A lot of companies care deeply about their customers. How do we know? It’s in their mission statement, on their website and in their commercials. One of my favorite quotes mainly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson is “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” Rather than talk about where companies fall short, let me give you an example of where one company truly owns it.
I placed an order for individual antibiotic packets on Amazon. As with many of their products, it was from one of their sellers, but they handle fulfillment. It turned out to be exactly what I was looking for so I reordered a couple of months later.
When the product arrived the second time, I noticed a couple of differences. The packets were not the same high quality as before, but still perfectly fine for what I needed. The problem was that somebody fell asleep in quality control. The first batch had 0.5 oz of gel in each packet, and all were very consistent. The second batch had a wide variance in amount per gel per packet with some almost empty. Still perfectly usable, but I might need to use two packets instead of one
I used Amazon’s seller information to let them know what happened and what the batch number was on the bad box. In my message I told them I did not want to return the item, but thought they should follow-up with the manufacturer. I received a response back from Amazon within 4 hours on a Sunday during a holiday weekend. Here’s part of the email they sent me:
I’m sorry about the problem you had with your Dynarex 1180 Triple Antibiotic Ointment 0.5g packets Box/144 . It’s certainly not our intention to ship defective products to our customers, and we’ll investigate the origin of this problem.
We always appreciate customer input on how we can improve our store, and I’ll consider your feedback for future improvement and to minimize the chances of anything like this occurring again.
When something like this happens, I’d normally send out a replacement order. I’ve checked your order and see the item was ordered from TopsMedical, a seller on our website. Because TopsMedical’s inventory is constantly changing, we can’t replace items sold by them that are Fulfilled by Amazon.
Instead, I’ve requested a full refund of $16.01 for the Dynarex 1180 Triple Antibiotic Ointment 0.5g packets Box/144 . This refund will appear in the next 2-3 business days as a credit on the original payment method used for the order.
I really don’t want to put you in the hassle of returning the item and would like to make things simple for you. There’s no need to return the item you received. You can dispose of it at your convenience.
If you still want the item, please place a new order via One-Day Shipping method and write back with the new order number. We’ll reimburse the total shipping cost for the new order as an exception.
Why was this important enough for me to stop my day and call it out? They didn’t have to do anything. I was perfectly fine using the product they shipped. I expected a response from the seller indicating they would look into it, but didn’t think Amazon should take action for something they didn’t have control over. They also didn’t require me to take any further action. I received an account credit for the full purchase price 30 minutes after the customer service email.
So do you think you really put customers first? Think how your company would have handled the same situation. Most companies might be good enough, but you see why Amazon gets my business if they possibly can.
