Receiving good customer service is certainly nice. It's even nicer when it's totally unexpected. Perhaps that's one of the secrets of great service!
I'm already a big fan of the service provided by indeed.com for job searches. You can target specific areas, companies, salary ranges, etc., and they do all the work of scouring the job boards, company sites, etc., to deliver appropriate matches. I have a few alerts that zero in pretty quickly on companies of interest.
My target area happens to include London KY. A few weeks ago, I started noticing results that were for London ENGLAND. That might be an interesting place to work, but it's not my target, so clearly indeed had some little problem. It wasn't a big deal, most of them were pretty obvious, but I wondered why things had changed and also wondered if indeed knew about it. I decided to let them know. A simple comment on their web site just to let them know. Not a complaint, not a request for any change...just wanted to let them know there was an issue.
That's where this story might have ended, in which case it really wouldn't have ever been a story. Obviously, there is more. Within hours I received a very nice note, thanking me for the report, acknowledging confirmation of the problem, apologizing for the inconvenience, and letting me know the team was working on it. And, it had a real person’s name on the note! That's nice, and indeed, which was already pretty high on my "I like them" list, bumped up a bit more. But again, the story is not over.
A day later (yes, ONE day later), a follow-up, apologizing that it was taking so long! (1 day is “so long?”) Seems the problem is with the source data, not with indeed, but they’re still taking responsibility for it and apologized that it might take longer. And again, a real person's name at the end of the note.
Here's what continues to amaze me. Those responses didn't fix anything. They just acknowledged that it mattered and that they cared. They probably spent less time sending me those notes than it took me to write this post. Was it effective? I wrote the post, didn't I? Yeah... it was effective as far as I'm concerned. Now, how can I go do the same thing?
