The fine art of customer disservice
Exploring the upper limits of failure cascades at USPS
We had a US Postal Service delivery today and the carrier knocked on the door instead of ringing the bell. There are, to my knowledge, no trolls, snakes, birds, or other wildlife guarding the bell. We were home but upstairs so we don’t hear the knock and our first indication of anything wrong is the delivery attempt notice we find in the mailbox later that day.
The delivery attempt notice says we have to go pick the package up tomorrow rather than making any redelivery attempt. That sucks. But it’s the USPS so I have options, right? It says so right on the notice. Bubbling over with naive optimism, I peruse the options listed on the notice.
The helpful notice says we can reschedule delivery on the web site so I give that a try. Nope. I can’t get past the dialog for the parcel tracking number. The number matches the one the shipper gave me. I know because I pasted it in from the invoice email. It also matches the number written on the slip. Despite all this, the web site doesn’t recognize it.
I’m a MyUSPS customer so I sign onto my account. Any deliveries scheduled? Yeah, this one. But it’s listed all in red and doesn’t have a date next to it. I suspect it wasn’t there at all until I tried to use that number a minute ago for tracking. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to this screen first so I’ll never know. In any case, it’s useless for this transaction.
Hoping to avoid the drive to the post office, I try the phone number and wade through one of the most annoying voice response menus ever. About 5 levels in I decide they hired a sadistic linguist to design this thing specifically to discourage anyone from ever calling in. That’ll reduce costs.
When prompted for a redelivery confirmation number I carefully enter the number from the bar code on the notice. Surely, that’s been scanned right? Don’t hold your breath. Although the menu asks for a confirmation number there is no field by that name on the notice. The number below the bar code is the only unique number on the form so it must be the right one, yeah? Nope. I’m informed bythe friendliest of robot voices that the number I entered isn’t valid.
Bracing myself, I re-enter the labyrinthine voice menu and find a route that doesn’t involve a confirmation number. When I finally get to the hold queue the system offers to call me back. Ever the optimist I punch in my phone number I am informed by the friendliest of robot voices that my phone number is invalid. Obviously it’s valid enough for outbound calls and people other than USPS have called and texted to it today. I try again, slower. Then again even slower. And again, very slowly but this time holding each button for down for a full second.
It turns out that the USPS voice response menu has a limit on the number of times you can fail while attempting to enter a callback number and after a handful more tries I reach it. Advanced players who beat the voice menu are rewarded by being granted an audience with a real live human. The hold time, I’m assured, is 13–20 minutes. Sometime after having exceeded the 20 minute mark I decide to take notes and began typing.
After writing all this up, taking a screen shot and a photo for illustrations, I’m still waiting on hold even as I type these words. In fact, I’ve now spent more time waiting on the phone than it would have taken to get in my car and drive to the post office and back.
Finally some poor guy answers the phone and in the calmest of human voices I explain to him everything that just happened, leaving out no detail. I’m not abusive and don’t raise my voice but if this is allowed to stand without comment there’s no incentive for them to fix the problem. Besides, I wrote all this down for a reason. This is it.
He’s been selected exactly for this moment. I can’t imagine the interview process that finds people like this so I assume he’s cloned and vat grown. He surely is genetically modified for the job because he never misses a beat and never changes the cadence or timber of a voice that is as smooth as honey and soothing as a lullabye. I don’t know what they pay this guy but it isn’t enough.
He verifies my information and locates the package within a minute or so. Are there any special instructions he asks? Why yes, now you mention it. He makes note of my request to ring the doorbell instead of knocking, filtering out the “goddam” during the transcription and prefixing the whole thing with “please” before hitting <ENTER>. Damn, this guy’s good.
As we complete our call he asks in his smooth dulcet voice if I’d like to note the redelivery confirmation number. “It begins with the letters WIR,” he says, then reads off the remaining digits. I have to ask him to repeat because during the first pass I was busy wondering whether whoever programmed the voice menu knew the confirmation numbers had alpha characters, and if this is all part of the plan to discourage callers. If so, then it will have served its purpose brilliantly because I so desperately want to avoid ever calling that number again I’ll ship via UPS whenever humanly possible, even paying a premium to do so if necessary.
I just hope that the carrier rings the goddam doorbell tomorrow or we get to do this all over again.
The next day…
The next day I happened to be in front of a window when the postal truck drove up to the mailbox. I dropped what I was doing and headed down to the door to meet my carrier with the package. Except by the time I got there they had left. No package in the box, no package at the door. Surveillance footage shows the carrier didn’t get out of the truck.
Apparently not all the customer service reps are as good as the guy from yesterday because the lady who answered this time seemed more than a little defensive even though I was in nice-guy mode.
At this point she said it would be pointless to keep trying redelivery and I should just go to the post office tomorrow and get the package.
“Sometimes we just don’t know why a package can’t be delivered,” she said without a hint of irony.
“I can help with that,” I said. “According to my surveillance camera the carrier stopped at the mailbox for less than 5 seconds and didn’t attempt to deliver it. How about we reschedule it and tomorrow the driver crosses that crucial last 50 feet?”
Wait…“tomorrow”? She seems to believe, either from what the computer tells her or based on unfounded optimism, that the package is on the truck and not in the post office.
“So I can’t go now because my package is on the truck?”
“Well, we really don’t know where it is but I’d hate for you to go down there and not be able to pick the package up. You’ve been through so much already.”
Well, at least they admit that much.
This is the United States Postal Service. Delivering stuff is supposed to be their core competency. Every other service they sell is contingent on getting stuff to its destination. If they can’t do that part they’d be out of business in a week. How it it they have even one employee who doesn’t understand that?
