BY STEVEN WINOKUR – www.TPStrategies.com

I recently had an experience at Staples that prompted me to write to their customer service department regarding their Rewards program. I went to their website and filled out the online form. I received two different responses back:

Thanks for contacting us! We appreciate that you’ve taken time out of your busy schedule to let us know how we’re doing. We will be happy to respond to your inquiries. Please allow up to 7 business days. Thank you for your patience and as always, thanks for shopping Staples.

AND

Thank you for contacting Staples Rewards.We are currently experiencing high contact volume; please expect a delay in our response.Don’t forget to view our Frequently Asked Questions at http://www.StaplesRewards.com .

First off, why two emails? Second, they’re telling me I expect to wait up to 7 business days for a response! Excuse me! 7 business days! What, do they have one part-time person responding to customer inquiries?  I always chuckle when a company says they are experience high contact volume. Either something bad happened and they’re getting a lot of complaints or they’re understaffed. I can’t think of a good reason to warrant a 7 day response time.

And remember their brand - EASY. Filling out the form certainly was. I guess their brand doesn’t make it all the way to customer service.

So, my issue - I joined their rewards program and received a certificate for my quarterly rewards. What I found out in the store (and to be fair, it is on the back of the certificate), if you don’t use the entire total and the remaining amount is under $1.00, you lose that amount. Now, just stating the policy doesn’t make the policy sound. I questioned the store manager why I would lose that amount and his response basically restated the party line - “That’s our policy.” Apparently EASY doesn’t apply to understanding their rewards program either.

Since I think that’s a ridiculous policy, I asked about it on the website. I even told them that I was going to go back to Office Depot because their rewards program made more sense. After only 4 days, I got this response:

We do apologize that you are not finding our Rewards program beneficial. Your comments and concerns have been forwarded to management for a review of the current policies for the Staples Rewards program.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and we appreciate your feedback. 

Once again, no real help here. Someone obviously cut and paste from the standard response document and didn’t come close to answering my inquiry.

There are many lessons to be learned here:

1) Don’t take days to respond - all inquiries should be answered within 24 hours, one business day. If it requires research or more time to figure out how an answer, respond and let the customer know. In today’s fast paced world, 4-7 days is past ridiculous.

2) When you build your brand, that quality must resonate within every thing you do. Shopping at Staples may be EASY, but getting an answer from customer service and their rewards program is most certainly not.

3) When someone takes the time to contact you and give you feedback, make sure you respond to them with a solution. Often, the best feedback you can get is negative - that allows you to fix the problem and rebuild the relationship. In this case, I told them I was going to shop at Office Depot. That obviously was of no concern to them because not only did they not answer my question, they did absolutely nothing to try to keep the relationship with me, a paying customer.

Close this WindowBookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

DotNetKicks Digg diigo dropjack.com dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl

Google Hugg Jeqq Kaboodle linkaGoGo LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb Netvouz

Newsvine PlugIM popcurrent Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy sk*rt Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl.net Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Webride Windows Live Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »