Dear Editor,

Apart from investing tremendously in education and agriculture in order for any country to be productive and vibrant, good customer service should be at the forefront of any business for it to be successful. But good customer service appears to be a problem in some organisations, and such statements have been filling the airwaves for a while. I believe that there is confusion between a sales and a customer service representative.

Some sales representatives are discourteous to some customers as a result of lack of training or ignorance, and in these days, some people are very sensitive to such treatment because a sales representative’s main objective is to sell his product.

On November 22, I went to a store in St Thomas to buy a cellular phone. Although the location is small, it provides service to a number of people, but only two sales representatives seem to be at hand.

When it was my turn, I told one of the representatives that I needed to redeem my points to get a new phone and I asked her if I would receive some sort of credit with the new purchase. She said that the points system (meaning the computer) was down, and if I bought the phone, then I could collect the credit on the following day.

I made the purchase because the phone was a necessity. Hours later, I was told by a friend that having bought a new phone, I was entitled to $1,500 worth of credit as part of Digicel’s “share your smile” Christmas promotion, which runs from November 16, 2012 to December 27, 2012.

Based on the information, on November 23, I returned to the store to inquire of the lady why I had not got the promotional credit. She was looking after another customer and asked the other sales representative to attend to me.

Although she tried to, I still have not received the $1500 bonus credit, and I assume that the time has passed so it is possible that I may not get it. The point that I am trying to make is that Digicel expects all sales representatives to inform people who buy new phones during the promotional period to be given the credit specified. But I believe that a sales representative’s main objective is to sell a product instead of dealing with clients in a friendly manner as a customer service representative would do. Perhaps that St Thomas store needs a good customer service representative in order to treat customers well — and immediately.

Charlie Brown

charliebrown1004@gmail.com