Are you Dave Grohl or the IRS ?

by Bryon D Beilman

Are you Dave Grohl or the IRS ? I had to call the IRS today with a specific phone # to finish something with them. They said that I could call between 7 am and 7 pm  and to have specific information ready. The challenge was that the information I needed was at home,  so I had to rush home to call them at 5:30 pm and was put on hold stating that my wait time was somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. I was waiting on speakerphone until 7:10 pm and then magically, my call drops. When I try to call them back, the auto attendant state that their office is closed. Should I be surprised or perhaps horrified that I was waiting an hour and 40 minutes on hold only to be dropped and then have the office be closed? If my company did this, I certainly would not be in business very long, and perhaps the monopolistic IRS can do whatever it wants to me, even though technically, I am paying their salary.

Switch now to Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Last weekend, he was doing a concert in Gothenburg, Sweden, when after just two songs, he fell and broke his leg on stage. He then told the crowd that he broke his leg but he was going to go the hospital and then he would come back. The rest of the band played a few songs that were not technically Foo Fighter songs. Amazingly, an hour later, Dave Grohl came back on stage, on a stretcher, leg in a cast and performed the rest of the show. He BROKE HIS LEG, but didn't want to let his fans (aka customers) down and came back and played the rest of the show. If your not already a fan of Dave Grohl or the Foo Fighters, you have to admit that this is great, perhaps even insanely great customer service.

Thank you IRS and Dave Grohl for clearly demonstrating different levels of customer service.