Inspired by this story (linked here), some stories of customer service - all happy in the end.

Last year, around April, I had spent quite a while out of work, and was rapidly running out of money. I had just moved in with a friend on what was meant to be a short-term basis - I'm still here now, and will be taking over the lease from her next month - and my financial situation was bad enough that a couple of automated payments failed to go through on my credit cards. One of them was for my mobile phone, not a particularly big payment, but once the payment failed, they canceled the automatic payment. I had a letter or two and a couple of automated calls from them, quite fairly, letting my know my payment was overdue and could I give them some money please? I actually did have the money to pay, but my c/c was maxed out, so I couldn't pay the phone bill until I paid off a bit of the c/c bill first - I did that, then tried to setup a payment on my online banking service. It failed - repeatedly. Then I noticed that I couldn't see my c/c balance or statement online either - very strange. I called the bank's hotline, got bounced around for a while, until someone explained what was going on, in one of the weirdest pieces of company process logic I've ever heard.

The bank had sent me a c/c statement through the post. Because I'd moved house, the statement was sent back to the bank, marked undeliverable. Because of this, the bank had removed online access to my c/c. To put it another way, because I was uncontactable by post, they stopped me from servicing my account online. They didn't tell me they'd done that - they have an email address and phone number on file for me - and their online service just gave me a generic error and/or simply didn't give me any information when I tried to get to my account details. It took a few calls before someone explained the situation to me, and then they started asking for me to go into a branch the following week to fill out a change of address form, and after the form had been processed, they would restore my online service. It took a couple more calls for someone to tell me that although they couldn't re-enable my account until after it was processed, they consider their online authentication strong enough that I could change my address through their website - I did so, and a couple of days later my account was back how it had been.

In the meantime, I'd been trying to call my phone company to - as in the linked blog post - just give them a c/c number and make them happy. I had the money, I was happy to pay, but would they take it from me? Of course not. Every resident of Hong Kong has a government-issued ID card and therefore an ID number, which is - insecurely, of course - commonly used as the basis for default passwords. I called the phone company, gave them my name, address, phone number, account number and... couldn't remember my password. It wasn't my ID number, and without it, they wouldn't let me pay my bill over the phone. Again - I'm calling up, identifying myself, telling them I have an overdue bill and would like to pay it, and being refused. Repeatedly. I got to the point where I was calling their customer service line, and opening the conversation with "Hello. I owe you money, and I want to pay it, but I don't know my password. If you ask me for it, I will immediately put the phone down and call again, until I find someone who will take my money without my password." It took me at least 3 or 4 cycles of call, be asked for password, put down phone, swear, call again until I got someone with a brain - someone who worked out that I obviously wasn't a native of Hong Kong, I was a customer of theirs, and maybe I had signed up before I had been given my ID number? In which case, the standard fall-back is to base the password on a foreign government-issued ID number - in my case, my passport number. We checked a couple of options - first N digits, last N digits - until we found the right combination, I paid my bill and went away as a happy customer, knowing that they employ at least one customer service agent who is capable of thinking outside the script.

And finally, a more recent story. Yesterday was Valentine's Day, a tradition pseudo-holiday designed to get people to overspend on things like gifts and restaurant meals. Since I am currently stepping out with a very sweet young lady, it seemed fitting that I, uh, show her a good time - and after thinking about it for a while, decided on a rather nice restaurant quite close to my home. I have some slightly odd eating restrictions/habits, and they were offering both a set menu and their usual a la carte menu last night, so I had a decent choice. I will admit that their regular menu is also quite a bit cheaper than the set, but that wasn't really a factor in my choice. After deciding on it, I then found out they were closed for Chinese New Year, so it was a few days until I could make a booking, which ended up being done on the way to another gathering, for which I was running late. I popped in, made the reservation - in a hurry - paid the requested HK$500 deposit in cash, made sure my name was in the book, and left. The guy had asked me to sign something, to pay with a card, but I was happy to pay cash and leave, didn't really have time to hang around.

I had the usual slight paranoid niggle on the way there last night, that we would arrive to find they had forgotten or ignored my booking and they would turn us away, but my name was in the book and we were shown to a table. We had both looked at the menu before, so we ordered relatively quickly - a big steak with chips for her, and battered seabass and chips for me. A couple of minutes later, the waiter returned to inform me that there was a $500 minimum charge because it was a pseudo-holiday - $500 per person! Since the combined price of our two meals was about $500, this seemed a bit odd, and I was surprised that nobody had informed us before taking our order. I told th waiter this, and he affirmed the requirement, and went to fetch someone else to explain it. Another member of staff came over and told me that I'd signed a booking form which explained it - which was strange, since I'd signed no such form. She was firm, and I apologised to my young lady, asked the restaurant to return my deposit so we could leave, and started thinking, dejectedly, where else I could take her at such short notice, on such a popular eating-out night, since the planned meal had been ruined. A couple of minutes later, another member of staff came over to return my deposit, apologise, and offer to waive the minimum. I asked him if he was sure, he told me he was the owner and we were welcome to stay. We reinstated our original order, and we can say that the fish, steak and - particularly - the chips were excellent, and we will happily go back to that restaurant.

While it was busy, the restaurant was not full, and since our booking was for 9pm - a relatively late time to eat on a weeknight - it was unlikely that they were going to be overwhelmed with walk-in customers at that point. They had a choice between enforcing their minimum and losing a current and future customer, or taking a smaller amount from me, and leaving me as a happy customer who will not only return but happily recommend the restaurant to my friends. It is the nicest restaurant - at the top end of mid-range, I'd say - within an easy walk of my place, and there's no doubt I'll go back. The owner made the correct customer service call. A little bit of politeness, a slight loss of business - although a net gain, really - on one night gives him a happy customer.

That sort of service is, in general, sadly lacking in Hong Kong. I am not claiming that the customer is alright right - in that case, the fault was with the member of staff who took my booking without insisting on my signing the booking form - but they could have stuck to their guns. It is all too common to find customer service staff who hide behind their 'process' to avoid making customers happy - for example, insisting that they are not allowed to call customers to confirm problems have been solved. One of the more positive things about the bank experience described above, is that one member of staff offered to go away, try to find a solution to my problem, and call me back. She did the best she could, found a partial solution, gave me a reasonable reason why should couldn't entirely solve my problem - and called me back, as she'd promised, to let me know. That shows a level of service above the ordinary, and is something worth rewarding with more custom.