Snapfish Customer Service Problems Continue - Is Overseas Outsourcing To Blame?

A few months ago, I blogged about a frustrating customer service experience that my wife had with Snapfish, an online photo production website. I was impressed with how quickly I received a comment on that post from Dean Cookson, director of Systems and Support Operations for Snapfish. His answer seemed reasonable enough so it prompted me to post a favorable response. But, as you'll see in the comments section on that post, Ona, one of my blog readers, posted a comment on 7/15/08 sharing her tale of woe regarding Snapfish which she attributes to outsourced overseas customer service.

I'm not sure whether Snapfish has outsourced its customer service but Ona's note raises some warning flags about whether Snapfish might be engendering a lot of bad buzz in the interest of saving money on its customer service operations. I'm sure that most people have experienced frustrations like Ona's. While I'm not absolutely opposed to overseas customer service, few companies can pull it off successfully since they tend to scrimp on training and quality control. In fact, problems are so rampant in overseas customer service that they've become a common joke as you'll see in the hilarious video from Reno 911!, one of my favorite TV shows.

Comments

[Patrick787]

The same day that this post appeared, Dean Cookson commented on another part of this blog at http://blog.galvincomm.com/my_weblog/2008/05/snapfish-snaps-to-attention-when-it-comes-to-customer-complaints.html#comments offering to help resolve Ona's problems himself.

I'm impressed with how Dean is actively monitoring Snapfish's online buzz and reacting quickly to it. When I worked in my family's retail furniture business, I learned that sometimes the customers that had the biggest problems associated with their orders became our best referral sources. When we took steps to solve their problems quickly, we were often rewarded with their loyalty and referrals.

[Emily]

I was wondering how many websites I would find about Snapfish's customer service. While I love theri products, I am about to stop using their service. I have had two completely seperate and very negative experiences with Snapfish.com customer service. In December I ordered a calendar because I got an email saying they would upgrade the shipping to two day and GUARENTEE it by the 24. I called repeatedly to make sure that it would in fact arrive on time (as it was a gift) because online it said it hadn't shipped. I was assured 3 different times that it would be there and to just ignore the website status. Well it didn't arrive the 24. It arrived the second week on January! wow... So recently I decided to give it another shot and order another calendar, as again, I like theri quality. I spent hours creating a calendar over multiple days and saved it each time. When I went in to order it (again it is a gift I need by mid next week) the calender no longer started in Feb but in March without the option to change back, but whats worse is what happened to my birthdays and events I spent hours collecting and entering into the calendar. (Obviously I wasn't smart enough to record all of the about 30 different dates elsewhere.) The birthdays were scattered accross the calendar listed multiple times over multiple months for the same event. So I called customer service because I dont have time to remake the calender, nor want to bother my relatives calling them all again for thier birthdays etc. Once I reached a Snapfish rep I tried to explain my issue but he couldnt understand what I was saying or even how to spell my email or name. (After trying over and over to slowly pronounce it.) He told me it would take a couple days to fix 24 hours most likely but no more than 48 hours. That was 3 days ago now... I just checked the status of the case and was shocked to see that it was marked as solved. (The calendar is still all scrambled, nothing fixed.) I called customer service again and although we were able to communicate a bit better than with the rep I talked to a few days ago, he still said that he would just forward it on to the 'offline' tech team. He said it would be resolved in 1-2 business days... Today is Friday so that means by tuesday evening. I need this calender by that Tuesday. I was promised that this would be resolved no later than yesterday! This really is terrible cust service. I am left with little more option than ordering elsewhere. And worse, remaking the entire project and calling eveyone all over again. I wasn't sure before but I now feel quite strongly that it is quite a mistake to outsource cust service. It is way too important.