Customer Care

This isn't really something I would normally blog about but some things that have happened recently have annoyed me and another couple have really pleased me so i thought I'd write about them!

First the good:

Saraband Books held a competition on Twitter, asking people to tweet about Woodlands. I was honoured and delighted that my tweeted haiku won this competition. I was equally delighted by the fact that Saraband sent me a direct message on Twitter immediately asking for my address and congratulating me and telling me when they would post out my prize. I was even more delighted when the prize (a copy of the wonderful Woodlanders book, which I will review on Crafty Green Poet in due course) arrived the next day.

As readers of this blog will be aware, I recently entered a Hollywood Haiku competition on Best for Film, which asked for haiku reviews of films. I sent in two haiku (you can read them in the posts below) and was annoyed when the second one bounced back! I left a comment in their blog and within a few minutes I'd received a reply asking me to send my entry to an alternative email address, which I did. Then today they've emailed all contestants, apologising for the bounced emails, extending the deadline to 23 May and assuring us all our future entries to the competition will reach the organisers!

So those are two examples of good customer care, unlike:

The publisher who shall remain nameless who held a competition on Twitter, which I won, but even six weeks later, after a reminder via Twitter and an email direct to the company, still has not only not sent my prize, but they haven't even communicated with me at all!

The environmental organisation in Scotland, who shall remain nameless, who contacted me, about a month ago, to say they were so pleased that Crafty Green Poet drove a considerable amount of traffic to their website, that would reward me with a substantial free gift. They then have not communicated with me at all, despite me asking them for clarification. I had linked to their website with no thought other than visitors to my blog would enjoy their site and their charity, and never expected to receive anything in return. Now however I have begun to feel antagonistic to this organisation, because their customer care is so poor.

The moral of the story is that if you want to offer a gift or a prize then you make very sure that you actually deliver on your promises otherwise you risk annoying people and losing customer goodwill.