For a while my girlfriend (sorry finacee now) has been attempting to get driving lessons working with BSM. BSM are a nationwide driving school but appear to be seriously disorganised and not customer focussed.

Her first driving instructor quit, which is fine, so they got her a second who didn’t turn up for lessons. She’s got so fed up with this farce of an organisational system that she called up to complain. They promised to sort it all out. It hasn’t been so she asked for her money back and get them with someone who can deliver on their promises.

Their response (I’m paraphrasing as I wasn’t on the call itself) was that buying lessons in  bulk was like buying a suit. And you can’t return a suit after wearing it a couple of times. So as she’d had a couple of lessons from the money she’d paid upfront she may not be entitled to her money back – else it’ll take them around 28 days to get her money back. Yes thats her money, its not BSMs money.

If this the world we live in. Large, supposedly trustworthy companies, delivering a customer service response like this.

In the world I inhabit, and I hope you do to, when something goes wrong with a service or a product and you ask to be reimbursed for their mistakes from money you’ve paid them you get at least something useful in return. Not condescended to and certainly not a smart arse response designed to make you angry.

The art of customer service is to turn a negative into a positive. I went to the Concert Hall in Glasgow on Monday to see Kevin Smith Q&A. Booked ticket online, chose my seat. Turned up and was told that part of the auditorium was closed and was summarily dispatched to a crappy seat on the corner. So I emailed them PDQ. Within ten minutes the manager had came up, found me and moved me to a better seat and explained the rationale for having moved me in the first place. Delightful woman, great customer service and turned a crappy experience of them into a far better one.

If only everyone was as good at customer service as the Concert Hall in Glasgow.