customer support

[cellio]

Today's mail brought a package for me, which initially puzzled me because my only pending Amazon order came yesterday.

A while ago (year? year and a half?) I called Del Monte to complain about the pull-top lids on their individual fruit cups. I keep these at work as a convenient no-hassle snack, and for three out of the four in the current box, the rings had broken off before opening the lid. (I'd had this happen occasionally before, too.) I do not keep a can opener at work, so that was a hassle -- and a friend who works there told me that they often send out piles of coupons when people complain, so I reported the problem. They seemed apologetic and sent me something like a 50-cent coupon, which was underwhelming, but *shrug*.

Today they sent me a box of fruit cups, along with a letter explaining that they'd redone their packaging and a postage-paid survey card with which to report back on whether this worked better.

They kept my complaint on file for more than a year, and followed up with something that specifically addressed that complaint. I'm surprised.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

What particularly impresses me about this is that it's not a gift to appease you, it's a genuine attempt to see if the new design works better by asking someone for whom the old design didn't work. So, does the new design work better?

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Instead of sending you "replacements" of the old kind, they paid attention to complaints. Impressive.

[cellio]

Yes, the genuine attempt to test the change with actual customers surprised and impresses me. I infer from the pre-printed postage-paid cards that they sent out quite a few of these, too.

The new top does work better (see my comment to magid above for details).