You never know what you will get. And with the last box of chocolate I bought, I also got an excuse to write another post here. A couple of months ago I was at Skopje, North Macedonia. It was my first time in the country and in the capital. On of the evenings I was there, I had some time to kill, so I took a walk in the center. After seeing the interesting statues, I decided I had to get something back home, apart from the traditional fridge magnet (to put it on the new fridge mentioned in a previous post). I came across a very elegant shop that was selling chocolate products, in every kind of form. Bars, wafers, boxes of chocolate, drinks…you name it. And they were all from the same brand. I have never seen this brand in the past, so I thought to give it a try and at least browse. I ended up getting a full back of products, one of them being a box of liquer-taste chocolates, with the box being a little bit fancy.

Fast forward 3 days later, I return home and I present everything to my wife. She is fond of the liquer-taste chocolates, so the box was the first to be opened. And she realizes that some of the chocolates were not fully wrapped! Actually 10% of the chocolates were like that, with the chocolate however not being damaged. However, she did not feel comfortable eating them, so…more chocolate for me. Seeing this, I thought that this was a good opportunity to test their feedback system. They seemed like a serious company, setting up a dedicated flagship shop in a capital, near the center. So I took pictures of the partially unwrapped chocolates, I kep the receipts and the box and I left them aside, until I had the time to act. Fast forward again 2 months later, and nothing was done, apart from this post.

It seemed like an overkill to get into the whole effort, just to complain for some chocolates that I bought abroad, which were actually produced from a company in a country different from the country of purchase. So I saved my time and I moved on.

Conclusion:

The more I look into the matter of feedback and of the quality control of services and products, the more I will find. There is always room for improvement and the data is there. If a company wants to find reasons to get better, they can do it. However, if they want to incorporate in the process valuable information extracted from the clients, they have to give some kind of motivation, some reward. Enough with the pat on the back and the badges. Give something that matters and facilitate the process. Otherwise, today we will forget to complain, but in the future we will forget your company and your products overall.