Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Stupid Stupid Stupid

I went to Wolf Camera yesterday to pick up some picture's I'd taken with my old school, 35 mm film camera.

The guy at Wolf explained to me that their machine that develops pictures is down and that they had called my home phone to tell me and that they'd call me again when my pictures were developed.

I got home, looked at the phone and noticed the voice mail notice light was NOT blinking. Then I looked at the caller ID. I hadn't gotten a phone call all day.

So the guy at Wolf had lied. And what a stupid lie it was. The lie initially made me feel really good about Wolf Camera. I was impressed with their ability to provide quality customer service. But when I realized that they had never called, it made me feel horrible about their company.

What a stupid lie.

UPDATE: I just spoke with the store manager on the phone. It ends up that the employee (the photo technician who doesn't normally do customer service) who was given the task of making the calls didn't make them but told the other employees that she had completed all of them. As a result, Wolf Camera lied to a bunch of people yesterday because their customer service team believed that people had really been called.

So here's my take. This was a case of bad management. Give customer relations jobs to people who are good at dealing with other people and who enjoy that kind of work. I know the sales staff was probably busy selling cameras and dealing with in-store customers. I also know that Wolf had a photo technician sitting around with nothing to do after the machine went down. But asking her to make customer calls was a mistake. It was a job she was not able to perform. Good managers put their employees in a position to succeed. I don't think Wolf Camera did that.

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