I’ve had a little frustrating customer service interaction recently. I wonder if you’ve ever had a similar experience to me.

I had placed an online order and, for a couple of different reasons, paid a bit extra for next day delivery. Only, the item didn’t arrive next day. It was no major issue for me, but it did seem appropriate to expect a refund for the extra cost of delivery that was not fulfilled. So, as you do, I went to deal with customer services.

Only, as is their wont these days, there is no customer service number so you can speak to a person. Oh no. There is a multiple choice, choose-your-own-adventure style set of questions. Is A your problem? How about B? Perhaps it’s C? Inevitably, none of the options were the actual problem. You have to click through the rigmarole of their multi-choice automated quiz to inevitably get to the point where they ask you, in that way which is both obtuse and seems purposeful, ‘did this resolve your query?’ when we all know it won’t have done!

Upon clicking ‘no’, you then get presented with the option of sending an email (which will not be replied to for days) or to ‘speak to a member of our team’. Not via phone, but using a chat box. But at least a real person at the end of it who can understand what the actual issue is. So, through I go, and I explain the problem. It isn’t a particularly difficult one: I ordered for next day delivery, it wasn’t delivered next day, can I get a refund on the delivery cost? Pretty simple.

‘We’re sorry your item hasn’t been delivered’, came the reply. ‘Just sit tight, wait a further 24 hours, and it should turn up’. But that isn’t why I was contacting you. I know couriers sometimes fail, I know waiting a bit longer means it should turn up, I appreciate it probably is still coming. My issue is that I paid extra for delivery within a timeframe that won’t be fulfilled. The courier has contacted me and said it will not be delivered today. I have proof in writing and everything. I am happy to sit tight for the delivery, I just want the extra money I paid for it being delivered quicker refunded.

‘We can’t do that yet’, I was told. ‘You have to wait 24 hours and then we will issue you a refund’. But the courier has told me they definitely will not deliver today. The day they promised to deliver and for which I paid more. ‘You have to wait for the delivery to actually fail next day before we can issue a refund. Wait 24 hours, then we’ll issue a refund.’ Annoying as that is, particularly with proof it won’t be delivered, there is some logic to it I suppose. I will check back in tomorrow.

So, the next day, I duly contact customer services again. I have to go through their multi-choice quiz that we know will not answer my query again. I eventually get through to a real person again. I explain the problem again: I paid for next day delivery, the item wasn’t delivered next day, we are 24 hours on from when it was due to be delivered, can you refund the delivery cost please?’

‘Hello sir. We would like to offer you an e-voucher for the failed delivery.’ Err, thanks? But no. I just want the delivery cost refunded because it hasn’t been delivered on time. I was told I could get the refund yesterday. ‘You can either get an e-voucher or a refund’. Oh right. Well, refund please. ‘Oh, well, we can’t process a refund yet. Wait 24 hours and then we can refund the delivery cost.’ Hang on, I was told yesterday I could have a refund if I wait 24 hours and now you are telling me to wait a further 24 hours in order to get the refund I was promised yesterday!

‘Just keep waiting, the item may well be delivered today’. I know it might – but that isn’t the point! I paid for delivery in a timeframe that wasn’t fulfilled, I was promised yesterday a refund if I just waited until today, I have done what you told me to do and now you are moving the goalposts on me again! ‘Couriers sometimes fail, don’t worry, it will come soon’. I know! I am not querying whether it might still arrive. I just want a refund on the failure to fulfil the bit that we all acknowledge has not been fulfilled. ‘You need to contact us after 24 hours…’ I did – you are saying the same thing again but, this time, not fulfilling what you promised the first time! The issue is not the courier, it is you!

At the time of writing this, I still don’t have either my refund or the item I ordered. By the time you are reading this, it may have arrived and I may have secured my delivery refund. Who knows! But I wonder if you ever have similar customer service experiences? Say what you want about Amazon (sorry Jonathan Carswell), but their customer service is generally very good inasmuch as they will refund you for almost anything and fix problems about as quickly and easily as could be. But I do think there are two lessons worth learning here,

I must admit my first thought on these sorts of situations is not normally this godly or spiritual, but I did think to myself: thank goodness the Lord does not operate this way. I am so grateful that we have a God who just does what he says and keeps his word. I am working through sermons in 2 Kings at the moment and a consistent and repeated theme is that when God speaks it happens; what God says will happen, does happen. We can rely on him and his promises to the point that we can rearrange our entire lives around them safe in the knowledge they will come to pass.

Just imagine if God operated like in this customer service experience. Asking for extra payment and then not fulfilling what he promised to do. When we raise it with him, he tells us to do something and then fails to fulfil that when we do it. When we seek redress, he kicks the can down the road and tells us to trust him, just keep waiting, even though all signs point to the fact that he is unreliable, self-interested and won’t actually come through. It would be a nightmare! Praise God that he asks nothing from us and always fulfils what he promises.

The other lesson that sprung to mind was about what the local church can learn from bad customer service. Whilst we are not a paid service provider, there are things that the church does and claims to offer that people buy into. Granted, they don’t pay us a fee and receive services. But there is a reason people come and there are promises made of what the church can and will do.

There seems to be two related lessons here. Where the church promises something, it really must make sure it can and will deliver on that promise. If we claim to offer people community, for example, we really need to make sure that when they come they experience community. If we claim to be authentic, when people come, they need to actually experience authenticity. If we claim to be a loving Christian environment where everybody serves everybody, we need to make sure that is what people find when they come. We can’t expect people to stick around and not become deeply frustrated if we make all kinds of promises about who we are, what we do and how we operate that just aren’t fulfilled in reality.

The other lesson is that when things inevitably fail, we need to take ownership of the failure and seek redress. Just as I was told that couriers sometimes fail (and we all know by experience this is true), churches also fail. People fail. There is no church on earth that does not fail to live up to its promises at least some of the time. The question is not how do we stop failure from ever happening because that is just not a credible mission. Nor are we to throw up our hands and insist everybody fails so tough luck if and when you are on the receiving end of our failures. That is sub-Christian thinking. The question is, how do we mitigate the probability of failure and what will we do when failures inevitably occur?

I was quite prepared to accept and understand couriers sometimes fail. I just wanted some redress for that failure. In exactly the same way, we shouldn’t be surprised when churches fail because churches are just people and people notoriously fail. But when we fail, we need to be alive to the need for redress. If we have acted poorly or we have failed to deliver on our promises, we need to own it and put it right. Failure, in and of itself, is not the problem. It is sadly inevitable. The issue is whether we are prepared to fix the problems that ensure from our failures or whether we are liable to double down or kick the can down the road so that the person on the receiving end either gets frustrated and leaves or, in the best case scenario if that’s our chosen path, decide to give up and stop mentioning it.

But that latter approach is not fixing the problem. ‘Least said, soonest mended’ rarely resolves anything. The more we rely on this, the more we think that if people aren’t talking about the problem anymore then it is resolved, the more likely we are to see deeply exasperated people and wild explosions of emotion over minor issues that appear to come from nowhere over nothing (to our mind). The truth is, such things are the product of nothing ever actually getting fixed. People either lie down and just accept the way things are, growing in bitterness and resentment, or they explode in exasperation usually over the straw that breaks the camels back. Whatever the case may be, it becomes apparent the problems that were initially raised had never actually been fixed and in not dealing with them we create a whole new set of even worse problems.

Sadly, I think many churches choose this latter path. I think the dominant middle class culture of the UK church tends towards a belief that if we aren’t speaking about a problem then it has gone away. Even if we don’t quite think that, the awkwardness of actually addressing the problem seems worse to many than the awkwardness of people not talking with each other and being on bad terms with one another. Maybe many have spent so long in customer services and HR meetings that this is how we end up operating. But if we were prepared to own our failures, seek to put right whatever we have done wrong, we might spare ourselves months, even years, of horrible atmospheres and very frustrating church experiences.