Take a Customer Service Advocate the Next Time You Go Shopping

The other day I received a voice message from someone I thought was contacting me for information on my consulting services. As I played the message over and over, I realized the caller was contacting me as a last resort and out of total frustration because of a bad customer service experience at her local home improvement store. When I called her back, she was nearly in tears describing how the previous week she went to purchase a large amount of tress for her yard. She went to the store, paid for the trees and they were to be put up for pick-up or delivery the following week. The day she expected the trees to arrive came and went. In the meantime, she had dug the holes in her yard, contacted the electric company to approve the sites prior to digging etc…

Assuming there must have been an oversight, she contacted the store only to be put on eternal hold, and when she finally spoke to a live person, they were unresponsive. She decided to resolve the issue in person. She was told that the person who took the order forgot to put the trees away until delivery, and they had been sold. The employee added they would not be getting anymore in from the nursery this year. She was offered a refund and sent on her way. Not only was she frustrated, she was now disappointed, angry, and felt helpless. That is why she contacted me; she explained the situation and asked if there was anything I could do to help her.

Although my services normally do not include customer advocacy, I felt compelled to help her. I gathered the details, names of the people she spoke to and her history of doing business with this company. Eventually, I escalated the call to the regional manager after attempting to get the issue resolved at the local level, and she finally received the trees.
This experience caused me to think, how many customers just give up because they do not have an advocate willing to fight for them? How do customers navigate through customer service indifference? How many customers feel the business they do with a company has value? How many people would have just taken the refund and left it at that?

I am convinced that customers should know their rights and not be afraid to speak up when they are not receiving a good quality customer service experience. After all, they have a choice on who they do business with.