Great customer service very rarely includes the F-word.
Unless, of course, the customer service operator says You’re a f*****g great customer and we love having you, though that seems a tad unnecessary.
And if you attend Customer Service 101, you’d know that the customer is always right.
But customer service operators are humans too (most of the time), and they are as prone to fits of anger as we are.
Business & Customer Exchange F-Words In Passive Aggressive WhatsApp Argument
When one man ordered a Signature Freestyle Bouquet from Floral Garage Singapore and paid $74.50 for it, he expected a good quality bouquet.
He requested for the bouquet, which had a special message attached, to be sent to his wife.
However, he had a few complaints after the bouquet was delivered:
1) That the flowers were supposed to be delivered in the morning but his wife only received it at 5pm
2) That the bouquet looked “distasteful and nothing like what’s on the website
3) That the bouquet appeared to be missing the card with the special message for his wife
Now, according to Stomp, this delivery was supposed to be a gift for Valentine’s day, so you can see why it was upsetting.
And when the man, known as Duckben to Stomp, contacted the florist to ask about the “missing” card and message, this is what the florist had to say.
Due to the florist’s poorly-worded response, Duckben thought that the company forgot to include the card and message, saying, “Your f*****g flowers are not even addressed properly to my wife and you have the audacity to put your brand name on the flower instead”.
He added that it was “cheap and done without any effort”.
Now, at this point, the florist had two options:
1) Calmly explain that the message is behind the logo card
2) Calmly explain that the message is behind the logo card
Yes, there is only one real option. But instead, the florist said “Ask your f*****g wife to take out the logo card. Message is under there”.
As I said, great customer service very rarely includes the F-word.
A “Misunderstanding”
After Duckben responded sarcastically with “Great customer service”, the florist said “Great customer”.
Looks like these two were made for each other.
And when Duckben posted a picture of his bouquet, complaining about the placement of the message and card, the florist said it was to “protect message content privacy”.
In the end, after cursing and sarcastically calling him a “great customer”, the florist said it was just a “misunderstanding”.
When Duckben called the florist out for insulting his wife, the florist simply said: “You got any suggestion?”
I have one – don’t be an ass.
“I was not happy with their product and I criticised their product. They cannot take feedback, so they scolded my family?” Duckben told Stomp.
Not the only complaint
You might think that this was just an anomaly, but according to Duckben, Floral Garage has received many other complaints.
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“They have deleted most of these complaints from the comments, but here are some screenshots for your reference,” he said.
In response to Stomp queries about Duckben’s feedback, a spokesman for Floral Garage said it has checked with the employee “who dealt with this conversation”.
“The customer ordered a ‘pastel, modern’ theme. The product delivered was indeed of a ‘pastel, modern’ theme,” he said.
“With regard to his statement that it looks nothing like the photos, it is not meant to look like any of the photos. Those photos are simply samples of past designs as stated in the product’s description on the website.”
Do they really think we would buy these bouquets if we knew the actual products are not as advertised?
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“As a florist, we design flowers based on colour theme and style, and can never match totally. Even then, this product itself is not meant to be similar to any picture,” he added.
“Maybe the customer’s issue is with the quantity and beauty of the flowers. You can see that we gave three roses (just like most of the sample images on the website), as well as some fillers and side flowers to complement the main flowers.
“When we do the bouquet, the value of the flowers and fillers is also taken into account. You can see that his fillers look more exotic as we used slightly more unique and thus higher-priced fillers.”
And the florist also disagreed that the flower was “ugly”.
“With regard to the beauty, I do not see how this bouquet is ugly. Maybe it simply isn’t to the customer’s taste. If so, he should have ordered a product that is not ‘Freestyle’ and not trusted our florist’s taste.”
The spokesman also echoed the sentiments of the WhatsApp Customer Service Operator Of The Year, saying that the message and card were intentionally attached in that way so as to “protect the privacy of the message.”
“However, we do admit in future we can make the opening of the message more intuitive. We would have to look into how to improve on this,” the spokesman said.
“With regard to the delivery, the customer had ordered for 9am-5pm delivery, which meant that we could deliver anytime within those times. We delivered right on time.
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“Due to the volume of orders on Valentine’s Day, we were not able to meet his request, neither did we promise to do so. This applied to all customers.”
Okay, fine, what about the profanity?
“With regard to the verbal dispute, in the heat of the moment, both sides lobbed the F-word.
“I would think it is reasonable that our staff would respond in kind as the customer was being rude to him. After all, our staff is also a human being. Hurling such abusive insult at a human being is not right in any circumstance.
“I hope you understand this from a customer service point of view. The staff ultimately was still helpful.
“Just to add on, this customer had been posting blatantly and abusively on our social media platforms. When he posted, he did not include the full story, but only shared screenshots showing the bad parts of the conversation e.g. the F- word.
“I would say he is one of the worst customers we have ever dealt with.”
I suppose both parties are at fault here. The customer did curse at the florist first, and both vulgarities were completely unnecessary and only served to anger the other party.
I have to say though, I never knew florists were so damn feisty.
