Arrr Mateys, Shutterfly’s Geeky Customer Service Delivers

Some days a little customer service will go a long way to creating a life-long customer and to spread the joy. Today is one of those days.

I recently received, along with apparently bazillions of other people, a coupon code for a free hardback 8 x 8 photo book from Shutterfly. All I would have to do is pay shipping & handling and tax. So last night I spent several hours working on my free 20-page book. I came up with a concept that was both meaningful and self-contained enough to fit in such a book size. More on that later.

So I went to check out and use my secret code to get $29.99 taken off of my bill. It wouldn’t work. I looked online to see if I was doing something wrong. I tried every method listed for entering a code, and all of them resulted in an error. I was distraught. I’d spent hours working on this book, with the hopes that it would be quite inexpensive. Paying $40 wasn’t going to make me happy. But customer service was closed for the evening, so I went to bed hoping to have more luck in the morning.

So this morning, the day the coupon code was to expire, I tried again. Still no luck. I got on the phone to customer service, hoping that they’d provide true service to keep a customer and not give me trouble and lose one. Before I could talk to a person, though, I had to navigate the menu. I always listen to all of the choices when I call somewhere new, as it’s good to get the right department the first time. But this time my thoroughness was rewarded with an added bonus.

At the end of the options list, they include an option to read the menu in a pirate voice. I am not making this up. I just had to try it out. It did not disappoint. Not only did the guy do a pirate voice, but he changed the wording of the options to use pirate terminology. I laughed so hard that I was in tears. It truly put me in a great mood to start my day. Perhaps they do that to put people in a better mood before they talk to customer service, I don’t know. But it made me laugh incredibly hard, and certainly increased their geek quotient.

What they said in pirate was really funny, but what pushed it over the edge for me was that it was so unexpected. Usually when you navigate those phone menus, you’re dealing with option after option and you just hope you get the right one. When does it ever make you laugh? I love how Shutterfly kept things light and extremely funny.

So I was in a great mood when I finally spoke to a customer service representative. She sounded like she was from the Caribbean, which only added to the pirate theme. She looked into my account and decided to honor my coupon. Thanks, Shutterfly!

Now back to my project. I created a yearbook, to chronicle all the things we did in the past school year in the name of education. We homeschool, but this concept could apply to any of you out there, since doing cool stuff with your kids is what GeekDad is all about. I’m hoping that in future years 20 pages will not contain the photos I have, but for this year, it did the job.

When you’re making a photobook at Shutterfly, “Yearbook” is one of the styles they have built in, with backgrounds of things like chemistry flasks, music notes, apples and other school- and learning-related items. Of course, you can use any of their themes for your yearbook, though. They also have a handy dandy option to help you with page layouts. You tell them what photos you want on each page and they automatically choose a layout that might work. I used this option because I’d never made a photobook before. It made the process easier, but not necessarily better. Next time I would choose the page layouts myself, since the interface sometimes rearranged photos without my permission.

The whole photo book building system is drag and drop, from arranging to rearranging, and I got a feel for their system pretty quickly. I plan to make one of these yearbooks every year so the kids have something to commemorate their school year. I’m afraid, though, that I’ll have to spring for two when they get a little bit older, so they won’t have to share.

When we receive our book, I will let the kids take it around and get all their friends to sign it, just like in school. This should prove very interesting as many of their friends are preschool age, and they are all under 10.

Pertinent Note: This review was completely unsolicited and I did not mention GeekDad during my customer service phone call.

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