I was sitting at my desk earlier today having a high falutin’ conversation with our wa… I mean bankers, when I had to abruptly cut the conversation short, promise to call them back, and then sit in wonder with my mouth wide open.
Our store manager was at the desk opposite me engaged in an animated conversation with a customer, and having caught a snippet, I was compelled to listen in.
This particular customer had called from Sydney. We don’t have a store in Sydney…yet. The customer had bought a car mag from a retail outlet (in Sydney) and then subscribed to that magazine by filling out the little subscription insert (damn evil things that fall out of magazines and make a mess of my shelves).
Having not yet received his magazine, he calls us (in Melbourne) and berates us for it. Natural thing to do right?
Mother of God man… what is wrong with you? When our store manager in his most polite voice asked him… “but where in all of this does mag nation come into it?”, I just had to listen to more.
The frustrating thing for me was to see how 30 mins (no kidding) of my store manager’s time was taken up explaining to this gentleman that just because we might come up first in a google search for a subscription to that magazine title does NOT mean that we are responsible for fulfilling it. Especially when he admittedly bought the subscription via the evil insert.
I love customers. No, I really do 
Our stores would be pretty lonely places without you. But for the 1% of you out there, do you really need to bust our balls for things that could and should put you in the loony bin? With around 5,000 customer interactions a day across our stores… well, lets just say welcome to our world of customer fun and games.
I’m feeling quite stressed out at the sheer stupidity of some fellow humans after reading that post. That sort of customer mentality would drive me to an early grave. Not sure if I could have stayed talking to someone like that for 30 minutes.