Adagio Service and Quality

[teachat]

I jusst want to say that I have been a customer of Adagio for almost two years now and I have never had any problem with the Customer Service the company provides. As a matter of fact, every time I've had to contact them, the representatives have been pleasant, polite and extremely helpful.

With regards to quality, I've always been tremendously pleased with the teas I have received. I can only think of one I didn't care for and that was a jasmine that I didn't realize was jasmine when I ordered it (I'm allergic).

I teach middle school and have my packages delivered there. My students always love to see my shipments come in, and always insist that I open the tins so they can sniff the various kinds. At the end of each school year, I treat one class to a "tea party." The students love it and almost fight over which 2 or 3 varieties we will serve.

Thanks Adagio for such a great product and for your excellent customer service department!
Rhonda J. Coleman

[teachat]

I have been a customer of Adagio's for a few years now. As a long time avid tea drinker, it was refreshing to find a company that had lots of great teas that it can ship to me at a moment's notice and never closes (ah, yes...shopping at 3 am). In all this time, I have only had a couple of order problems with Adagio - small things like a small box of tea missing from a (huge and otherwise correct) order. When I used Livehelp to inquire about the missing item, I received wonderful assistance - and my missing tea in just a few days (once with a little gift tea for the inconvenience!). Cheers to Adagio for all their great teas and the wonderful people who work there! I have NEVER been disappointed or unhappy with Adagio - in fact, the gui hua organic green tea I'm drinking right now is making me want to go shop again...uh oh.

Meghan

[teachat]

I to am a happy customer! I get nice little suprises in my orders, and I love the service and suport. I am drinking my mandarin green now and have all day! Keep up the good work Adagio!
Hope you have phone order service soon. I love ordering to a live person.

Ellen

[teachat]

I love Adagio Teas! One of the biggest draw to this company was it's Fed Ex shipping. I used to have my tea at my door the next day! Now, even thought they advertise Fed Ex shipping and I have Fed Ex checked on the order page, they are shipping via the US Postal Office and now I have to wait almost a week to get my tea. I have contacted them about this problem and was told that *Always Ship Fed Ex* would be put on my account. Still no Fed EX shipping for me and I haven't had a nice little surprise in my last few shipments. Looks to me that customer service is slipping at Adagio.

Dave

[teachat]

Dave--

Thanks for the note.

Our Customer Service dept. indeed did put a note on the account, so all orders should ship out via FedEx. Please drop us a note at info@adagio.com if this is not the case in the future.

As soon as the teas from this harvest hit the shores, those wonderful surprises we include will make a return.

Still working as hard as possible to make you happy--

Chris
Adagio Maestro

[jbphdelaney]

I have gotten two orders, and neither of them had any little surprises. With my second order, I used a coupon for a free herbal sampler. However, when I received the order, the sampler was missing. When I contacted customer service, they said they'd include it in my next order. However, I'd like to try the herbals now so that I know if I want to order any of the herbals in my next order. When I asked them to ship it now since it was their mistake, they told me that they will not ship free items separately. Long story short, the person I was talking to on live chat was VERY RUDE, and actually cut off the conversation!

After my first order from Adagio, I was very pleased. The website is awesome, there's so much variety, the prices are pretty good compared to other gourmet tea stores, and the shipping is pretty fast. However, if you ever have a problem with one of your orders, BEWARE! The customer service is not worth CRAP! I'm really disappointed now, because I thought I found this great company, and the customer service people totally burst my bubble! Now I have to find another store . . .

[chris]

Maryanne --

Thanks for the post.

Customer Service is a deceptively difficult job, and the team at Adagio is the very best in the business. If you don't believe me, simply look at all of our online ratings, all done by independent companies.

You see, the job of Customer Service Rep is not only to try to keep customers happy, but to do so with good business sense. A customer service staff that refuses to correct any errors is obviously lacking. On the other hand, one that will give away tons of free stuff simply because the customer complains a lot is also not a good staff. A staff that is able to find a reasonable compromise that is fair to the customer yet doesn't overly punish the company is the ideal staff... But the customer has to be reasonable, too. Otherwise, the attempt to find a compromise is worthless. If the customer refuses to compromise, then ending the conversation is definitely the most efficient use of time and energy.

Now, you've been trying to make a commotion all over Adagio today (even me, your favorite Adagio Maestro, has gotten word of this!) simply because of a free sampler missing -- from an order that didn't even qualify to receive it. We sent this offer to only existing customers... kinda like a VIP invitation. So if the offer was used by someone other than the "VIP", we recognized it as invalid and wouldn't include it.

I kindly ask two things of you:

1. Be reasonable. Our service rep. kindly offered to send it with the next order (even though it didn't qualify), but you demanded that it be sent individually. The postage cost of sending a free sample *on top of the cost of the free tea itself* is an unreasonable loss for Adagio to take (considering that this would be setting a precedent, we'd have to send them to everyone who didn't qualify!).

2. Please don't try to air your dirty laundry on this bulletin board until the issue has been completely resolved. At least give us a chance to find a solution. Emailing us once to demand the owner's contact info is not helping move things forward. I hate answering these posts, and not because i dislike seeing criticism about Adagio (we're very open to feedback-- that's the point of this folder!), but because I do not like to publicly discuss individual problems. It's just embarrassing to all parties.

Respectfully,

Chris
Adagio Maestro

PS... To anyone who is interested in learning more about business theory and handling Customer Service issues, there is a great book called Killer Customers that I just finished. It purveys some revolutionary concepts!

[PeteVu]

its too bad nobody ever makes such a commotion about a GOOD experience with your customer service. -_-v I used to have a job in a factory making corner samples of picture frames and wall moulding, and let me tell ya, i feel adagios frustration. i had good marks on the products i sent out, but never recieved a thank you. occationally there would be a bad day and id send out a single fault with an order, and u never hear the end of it from the customer. building corner samples are the kind of thing where if u put more effort to it, it would be excelent, but you could get away with mediocre frames, and i can honestly say i sent out as many excelent corner samples as possible, and u never really get recognized anyways, but one mistake, and your boss is on you for the rest of the week. how stressful!

[Dronak]

I think that PeteVu is right, companies normally only hear far more complaints than compliments. So I'll give a compliment based on my first experience with Adagio. I noticed they had a link rewards program, so I put the link up on two pages of mine on different sites, my old school account and where I moved them to. These pages were eligible for different rewards, so I let Adagio decide which to give me. They could have easily justified giving me the lower level one, but they gave me the higher level one and took a bigger loss by sending me more free items. I think it's worth giving them some recognition for that. Also, the service was fast -- I put the links up and told them so on Tuesday, they mailed the reward on Wednesday, and I got it Thursday. The fast delivery is probably at least partially due to my proximity to their shipping location, but still, that was a fast turn-around. I was very pleased with their service on this, a free offer, and expect their normal service would be equally good. I haven't tried the teas yet (they smell good though), but assuming I like them, I'll probably order from here in the future. I really like that there are sample sizes (1oz I assume) that are good for experimenting and that they come in tins, a very good storage option. I may be new, but I've had a good first experience, so Adagio is OK in my book.

[Lana Y]

Dronak, You will love this place (Adagio)
it is the best tea I have ever had, and a great company.