Two Examples of Customer Service

The past couple of weeks have been hectic — not necessarily in the simple hectic=busy sense. A few roadblocks got thrown our way, which meant we had to run around a lot more than was necessary. So what does this have to do with customer service?

Flipkart’s an online bookstore, and the basic premise of which includes being online almost all the time (not unlike other jobs.) We’re also big proponents of FOSS, and all of us tote around laptops running Ubuntu 8 or so.

Except me.

I tote around two Ubuntu 9.10 laptops, with a third backup. Why do I need to carry around so many laptops. Because I’m an important man and I need to seem unnecessarily busy while looking like a Trader with my LIBOR on one screen and the Hang Seng Index on the other. There is of course a simpler explanation.

One fine evening — without as much as a warning — my Dell died on me. It went blank, and then refused to boot up. As the saying goes “the blue lights all kept blinking, but there was no one home.” Something had to be done. So I rushed over to the nearest desktop and contacted Dell over their Chat … and soon enough a friendly Ethel_Silo came on and got started on the diagnosis.

We tried a few things, all of which went nowhere. Still, the process of elimination is a critical aspect of anything — Flipkart could have started off selling everything under the sun, but I’m not sure we would have made much headway were we to start that way. By the process of elimination, we narrowed down to books and that has I think held us in good stead. We can now start to explore other categories perhaps…

But I digress.

So by a process of elimination, we realised what the problems weren’t. Now all that was left was to figure out what the problem was — and then it happened. The power went out, and the PC I was on was not sufficiently high up in the desktop food-chain to deserve temporary backup. My desktop gave up the ghost, and with it went Ethel_Silo (whose hand I was convinced I would ask in marriage, were she to fix my Dell).

I resigned to being counted as a Laptop Widower and thought I should grieve, but there was no time. I had to move on pretty quickly.

It was going to be a long night and I needed discomfort food. Domino’s took my call and said they’d be there in 30 minutes. I hung up and realised a few minutes later I had forgotten to order the dip. I called Domino’s back and requested them to send the dip along as well, if their guy hadn’t left yet. They said sure.

Out from the cupboard came the spare Lenovo ThinkPad and I went about installing and upgrading and transferring and salvaging all that I could. So there I was under a dim light — The deceased Dell to my left asking me to be brave, the Thinkpad to my right being loaded and wondering if I will ever love it as much as I did the Dell, and my trusty old Compaq in the middle finishing the artwork so that I could make the Printo deadline.

Domino’s guy came around and handed me my Pizza and Garlic Bread and Fanta. I asked about the dip, he had no idea. I said fine, no problem, paid him and went back to my troika of screens.

From Here On Is Where All The Customer Support Kicked In

20 mins later, another Domino’s guy turns up. Bells went off in my head — it can’t be. But sure enough, there he was— 20 minutes after the order was delivered and 5 mins after I had finished off licking the crumbs from my keyboards — with a tiny container of Dip.

Now ,

a> I’m not necessarily a longtime or loyal customer of Domino’s (though I would like to believe I am)
b> It was my oversight, I was the one who had forgotten to order the dip
c> I did not threaten anyone with dire consequences or swear I would go to Consumer Court

Yet,

There he was, making the solitary trip only so that I got the dip I had forgotten to order. When he saw I had finished the Pizza, he said “Oh well, i don’t think you need this dip anymore!”. I insisted I’d pay for it, it was the least I could do. He smiled and asked me not to worry about it, got back on his bike and rode off.

I have a feeling he did this on his own initiative. Not because of company rules or protocol or getting stars on his shirt; because he thought he should do what he felt should be done. Given a choice between doing things right and doing the right thing, he chose the latter.

After a long night of installations, upgraded and reboots, I woke up late the next morning. Walked into the office and someone handed over a phone message left for me. Dell had called, they were wondering if all was fine because I abruptly went offline. I smiled, but I had too many other things to do.

Sometime the same evening, someone came up to me saying there was call from “one of my foreigner friends”. That struck me as odd, but I didn’t know the half of it. It was Dell again, saying I had abruptly logged off and they had left a message for me but I hadn’t called. Was all well?

I apologised, said all was well but that I was a little tied up to get back on chat support. I would probably get back online later in the week. We hung up.

2 days later, I got a mail from Dell. “Is everything Ok? They would really like to have my problem resolved, but I was always unavailable. When would it be convenient for me to get back in touch with their Tech Support?”

There’s this one line I’m very fond of: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”. Looks like with Dell, that line applied to me. They really wanted to help me, but I wasn’t co-operating!

Like it happens with most people who know me long enough and well enough, they soon realise they will have to take unilateral action and I will just go along with it. I think Dell did just that, with a Voodoo doll.

Someone from the office was fiddling around with the deceased Dell, and it booted up. IT CAME BACK TO LIFE, ONE WEEK LATER. So Ms. Ethel_Silo, if you’re reading this, my problem has been resolved, with no intervention from you and even less from me. It has self-healed. I will get in touch with you soon.

To everyone at Domino’s and Dell, I salute you.

PS: This blog post is currently being written on the very same Dell, now with the added flavour of Ubuntu Karmic Koala. Karmic, how appropriate.