smart vs. stupid customer service

I have always maintained that the difference between smart customer service people and stupid ones is as obvious as night and day. And you won't get what you need until you find a smart one, the stupid ones just will never do.

Over the past week it has been a great trial to have a number of photos laminated for a certain project at work. Let me demonstrate my aforementioned thesis with the following case studies from this last week. (I'm sorry the gory details are so lengthy. I hope it is entertaining nonetheless. It's a gong show.)

STUPID: I call a UPS store asking if they can laminate such-and-such. The guy sounds ESL, and I have a nagging suspicion that he doesn't quite understand what I need, but he insists he can do it before closing at 6 if I can get there by 5. I arrive at 5:10. Three people (apparently related) turn their blank faces away from the TV and towards me. "Hello!" I venture. Blank stares. Nobody gets up off their seats. I try again: "Hello!" One of them looks at the stuff I'm carrying, figures out I'm the girl from the phone call, and greets me by saying, "You're too late." I explain that I don't mind leaving the job overnight, and THEN he gets up off his arse and walks behind the counter to help. Except then it turns out that he doesn't have the correct equipment to do what I wanted as per our telephone conversation. My nagging suspicion is proven correct.

STUPID: I go to Superstore to have a photo blown up to 11"x14". I inquire if they can do that. The lady says they can. I ask when it will be ready. She says in a few weeks. I say, "You mean a few days?" She says no, a few weeks. They have to send the job to Ontario to have it done there. I leave the store.

STUPID: I take my laminating to Staples. Some guy takes my stuff and says he can have it laminated by 3pm. I can't be there at 3pm, so my boss goes and gets it for me. She reported the following conversation:
My boss: "You've laminated some of these photos so that they're overlapping."
Staples boy: "Is that a problem?"
"Yes, I can't use them if they're stuck together."
"Oh....Do you want me to fix it?"
"Yes!"
"Okay....Right now?"
"Well I'm certainly not coming back here again, so if you'd like to do it later and have it couriered to my office by the end of the day, be my guest."
"Oh. I guess I'll do it now."

STUPID: I go to the mall to see if I can find someone who will blow up my photo to 11"x14". I find a store that is a cross between a 1-hour photo place and Blacks, so the entire store is about photos. I ask the lady if they can make a photo that size. She says yes. I pull out my flash drive. She says they can't do that. I ask her to clarify, there must be a mistake. But no, they do not have a USB port anywhere in the store, but if I can write down the exact file name and give her my entire flash drive to send away somewhere, they can have it in a few days. This is obviously not a 21st century photo shop, and I need to use my flash drive for other things on a daily basis, so I leave.

STUPID: Those laminated photos I mentioned earlier were given to me on Friday. I had glanced at them at the time, but it was not until I took the paper cutter to them today (Monday) that I realized that one third of them were missing. When I called Staples and described what I was missing, the phone girl went to look for them. Sure enough, she found my envelope of missing photos just sitting on top of the laminator. The idiot from Friday must have gotten distracted and just sold my boss half of the job without remembering that he hadn't finished the rest of it.

SMART: (Cue angel choir.) I enter London Drugs with my flash drive. I ask the girl behind the counter about my 11"x14" photo. She says, "Sure!" and guides me to a computer where my order is taken in about 45 seconds.
"When do you need this done by?"
"Oh, anytime in the next few days is good."
"Well, I could have it ready in an hour if you want."
(I get a little choked up.)
"I can't be back here in an hour, but I could be back in three hours."
"Okay, I'll write down that you need in in 2 hours, so you'll be sure to get it."

SMART: (Angel choir reprise.) I arrive at Staples to collect my missing photos. The girl from the phone not only has laminated them all, but has trimmed them perfectly and has them ready in a neat stack. (I had been expecting the big plastic sheet full of laminated photos like we got on Friday.) I ask her to also laminate my newly procured 11"x14" photo, and she does so -- and trims it! -- within a minute. We head to the cash register, where I explain that my boss had already paid enough for the photos we got on Friday (I was not intending to pay for photos that had been forgotten). The girl sincerely says, "Oh, of course!" as if she had never dreamed of asking me to pay for them. No fuss whatsoever. We ring up the single photo I just had laminated, I thank her profusely for her helpfulness, and I leave satisfied. This may sound ridiculous, but I quietly prayed a blessing on her for being such a saint.