You can have the best customer support staff in the world, but they’ll be terrible at their jobs if you don’t empower them.

A few months ago I had ordered a pair of Klipsch B-3 speakers from BestBuy at 20% off from their online sale.  I had selected the online option to pick them up from my local BestBuy.  Sadly, a few days later I got an automated email that told me that they were out of stock and I would have to re-order them online.

Since the sale had already ended, I could no longer re-order the speakers at 20% off.  I called their customer support and they said that they could process the order again, but they only had control over online orders and could not arrange a pick-up.  This would require me to pay extra shipping fee for a mistake on their part.  I cancelled my order.

Apparently, their support representatives had no jurisdiction over local pick-ups even though their website allows it.  Furthermore they weren’t able to budge on the extra shipping fee they would require me to pay.

Too often then not, I end up calling customer support from company whose support staff can’t help me with my problem.  It’s easy to get mad at the customer support representative when you are frustrated, but many times I find that it’s not their fault.  Those companies failed to provide them the right tools and empower their staff to actually solve client problems.