Eating Crow, and Enjoying It

I had a nice helping of crow on Monday.

Early this week, Nikita had her first 1000 km, and I'd made it a point to get the checkup and servicing done while I'm still relatively free. Logging on the network, I remembered seeing an online appointment booking feature on EON's site (Link), which I utilised.

As I confirmed and sent the email, the system returned a message that went something like:

"Thank you for using our services. A customer service representative will contact you within 3 to 5 working days."

Now, since I'd made the booking for Thursday I was naturally a little suspicious of this claim (plus the general perception of services in Malaysia notwithstanding) and decided I'd make a personal call to the Glenmarie service centre, just in case. A couple minutes later, the call was made, the appointment set, and I was just about to get back to work when an unknown number came through the line.

"Is this Mr A___?"
"Yes, who is this please?"
"This is N__ from EON, we received an email from you about an appointment booking at Glenmarie for Thursday?"
"Yes, ah -"
"But our records also show you placed a call to the service centre."
"Yes, you see, I - (at this point I needed desperately to bullshit my way out of this) I thought I'd sent the email out a couple days ago, so I decided to call and check."
"I see. So the appointment is set then, at 8 am Thursday the 9th."
"Oh. Er. Yes. It is, isn't it?"
"Yes. Well thank you for using our services, sir, have a nice day."

Now, from a purely systematic standpoint, should I emphasise how flabbergasted I was? I DID of course expect them to be able to trace my mobile number from my licence plates, but having the call returned THAT quickly set my head spinning. At a time when confidence in our customer services are at an all time low (Link), it's heartening to know that some of these expensive systems these companies install do work, and are utilised well.

I'll be blogging the review of the first 1000 km service very soon, so keep tuned!