Customer Service is part of your overall Brand Experience

Several times in the past few years I’ve had rocky online purchase experiences. The wrong item was sent, or an item was faulty or I requested something particular in a special type box the seller offered at the time of purchase only for it to be completely ignored.

Now, I’m not one to complain. I pick my battles. If its not a big deal, I generally feel I can move on with my life not being altered in any way. However, on several occasions, I have contacted companies, not looking for refunds or credit, but to explain the user and purchaser experience was below par and offered my suggestions to make it batter only to be shot down with gruff replies and a serious lack of professional manners. On one occasion, when I asked for a change to my order, I was ignored. This is not good. I’m not trying to put them out of business but in order to improve customer experience, after sales service and communication is still part of the overall brand experience.

On one occasion it was a straight forward faulty piece of equipment. I wrote a note trying not to upset but just saying there was a mechanism not working great. At first I was told this was incorrect, there was nothing they could do and I was basically told to put up with it or shut up. At the very end of very tense back and forth emails, I was told to send the product back to them, at my cost, which was more expensive than the actual product should I actually buy it again. There was nothing they were doing that was going against my legal rights but the response was less than helpful. This was the response from a very big garments and merchandise brand. This company sells product all over the internet and has a massive online following so I was very surprised at the reaction I got. I walked away and decided not to send the product back. I still have it. It’s still faulty. But my feeing about this company has changed. I will never use them again. I will never recommend them and the whole experience will never sit well with me.

Another time, I worked with a website developer to build my first website. This was done using their own software which I had to learn to navigate around. I had lots of issues trying to keep it up to date, which as a designer with new projects all the time, was necessary. Shockingly, I was given NO HELP! None. Emails were ignored. Phone calls not returned. Absolutely zero help and they were quite horrible about it. Once they were paid, they left me high and dry. I was so incensed, I contacted a new developer who helped me develop this site, using Wordspress. I had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.

All these stories are not proper customer service. This is buck passing and denial and guarding closely their profit margins. You won’t get that at designerg.ie. I fight hard for my clients. I know I cannot please everyone but I will do my best to ensure your experience with me was worth it. I will ensure that if you have been given a logo and you need it in another format, that you get that and I don’t charge for those after sales helps. It’s called being helpful. If you want to be corporate about it, it’s about maintaining a client experience to the very end. Every time a customer or client speaks with me, I know I am engaging my brand and my brand experience. You have to remember that. Its free to be nice and its free to be helpful. There is nothing to gain from being so protective that you’ll lose a client. I certainly won’t be going back to those places to order again and that is their loss.