Amazon used to be famous for making it difficult to figure out how to contact a human being by telephone, and not providing a terribly great experience when you final did get connected to someone. It’s not something you could really blame them for — much of their business is low margin and call centers are expensive to run — but I’ve personally found their customer service via the web contact form to be more than satisfactory when I’ve needed it.
Times have changed. A few years ago they implemented a “Click to Call” feature on their contact form that will have customer service call you. Today I got to put it to the test: my $500+ order arrived with only $70 worth of merchandise in the box. I was missing a Panasonic DMC-ZS3 and 32GB SDHC card and I was a bit panicky as I wanted this stuff for my vacation that starts next Wednesday.
So I did the click to call. A moment later I was speaking to “John” and I explained that my package arrived a bit beat up and missing items. He promptly apologized, confirmed which items I had received, and offered to send replacement items out with next day delivery to the same address. The whole conversation lasted just a few minutes and I could not have been happier with both the experience and the result. I was especially pleased that I didn’t have to ask for anything — Amazon had empowered “John” to do the right thing, right away.
So many large companies put up obstacles to receiving great customer service — I’m looking at you, Comcast — so it’s great to see a company that has torn them down and delivered an outstanding experience.
