Doing business with a company means you’re not just buying their products, but the experience of having their people, opinions and expertise, too.

Some companies really understand great customer support and service, others fall hard. The latter is the case with my recent (now only) experience with Canadian online menswear retailer, Frank & Oak.
My story is common: I ordered a couple of items, but one got lost in transit. I had full faith that customer service at Frank & Oak could help me track it.
I got a week of radio silence through their online form, and email. Resorting to Twitter, I finally got a reply a couple days later: “we’ll email you.”
Fast forward three weeks from their first reply and we’ve got two valuable lessons from their final correspondence:

I usually answer my email within 3-4 days, but since you sent 3 emails, the number of days showing since our last communication stayed the same. Please wait for a response next time, so that I don’t loose track of our communication.

1. Blame the customer: 3 emails in a 3 week span, of course it’s my fault.
2. Passive-aggresively tell the customer they’re annoying: In 2013, most email clients order messages by time of receipt. My fault, I didn’t know that yours doesn’t.
Every bit of this Frank & Oak email makes it my fault. So much for making customers feel like a bad ass.
For examples on how to avoid bad customer service like this, you can read how Ryan switched to T-Mobile and had a great experience, or you can read how we turned our own disasters into gold. And whether you work on a support team or not, everyone should give Carnegie a read. You’ll make more friends, and probably more customers.
In the mean time, I’m going to find a place to buy a nice shirt.