(no subject)

[yagathai]

People have this strange idea that customer service is something that anyone can do. I guess in a sense anyone can do it, in the same way that anyone can dig a ditch. But of course not everyone can dig a ditch, let alone dig a ditch, and not everyone can do a customer service job -- let alone do it well. It's a skill, and a talent, and rarer than many people think.

Nevertheless, just like most anyone can grasp the basics of ditch-digging (hold this end of shovel, insert other end of shovel into earth, move shovelful of earth, repeat), just about everyone should be able to grasp the first principle of customer service:

DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE.

Now believe me I understand how much fun being an asshole can be. Being an asshole is one of my primary forms of recreation, in fact. And sometimes people make it very hard for you not to be an asshole to them. Nevertheless, if you're in a customer service position, if people are giving you money in exchange for your goods or services, the rule remains. No matter how hard it is, you must always remember:

DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE.

I just don't get why some people can't figure that one out. Because as I see it, there are exactly three acceptable answers to Nick's question:

1) "I'm very sorry. I wish I could help, but our policies prevent me from doing that, and here's why" ... followed by a reasonable explanation for why his very simple request could not be accommodated.

2) "Let me check on that for you and get back to you when I've found an answer", followed by a subsequent communication featuring either answer 1 or answer 3.

3) "Sure thing, Nick. Here you go." Because, as Nick points out, it's the work of maybe a couple of minutes to fulfil his request, and that's if you're out of coffee.

You see this kind of thing a lot everywhere, but for some reasons it seems especially concentrated when it comes to the people that run fan conventions. Not all the people of course, and not all the conventions, but often enough that it's a noticeable trend -- and frankly, there's no excuse. Even if the people running a convention don't possess the necessary "don't be an asshole" skillset, and even if their services are indispensable because only their brobdingnagian brains can perform such feats of combinatorics that even our primitive electric calculating machines cannot compare, those people should not be anywhere near the paying customers. All they need to do is find someone that has that valuable non-asshole skillset and put that person between them and the public.

Everyone in our community would get along so much better if they did that.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You're not at all familiar with the situation, or the people involved. As a matter of fact, the email you post below was the email I sent my first message to. It's a generic contact address. The person who responded to my first email with the blow-off claim that it's impossible to have a real receipt was the co-chair of the convention. There is no superior, except for the WF board.

I went public for two reasons:

a. after discussing it with someone close to the board who noted that the board would not seek to correct the co-chairs on anything short of fraud, and after being given a specific example of the board shrugging when Jay Lake approached them with a similar issue months before in dealing with the other co-chair, I realized that there wasn't anyone upstairs to talk to. Indeed, the problem was ultimately solved by people below the chair-spouse. Incidentally, Lake is not attending WFC for the first time in a decade due to his treatment at the hands of the WFC co-chair. If not for my dayjob mandating my attendance at the convention, my normal follow-up would have been to contact Paypal and cancel the charge.

b. as a public announcement. WFC is an industry convention—the majority of attendees would either want their membership receipt either as a write-off or as a reimbursement deal with their employer. The receipts being given out by WFC via their PayPal account would not stand up to an audit without at least some extra paperwork—pretty much the last thing anyone wants to prepare. As my blog is widely read, people could take the information and decide on a snail mail membership (the canceled check made payable to "World Fantasy 2010" would be an effective receipt of sorts) or to make some other arrangement.

As far my actions being "potentially useless", my problem was solved in under an hour. It's pretty tough to confuse "potentially useless" with "actually useful", but I couldn't help but noticed that you managed it handily.