Service

This will probably sound like an old lady rant, but here goes anyway.  Whatever happened to customer service and taking responsibility?  Maybe we never had them as a society.

I used to work for a municipal government and occasionally I’d get phone calls (sometimes irate) from people who wanted to know something or get in contact with someone, but it wasn’t me and not my area of responsibility.  Rather than sending them on to another phone number (unless I knew definitely that it was the right contact) I’d say, “Give me your number, I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll call you back.”  And then I’d do it to make sure they reached the person they needed to.

Recently I was trying to find a contact for seniors’ housing in the small town where my parents live.  They still live in their own home and are independent, but it’s getting a little much for them.  Internet, I thought; I’ll find out what I need to know that way.  So I contacted their Health Region via e-mail and received a fairly prompt reply saying that my request had been forwarded and giving me the name of the person and a phone number.  So far so good.

I waited for about a week and, not having heard anything, decided to follow up with a phone call.  The person I wanted wasn’t there, and the person who answered didn’t know anything except that it wasn’t the Health Region that looked after seniors’ housing.  She thought it might be Mortgage and Housing Corporation (she said it twice, so I know that’s what she said).

Well, that didn’t seem quite right to me, so I went back on line to the Government of Saskatchewan web site (which I’d checked before without finding anything definite).  I found Sask. Housing Corporation and finally found a brochure that gave me a 1-800 number.  When I called it an automated voice mail gave me another 1-800 number for my specific region.  That resulted in a real person who gave me a number in the town where my parents live.  I knew it was a number there because of the prefix.  When I called it, however, I reached the Credit Union there.  When I explained that I was trying to reach someone in regards to seniors housing they said, “Oh, you want so and so, she works in (the next town) and doesn’t like to be disturbed at work about this, but here’s here home phone number, call her in the evening.”

 Great I thought, and in the meantime I’ll phone Sask. Housing back and tell them the number they have is incorrect (so someone else won’t waste their time calling it).  When I phoned, I was very low key, said that I’d talked to someone and been given this number and it was the Credit Union and not the number I wanted.  I said that I thought they might want to know they didn’t have the correct number. The woman told me that the number had been given to them by the coordinator and they updated it last in June.  She obviously didn’t want to even acknowledge or even thank me for drawing this to their attention.  It just wasn’t her responsibility.  So I said again that it obviously wasn’t the right number and I just thought they might like to know and rang off.

Or maybe I just expect too much.