If you own, rent or share an apartment in Canada, you have got to be handy! In a country where labour is extremely expensive, a lot of stuff has got to be done without professional help. While you can get most of your stuff done through a professional, doing stuff yourself saves you a lot of money and gives you a great sense of accomplishment.
Places like the Home Depot, Lowes, Rona, Home Hardware, Canadian Tire and even Walmart stock up a lot of stuff that you can use in your homes and make you a truly handy man or woman. Some of these speciality stores also have workshops that teach you to DIY (Do It Yourself) and this works out really well.
If I could accomplish it then so can you. I have never done anything handy back home, getting simple screws into a wall were things that I could not accomplish with easy, however, I managed to paint my home and install my computer workspace with a lot of help of course all by myself. The key to DIY is the right tools and applying the right techniques. If you put your mind to it, it can be very simple. The results give you immense satisfaction and pleasure.
I must ask you to use caution if you are going to try to install electrical equipment or do some plumbing activity in your new home. You should use a professional for these projects unless you are qualified or certified to do them.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Poor Customer Experience!
Being in the Customer Service industry for almost all the 11 years of my working life, overlooking minor service failures has been okay with me. However, when you get cheated by leading service providers for the promises that they make is unpardonable in my books.
I have been trained in Customer Services by some really great brands and some key lessons they taught me that
1. It cost seven times more to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one and
2. A poor service experience will receive a lot of publicity than an excellent one.
Customers can be extremely demanding and they have every right to be that way as they spend top dollars to make service providers profitable. While there are several customers that are unreasonable, I am not one of them. It is for this reason, I choose to write about my poor experience as I have told several people that I know about it and I want to share it with a greater audience.
Television is something that I really enjoy watching and I willing to spend a lot of money, if I can get to watch what I want. I did it back home though at a fraction of the cost and I was willing to do it here as well. My experience from back home with Satellite TV was an extremely fulfilling one and therefore I chose to explore the opportunity in Canada.
Sadly, in this country, the market is well protected and satellite services are limited to very few players. In Ontario, which is where I live, there are only two service providers and my experience is related to the services of not the market leader but the emerging player.
Now, with my limited knowledge of business, I do realize that it is the smaller fish that has to woo its customers with great deals in order to avoid being eaten by the big ones. However, it was not true in my case. After several weeks of research, I chose the smaller player and got the necessary equipment to have my service installed as the services that they were offering were far better than the market leader.
I called up their Customer Services and had to wait 40 minutes to get to speak to an agent to schedule an appointment for the installation. On installation day, I was extremely anxious as it was more than three weeks that I had to wait to get my services. As I waited at home for the technician to arrive, my gut instinct told me to check on the appointment with the Customer Service team.
This is when I was thoroughly shocked because after waiting for 30 minutes to speak to an agent, I was told that my appointment was scheduled for three weeks after the date that I had requested. I lost my patience, as this was absolutely unacceptable and there was no way the agent could grab a hold of the recording that I had with the company. I could not speak to a supervisor and the company did nothing to resolve the issue or offer a solution that was in my favour. I chose to cancel the contract even before it started and they did nothing to retain me. They lost a minimum guaranteed revenue of $75.00 a month.
I always use the statement that a Vice President at British Airways made, "customers will accept that things will be broken, however, the expect you to fix them". This service provider did absolutely nothing to fix what they broke and were okay to lose my business.
I have been trained in Customer Services by some really great brands and some key lessons they taught me that
1. It cost seven times more to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one and
2. A poor service experience will receive a lot of publicity than an excellent one.
Customers can be extremely demanding and they have every right to be that way as they spend top dollars to make service providers profitable. While there are several customers that are unreasonable, I am not one of them. It is for this reason, I choose to write about my poor experience as I have told several people that I know about it and I want to share it with a greater audience.
Television is something that I really enjoy watching and I willing to spend a lot of money, if I can get to watch what I want. I did it back home though at a fraction of the cost and I was willing to do it here as well. My experience from back home with Satellite TV was an extremely fulfilling one and therefore I chose to explore the opportunity in Canada.
Sadly, in this country, the market is well protected and satellite services are limited to very few players. In Ontario, which is where I live, there are only two service providers and my experience is related to the services of not the market leader but the emerging player.
Now, with my limited knowledge of business, I do realize that it is the smaller fish that has to woo its customers with great deals in order to avoid being eaten by the big ones. However, it was not true in my case. After several weeks of research, I chose the smaller player and got the necessary equipment to have my service installed as the services that they were offering were far better than the market leader.
I called up their Customer Services and had to wait 40 minutes to get to speak to an agent to schedule an appointment for the installation. On installation day, I was extremely anxious as it was more than three weeks that I had to wait to get my services. As I waited at home for the technician to arrive, my gut instinct told me to check on the appointment with the Customer Service team.
This is when I was thoroughly shocked because after waiting for 30 minutes to speak to an agent, I was told that my appointment was scheduled for three weeks after the date that I had requested. I lost my patience, as this was absolutely unacceptable and there was no way the agent could grab a hold of the recording that I had with the company. I could not speak to a supervisor and the company did nothing to resolve the issue or offer a solution that was in my favour. I chose to cancel the contract even before it started and they did nothing to retain me. They lost a minimum guaranteed revenue of $75.00 a month.
I always use the statement that a Vice President at British Airways made, "customers will accept that things will be broken, however, the expect you to fix them". This service provider did absolutely nothing to fix what they broke and were okay to lose my business.
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