Ten and the Postal Investigation
For the last two weeks, I've spent more time than usual on the phone with UPS and USPS.
Business has kicked up, which is great for the company in general, but also means that there's more questions coming into CS, and a lot of them are about package delivery. Many can be addressed by looking up a tracking number, but when the package is, say, en route to Alaska, and UPS says they dropped it off, but USPS says it never showed up, then I get to step in and start calling people. I am two minds about how much customers like to yell at us personally for their package situation; on the other hand, I am kind of fascinated by the process of getting through to these services and experiencing their CS>
I will say: UPS quoted their tracking info at me, and when I asked for further assistance, hung up on me. USPS will also quote their tracking info at you, but if you do manage to get a person - which is the tricky bit, both at POs and on the help line - they are generally superbly nice and amazingly helpful, even when they can't solve the problem for you right off the bat. I suppose that's the reward for navigating the hurdles of the lovely sounding but difficult to bypass robot USPS has for their phone system.
Yesterday, I had to call into the help line again because there was a package floating around Rochester, NY, and no new scan had been done on it to tell me where it was. Was it in the post office? Was it on the way to somewhere on the East Coast? It hadn't found the recipient, she was still emailing about it. After trying the PO and getting nowhere, I called into the USPS customer service line and, with a little finagling, got an agent. Who took a look the situation and was like, "Looks like you need a postal investigation."
I'm way too much of a fan of the private dick genre not to picture a guy in postal blue trench coat at those words.
But the reality of the situation turned out to be much less fantastical, as it sometimes goes: I gave the USPS guy my phone number, and this morning I got a call from New York that I did not answer because who calls me from New York? Oh. Right. The post office investigator. But he left a pithy message detailing what the resolution to my problem was, left his number if I had anymore questions, and that was it. May all your investigations be so easy, postal investigation guy! And I got to button up a CS issue that'd been bugging me for a week, so it all turned out well in the end.
That is, until something happens while I'm on travel and I get to start the call rounds again. Let us hope that Thanksgiving doesn't jam up the package lines too, too much!
Business has kicked up, which is great for the company in general, but also means that there's more questions coming into CS, and a lot of them are about package delivery. Many can be addressed by looking up a tracking number, but when the package is, say, en route to Alaska, and UPS says they dropped it off, but USPS says it never showed up, then I get to step in and start calling people. I am two minds about how much customers like to yell at us personally for their package situation; on the other hand, I am kind of fascinated by the process of getting through to these services and experiencing their CS>
I will say: UPS quoted their tracking info at me, and when I asked for further assistance, hung up on me. USPS will also quote their tracking info at you, but if you do manage to get a person - which is the tricky bit, both at POs and on the help line - they are generally superbly nice and amazingly helpful, even when they can't solve the problem for you right off the bat. I suppose that's the reward for navigating the hurdles of the lovely sounding but difficult to bypass robot USPS has for their phone system.
Yesterday, I had to call into the help line again because there was a package floating around Rochester, NY, and no new scan had been done on it to tell me where it was. Was it in the post office? Was it on the way to somewhere on the East Coast? It hadn't found the recipient, she was still emailing about it. After trying the PO and getting nowhere, I called into the USPS customer service line and, with a little finagling, got an agent. Who took a look the situation and was like, "Looks like you need a postal investigation."
I'm way too much of a fan of the private dick genre not to picture a guy in postal blue trench coat at those words.
But the reality of the situation turned out to be much less fantastical, as it sometimes goes: I gave the USPS guy my phone number, and this morning I got a call from New York that I did not answer because who calls me from New York? Oh. Right. The post office investigator. But he left a pithy message detailing what the resolution to my problem was, left his number if I had anymore questions, and that was it. May all your investigations be so easy, postal investigation guy! And I got to button up a CS issue that'd been bugging me for a week, so it all turned out well in the end.
That is, until something happens while I'm on travel and I get to start the call rounds again. Let us hope that Thanksgiving doesn't jam up the package lines too, too much!