The first rule of good customer service is…
… reply to your customer’s email right away. Even if you don’t have anything to tell them, you should reply. it shows you received their email and that you’re aware of the situation.
I ordered a pair of Dots Gloves. They were too small and there was a thread on the index finger that started to unravel. I only wore these twice and neither time was outdoors. I fired off an email with pictures of the problem asking for a replacement.
I didn’t receive an answer for two business days. At first I replied to the email address that sent me my order confirmation. It looked like a real person’s email address maybe they don’t answer their mail. So after a few days I figured I was wrong about that and used the contact email address from their site. I received a reply no longer than 20 minutes later from the first address that I emailed and never received a response from. That’s a big problem. I’m assuming that a bunch of people see email coming in from the contact address from your site. Once you saw I forwarded my original request to it you realized you had better reply quick or someone was going to be on your ass about it.
That’s really shady and not the first time I have seen someone do that in a company.
The reply I did get back stated there was a bad batch of gloves and my replacement would be shipped out on Monday (that was October 26th) Sweet, I appreciated that bit of info. Almost two weeks later and I have not heard anything nor have I seen any gloves show up at my doorstep. So I fired off another email to the personal account on Thursday the 5th asking for a tracking number. I was confident since we had an email exchange going now that I would receive an answer. Three days later and I have no reply. I forward my email to the contact address from the site again and wouldn’t you know I got a reply about 20 minutes later stating this would be looked in to. This was from a new personal address that had been cc’d in on my previous emails. I received a tracking number shortly after that. I got the tracking number twice. Once from the person who replied to me saying they’d look in to it, and another time from the guy that likes to ignore emails.
One thing was done right here: I got an email regardless of new information. Getting that “Sorry I don’t have any information for you now but I will get back to you” email really made me feel like something was getting done. And if I would have gotten an email like that any time I sent my FIRST emails that would have been even better. I do care if you can tell me something, but if you can’t it looks good if you just acknowledge that I sent you an email.
Now the kicker about all of this. The gloves were shipped a day after I send the first email asking for a tracking number. You know, 10 days after I was told the gloves would be shipped. I can’t say exactly what caused the delay but I assume it was sent the day after I started asking again because someone realized they messed up. Of course a nice little “got lost in the shuffle but they’ve been sent” email would have been nice, and would have avoided me writing this post explaining to people why I think your company (or at least one person in it) is really shady.