It certainly was an interesting year of odd customer service moments, some good, some bad, and some a mix. Here is my review on how 2019 went.
I can’t put companies in a good or bad bucket as some were a mix, so I will just list them.
Review
- I had an old account that I wanted to close, it wasn’t that simple. Lots of back and forth, messages, traumas and so on. Until, I came across one employee who said “oh sure, no problem, sorry to see you go” and it was sorted in a couple of days.
- Companies like HSBC make it easier to deal with internationally but this wasn’t the case with Capital One. They are low tech and if you are living outside the UK for a while it’s extremely difficult to do business with them.
- I got my British passport renewed and DHL UK delivered to my place in Canada without any difficulty. I say this from the perspective that other delivery companies have been a complete nightmare to deal with.
- There was a slight mix up with a parcel delivery but managed to sort it out quite quickly, instead of worrying their driver we decided to pick it up from their conveniently located depot, which is in a shopping center.
- The company even sent us a gift basket to say “thanks for the business”. Last time I experienced that with a company was back in 1986. I was impressed.
- Like some other companies getting to the right person was a challenge mainly tackling their call center telephone system workflow. There were, unfortunately, many questions that remained answered for which I just gave up.
- Connecting with someone I could talk to on a daily basis was actually a very good experience and could settle matters very quickly without any fuss.
- HSBC UK and HSBC Canada have very little connectivity together despite them being the same brand, this I found to be a major challenge.
- Finding a subject matter expert was quite painful. For example, the company wrote a letter to me and I needed to speak to someone about it. When I sent them a message I got the runaround. When I phoned no one was an expert in that subject. I eventually sent a snail-mail letter but no one has responded as yet, I guess I won’t know how that went until 2020, if at all.
- Questions still remain unanswered with the bank, so I will just have to give up.
- It’s easy to contact Shaw, by telephone or social media DM’s, however they lost track of some of the issues I registered. Maybe a ticketing system would help.
- We were having this strange pop up appear on their cable system, I reported it 4 times but they never got back to me. An engineer came round and advised us it was totally normal, issue resolved. Not good that I had to reach out so many times to get an answer.
- We had a lot of picture and sound break up on certain channels. At first they didn’t believe us. I then recorded the TV and sent them videos of the issue. Two times engineers came out, it improved a little as they fiddled with our cables, however, we still get the issue now and again. I am wondering if it’s nothing to do with Shaw but the feed they get from the US. Who knows.
- Siteground is my web hosting provider I’ve been on for just over a year now. They are awesome.
- 3 minutes unplanned downtime since I’ve been with them (competitors are nowhere near this). Superfast connectivity to the website and CRM I store there. Customer service calls answered in a flash.
- I am amazed how good this company is.
- I ordered something from Wayfair and UPS was their chosen company for the delivery. Twice the company never appeared when they said they were supposed to deliver. I struggled through their telephone system and when I got someone he was actually in the US, not Canada. He told me the parcel had been lost, I agreed with them if they ever find it to return it to Wayfair. Wayfair kindly agreed to refund my money and give me a $75 gift certificate, that was really nice.
- The next day UPS tried to delivery the item, maybe it hadn’t been lost after all. However, I didn’t accept deliver and the took it back to Wayfair.
- If UPS is Wayfair’s chosen supplier then I cannot do business with them, our local delivery depot is not that good and consistently get poor reviews online, and not useful feedback from their Head Office.
Summary
The Best
Every company I didn’t have to call and could resolve issues on their self-service website. I really don’t like wasting my time on the phone or in live chats.
The Not So Bad
Has to be DHL, they were helpful in fixing the issue and send us a gift! Well, it helps.
The Worst
It’s a toss up between HSBC and UPS. Misdelivery of items I can probably deal with but errors with my finances have a knock on effect down the line.