Why Must I Be an Annoying Customer?

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If customer-centricity is the mindset that drives all successful organizations and customer experience hailed as the most crucial pathway to business success, why is the burden on customers to earn quality service from most companies?

No matter who the author, nearly every article or blog post offering "tips" on how to voice your complaint asks the customer to be loud, aggressive and forcefully proactive. Threaten a lawsuit. Whine about the experience on Twitter. Demand to speak to managers. Blast Barry Manilow’s greatest hits outside the company’s corporate headquarters. This backwards mindset, bolstered by many a customer management "expert," acts as if the burden of creating a quality customer experience falls on the customer rather than the brand.

Enough is enough.

I have no problem being somewhat proactive about customer service. I do not believe more than a few businesses can read my mind, and I know that it is up to me to voice the grievances I have. A business is not inherently wrong for thinking its products and customer service are at least passable if no one calls the contact center to state otherwise.

But when I do make that call, send that email or post that Tweet, I want the customer service team to instantly put itself in my shoes and consider my scenario. What made me upset? What kind of restitution do I seek?

More importantly, I want the representatives to be thinking about how to bridge that gap and deliver the resolution I desire rather than how to apply a broad "policy" to my issue so that call times are kept low. I want the representative to know that its brand’s relationship with me is on the line the second our interaction begins. If all does not go right, the damage could be irreparable.

A live chat interaction with an online nutrition retailer epitomized the logical breakdown to which so many customer service representatives succumb.

A while back, I made a big nutritional supplement purchase, taking advantage of the flat-rate shipping by purchasing everything I would need for the next few months. I recently began using one such product, and noticed that it gave off the worst sulfur/rotten eggs/raw poultry smell I have ever encountered in a flavorless product.

Even though I have purchased this particular product at least twenty times over the past six years and never encountered a comparable smell, I initially downplayed the issue, knowing that all chemical-based products can come with some uncertainty.

But at a certain point, the smell became too potent to ignore, and I emailed the manufacturer to inquire if it were normal. The company confirmed that it was not—and that it, in fact, had heard no such complaint before—and advised me to return the good to the retailer, whom they credit directly for all returns. Clearly, there was fear even from the manufacturer that contamination had occurred.

When I contacted the retailer via live chat, however, I was told that they could not approve the return since the purchase date occurred more than 45 days prior to the request. There was some ambiguity, but it seemed she also suggested that returning an opened product could always be problematic, even within the timeframe.

I understand return policies in some cases. If you decide 9 months later that the shoes you bought do not fit, I am not sure you should be able to get a full refund. If you buy a big screen TV to watch the Super Bowl, keep it through April, and then decide you do not need it anymore, I am not sure you should be able to get a full refund. Interestingly, Zappos and Costco are known for their ever-flexible return policies.

Here, however, we are talking about a product one ingests. The quality that makes the particular product unsatisfactory could, in fact, be a quality that leads to severe illness or even death. Does a brand really want to put a barrier on the timeline for which it cares about a customer’s demise?

And yet, the agent initially did not seem to want to think about my argument. She was content to simply reference the 45-day return policy, noting that it was a policy that came straight from "management." Being a customer service writer and adviser who stands in aggressive opposition to the idea of management demanding its agents not think like customers, I started ranting, hinting at the liability associated with not immediately recalling a product that could be contaminated. I played up my years of history doing business with the retailer. I became annoying.

Suddenly, a "technical difficulty" booted the agent from our live chat, and I was up in arms and ready to lambast the organization on Twitter. I was ready to be even more annoying.

When the replacement agent logged in, I continued my rant, noting my sympathy for a customer service representative who has to defend such an inane policy. After some more annoying argumentation, the new agent finally agreed to accept my return and emailed the appropriate shipping label.

When push came to shove, I got what I wanted, and the retailer can claim that it "resolved" the issue. It can claim that it bent the rules for a customer and was therefore operating as a customer-centric organization.

But as the customer, am I really walking away with that same perspective? After all, the brand did not want to do right by me and, in fact, initially dismissed my request. In my mind, the only reason I got what I wanted is that I had no shame in being aggressive and annoying in the live chat session. And that is most likely the right answer—if the company truly cared about being proactive and giving me what I wanted, why did it require I make such a big stink?

The fact that articles have to tell customers how to properly voice their complaints is a disappointing one for the state of customer service. This is supposed to be the age of the customer, of putting the relationship between seller and buyer above all. And so it seems immensely contradictory that a brand would only live up to that commitment out of fear of negative social media discourse or vexation with my overbearing dialogue and whining.

If a brand truly cares about a customer, shouldn’t it respond to the initial request in the most resolute, customer-friendly way it possibly can? Is the "reward" of a great solution a sign of gratitude for the business we did together, as it should be, or simply recognition of the effort my complaint entailed.

If it is the latter, I am praising my own annoyance. I’m certainly not giving your brand any credit.