Biz Quirk #1- Customer Disservice

Now for a running blog segment entitled Biz Quirks. Quirks are commonplace when doing business anywhere but some seem more prevalent here. In fact when it comes to Customer Disservice, defined as the practice of not only failing to give good respectable service to your customers but going the extra mile to ensure that they have a bitter taste in their mouth, I don't know who is to blame when its a foreign company providing it so diligently. Its quite odd because the company has made a name for itself by providing high quality products and services but then its all lost when they turn it over to their companie's China division or pass their product on to another 3rd party. One particular bitter example was our recent dealings with a division of the Anchor company. Anchor makes great butter and cheese but also excels in their level of customer disservice. We recently made an order for unsalted butter and cheddar cheese blocks. We chose to order in bulk to cut costs. When our order arrived there were a few things wrong. 1) The butter was salted instead of unsalted. 2) the butter was melted because the wrong shipping company was chosen 3) the cheese was processed slices and not real cheddar cheese blocks and 4) no invoice was provided although specifically requested. All in all not the end of the world but needless to say none of it was usable for what we needed it for. When we contacted the company they admitted their mistakes but informed us we could only choose one of their mistakes to have rectified. We took our beef to upper-management and they were embarrassed at what happened and promised to have it fixed immediately. Unfortunately, they flipped flopped the next day when they told us all butter has salt in it so it doesn't matter which kind we ordered and paid for and that we should use the processed cheese slices to make sandwiches. Of course if I had wanted to do either of those things then I would have made my order to reflect those desires, but we don't make sandwiches and don't see our use of processed cheese slices in the near or distant future to make soup and pizzas. We are still waiting for a resolution but it baffles me that a company would go the extra mile and pull out all the stops to push us to the verge of never using their products again instead of taking the easier path of righting their wrongs.

I have seen some companies go the opposite way with their service and it wows me all the more. Our coffee bean supplier routinely sends us free samples of beans to sample, knowing that if they show us some love we are more likely to pass the love back.