How to Deliver Excellent Customer Disservice
I recently experienced the pleasure of attempting to have my email address removed from the marketing database of a cosmetics corporation, Sephora. At the bottom of each of their email newsletters is an “unsubscribe” link, which, once clicked, takes you to a screen with several categories of email newsletters. If you don’t want to receive ANY emails, the appropriate box to be checked is at the bottom of the list: ”No, I prefer not to receive email updates at this time.” I checked that one, and thought “done and done.”
Three days later I received another of their newsletters. I sent an email to their “Client Services” department: “What will it take to prevent receiving Insider Scoop emails?” In a response written by “Brandy” that arrived three days later, I was thanked for contacting Sephora, apologized to for any inconvenience this had caused, and was assured that my email address would be removed from their mailing list. A caveat: it would take ten days for this process to be completed.
Why would it take ten days for a single email to be removed from a mailing list? I’m certain that some group of executives somewhere had established a labyrinthine, bureaucratic maze in which low-level peons would have to navigate in order to fulfill the simple requests of consumers. After all, they wouldn’t want to make it EASY for customers to get away, now would they?
Six days after that, and after receiving three, yes, three more emails, I became more than a little perturbed, as demonstrated in my overzealous email back to them: “Why exactly would it take 10 days for an email address to be removed from a mailing list? That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve received three more emails since I’ve asked for this to be done! This is inexcusable! It should not take 10 days for this to be done!”
(I like exclamation points.)
Shortly thereafter, I receive a response from “Michael” stating that they had JUST received confirmation from their marketing department that my email address had been removed. Well alright then. Case closed.
Nope. Received another newsletter a couple days after that. I call 1-877-Sephora in the middle of the day and hear a disembodied voice: “Our office is currently closed. Please call back.” Fuming yet undaunted, I hang up and dial again, and again, and again, until finally on the fifth try, a pert voice answers: “How can I help you?” I explain the situation, and she tells me that my email address is “tied” to a marketing list based on a rewards program for which I signed up. I’d have to cancel my membership in the rewards program in order to stop receiving those emails. Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. After I hang up with Ms. Pert Anonymous, I send my final email to “Michael” with Client Services: “Your customer service is beyond poor.”
Initially, I didn’t even really care about receiving the email newsletters – I unsubscribed as an afterthought, as an attempt to decrease the amount of junk permeating my inbox. As my request turned into a “process”, it became my MISSION to get my email address removed, and their lackadaisical incompetence garnered hostility on my part towards a corporation whose products I actually liked and bought.
