The quickest way to lose me as a customer is to respond to my customer service request with canned information that doesn’t actually address my problem.

I’d been avoiding Amazon.com for the last six months because I just couldn’t get any satisfaction from their “customer service” reps over an issue I was having with their order notification emails.  I’m pretty prickly about how people contact me.  If you aren’t agressive about making sure that companies adhere to your wishes (and their own rules), they’ll quickly fill up your inbox with stuff they think you might be interested in.  Anyhow, this case wasn’t about that but rather about my dislike for HTML emails.  They slow down my email program while waiting for images to load and they often contain lots of flashy crap that I have to work around to get to the real information.  I’ve always had my email preferences on Amazon.com set to “text only” for email.  On several occasions I received HTML-based order confirmations, despite the settings.  Each time I’d contact them to tell them there was something wrong with the system.  The first several times I just got back a canned response that I could go into my preferences and change the setting.  A couple of times they told me they’d gone in and changed it to “text only” for me or that they’d confirmed the setting, despite the fact that I’d told them explictly each time that I’d already confirmed this setting and that this was an intermittent problem.  Eventually I just gave up on them and quit using Amazon.com altogether when I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer that at least implied they took the problem seriously.  In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a big issue.  Although part of me was wondering if they can’t be trusted to handle something as simple as an HTML-email flag in their database, why should I let them store my credit card info?

I only went back to Amazon.com on Monday because I was given a gift certificate from them for my birthday.  At checkout time I encountered a problem with the size of the entry fields in Firefox.  For some reason they were so short that I couldn’t see the text that I was entering.  I checked with Internet Explorer and didn’t see the problem.  Despite the problems I was able to complete the order in Firefox.  I sent them a feedback letting them know about the problem.  Unfortunately, their customer disservice department hasn’t improved much in the last six months.  Instead of really acknowledging the problem all I got back was an obviously canned response about how I should clear my browser cache and reload the page.  I responded back that the answer was not helpful and all I really expected was an acknowledgment that the issue had been forwarded to development/support.  Their response to this was an apology and a note that they were sending it for further investigation.  While I give them credit for at least acknowledging the problem, I’m not sanguine that they actually sent it for investigation.  I suspect the responder just said this to make me go away.

But it isn’t just Amazon.com that has sucky support.  Atkins.com is in danger of losing my business because they gave my email address to a third-party for some kind of survey.  I contacted them about the problem, but all I got was what appeared to be a canned response that didn’t even get my name right (“Dear Aubrey Aubrey”).

Thank you for your inquiry.

We use your personal information to fulfill any orders made on the Web site.  We occasionally make our customer list available to a few reputable, carefully screened companies whose products you may find of interest.  However, if you do not want your personal information shared with companies other than Atkins, please check the box that says,” If you do not want your name and contact information shared with Atkins Nutritionals business partners, please check here” when you register and when you purchase products on the Web site.  For more information about this topic, please see our privacy policy.

People who know me (or have been reading this site for a while) will understand why this answer is unsatisfactory.  I explictly stated that I didn’t give permission to be contacted in this manner.  Further, I make it a habit to carefully scan all registration and order forms to make sure I’ve correctly “opted-out” of whatever SPAM they’re trying to get you to take by default.  I know for a fact that I selected the “don’t bug” me checkbox when registering.  I’ve sent back a response telling them this, so we’ll see if it gets anywhere.  But I’m not hopeful that they’ll actually forward the request to anyone who can actually investigate the problem or fix it. 

Given the usual pressure on support staff to answer as many calls/problems as quickly as possible, I can see how they don’t really take time to understand (or even read past the first sentence).  This just highlights how most companies don’t understand the actual costs of their support centers.  They all see the bottom line cost of the expense of hiring support staff, but they don’t understand the cost in terms of lost revenue from pissed off customers.  It doesn’t even require that they completely fix every problem.  Sometimes just acknowledging that a problem exists or simply showing that the rep understands the problem may be sufficient.

Failure to understand this is costing them business.  In the case of Amazon.com I used to use them as my go-to site for any kind of product I was searching for.  Now I tend to try to find it in a local store or search on Google for a different source.  I can’t say for sure how much I’ve spent in other places that would have gone to Amazon.com, since I’ve bought some of the items locally.  However, I was able to determine that they’ve lost $228 to Barnes & Noble for books and CDs and another $109 to DVD Empire for DVDs and CDs.  Another way to look at it is that I spent a little over $3700 with them in 2003.  Although 2003 was a bit of an anomaly since I bought extra items for the house.  Regardless, they’ve lost their opportunity to get a share of those purchases this year.

Atkins stands to lose $240 every six months in supplement sales if they can’t give me a satisfactory answer concerning their failure to adhere to my expressed preferences.  There are a few places around the area that sell the Atkins supplements.  It was more convenient to order them on the website in six-month quantities, but I can get them locally with only a bit more effort.