It's ironic that I should (finally) receive YAHOO's "response" to my customer service complaint during a week that I'm thinking a lot about customer service. At least I know who I don't want to be like.
You will recall that I sent the original complaint on June 8th. On June 22nd, I finally received a two-line email from a customer-service representative. It said "We do not have enough information to answer your question. Can you please be more specific?"
Are they kidding me????? How much more specific could I have been?
So, I replied, sending the same email again.
Today I received this response, which means totally NOTHING and was probably pulled from a letter-database using a search for "local listing". It's obvious that the person wrote to me doesn't even understand why I wrote to YAHOO in the first place.
Hello Cathi,
Once you create free web site for a particular Local Listing, that free web site is only associated with that Local Listing. The only way to edit our review your free web site then, is to access the ?edit? link associated with a particular active Local Listing. If the free web site you created is associated with an inactive listing, then you will not be able view or modify that web site.
We advise that you select the ?create? link under the Free Web Site section of your currently active Local Listing to create a new free website, as any other free web sites created under your deactivated listing will not be available for you to edit.
Sincerely,
G***** H****
Customer Solutions
Yahoo! Search Marketing
I then fired off this note to Mr. H****.
This response did not address my concerns at all, and only makes me more disappointed in YAHOO's customer service.
Did you even read my letter?
Cathi Kent
Dancing Cactus Imports Inc.
So now the ball is in YAHOO's court. I somehow doubt that I'll ever get a real response to my original letter, and I really don't even care anymore, except as how it relates to such a bad example of customer service. That's not the best way for them to catch up to Google, is it?
Unfortunately they farm these out to customer care centers, usually over seas and they use smart database entries to answer your question. The problem is that first, the care centers dont care about you as a person because they deal in volume and if they did and they can't match your answer its no answer.
Maybe this is a good example of how outsourcing can screw up a business and what not to do when addressing your customers needs.
Posted by: Tim Whelan | July 2, 2006 11:16 PM | Permalink to Comment