Cynthia Kuhn

Just a Friendly Note (idea edition)

Dear Store Where I Love To Shop:

I remember when we used to be able to email you and say hey, I have a fabulous idea!

Think of that, free feedback submitted by your dedicated customers…so much cheaper than paying a focus group, am I right?

But now our only options are “chat” or “call.”

(Who has time to chat or call these days? There is too much information flowing toward us at all hours of the day. Which is probably what you’re counting on. Because you probably don’t think you need to hear from us, the people who already buy stuff there.)

Against my will, I both chatted and called about this.

Yet I genuinely feel like the information is never going to reach you.

The customer service (people? artificial intelligence? robots?) did not in ANY way make me feel as though they were going to tell another single soul.

I just felt…humored.

If I ever hear from anyone about my Very Fabulous Idea that would benefit both store and customer, I’ll…you know…buy things there!

More than I already do, I mean.

***

Dear Every Place That Serves Coffee:

Why in the name of sweetness and light don’t you have a variety of sugar-free syrups?

It’s the millennium!

If we can’t have flying cars, could we please at least have sugar-free caramel? 🙂

 

Dearest Readers, thank you for listening. Please tell me…what is on your friendly note list today?

26 thoughts on “Just a Friendly Note (idea edition)”

  1. I want to know why they don’t sell flavored decaf coffee in the grocery store. You can get regular coffee in any flavor under the sun, and then there is decaf. I would like even a couple of options. Just wondering……
    Carol

    Liked by 4 people

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  2. Dear Multinational Security Conglomerate,

    I know simple home security plans aren’t your forte. But you bought the company that bought the local company that installed our system all those years ago.

    So when someone like me contacts you about canceling my plan, can you provide some level of customer service instead of calling me a legacy customer and sending me into an endless circle of unresponsive and unhelpful voice mail options? Thank you from a person, not a huge corporation.

    Liked by 5 people

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  3. Dear Corporate Medical Provider:

    Why do I have to wait on hold for at least twenty minutes every time I need to make an appointment with one of your doctors? With the most nauseating muzak ever known to humankind that I have to listen to? Could you not have some sort of call-back option–or better yet, hire more folks to answer the phone?

    Sincerely,
    one of the people who are the reason you exist

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. Rightly so! Answer the dang phone, doc! (There is one company whose muzak I had to listen to so long that I knew where the little warped scratch that wasn’t supposed to be there would happen each time. Still mad I had to listen to that.)

      Liked by 1 person

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  4. Dear Rec Center Where I Swim,

    Thank you for offering me a free lock and key with the little wrist doohickey, but if I slipped you a twenty, could I please write my name on a locker? I don’t mind if other people are in the locker room, but it messes with my mojo to have to remember for forty minutes which locker my lock is hooked up to. I have a hard enough time not bonking my head on my split turns.

    Thank you.

    Liked by 2 people

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  5. These are all hilarious.

    Dear Any Store That Has Customers:

    I am the reason you exist. I literally enable you to pay your employees. Please listen to me carefully when I call and don’t send me to five different people named “Dave,” none of whom are probably really named Dave.

    Liked by 3 people

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  7. You all are so creative! My mind is muddled, but I have been on a recent call with customer service where they repeated everything that I can access on my own online with no further info. And then the AI sends out an email that my claim has been “resolved.” Um, nope.

    Liked by 2 people

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  8. Dear STARBUCKS, and yes, I’m talking directly to you – you’ve been around long enough to come up with better tea choices for us tea drinkers. Stop treating us with such disdain.

    And Dear Every Other Company on Earth – stop making me scream ‘HUMAN BEING!!!!!!!!!!!!” into the phone in my vain attempt to get through your goddawful obstacle courses of voicemail options designed to make me NOT talk to a human being. Sorry, I will never give up! And apologies to all the neighbors who hear me constantly screaming. “F–KING HUMAN BEING!!!!!!!!!!!

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. LOL I have screamed HUMAN into the phone too before, multiple times! It only works about half of the time. I tried HUMANOID once in desperation (was teaching Sci Fi that day) but it didn’t work either.

      And I hope you get more tea choices!!

      Like

      Reply

  9. No more phone trees. Please. Let me just speak with a person. I don’t mind waiting on hold if I know there’s a person waiting on the other end to help me, answer my questions, resolve a problem.

    Liked by 3 people

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  10. Dear Lots of Places,

    Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t force your employees to follow a specific small talk script. If they feel like commenting on the weather, asking about my dog’s underbite, or asking for my true feelings about pumpkin and spice, please let them! I love human interaction when it actually feels human and like an interaction, not prescribed down to the last syllable from corporate.

    Truly,
    This Is the Most Exciting Thing I’m Doing Today, Thanks for Asking

    Liked by 2 people

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  11. Dear Well-Known Clothing Store Where I Needed to Exchange A Birthday Gift But You Don’t Have a Physical Store in My State:

    Thank you ever so much for hanging up on me because I wanted to return my gift by mail in exchange for online store credit, as advertised on your website.

    I am delighted to inform you that you are the Meanest, Rudest Store Ever (and pricey to boot).

    Your employee was so nasty I cried after she abruptly disconnected our call without a resolution (but with a free, colorful curse word). Perhaps it was just all the screaming and yelling going on in the background at her house (in lieu of a call center) that provided extra aggravation.

    Since you were so frustrated by the audacity of my request, I will do you a solid by never shopping with you again. Now you don’t have to be Extremely Annoyed with me, ever again.

    cc: Twitter

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. “I am delighted to inform you…” LOL

      (But I’m sorry they made the crying happen…big hugs.)

      They sound awful. I hope when they ring up the return, the item has magically gone up in price since it was bought so they owe you MORE money.

      Liked by 1 person

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  12. These are all (sadly) hilarious. I, too, cannot stand not being able to reach a human being easily on the phone. I don’t pray for patience in those situations but to have the chuzpah to act like this customer I witnessed at a store I worked at: A well heeled woman returned a jar of pickles, empty except for one lone pickle swimming in the bottom, to the customer service desk because “the pickles weren’t crunchy enough.” When my coworker politely informed the woman she couldn’t give her her money back because she had eaten nearly all the contents, the woman screamed like a banshee until a manager gave her a cash refund, just to shut her up. This is an absolutely true story. I just don’t have the balls to act like that, even when I m clearly in the right.

    Liked by 1 person

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