Lori Ray, customer service representative for Olympus America saved my day. For that, I have named her a Customer Service Hero.
I had just finished recording a client’s words for a writing project I’m working on and went to transfer the remarks from my Olympus VN-4100PC digital voice recorder to my PC. The Olympus Digital Wave Player showed it recognized the recorder but was being very stubborn about transferring the files.
I checked out the recorder’s manual and found nothing. I even looked under “troubleshooting” because I was in trouble, though when I didn’t find my answer, I thought of shooting something else other than trouble. When a telephone number for customer service was not immediately findable on the Olympus website, I began to feel like someone dropped in the middle of a strange city without knowing how to get out. As the sweat began to appear on my brow, I found a number and called it. The voice recording indicated I had called Olympus Imaging products (Cameras) and I hung up. I rechecked the number and though it was the same, I tried it again. This time I stayed on long enough to hear the prompt for voice recorders.
Lori answered the phone and demonstrated everything I teach in my customer service course. She answered with a pleasant greeting and expressed a desire to help me. She asked me what the situation was and when I told her about the frustration of seeing that the software recognized my device but refused to transfer the files, she replied with an attitude of “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”
Though I thought I must be missing something myself, she never made me feel like I was technically ignorant. She asked me several questions and had me repeat the various steps I had taken before I called her. The way she asked made me feel as if she was feeling the same frustration as I was, but she was going to figure it out no matter what. Her voice never showed the frustration but did show empathy. It probably helped that I remained calm, but I think she would have remained calm in any case.
Lori stayed on the phone with me for an hour (or so it seemed), tried this, tried that, and then, unlike so many others, she actually asked me if she could put me on hold and went to check with someone else. She made the conversation totally about me. She had asked what version of the software I had and apparently, there had been an update to solve the problem.
While she was telling me about the update, she was writing an email with links to the software and the update. She could have had me go to the Olympus website, navigate through the pages and find it myself. But no, she sent me the link while she was explaining so that when she got finished, the link was there for me to use.
I uninstalled the old software as she said and downloaded the new software and the patch. When my computer took a long time to shut down and reboot, I apologized and she assured me it was no problem (twice). After I rebooted, she had me reconnect my recorder, which opened the new software. Then she told me to try to transfer the files again and it worked.
Then she again exceeded my expectations while the files transferred. Apparently, I still had quite a few files on the recorder from previous uses and it was taking quite a while to transfer. Suddenly, I realized there was probably no reason for her to stay on the phone with me and offered to allow her to call me back after the transfer. She commented, “I probably won’t be here.” I looked at the clock and saw it was just after 5:00, but she had given me no indication that she wouldn’t have stayed with me for the duration. Finally, we agreed that I would email her when I saw it was alright. And it was.
In my customer service class, we show a video with a character, Maria, who does everything right. Some of the people in the class tell me Maria is “too perfect.” I ask, “Are there people who do what she does?” and they sheepishly say yes. After working with Lori Ray, our Customer Service Hero, I can honestly say I have met Maria in real life. She is a customer service hero.