I apologize in advance for the following rant, but I think this is frustrating or funny enough to be mentioned.

I am pretty sure you have experienced the same issues. You are an happy customer of your favorite brand, but unfortunately, once in a while, there is a problem, an issue, a failure in the delivery and you have to contact the hotline.

Here it goes, even though you trust the company, even though you know it is going to be painful, even though you prepare yourself mentally, you lose your nerves eventually.

This was what happened to me.

You order software from the online store of a famous brand to make sure that you receive it fast. The software arrives damaged and cannot be installed.

The nightmare begins:

1) The Tradition :
‘Sorry for putting your call on hold, your call is important to us, all our customer service officers are engaged at the moment. Please continue to hold, we will attend to you shortly.’
Even if you try to call in the middle of the day, you have to face those cheesy ‘hotel lobby’ music for 40 minutes.
After that, you engage with a technical team who believe you are a newbie and cannot operate software properly. You have to explain to him specifically that you know what a CD is and no, you did not put it upside down (lol!).

Then, you realize the guy you are calling is in Australia (which is pretty far away from Singapore for a product you have purchased in Singapore….). The same guy tells you proudly that if you had bought the product from a ‘ brick and mortar’ store, you will have an immediate exchange for the faulty product. Lol, what a great promotion.

After negotiating, he agrees to ship you another CD that will arrive in 10 days!

2) Follow Up:
Of course, you do not receive a formal reply, so you chase after the team. You then realize that the reply is coming from Europe from a different team. Nobody is answering the emails of course.

3) You Try to Call Up
This is the big mistake – you have 5 people who explain to you how sorry they are, how they understand your frustration and they are doing everything possible to solve your issue. Nice but still, I have yet to receive the CD.

4) The solution
After 1 day of effort, you finally reach somebody who is the decision owner and can arrange for a delivery of that new software. The software is delivered late the same day and the day after 5 people call me to see if the ‘customer issue has been solved’

Conclusion : Why is it so complex when you have a solution to the problem?
In this case, a simple ‘Yes we understand, we are sorry, you will have another CD delivered to you tomorrow’ would have solved immediately the issue.

It is frustrating to realize that you are just treated as a number among all the customer issues and you are just going along with the process flow.