live to write about it.  In fact, I can say that I had more patience for customers than I do for driving. I rung my last sale January 17, 2010, at Archiver’s, a Memories store.  It was a scrapbooking store.  I left in January, and Archiver’s closed its brick and mortar stores in February 2014. I made lots of friends while working there, both in regular customers and in co-workers.  I do not regret my time there, even when I started working with a difficult manager.  She was new and I had already been there for 3 years.  We did not see eye to eye, but she was not the main reason why I left, but I will tell you that P. Lynne Designs was the main reason for me leaving.  Yes, I was starting my own company.

As a customer service associate for the store, and working years earlier at a local department store called Schottenstein’s Department Store for 2 years (I also worked at Sears but in the office-no customer contact), I have received my share of customer rants and raves. When I explained with a simple “no” and a reason why not to the customer, I received answers from a simple “Ok”, to “I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER, NOW!!!!” I was to remain calm at all times when that was shouted in my face.  I sorry customers, but stores cannot be all things to all people.  I hated when the manager came out, explain the store policy to the customer again (after I have explained it), then to keep peace between the three of us (me, manager, and customer), by issue something that has them skipping out of the store, which was usually money or a lower price on a product.

Customers, please, do not talk down to a person, who is trying to help you with what you want in the store.  Like I explained in the status, the number of products in a store is determined by sales from last year.  Sometimes, a buyer is brain-dead to the stats of the store you shop at.  They do research all the time, but they cannot catch all the data being fed to them.  If the store you are shopping at is a low performing store with not a lot of traffic, there is not a lot of product to choose from.  How does a customer know this?  You don’t, but it would not hurt to ask the manager on duty.  Have a conversation with the manager.  Don’t have a long drawn out conversation, get to the facts on hand.  Please, do not explain how much your child would love the latest Hatchimal, explain where you have been looking in that store.  If no luck, go to a quiet place, and search on your phone while in the store.  If it is at another store, for instance, you search for another Target store while in a Target, ask a manager or a service desk person to call that store to see if they have the item.  If so, see if they can hold it.  If not, ask for a raincheck if possible.  If not, check online when in the store.  Most stores have free WIFI.

As a customer, the last thing I want is for a clerk to do is talk to me like a two-year-old.  I feel like as a customer, your attention should be on me as I talk to you to ask a question or if I am paying for my purchase.  On Black Friday, it was me and my mom looking at a few things.  Come check out time, a person helped my mom, and was wonderful, except during the checkout process, she was talking to another co-worker about another co-worker, who had quit her job, another one who was late, and yet another one who was new.  This convo went on for about 15-20 mins, and we as her customers could have been finished in 10 mins.   No customer wants to hear that kind of talk.  You should be present with the customer, asking them questions about the item they purchased, reminding them about current and future specials, and so on.  Once you are off for the day or on your break, feel free to talk about those co-workers.  A customer’s time is valuable.  Courtesy also has its rewards.  Say a customer calls in to find out if your store has an item for sale.  Do not repeat, do not hang up on them.  If you do not have a product, kindly tell the customer what is the store policy when you sold out of a product.  Again, the customer is not a mind reader.  God does not equip us with those abilities. 

Long Lines

Last thing…. Long lines.  They will come, and they are everywhere.  Don’t like them?  Hire a personal shopper or shop online.  Simple.  You can even arrange when to have it delivered.   If you are stuck in one, play on your phone.  I do.  If you have kids with you while stuck, have them play on your phone.  My sister does. If you and your spouse are shopping together, have that person take the kids to the car.  Problem solved.

My take away for you:  This is a stressful time of the year.  We all go through it, and we try to people please during this time.  Cut the stress by doing something with the family that is meaningful.  In fact, I insist. Helping one another means more than some present that is only going to be tossed aside by someone if they do not like it or it gets worn from overuse.  Love someone, care for someone, never let go of that feeling.  Once they are gone that’s it.  

Take care and Merry Christmas.

Get the Job Done Right the first time

(c) 2015 P. Lynne Designs

Today’s post is somewhat of a bittersweet moment.  I am not going to always post things like this, because, for one, it is not in my DNA to upset my readers.  I want the post to be a teachable moment for all, including myself.  The second reason is to inform, not put down, which leads back to the upset part. 

I have mentioned for some time how I was going to switch up my blogs.  Not so much with the format, I am pretty happy with that, even though the format could use a little updating every now and then.  I was going to change from Blogger to WordPress, mainly because I will have more control with a WordPress blog (self-hosting) then with Blogger or the other WordPress platform (yes there are two WordPress formats).  Do not get me wrong, I love Blogger, and it is great for those who are just starting a blog, but it is being controlled by Google.  Google has this tendency of being a bully, and if they feel that you are not following their rules, they can delete your blog in an instant, without so much as an email on why they feel that your wisdom is not worth their time anymore.  Besides that, Google feels like they can change the Algorithm (fancy word for code) any time they feel the wind blow.  It frustrates many a blogger who happens to have the blog on Blogger.  I will explain later in another post.

The point I am trying to make is, when I started out on this blogging journey, I thought I could just create a blog, and that was it. All I had to do was to keep it up, and for the most part I did, but again I was getting restless with the format and Blogger, and I was hearing horror stories about blogs and whole account being deleted by Google, until I had to do something, before I would not have a blog.  So I started creating the format with Host Gator, but I was not getting anywhere because I did not know how to code.  I still do not know how to code very well with HTML, and Joomla is just a foreign language to me, so I started inquiring for some help.  

I am not going to mention any names on here, because they could be reading, and I do not want their rep to be totally ruined, but there is something called integrity and doing the job right the first time.  The first person I asked was actually the results of a contest I won locally.  The person emailed me to congratulate on winning her giveaway, and that she will create for me a custom website.  A $200 package that she was giving away.  I told her what I needed, and she said that she would get back to me.  She never did.  A few months later, I had her as a Facebook friend, and I explain in my status that I was having an issue that needed solving in regards to the website I was creating, and she chimed in that she could help.  I explained that it had to be for free, and she actually explained that she owed me for the contest, so I agreed.   I took to email and explained the situation, and once again she said that she would get back to me, and she never did.  I was devastated and moved on.

Next, this came at the beginning of this year, and with the same blog, which is my Simply Organized Crafts blog, and I donated $10 for an international charity that the blog creator was contributing to.  I found this out by the emails I was already getting from her.  In turn, she was supposed to create this blog for me through Web Hosting Hub.   I gave her the information, and I was not sure of my password on my Google account to access Blogger.  She needed it to transfer files onto the new site.   It is now September, and I have not heard from her since my accident.  I went on Web hosting hub and I cannot get into the account.

My point in all of this, and this is my takeaway for the day is:

·         If you are in any kind of business, make it a point to spell out from the very beginning what your products and services are.

·         If you are in service for someone else, make sure that you do the best job you can possible for that customer or even that friend.

·         Follow through and follow up with everything. 

·         If you cannot do it, tell them you cannot, explain why.  You do not have to make up the why.  Tell the truth.

·         Know your resources.  Is there a business person who owes you a favor or has a service that you do not offer?  Point your client in that direction.  That client may actually come back to you for a service that you DO offer.

·         Finally, if you make a mistake, own up to it.  Correct it by making it right.  Offer to fix it, or if you cannot, offer some sort of compensation (example; a discount, an extra product, refund).

I am sure that to these two people I talked about in this post, what they had to offer me was a drop in the bucket to them, but to me, it was a delay at the start of or continuation of my business.  I could have given them a note of thanks for helping me with my situations, and without them, my business would not have gotten started the way that it should.  Now, if they ever ask me to review their services, I may not give them a fair feedback.  So if you are looking for some sort of feedback on your products and services, do all you can to win over that customer or of it is personal, keep a friend.