Grace under pressure

If you’ve ever worked for a living, you’ve been in the customer service business. Yes, you have. You don’t have to be the owner of a business and you don’t have to be at the customer service counter or at any counter, for that matter. Customer service is what makes or breaks a lot of businesses. If service is bad you can bet your extended warranty everyone within shopping distance will hear about it.

Recently, I had to deal with a huge technology based corporation and the promise their customer service person made was, “We’ll have your Mac back to you in two days.” I didn’t make up the “two days” thing, two other people heard the assurance. So, two days passed. Being an optimistic kinda gal, I headed in to retrieve my Mac only to hear, “Two days! We only just sent your Mac out this morning. We’ll give you a call in two days to let you know when it’ll be ready.” I’m okay with that. A bit ticked about the original “two days” but quite accepting of the next two days. And so, two days and a weekend pass without a call.

Although a bit irritated, I compose myself and call about my precious Mac. As if I’d never darkened the doorway of their service department, I am told it isn’t ready and someone will call back later that day to let me know when it will be ready. The call never comes. I call again and the very same person tells me it usually takes at least 10 days from the time the Apple wizards-of-repair receive an item until they actually repair it and send it back. Seriously!

How did we go from two days to two more days to 10 more days? And then it happened. My brain went into i-maginitive overtime. “They must have lost my Mac. Ya, that’s the ticket. They’ve lost it and they’re waiting to tell me there isn’t a Mac out there in repair land with my name on it.”

Eventually, with an i-knot in my gut, I call again, this time firmly asking the store manager how the Mac repair work process rolls out and why no one calls when they say they will. The manager apologizes for the callbacks that haven’t happened and sweetly explains how it all “rolls out” and assures me someone will call in 48 hours. Forty-eight hours plus the two plus two plus 10 days later, my repaired Mac is in my hands and the sullen, likely chastised, customer service fellow is probably hoping I never darken that doorway again—for any reason.

Truthfully, I want to tell him I didn’t want to go over his head, but his version of customer service just wasn’t working for me. All I really needed was a bit of assurance by way of the much-promised callbacks. I actually felt guilty for “not making his day.” I “poked the bear” by asking for good customer service. I left, hoping I’d never have to go back again—for any reason.

At that point I needed a coffee and would have given just about anything to have a better customer service experience to make the world right. We headed over to a bookstore/cafe to pick out books for our grandchildren. The coffee was just right and it was served with a smile and the children’s book department was staffed by a well-read, delightful woman named Grace. Grace asked us if we needed assistance. If you know us, and many of you do, you know books are a very big part of our lives.

Lovely, tactile books. Picture books. Novels. Biographies. Autobiographies. DIYs. Mysteries. Science fiction. Dictionaries. Atlases. We love them all. We seem to have passed our love of books along to our children and the love of books trickled down to their children. And there we were. In the children’s section of a large bookstore, trying to remember how old each of the grandchildren are. Who likes chapter books? Who likes Fancy Nancy? Who likes optical illusions and who likes science? Did one of the boys like DK books? Is there a child who likes word puzzle books?

Bookstore Grace recognized the faces of grandparents who are in over their heads. She assured us she had read almost all of the books on those shelves. Bookstore Grace loved and understood lovers of books; not only that, Grace understood children who loved books. Grace had a book in mind for every kind of reader.

For the next 20 minutes, LOML and I were the only people who had ever looked for books for their grandchildren in that department. We were given to believe we were Bookstore Grace’s only customers, ever. Maybe it was the lack of love from the i-service folks. Maybe it was the coffee. Maybe it was being surrounded by thousands of beautiful books

We both knew it was a person who listened to her customers and wasn’t a stranger to giving more than a customer expects. Bookstore Grace made it all better than great. We spent a fairy tale king’s ransom on armloads of books for our beautiful grandchildren. Am I looking forward to going back to that store again? You bet. Bookstore Grace, you have restored our faith in customer service

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca