Customer Service? Customer Service? Where are you?

I know others have written about this before, but this is my official moaning about the lack of service in general in our world.  If you have a business, any kind of business, and you still care about your customers, and you can relate to your customers, and you can provide excellent service to your customers, you WILL WIN!!!

As many of you know, I have a broken ankle.  http://actvra.in/p8h  That means I have a cast on my leg/ankle/foot, and I can't put any pressure on my right foot.  So I have to do everything with my one good foot.  If I need to pick something up, I have to crutch over to where the item is, and then I have to place both crutches against the wall because I cannot lean over if I'm using my crutches.  I then place one hand on the wall, furniture, or whatever I can find, and I lean over, pick it up, and stand back up again.  Then I need to place whatever I picked up either down on the furniture, or in a bag that I can carry while using the crutches, in a fanny pack or pocket, or I have to throw it to wherever I'm going.  To say the least, picking things up is extremely difficult, and I absolutely cannot pick up anything unwieldy and carry it anywhere.

Which brings me to my rant about service.  There are two major delivery companies, and while I don't want to say who they are, you can figure it out by the clues UPS and FedEX.  I had to order all my Christmas presents this year, so everything had to get delivered by one of these two companies. 

If anyone pulls into our driveway, they can see the nice path that heads right to our front door.  It's the front door of the house.  The place where people enter, visitors can ring the doorbell or knock and have someone answer the door.  It's where anyone with a desire to serve the customers would go if they wanted to actually serve the customer.

Well.

Many of the boxes were dropped on the far end of the porch.  The truck would pull up, someone would leap from the truck, run to the porch, drop the boxes and run.  I can't get the boxes.  If it's raining the best I can do is hobble outside, hope I don't fall, and push them with my crutch closer to the house so they don't get too wet.  

So I put up a big sign.  "PLEASE knock on the door.  I am on crutches and will be right there."

Did any delivery company EVER knock?  No.  Every single box was just plopped wherever, except for the one time I was close enough to the door to see them and I indicated I was on crutches and they needed to bring the stuff up.

Today was the proverbial straw.  I had a gift card for a seafood company, and I ordered a dinner to be delivered.  (Update: it wasn't a cooked dinner, it was seafood that still needed to be cooked.)  Today I called the company because I never received a confirmation of delivery.  Yes, don't worry, it's coming.  At 2:30, I still hadn't seen anyone, so I checked online.

It said, "Delivered and left at garage."

I WAS HOME!!!!  Why would they leave it in the open air, near the garage, when I was there waiting for it?  I know why.  Because the number of deliveries, time for deliveries, and number of employees probably necessitate fast deliveries.  But they also necessitate NO SERVICE.  What if I didn't have someone who could bring in the box for me?  It said "perishable" all over it.  Duh.  Just because a signature is not REQUIRED when a package is delivered is no reason not to try to actually deliver the perishable package to a person.  All they had to do is walk up the path to the front door and knock.  A minute is all that would have taken.  Instead, they left a perishable box in the driveway and assumed someone could get it.

I want service to come back.  If you are in any business and you deal with any kind of customers, serve them.  You will stand head and shoulders above the competition, and your business will THRIVE.

I know I would much rather spend a little more on a company that actually cares about the customers than for a cheap crappy service that leaves packages in the driveway.

Rant over.