Give Us Your Feedback on Sherwin-Williams Customer Service and More
One of the great things about Sherwin-Williams is the stand-alone, brick and mortar stores. Behr, the Home Depot house brand, is embedded within the craziness and know-nothingness of Home Depot stores. With Behr, you need to know what you want, because you will receive scant advice from staff. Otherwise, Behr--as a product--is great paint.
At Sherwin-Williams stores, you can peruse paint, stain, and tools in relative comfort. The stores are spacious, the aisles wide. The paint chip kiosk is usually well-stocked and orderly.
My Experience with Sherwin-Williams Customer Service
Recently, I went to a nearby Sherwin-Williams store with Olive, my Painting Sr. Vice-President. We were in search of green-based exterior house paint that I may or may never apply to my house, all depending on my personal energy levels and the state of the weather in my fickle climate zone.As said before, the store was a pleasant place to visit, even on a Saturday, which you would expect to be busier and less customer-friendly than usual. The store employee was indeed very busy, but she managed to take on the difficult task of juggling several customers all at the same time, yet without (at least in my case) making anyone feel neglected.
Even though this employee appeared to be rather new at the store, she dispensed advice about paint in general and the Sherwin-Williams brand that I found impressive. She mentioned a store holiday sale and she suggested some types of colors. She gave us valuable advice about paint samples and how testers are meant only for testing, not laying down a layer of paint that will last the next 30 years.
A Problem Arises...
I brought back the paint (I decided to buy a gallon of real exterior latex paint, instead of the sample) and painted a sizable section of an outbuilding next to my house. Before long, it was clear that this was not the paint color I had chosen. Since we had 1/3rd of the building painted by that point, it only made sense to continue.There arose no less than half an hour of detective work to determine what had happened. Had we given her the wrong paint chip? Have we given her the right chip but it had been mixed wrong?
Impossible to know for certain, but Olive and I came to the conclusion that there had been a mistake on Sherwin-Williams' part. We believe this because we no longer had the correct paint chip (Antiquity) in hand, but did still have the incorrect chip, Edgy Gold.
The Customer Service Part
A few days later, when prompted by an automatic e-mail to provide feedback on my Sherwin-Williams experience, I gave it high marks except for the bit about the wrong color--kind of a big deal when it comes to paint.I expected to hear nothing back. Yet I did. I got back a boiler-plate "We're Sorry" message, but one that allows for some personalization from the employee (she signed it) and addressing my specific issue:
Thank you for the feedback on your recent visit to Sherwin Williams. I am so sorry to hear that the color turned out wrong on the house. Sometimes deep base greens do turn out a little different than on the paint chip in the store. We would be more than happy to help you and get you another gallon of a color that would work better for you on the house...
And a subsequent, unsolicited e-mail that read in part:
I am so sorry to hear that Edgy Gold didn't work for you. Sometimes the deep base greens don't turn out looking the same on the house as they do on the paint sample in our store...
They are vague on the "another gallon" bit (who will pay?), and there is that standard disclaimer about the difference of colors in various environments. Yet I did get a reply. And no doubt, with mild coercing I could get them to finance the cost of another gallon.All in all, a good customer service experience. What do you think?
