I recently posted on another blog about the impressions we make.  For people who have public facing jobs, sales people, customer service reps - the impressions that you make are crucial to surviving in a truly cut-throat world.  I recently had an experience that just left me feeling rotten.

Everyone knows ‘American Furniture Warehouse’ - their stores seem to populate as many corners as Starbucks anymore.  I recently got a couch, chair & ottoman and a couple of tables. Everything but the tables were in stock and ready to go, so the sales guy told us that he’d give me a call in a couple weeks and let me know when they were in and, if I wanted to, I could come by and pick em up and save a little bit on delivery.

This sounded all right to me - the tables were small enough to transport on my own so we thanked the guy and didn’t think any more about it until this past week.

That would be week three in our timeline.  One week past when the sales guy said he’d call.  One week past when the tables were supposed to come in.  No one had called, so I called to find out what was up - maybe there was  a backorder or something - I don’t know.

I was told that the tables were in and they were just waiting on me to give em a call and let them know when they could deliver.  I said that no one had let me know they were in yet and the gal on the phone was fairly annoyed and wanted to know if I wanted to schedule deliver or not.

Not.

I called the sales guy the next day (having gotten the info and invoice from ma) and he was confused.  Said he’d call me back the next morning as he wasn’t at work.  That phone conversation was him telling me that he wouldn’t tell someone they could just come pick up furniture, that he didn’t know why no one called, that I could pick the tables up if I wanted to and that he’d get me the address.

Liking the whole thing less and less, I told him I didn’t need the address, that I knew where the damned store was.

"Oh - we don’t have any stock here.  You’ll have to goto our distribution warehouse to pick these tables up…"

Ugh.  POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE.  I mean, from the get go.  It was as if the guy knew NOTHING at all.  If you say you’re going to do something, you should do it - it’s called follow through.  I mentioned another article I wrote - it was about the Last Impression we make on people.  The first impression is very important, but the last impression is what we take away from the experience. 

In this case, I’m taking away poor customer service, lack of follow through and communication. 

The next time I am looking for furniture, I will have to seriously reconsider American Furniture Warehouse based on this experience. 

~P

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