What Customers Really Want

What Customers Really Want

During the week I spent in Korea, the publishers of my book loved my tie which had the book in Korean printed on it. They also loved my million dollar business cards and before I left, they asked me if I could mail them 500 cards so that they could continue using them in their promotions.

I went by my office in Miami, on my way from a trip to Panama, and grabbed the cards, the tie and a couple of T-shirts with the book printed on them and headed to the central Post Office in N.W. 72nd Avenue and 24th Street.

I filled out the form they told me to fill out and mailed the package. A few days later, the package was returned to my office, with no explanation whatsoever. I returned to the Post Office with the box and asked them what had happened.

The clerk called the supervisor who instructed him to mail the package again because they didn’t know what had happened. He weighted the package and realized that I had been charged $97.00 instead of $77.00. That made me very happy because they were returning $20.00. That mitigated the anger about my package not being delivered.

However, guess what happened next?

The package was returned for the second time in a row. I go back to the post office with the package and I went to the clerk that had taken care of me. Since he didn’t know what had happened, he called the supervisor, a lady named Shirley. She looked at the paperwork and said that I needed to fill out a different form. I told her that I had been in the post office twice already and that I filled out the form they had given me in the first place. In other words, the package had been returned because her employee had made a mistake, his mistake, not mine.

Don’t you think she should have apologized? Shouldn’t she have shown some empathy with my problem? Here I was, three weeks later and my package still hadn’t been delivered in Korea.

She continued to accuse me of not filling out the right form. I said to her that her employees were the ones that had filled the form, not me. I told her that apparently, she had a training problem because her employees didn’t know what to do. She was as cold as a fish, showing absolutely no sympathy for what I was going through.

She instructed a clerk named Herb, an older fellow, to fill out the paper work. As he was filling out the paper work I commented that his boss should have at least apologized for what had happened to me. I made a couple of comments about their service being so poor and the guy didn’t even acknowledge what I was saying to him. He totally ignored me. Literally, he didn’t look at me or talk to me.

I asked for a refund and I told him that I was taking the package to UPS or Federal Express because I didn’t think the US Post office had the expertise to take a package to Korea. He didn’t try to save the order nor did he show any empathy.

He ignores my comment and hands me a $77.00 money order. I tell him to give me cash, not a money order and he tells me that he doesn’t have enough cash in his register, to stand in line again and wait for another clerk. In other words, he doesn’t even have the decency to find another clerk who has enough cash in his cash register to give me the refund. It is not my fault that he doesn’t have the cash in his drawer. He is the one that has to go to look for the cash to give it to me. I am the client, for goodness sake!

Finally, I go to another clerk and he gives me my money back. I went from there to UPS, a few blocks away, and mailed my package to Korea. It was $3.00 more expensive than the US Post Office but I am sure it will get there.

People in line that were watching what was happening, told me that the service in US Post Offices is very bad. They said that since they were government employees and very difficult to fire, they simply didn’t care about giving good service, because they would get paid anyway. It is obvious that if employees feel so secure that they know that no matter what they do or what service they provide, nothing will happen to them, the customer is the one that has to put up with lousy service.

In a private company, this doesn’t happen. Employees in private companies that don’t do their jobs get reprimanded, and if the bad behavior doesn’t improve, out the door they go. In private, profit oriented companies, the customer is king because they know that if good service is not given, the customer will cross the street and go to a competitor.

The goal of every organization, including the Post Office, should be to provide customers what they really want so as to increase the level of customer loyalty.

The US Post office just released their figures and they are losing millions of dollars. Their solution to this problem is to raise postage stamps rates. They don’t realize that the reason they are losing millions, is because their service sucks.

The post office probably will blame consumers for not being loyal, but the problem is that they don’t give consumers any reason to be loyal.

Right here in Puerto Rico, who can point to a government office and say that they give very good service? The majority of people that you ask will tell you that the service they get from government employees is very bad. People go to a government agency and it seems as if the employee is doing the customer a favor by simply taking care of him. It is the other way around; it is the customer who is doing the employee a favor by using the service.

This picture must change. Taxpayers deserve to be treated well by government employees because they are the customers that pay their salaries.

Not only do we have too many employees in government, most do not care about the consumer and what kind of service they get.

I must clarify that not all government employees give bad service. There are very good government employees, but they are clearly in the minority.

Don’t believe me. Ask around. You will be shocked with some of the horror service stories out there.