There's No Need To Try So Hard

I am the first person to bitch when I’ve received what I feel is bad customer service. I also praise and reward good service that goes above and beyond what is expected. But when companies try too hard, we all lose.

When I woke up this morning, the power was out. We had some bad weather over night. I assumed that the outage had something to do with that. I did my usual putzing around and by the time I finished it was back. By the time blinking on my oven, I assumed it had only been out for a half hour or so.

At three o’clock this afternoon, I received a prerecorded phone call from the power company explaining that the power had gone out this morning for a half hour. NO SHIT DICK TRACY! WHERE DID YOU HIDE THE SQUAD CAR? Even if I had not been home, I’m pretty sure I could have figured out that the power went out by the blinking clocks all over my house. Is it really necessary to call my house and possibly wake my napping baby?

Amazon.com also tries too hard with their customer service. When a customer makes a request to be removed from their automatic promotional email list, they send an email confirming that they’ve been removed. Um, thanks. I just told you that I no longer want emails from you and you send me an email to tell me that you will no longer be sending me emails. Here’s an idea. How about you just stop sending me emails? I will figure it out that you are no longer emailing me by the lack of emails from you in my inbox.

Maybe I’m just cranky. Maybe I should applaud these companies for taking their customers into consideration. Maybe I’m just smarter than the average bear and don’t need an explanation for every. single. thing. But at some point, over serving becomes a disservice.