I really enjoy giving praise much more than I like giving criticism, although nowadays there seems to be less opportunity to do it. I’ve been given the opportunity here, and I want to take it. Hello, blog!
I ordered two servers for SimYard, my baseball management simulator that’s opening soon. I was given an estimated arrival date of 1/21 (two days ago). On 1/18, I asked my salesman for an update on the delivery, and was ignored. I followed up on Monday, 1/21, and found out that the first had been shipped and the second was going out soon. Yesterday, 1/22, I finally get an e-mail from my salesman with the tracking numbers of the two packages, and I’m told they’re going FedEx Freight.
So, I tracked the numbers. The first server had been sitting at my local facility since 1/19, waiting for a delivery appointment. It was too late in the day to get it the same day, so they scheduled an appointment for today from 10-2. This morning, at 8:30, I checked the tracking numbers and saw that the second server had arrived three hours prior. I called Fedex again, and they checked into the status of my delivery truck. It was still being loaded, so they’re putting the second server onto the truck also, and both will be delivered today.
Maybe this isn’t such a big deal. Maybe this type of customer service doesn’t qualify for any special praise at all. Maybe this is the kind of customer service that we should be expecting all the time. Or maybe it just seems a lot more special because of the contrast between the salesman who didn’t even care enough to spell my name right and the people at FedEx who apparently take customer service very seriously.