Apologies for my slow reply – I have been discussing with staff exactly what happened, as quite a bit happened over the phone and I wanted to get a full picture of the situation.
If we were bigger and had a full-time PR agency managing our online presence, I imagine that they would advise that we let this dog lie, however I’m really not happy with how Mr. Lewis has portrayed our staff throughout this entire ordeal. Our customer service team in particular is the best it has ever been in the 5+ years I have been affiliated with Benchmark. They do their best with every customer who is reasonable (99.99999%), but they are also very good at holding their ground when a customer tries to bend our policies, ‘just this one time’. They have a very tough job and I absolutely respect that they bear the brunt of any mistake that other team members make - doing so with a smile.
The following is a full recount of what happened, and why it happened. From my perspective, our team tried to go above and beyond for Mr. Lewis, however a first time buyer’s discount and detail oriented customer service to make sure his order shipped at the requested ship date was not enough for him.
- Mr. Lewis placed his first order with BWG on 1/9/15, using the First Time Buyer code, and requested a ship date of 1/19/15. While placing that order, Mr. Lewis was informed by our sales person that this promo code was only available to him once, and perhaps he would like to save it for a bigger order. He opted to use it for that order and we obliged.
To be clear, when an order is placed, it is finalized in our system – bottles cannot be ‘added to’ the order at a later date for inventory and accounting reasons. The order would have been shipped within 72 hours, but Mr. Lewis asked that we Hold for a specific date. We often provide the service of holding orders in our warehouse and shipping on a convenient date for the client, and Mr. Lewis took advantage of the service. In the event the customer would like to place additional orders, we are happy to consolidate those orders with the original and give the best possible per bottle shipping rate.
I believe this is the root cause of this entire issue – Mr. Lewis made the assumption that he would be able to ‘add bottles’ to an order after the fact, even though he was told directly that he would only be able to use the discount on one order.
-
On 1/16/15, Mr. Lewis’ Customer Service Rep sent him a courtesy shipping notice to remind him that we would be shipping his order on the requested shipping date – as we always do for our customers. This is to make sure the customer still wants to ship on that date and to make sure someone will be available to receive the shipment when it arrives.
-
Mr. Lewis replied to the shipment notification, saying that he wanted to add bottles to the shipment and receive the 10% discount again. If you read the email again that Mr. Lewis posted, you will see that his customer service rep made no promises, she just asked him to call our sales department and let them know about the discount. Our customer service team does not keep track of discounts, that is the sales team’s job.
-
When Mr. Lewis called to place a second order to be combined with his first for shipment, he was kindly reminded by two members of our sales team that the First Time Buyer promo was only available to him once, and he opted to use it on his first order.
-
After expressing dissatisfaction with our response, he was transferred to our Operations Manager. By this time, Mr. Lewis was not in the greatest of moods and when she held her ground on the subject he immediately asked to have the order cancelled. She obliged and waived the 5% restocking fee.
Our Operations Manager is very good at what she does and any upset customer phone calls typically land in her lap – the phone call from Mr. Lewis was not her first rodeo. When she does receive these phone calls, she is very direct and matter-of-fact about the situation. Perhaps the tone might be misconstrued as rude when the caller is upset, but I am often in the room when they happen – at no time is she rude or patronizing.
- Within a few hours of that phone call, I received notice from Yelp that a review had been posted on our profile – which was the One Star review that I referenced in my first post.
Perhaps there is a fundamental misunderstanding between Benchmark and Mr. Lewis on what customer service is. We do our best to go above and beyond by giving our clients on-demand access to rare wines that cannot often be found anywhere else, and detail oriented service after the sale to make sure your prized wines arrive safely at your doorstep. However, given the constrained supply of the wines we sell, we don’t discount – save a select few rare circumstances. A customer’s mistaken assumption is not a good reason to extend a discount on wines that will easily sell otherwise at the original, market leading price. If this was an auction and Mr. Lewis had been outbid, would we still be having the same conversation? Our team did their best to kindly inform Mr. Lewis that his assumption was incorrect, however that was not enough.
Throughout this ordeal, many adjectives have been used to describe our team – which I completely disagree with. The team made an honest effort to satisfy Mr. Lewis using the tools that they had available – tools that seem to be very agreeable to our many happy customers. This same misunderstanding has happened in the past (one of the reasons this discount is no longer available), however we have managed to (almost) always resolve the situation equitably. At the end of the day, you can’t make everyone happy…and we’re okay with that.
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
