Should customers be thankful when a company that often provides hours of frustration when trying to resolve an issue comes through with solid customer service … even if that should be the norm?
The volume on my old Android cell phone had been failing for a while. I hadn’t been able to turn up the volume to hear phone calls for months. No matter how many online hacks I discovered, none of them seemed to fix the issue. I could hear phone calls when I had them on speaker mode or when I Bluetoothed them through the car’s radio, but these solutions were hardly practical when I was trying to have a routine conversation with someone. It didn’t help that my phone was so old, the manufacturer no longer provided operating system updates for it.
I finally decided I needed to buy a new phone rather than live with a phone where I really couldn’t hear most of the conversations I was having with people. When I got to the store, which was in a shopping mall, I told Maurice that the volume on my old phone wasn’t working. He asked me some personal information so he could look up my account. Rather than try to sell me a new phone, he mentioned that I had been paying $4.15 a month for an extended warranty. Because nothing was physically wrong with the phone, Maurice told me that I might be eligible for a free replacement.
Unfortunately, warranties were handled by a different division so Maurice couldn’t handle it, but he gave me the number to call to check. I left the store, walked into a relatively quiet and untrafficked area so I could put my phone on speaker, and called the number. The representative asked a bunch of questions and then offered to send a replacement phone for a $52.06 “replacement fee.” Given that that amount was significantly lower than the cost of buying a new phone, I agreed. The representative ended our call by telling me she would call me three days later at 10 a.m. to help me transfer the data after I received the replacement phone.
I walked back to the phone store, gave a thumbs up to Maurice who shouted “win.” I received the phone the next evening. But the promised phone call at 10 a.m. never came. Typical frustration with my cell phone company began to set in and erase any of the good will Maurice had built. But I found the number he had originally given me, made the frustrating way through the automated response, and then was connected to a technical support person named Jane who patiently spent the next 21 minutes and 43 seconds with me walking me through the data transfer.
When I thanked Jane for her help and patience, she responded: “Patience is a virtue.” That wasn’t the first time she used that phrase on our call. In spite of the annoyance of a broken phone, the lack of a promised follow-up call, a charge of $52.06 for a “free” replacement, and a history of frustration with the phone company, Maurice and Jane did what they could to help me. When a company representative actually tries to help a customer, the right thing is to thank them.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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