Nothin' But Crickets

It's been about 24 48 hours since I sent my email to the Niners explaining why I'm not renewing for 2011. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I thought I might have received a reply or acknowledgement. Instead, I've received nothing. I suppose I should be flattered that my account rep even sent me a couple of emails prior to the deadline, since I know other folks who never received any correspondence from the ticket office after the invoices were sent.

It's not that I think I deserve a reply or that I'm looking for some attention from the team. I just can't believe that the organization wouldn't get back to a customer in a timely manner, especially one as displeased as I am. That's basic customer service.

The Niners' latest ticket account rep.

For example, in my current gig, customers regularly submit their feedback on the products that I work on. In every instance, I make sure to respond to them in a timely manner, no matter how mundane or trivial their comments may be. It's important that they know we're listening and we care about what they think as valued customers. If we ever received a comment that indicated a customer was frustrated to the point of discontinuing their business relationship with us, I guarantee the matter would be escalated and attended to immediately within several of our departments.

Hell, last week, a new customer's offhand remark about the messaging in one of our automated emails (translated into another language) prompted several internal stakeholders (including some at the executive level) to make sure that the customer was contacted for further information and to determine the cause and formulate a remedy for this issue. It turned out the email in question wasn't even in our automated system and was in fact manually written and sent by an account manager to welcome the customer onboard. It took the better part of an entire day to track down this information, but because the issue stemmed from customer feedback, it became priority number one.

The Niners? Not so much. And, to put things into perspective, my company has a global presence across North and South America, Europe and Asia while handling at least as many accounts as the 49ers. I know firsthand that corporate size and geographic distance are not valid excuses for ignoring customers.

Once again, the ignorance and arrogance (two words that appear quite frequently on this blog) of the 49ers has proven that they don't care about their customers.