Service With A Smile

Ever since man began trading and bartering to obtain needed goods, there has always been a minimal level of service that was expected during the transaction.

In the middle ages, it was assumed that a blow to the noggin with a mace would not conclude a trade for rice or grain. In the times of Columbus, it was commonly expected that one would not receive a rapier swipe to the ear at the completion of a transaction. In the early 20th century, a gunshot to the forehead would certainly have been a disappointing end to a deal for Prohibition era booze.

Now that society has made it this far with this loose set of ground rules, it was time for corporations to get involved. With all the gusto & planning found in a boiler plate Dilbert comic strip, Big Business has surveyed, studied, and analyzed us to determine what kind of service we expect from them.

They learned that the customer expects to deal with a knowledgeable, compassionate human being who understands our needs and sympathizes with our frustrations.

They also learned that the chances of finding a large team of people fitting this description and willing to work for $7/hour is about as easy as finding a website without commercial sponsorship. [This paragraph has been brought to you by BidFinders, a non-profit organization (although we hope to turn a profit some day).]

Since the average human being is not knowledgeable, compassionate, understanding, and sympathetic, they did the next best thing – just short of fitting a square peg into a round hole, they have taught their service staffs to follow a script with their customers. The idea makes sense if the customer service reps make a semi-human attempt to be sincere – sadly, most have the acting chops of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

For the sake of this blog, it would be handy to have an example at this point. Fortunately, I bought a defective dishwasher last week (!) and had to place a call to customer service at a big box appliance store. (I would reveal the name of the store but have no vendetta against them – besides, they did offer the best buy on this fine appliance.)

After the expected maze of incorrect transfers, I was eventually connected to the right department. My call was picked up and I could clearly hear someone laughing hysterically, as if watching an episode of Arrested Development, or more likely in this case, America’s Funniest Home Videos. There was a period of about five seconds in which it was clear to me that the rep who was tasked with answering my call was taking a moment to compose herself.

The woman finally regained control of herself long enough to ask me how she could help me, using all of her will power to get through the canned line without cracking up. I felt like a part of a Carol Burnett skit with Conway, Korman, and “Katie” trying to get through a scene.

My explanation that my dishwasher wasn’t working was met with silence – she was again trying to regain control of her involuntary laugh reflex. She was able to ask me how long I’ve had the problem, in an apparent attempt at small talk. I let her know it’s been a few days and mentioned it’s a bit inconvenient having to do the dishes by hand.

She read this as a disgruntled complaint, scrambled the F-16s, and went immediately to page 13 of the handbook: “I’m very sorry for your inconvenience, sir. I will do my best to help you today.”

This was said with all the sincerity of a Lindsey Lohan commitment to sobriety – if a robot could speak while trying to hold back a laugh, it would have sounded much like that.

She was skillful enough to drop these lines into our conversation two other times as we scheduled an appointment to have the dishwasher fixed. I was on the verge of calling her on her insincerity but figured it just wasn’t worth the hassle. Let her go back to the water cooler and regale her cube mates with the latest adventures of According To Jim before clocking out to buy lottery tickets.

The key to good service is hiring good people – without them, the customer service scripts could be written by Oprah Winfrey and Mother Theresa and I’d still feel like I took a rapier to the ear.


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Best Money Spent - 2007

Now that we’ve started working on our 2007 taxes at the Smack Of Ham household, we’ve had a chance to review some of the purchases we made last year – some better than others.

Instead of revealing some of the more off-base buys (who wants to read about my obsession with collecting sculptures of Lindsey Lohan created using the common potato as a medium?), here are the highlights of the last year:

Best Money I Spent In 2007:

Best $3 Spent – Book of 200 Sudoku puzzles – I’ve pecked away at this book for 12 months and still have about 50 left to go. The cover is so worn it looks like it was printed in 1942 and carried in a soldier’s back pocket during the Invasion of Normandy.

Best $30 Spent – There was a simple Xbox 360 game called Earth Defense Force that utilized none of the potential of this advanced system. It basically dropped giant insects from the sky and you had to run around and shoot them, old-school style. Its simplicity of game play appealed to my gaming skills which haven’t evolved since the third wave of Space Invaders.

Best $300 Spent – Replacing the gawd-awful cable company DVR with a TiVo Brand DVR after a month of aggravation. The CEO of my cable company should be imprisoned or at least ashamed of himself for pushing his inferior product on the unsuspecting public.

Best $3,000 Spent – I felt obligated to have a $3,000 entry although we didn’t spend that amount on anything this year (I'm not including Lindsey Lohan potato products)– we saved this money for…

Best $30,000 Spent – On legal fees, travel expenses, and adoption costs to bring a cherished child into our home. Better than 10,000 Sudoku books!

I’m off to a good start for 2008. My best investment so far…

Donated $.25 to Send Me Pennies, an original website I discovered this weekend. The gist of the site is that when a million pennies are collected, the web site owner is going to buy something using the million pennies as payment – some 3 tons of coins. The transaction will be recorded and made available for our entertainment pleasure. It’s a fun, friendly site and will be worth it for the eventual payoff. Give ‘em a visit!

What are your best purchases of 2007?

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