I started a previous blog on Business Line with a complaint about customer service and in time-honoured tradition will do the same thing now. Back then, I had wondered why department stores did not have anything like a shelf or a rack to put one’s bag or mobile phone on in the trial rooms. These accessories had to share space with the clothes on the two or three clothes hooks there – rather like the sword of Damocles suspended on a single hair – or rest on the floor with all manner of refuse – hair, dust, threads, clothes left behind by other customers. In some less upmarket stores, the trial room even doubles up as a broom cupboard!

The customer service gods must have taken note of my post, because trial rooms have improved since. A store I frequent has installed stools in its trial rooms. The dust is intact. When I went there recently, I finished paying the bill and asked for the free parking tokens that they give. “You have to go down to customer service, Ma’am,” said the person at the counter.

“Why don’t you just keep some on each floor like you used to earlier? I don’t want to go up and down, why don’t you make things easy for us?” I hissed, my irritation heightened by the fact that I had been able to find very little of what I wanted there. A salesperson who had been assisting me (read listening to my complaints) till then said, “Please wait here, Ma’am, I’ll get them for you,” and rushed to the ground floor. I thanked him when he came back with the tokens and left, wondering why some stores had to get rid of little conveniences like these. There was another instance of a store letting us shop late but forcing us to exit only from the ground floor two floors down, and cranking up the shutters to let us out directly only when we wondered why it was okay for them to let us shop late but not leave without a hassle.

Why does a customer have to often turn cantankerous before anything improves? And these seem like little things. I probably would be less inclined to shop at this store if they didn’t give out the tokens.

Another time I called an appliances company’s helpline to book a complaint about my DVD player. After querying me about my name, address, mobile phone, landmarks to my house, they gave me the number I needed to quote for the job. It was at least 15 digits long, if not longer. My eyes glazed over as there were several zeros in succession at various places. It didn’t serve any purpose other than adorn my Facebook status and raise a few laughs. Nobody called about the repair and I didn’t bother to follow up. I didn’t even feel like using my official position to get a response from the company. Customer apathy brought on by an ever-increasing sense of futility? Or a trade-off between taking it easy and getting worked up over a not so pricey device – I know I didn’t give up so easily when bigger appliances went kaput. Maybe those are subjects for a future post. Meanwhile, I will probably be buying a new DVD player soon – and not from this company.

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