As I write this, I’m reminded of the old Despair demotivator (which they don’t seem to have anymore) that said, “If we don’t take care of the customers, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.” I’ve run into another example of that while talking to the corporate administrative assistant at work yesterday. I’ll avoid naming actual names, but this story amused me enough where I felt I needed to share it.
Of course, one of the most important luxuries in an office is coffee. :-) And of course, there are companies that specialize in providing coffee and coffeemakers to companies. We use such services at where I work, too; in IT, we’re a bit different in that while our coffeemaker was provided by the same provider the rest of the facility used, we had a different provider for the actual coffee as my boss (and I myself) prefer Community Coffee and the main facility provider sells Folgers. Well, a couple of months ago we decided to have the IT coffee provider provide the coffeemaker as well, and they came in and got it set up. The old one was put to one side, and I sent a note to the corporate administrative assistant saying it needed to be picked up. It ended up sitting there since.
A couple of weeks ago, the corporate admin assistant remarked to me that they had changed coffee providers for the main facility, but I hadn’t paid too much mind to it. Yesterday, the IT admin assistant asked me when the old coffeemaker was going to be removed, so I decided to go to the corporate admin assistant’s office and ask. When I got there, she shook her head and told me about Monday.
You see, on Monday, our delivery person from the old coffee provider had arrived on (what he thought was) schedule to restock our coffee and see what we needed, only to find his equipment put to one side and someone else’s where his employer’s used to be. So, he went to the corporate admin assistant and asked, “Did you guys change providers?” The admin assistant looked up in surprise and said, “Yes… didn’t your office tell you?!” He sighed, and said they hadn’t… but that he wasn’t really surprised. She then said flat-out that it was the office’s inability to even listen to our requests and fulfill them was what led to us switching providers. She asked if he could remove the old coffeemakers, and he replied he’d have to come back for them as he would need help, not to mention need to make room in his truck.
What he said next was the truly sad part. The guy told her that we were the fourth customer in two weeks that they had lost because of the office people not taking care of them. He then asked for her card (presumably for future business, as we had no problem with his service), and admitted he was very likely going to look for a new job as he didn’t see this one lasting the way they were hemorrhaging customers.
It’s just sad, really. I wonder if the office people realize just how much their attitude and lack of service is costing the company. If you don’t take care of the customers, you won’t have customers… and if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. I also hope the rest of the facility does well with their new coffee provider. We’re still doing well with our current one.
As for the last one… hope the delivery guy gets a good job, as he was decent. The rest of the company, well… if you go out of business, you deserve it the rate you’re going. We don’t miss you and are doing much better now with someone who actually knows customer service. :-)