Professionalism without Discrimination?

Encountered a bad experience with a client and that got me hopping mad. I am so glad that I took the liberty to cool down over one night, and then relate the entire incident the next day, which is today. By doing this,I am making sure that I will relate the incident in the most neutral way as possible.

It started my designer emailed an artwork to a client for her approval. And being a young Msian (there's no discrimination here), she is used to sending emails with abbreviations (msn/sms terms) such as "c" to rep "see", and "soli" to rep "sorry". While I dun encourage such languages as it is certainly deemed as "improper" or "unprofessional", but it sparked off a "fire" from the client.

Designer was careless when sending an artwork with a typo-error, and upon reacting to the mistake, she sent another email to client. While this time, a proper artwork without typo was sent, client insisted that she checked her work before sending (see extract):

Check your piece of work before sending it out. The names are still wrong.
I seriously have no time to entertain to correct mistakes from your side such as this.
Get someone who knows English to look into this matter.

DISCRIMINATION!!!! Ok, the colours and bolding effect were added by me, to highlight what i meant by discrimination.

My designer was "traumatised" as this is the 1st time anyway had gave such a harsh comment. Ok, in this instance, it was realli no big deal even if we lost a client. But as a superior, if I do not get to the bottom of the entire incident, it would be deemed as a company without professionalism, as well as a superior who do not "defend" the staff.

Hence, a phonecall was made to the client, explaining all in good words that we have had checked all the works and really found no mistakes. She hissed in the phone saying that it is totally not professional that we wasted her time for sending something with error (even though it was a one-off incident), and proceeded to slam the designer by saying," Look, she cant even spell Sorry, and spelt as "Soli"). Her then-reply over the phone was that "if its too hassling, we call off the deal". Well, I got pissed too. And hence, an email was written to her, to confirm that the order has been cancelled based on her phonc instructions. I do not want to risk cancelling the project without covering my ass. What if she turns her back on us saying that we fail to produce the items in time?

My email to her was:

Hi Ms XXX

With reference to my conversation with you this afternoon, at 1pm, we would like
to confirm as per your instruction, the confirmation for the quotation (state quote no.)
will be void/called off.

We would like to reiterate that based on the above attachments, we found no typo
errors in our artwork. Please do a check on your end.

Based on our industry practices, all confirmation will be followed by artworks for clients'
vet-thru, and should there be any errors, clients will usually pin-point to us what are
the exact errors, so that the designer can react to the mistake.

However, based on your email below, there are no mentions about the mistakes made,
and the designer was simply told to "Check your piece of work before sending it out. The names are still wrong".

We found it hard to co-operate on a cordial basis especially when discrimination (i quote from
your email below: Get someone who knows English to look into this matter. ) is involved. While our
designer has no solid command of the English language, it is equally unfair to penalise her on
her language found in the email.

As such, we agree to your instructions above to call off the confirmation of this order.

Thank you for your attention.

The whole thing could have ended off with this email from us. I do hope that my email was written in the most neutral and professional way it should have been, but it seemed otherwise to my client. What i got back was this:

Hi,

This is the best resolution (shouldnt it be SOLUTION?) for me to the end the hassle that has been going on. Its up to your organization to allow someone to liaise with customers externally with that level of English where you justified that she is using ‘MSN English’ on emails.
That was not the only issue, in the initial stages she did not handle calls politely even (the phonecall was a blardy misunderstanding that i suspected had sparked off her prejudice against the designer), so are you going to justify that incident that she was using some other version of English that was out of this world?
If the rest of your clients are happy to be tagged with ‘Singlish’ and rude telephone etiquette, I have no comments on that but not in this incident. (whats wrong with SINGLISH anyway?)
You are simply hiding the fact that there was no mistakes, so how does the attachment here spell your justifications?

We pay for quality services, not wasting time like this to correct errors. (In my own terms, Got Money Big Deal?)

All the reasons just do not make any sense at all.

I am sorry that we cannot entertain this kind of arguments and I had to cancel your services immediately on your call.

There was no intention of penalizing her for the English, but you have to understand that this is SINGAPORE and this incident is wholly shocking as to how you could justify mistakes as such to be overlooked.
Instead she should be taking this whole incident to improve her mode of communication and not melt over it.
We are extremely disappointed that we were offered such a service locally when you are relating this to industry standards.

I have instructed the accounts to cancel all transaction to the earlier sent bank details as well and here I have wasted 15 mins talking to verify and get this email back to you.

Hence, I will be sending out a notice to the necessary teams to avoid using services rendered by Leadz. (Thats a favourite retort from all nasty clients, isnt it? keke)

Thanks.

My reply to email was:

Dear Ms XXXi

The attachment you have given here is the first artwork that Rain had produced, which indeed,
was the one with typo error. (she attached the very first artwork that indeed was wrong...
suay that the designer's typo error was for her name - what a bad boo-boo!)

However, if we are basing on the artwork that she emailed to you this afternoon, there was really
no typo errors. Based on my simple understanding of the whole matter, you had only mentioned
that there were errors in the artwork without pointing out the errors.

We certainly do not have any intentions to "hide" the fact that there was no mistakes. In fact, my
designer had apologised for the mistakes, and had produced new artworks for your further vet-thru.
We understand time is precious and hence allow our designer to communicate directly with our clients
as if she have to wait for our return from our appointments, the clients would have to wait for a longer
response time, just to confirm an artwork.

As a Company Director, I would also not condone bad service behaviours from my staff to our potential
clients, and that was precisely why I had made the phone call personally to your goodself to apologise
for a genuine misunderstanding (the "rude" telephone etiquette).

While we pity the loss of a potential client and the sales, we are happy that this instance has allowed
us a chance to train our staff into providing excellent service to our future clients.

We only hope that your colleagues will get a truthful understanding of the happenings without biase-ness,
after receiving notices to avoid using Leadz services. If the need arises, I would be glad to explain the
entire episode to your superiors/colleagues in the most truthful manner.

Well, she sent back an email this morning, saying that there is a great lack of luxurious time for her to continue this. I knw actually the whole thing was blown out of proportion, but if I had made the decision to retain this client and omit the hardworks of my staff, that would be wrong too. I also know that i could be 2-headed-snake, to pamper the client on one way, and to pacify the designer on the other end, I just am inflexible and refuse to do that. Thats succumbing to "money". Heck!

Anyway, i just want to reiterate that while we are not some big companies out there, we do know that value of having repeat clients and that customer service is truly important in the industry. But, are clients always right? Not so, in this aspect.