I almost put this in the Pit. (B2B customer service rant.)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Finally I figured, eh, no swears = no Pit. But I was mightily pissed. :mad: :smiley:

Yesterday, I a lengthy email terminating my company’s relationship with a longtime supplier of widgets. Their service had been going downhill steadily for several years, and the final straw came today when the Big Boss Herself gave a perfunctory apology and truly insulting offer of partial restitution for a major screw-up.

I tried to stick to the facts, editorialized as little as possible, and never once got personal, but nonetheless the final email is brutal. I actually feel sorry for the employees at the other company. As in, I worry they’ll just fire people instead of doing what they should do; i.e. change processes.

On the other hand, I feel soooooo much better having gotten that out. I’ll never be a best-selling novelist (or an any-selling novelist unless I get my ass in gear), but damned if I’m not the Neal Stephenson of white-collar email evisceration.

Email chain follows, with personal names, company names, and product names changed to protect the guilty. By way of background, my company (MyCo) has been ordering widgets from this provider (YourCo) for close to fifteen years. I doubt we’re their biggest account, but we’re a major one. Widgets are something we go through a lot of each week, it completely sucks if we run out, but we lack the storage space to order, say, a year’s supply in advance. We ordered them on about a quarterly basis, and that worked fine as long as nobody dropped the ball. Only they did.

Of course, now that I reread it, I worry that it wasn’t as brutal as I originally thought. Ah, the self-doubt of the novice author…

Laura,

I received your voice mail as well as this email. Thank you for reaching out to me so promptly. I am CCing my head boss person on this reply. We’ve actually been thinking for a while now about coming up with a new widget idea, since we’ve been using YourCo widgets almost since the day we opened. The lapse in widget inventory caused by this recent error simply forces us to work on it now rather than later.

I appreciate your apology for the problem with our most recent order, but as I noted in my last email to Andrew, this is only the most recent example of the issues we’ve had in the last couple of years. Please don’t interpret any of the remainder of this email as me trying to tell you how to run your business; I’m simply going to detail these for you in case the information turns out to be useful.

In November of 2013, I had the problem detailed in the email exchange partially quoted below:

Amy also offered to refund our delivery charge for that order. I declined the refund, since I was primarily interested in seeing the problem solved, and it appeared to have been. However, if it had been one of my employees apologizing for not providing a service for which a customer had paid, that employee would have been instructed to refund the charge without even asking the customer.

Our very next order, in spring of last year, had a different delivery problem. That time, the delivery man or men asked for me at the front desk, but I was out of the building at the time. If they had then said who they were and what they needed, any one of the half-dozen other people with the key to the storage closet could have let them in, which happens all the time. However, they did not; they unloaded the boxes into our parking garage and simply stacked them next to our mailbox, impeding access to the mail as well as to one of our handicapped parking spots. I got back to the building a couple of hours later to find an unexplained, unattended stack of widget boxes. Unfortunately, I only left an irate voice mail that time, rather than an email, and our phone system doesn’t archive recordings that far back, so I have nothing to quote.

After that order, things went relatively quietly and smoothly until this most recent order. There’s no point in rehashing the actual problem with the order, but allow me to give you a general timeline of my interactions with your company in the last few days. Knowing that widget orders typically take 3-4 weeks to arrive, I try to order when I have about 5 weeks’ worth of stock left, just to be safe. Last Friday morning, employees let me know that we were almost out of widgets, at which point I checked and saw that it had been nearly six weeks since I’d ordered. That led to the following phone contacts. Please let me know if you want the recordings of any of these calls.

Friday 8:40AM – I called, stated who I was and that I wanted to check on the status of my 9/28 order. I was told that Andrew was helping another customer. I was then transferred to Andrew’s voice mail, where I left a message requesting a status update on my order.
Friday 4:38PM – Not having received a call back from anyone at YourCo, I called you again and got the after-hours menu. I left another voice mail, this time in the general box, since I don’t know anyone’s extension there.
Monday 3:00PM – Still not having heard back from anyone at YourCo, I called again, asking for a status update on my order. The woman who answered said, and I quote, “OK, he is not here today, he did not show up. Can I send you to his voice mail and he’ll call you in the morning?” I declined, pointing out that I’d left two unanswered voice mails on Friday. She then offered to send me to his boss’ voice mail. I declined, asking her simply to take down my name and number and have the boss call me.
Tuesday 9:00AM – Two full business days, ninety-six hours after my first call, Andrew called me back. He stated that he saw no order from me in your system from that time. At that point, knowing your usual turnaround time, I felt sick immediately, knowing we were going to be out of widgets for at least a couple of weeks. There was no real apology: Andrew blamed the lost order on a transition that was happening at the time between a former employee and himself. He neither blamed the other employee nor took the blame himself. He gave me an estimated delivery date of late November/early December, and we ended the call.

At that point I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t my mistake, and that I had in fact placed that order on 9/28, so I went back in my phone system to check my call. It was then that I realized that not only had I placed the order, I had placed it with Andrew himself – in fact I had spoken directly to him, not even left a voice mail. That led to the first email in the lengthy exchange you are now reading, and to his credit, Andrew did promptly apologize once I brought the mistake to his attention.

The lack of satisfactory communication from your company surrounding this incident underscores the ongoing communication problems I’ve experienced in the five years I have been ordering from YourCo on behalf of MyCo. Every time I call to order widgets, the phone is answered the same way: “YourCo.” No “Thank you for calling,” no “How may I help you,” usually not even the name of the person I’m speaking to: just “YourCo,” often said so fast that I’m not even sure I called the right place. I’ve never encountered another business that answers customer phone calls like yours. When I state that I need to place an order, I am immediately dumped to a voice mail box. (Ironically, the time I ordered from Andrew in September was one of the very few times I’ve ordered from a live person.) I leave a voice mail, requesting a call back confirming the order was placed. My success rate at getting that call back is about 50%. I then wait for my widgets, and if my supply starts to get low, I get nervous and call for an update, just as I did Friday, leading us to where we are now. I always felt as if I was in the dark with my widget orders. Every other supplier I have – hornswogglers, snozzwangers, whangdoodles – is in constant communication. They send me tracking numbers. They give me delivery dates, even if it’s just “my guy will be there tomorrow morning.” Some of them even remind me when it’s close to my usual time to order. YourCo never did. The widgets just arrived when they arrived, however they happened to arrive.

Here are some questions I have. I don’t even want you to answer them to me; they’re just food for thought.

  • What caused me to have to wait two full business days, and three unanswered calls, to hear back from your company?
  • If Andrew is out, does no one check his voice mail box?
  • Did no one check the general box on Monday?
  • When I clearly expressed to the woman on Monday my worry about my order, my frustration with my unanswered voice mails, and my disinclination to leave another voice mail, how did the promised “boss” not call me back that same day?
  • If your company was able to expedite my order, willing to offer me a discount, and willing to waive my shipping fee, why did Andrew not do so the instant he realized how badly my order had been mishandled?

As you think of the answer to that last one, please understand this: if he had done so proactively on our first call this morning, with anything resembling an actual apology, you would still have our business. As it is, even the modest discount you offered only came once I stated our intent to stop ordering from you. In fact, I may be wrong, but it appears that it was only then that this situation even came to your attention. If that is the case, how often are your other customers receiving this same level of service without you hearing about it?

At any rate, thank you for supplying us with widgets over the years. If we need a one-off batch for any kind of special need in the future, I will contact you for a quote. I hope some of the rest of my long email ends up being informative or helpful to you.

Sincerely,
OneCentStamp
Director of Acerbic Emails
MyCo

From: Laura Miller [mailto:laura@YourCo.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 3:04 PM
To: OneCentStamp <ocs@myco.com>
Cc: Amy Smith <Amy@YourCo.net>; Andrew Jones <Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net>
Subject: RE: MyCo widget order

OneCentStamp,

I am disappointed to hear we have not met your expectations with your most recent order, please accept my apologies.

We can have the widgets into our warehouse by Monday November 16th and will expedite the order to delivery by Friday the 20th.

If there is an opportunity to keep your business I am prepared to offer a discount on this order of 25% and waive the $XXX delivery fee.

Your business is valuable to us and again accept my apologies.

I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Laura Miller
Director of Operations
YourCo

From: Amy Smith
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 2:27 PM
To: Laura Miller <laura@YourCo.net<mailto:laura@YourCo.net>>
Cc: Amy Smith <Amy@YourCo.net<mailto:Amy@YourCo.net>>
Subject: FW: MyCo widget order

Laura,

I doubt anything can be done now, it’s just an FYI, and I’m not trying to get Andrew in trouble.

Amy

From: OneCentStamp [mailto: ocs@myco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:43 PM
To: Andrew Jones <Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net<mailto:Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net>>; Amy Smith <Amy@YourCo.net<mailto:Amy@YourCo.net>>
Subject: RE: MyCo widget order

Andrew,

Actually, please stop and cancel our order. I apologize for the abrupt change in plans, and please don’t think it’s all on you. While you were directly involved only with this most recent episode, there have been several lapses in delivery fulfillment and customer service from YourCo since we relocated to our new facility in 2013. After an internal discussion, we decided that if we’re already having to come up with a contingency plan for at least the next few weeks, that’s enough time for us to come up with a long-term alternative and a new widget for our customers.

I’ve CCed my administrator on this message as well as Amy Smith, simply because Amy has always been my point of contact at YourCo for issues in the past. If there’s anyone else at YourCo who should see this email, please feel free to forward it. Thanks again for your quick and sincere apology and explanation of the September problem. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
OneCentStamp
Director of Actually, Bag This
MyCo

From: Andrew Jones [mailto:Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:08 AM
To: OneCentStamp <ocs@myco.com<mailto: ocs@myco.com>>
Subject: RE: MyCo widget order

Thank you OneCentStamp,
Again I apologize for any inconvenience that I may have caused. Email works out great for me and I will stay in contact with you to let you know when the stock arrives from our supplier. If there is anything else that I can do please let me know.

From: OneCentStamp [mailto: ocs@myco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:04 AM
To: Andrew Jones <Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net<mailto:Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net>>
Subject: RE: MyCo widget order

Andrew,

Thank you for the apology and explanation. Mistakes happen. Please keep me well informed of the status of this order; when the stock arrives from your supplier, please let me know that it has arrived, and what my delivery date will be. I’m now going to have to come up with an alternate widget for our customers for the next month, and I don’t want to buy or assemble any more of them than I absolutely have to.

So that this doesn’t happen again, I am going to place any future orders with you through email, so that you can confirm via email and give me an estimated delivery date.

Sincerely,
OneCentStamp
Director of Are You Freaking Kidding Me
MyCo

From: Andrew Jones [mailto:Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 9:47 AM
To: OneCentStamp <ocs@myco.com<mailto: ocs@myco.com>>
Subject: RE: MyCo widget order

Hello OneCentStamp,

I want to apologize first and for most and hopefully you can be understanding as well. That was the beginning week of when I started that position and really am not sure if I had written up the order under another name or how it didn’t get processed all the way through. I don’t want to make any excuses other than I have put in another order for those 720 widgets. As soon as they come in from the manufacture I will put your order on the top of my list. I hope we can keep doing business with you in the future and this will not happen again.
Thanks,

Andrew Jones

From: OneCentStamp [mailto: ocs@myco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 9:24 AM
To: Andrew Jones <Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net<mailto:Andrew.Jones@YourCo.net>>
Subject: MyCo widget order

Dear Androooowe (please forgive me if that’s misspelled; I should have checked with you),

After our first conversation this morning, I looked back and did some research in my phone system. Please find attached to this email the recording of you and me talking on September 28, in which I ordered 720 widgets from you and you verbally confirmed the order. I would be curious to know what happened to that order, but more importantly I would like to know what your plan is for getting me those widgets sooner than your quoted “end of November/beginning of December.”

We’ve ordered widgets from you for well over a decade, which is why I’m giving you an opportunity to make this right and retain our business. Thanks in advance for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to hearing from you either by phone or email. Please let me know if you have any trouble opening the recording.

Sincerely,
OneCentStamp
Director of OMG I Can’t Believe You Lied About This
MyCo

2

If a company is ordering supplies in quantities so large they come paletted and they don’t have a loading dock, they should fully expect to be responsible for getting those supplies off the truck and into their facility.

As someone who has been on the other end, nothing slows down a delivery schedule worse than a facility not properly equipped to receive what they ordered.

3

But the correspondence here suggests that both sides were well aware of the need for the widget-deliverer to accommodate this, and that historically, they had been doing so. I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to interpret the time they didn’t as anything other than a mistake. If it was a problem for the widget company, they should have communicated as much in advance.

4

Common problem for companies with a sole-sourced supplier.

5

Has the OP contacted World Wide Widgets for a quote? I hear they have a young executive named J. Pierrepont Finch who’s really on the ball.

6

The order was exactly the same for nearly fifteen years: 20 boxes, each of roughly the same size, shape, and weight as a box of printer paper. Palleting them was for their convenience, not mine, and was not consistent at any rate. Sometimes they came on a pallet in a flatbed truck, other times they came hand-stacked in a smaller box truck. Either way, the procedure was the same: load them onto hand trucks and bring them into the building. Two hand trucks, two loads each.

It never occurred to us to try and install a loading dock in our relatively small medical office; other vendors routinely bring larger orders to us, using a pallet jack or hand truck to pull the supplies directly into the storage room. But if this particular vendor ever found it unreasonable that we didn’t have a loading dock, or that we didn’t do our own load-in, the way to let us know was not simply to show up without carts one day after 12 years of doing it the same way (and charging us the same healthy delivery fee).

7

It strikes me that you’re pretty leasurely in ordering the widgets that your business depends on. You (apparently) were a week beyond your known point of critcality (and not aware of that) before ordering and then waited from leaving a message Friday morning until THEY CALLED BACK (!!?) on Tuesday to learn the status of your order.

Good luck with your next vendor.

8

My apologies for veering this thread off course, I will drop this point.

However, the initial rant was a company not being able to take your orders and deliver you product, so you dumped them. Hopefully you don’t need to go back to them after finding their competition sucks worse than they do.

9

I won’t deny that I was remiss in not checking on the order until nearly six weeks after I’d placed it. I was lulled into complacency by years of “well, they rarely call me back, but at least the widgets do always show up on time.” A 1-2 week cushion had always been enough…until it wasn’t.

If I had called and checked exactly at the four week mark, and found out the extent of their failure then, I might only have been out of widgets for a few days or a week, rather than two or three weeks, and I’d still probably be their customer. As it is, the crisis was a boon in disguise, as it spurred us to overdue action. (Widgets Version 2.0 are already here and in use. The substantially shorter lead time will be nice as well.)

As for the Friday–>Tuesday wait, considering I left them two messages Friday and one Monday, I’m not sure what more I could have done short of go pound on their warehouse door, or sit on hold for a manager who clearly didn’t want to talk to the guy whose ball they had dropped.

I know that it’s our way here at the SDMB to be contrarian and play Devil’s Advocate with the OP, especially of Pit and Pit-lite rants, and I’m totally down with it. But in a customer-provider relationship, the one who wants the other’s money is the one who should be proactive, accommodating, and eager to provide satisfaction. Ultimately, their failure was a colossal breakdown at every level of follow-through, communication, and basic customer service, while my failure was that I didn’t pester them hard enough to do their freaking job. I’m willing to accept my 0.05% share of the blame for this fiasco and chalk it up to a lesson learned. :slight_smile:

10

I am curious how much roughly in terms of dollars purchased how much did this terminated business cost them annually in lost sales. 5 figures? 6 figures?

11

"At any rate, thank you for supplying us with widgets over the years. If we need a one-off batch for any kind of special need in the future, I will contact you for a quote. "

Yep, you really ripped them a new one there! I was expecting real vitriol – a letter dumping them with helpful information as to how they could do better is a letdown. :slight_smile:

12

It’s interesting you mention this. :slight_smile:

As I was writing that email, I felt almost overwhelmed at how brutal and mean it was. Then, when I posted the edited version you see above to Facebook (about 18 hours before I started this thread), the consensus among my friends seemed to be, “Well, it was blunt, detailed, and well-reasoned, but not especially mean.”

At that point it kind of hit me: it’s that damned empathy gene. My brain is always super eager to jump into the other person’s shoes (I have a really hard time watching awkward stuff like The Office, and literally cannot sit through ambush comedy like Borat or Bruno), and my job already involves apologizing to my customers from time to time - rarely for my own mistake; most often for the mistake of another employee or a fault in my company’s processes. Because of that, I think I kept thinking of how crushed I would be to receive the email I was writing, or worse yet, how mortified I would be to have my boss receive it - a lengthy history of fuckups that had only now made its way up the ladder.

So yeah, I’m really glad at this point I didn’t put this thread in the Pit. :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Low-to-mid five figures annually. Mid-six figures over the life of our relationship. Sounds smallish, but that particular shop has like ten employees, and my company’s contract alone would cover more than one of their salaries. YourCo specializes in fairly high volume, low cost widgets.

14

Thats not vitriolic.

Vitriolic is when you receive a fax, write FUCK OFF on it in thick marker pen and fax it right back.

15

Out of curiosity, it has been – what, three days now? Did you get any response?

16

Laura’s probably still reading it…

17

No response. Probably none forthcoming at this point. I mean, look at the internal email which they (probably accidentally and definitely unprofessionally) forwarded to me: I doubt anything can be done now, it’s just an FYI, and I’m not trying to get Andrew in trouble. Apparently not getting Andrew in trouble is high priority there.

18

Which, come on guys, separate email for internal discussions! If a client’s email is relevant, C and P the text or include the email itself as an attachment! Bushleague.

I woulda said, “Cancel our order, please. We have found a more reliable widget distributor. Thank you.” so I guess we know which of us is the nicer person.