I used to work escalation support for a door and window company, and we had full discretion to give people free shit to keep them happy “within reason”. See, doors and windows are really expensive, and warranties are serious business when you are talking $20k in product, so reputation is important. We were the step below the core product experts with the company, who handled anyone who was talking lawyers.
I hated that job because, like any call center, they never fired anyone for not doing their job properly/well, so I gave away a lot of free stuff in protest. Like a lot. Examples include:
Oh you are a 10 months outside of warranty for the whole house of windows that’s just started failing? No problem, we’ll honor it and send out an inspector to get the full scope, order the replacements, then install them.
Oh you are missing a piece, but you mentioned the thing it’s attached to isn’t working that well, so I’ll just send a whole new unit for you, instead, and just charge for the small piece.
You’ve just ordered this replacement part that’s outside of warranty, I’ll include some stuff to keep it working well for you.
Ok we can’t figure out which specific part it is that you need, so I’m going to send the entire kit.
If you only replace this one piece on the door it will be aged differently than the rest, so I’ll send you a whole new set of hardware.
The only thing you needed to do to get free stuff from me was be nice, and have a need I could fill for free. If you were mean, not just frustrated but mean, to me or my tier 1 agents, I’d get real stubborn real quick. That served as a lovely smokescreen so nobody really caught on to the plethora of goodies I gave away, though I saw my giveaway stats and they were considerably higher than anyone else. But it meant I got great feedback, so they didn’t do anything about it except tell me to cut it back where I could. lol ok sure I’ll get right on that.
Small thing overall but I got what I could out of it.
I used to work escalation support for a door and window company, and we had full discretion to give people free shit to keep them happy “within reason”. See, doors and windows are really expensive, and warranties are serious business when you are talking $20k in product, so reputation is important. We were the step below the core product experts with the company, who handled anyone who was talking lawyers.
I hated that job because, like any call center, they never fired anyone for not doing their job properly/well, so I gave away a lot of free stuff in protest. Like a lot. Examples include:
The only thing you needed to do to get free stuff from me was be nice, and have a need I could fill for free. If you were mean, not just frustrated but mean, to me or my tier 1 agents, I’d get real stubborn real quick. That served as a lovely smokescreen so nobody really caught on to the plethora of goodies I gave away, though I saw my giveaway stats and they were considerably higher than anyone else. But it meant I got great feedback, so they didn’t do anything about it except tell me to cut it back where I could. lol ok sure I’ll get right on that.
Small thing overall but I got what I could out of it.