Gold medal

Finland won a gold medal in javelin in Osaka world championships in the weekend and Finland also won the first Eurovision dancing contest on Saturday. Finland was one among 16 countries to compete in the dancing contest and won for the first time as the competition was held for the first time ever.

But one thing for sure Finland will not get a gold medal or win a competition in is customer care as

Customer care and customer service is one thing that most of the times seem non-existent in this country, even in so called customer care profession.

There are of course exceptions but they are scarcely rare, sometimes I wonder how anyone gets anything sold or done in this country. The son of a friend being in his late teens went to buy himself a new suit, not his first but another one as he happens to be from a quite wealthy background. He walks into a posh and renowned men’s outfitter in town and began his look around the suits. Time went by and the salesmen were not at all interested in this young boy and after a while he got fed up with not being seen and went straight up to one of the salesmen asking him: “Do you know who I am?” with the confused man answering with an obvious:”No, I’m afraid don’t.” followed by his curious question of: “Who are you then?” expecting the young man to be someone famous he should know about.

My friends’ son answering to this by saying that he is a customer and that he wants to buy a new suit and could he please get some help. This quite accurately describes the situations you end up in sadly enough all too often for it to be good for the national economy of Finland and currently I am in just the same situation right now. The situation gets even trickier as there only is one supplier available for the service in question and as there are no one else to compete with there is no need to take care of your customers, is there? At least that is how it seems.

I have now been trying to get contact with this one guy in the company in question for two weeks, I have spoken with him on the phone twice but as he has not been where he should have been to read my e-mail concerning the items I am to order, he has been non-committal about it all. My problem now is that I have promised to do this as a favour to a friend who has to get it done but has not the artistic gift to go through with it together with lack of sufficient language skills but time is now running out as the items have to be ready for the occasion, and we are here talking about hundreds, not a single one, with hundreds more to come if it all works properly and is delivered in time.

I can’t promise a good deal in the future as this deal seems to have to be moved abroad in order to get it done in and the company in question’s name getting a real bad reputation among many people and missing the opportunity to do some easy business. So no gold medals in customer care to be expected to in this country for a long, long time.