Dear IKEA: Your Customer Service Is Terrible

In today's world, no company can afford to fail their customers. Especially if the failings are systematic. Major shortcomings will come to the surface and particularly bad stories will spread virally across social media channels. I believe that IKEA's customer service is systematically failing. Instead of writing a traditional post about it I thought I write it as an open letter to IKEA’s CEO, and I would invite anyone to share it and comment on it. Let me know your thought on IKEA, their customer service and the topic in general.

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Dear Peter Agnefjäll,

As the relatively newly appointed CEO of the IKEA Group, I would like to share with you some experiences I have had with your company, and I am sorry to say they are not great.

I hope you don’t mind me calling you Peter. So Peter, it all started a few months back when I ordered the white BIRKELAND bed for my eight-year old daughter after she decided, based on an online-search, that this was exactly the bed she wanted.

At first, everything seemed to work well. I placed an online order and the bed arrived on the specified delivery date. Or so I thought.

The day after I took delivery of the boxes I received a call from the delivery company saying that they failed to deliver one part of the bed and would deliver the missing piece in two days time. Peter, do you know how annoying it is when a company can’t give you a time for a delivery? It was bad once, but now I had to experience this again. On that day I waited, and waited and the delivery company never turned up.

They apologized and promised to deliver the next day, but again couldn’t give me a time. The next day the deliver came and I thought that would be the end. I hired a decorator to decorate my daughter’s room, which included putting up the new bed. I then get a call from the decorator explaining to me that he is having difficulties assembling the bed, and that there seem to be parts that don’t belong to the bed.

After some confusion we realized that the delivery company delivered some parts of a completely different bed and that the slats for the bed I originally ordered were still missing.

I then rang your customer service to get this sorted. They apologized and said they will send a courier company to deliver the slats in two days time and pick up the wrong parts. On the agreed delivery day nobody turned up. So I rang again, got another apology and an explanation that the store manager didn’t sign off the delivery. We had another repeat of this until a customer service agent promised me that the missing slats will definitely be delivered the next day and the wrong parts be picked up. Finally I took delivery of the slats and my daughter had a bed she could use. Hurray!

The problem was that the courier guy didn't know anything about picking up the unwanted items, which still left me with a massive box full of bed parts that were blocking off half my garage.

I got on the phone to customer services again but the automated message told me that there is a 90 minute wait. Peter, 90 minutes? Have you ever heard of anything like that? I am sure that like me, you live a busy life, especially as you are running the largest furniture retail groups in the world. Obviously I am not happy to wait on the phone for one and a half hours.

So I decided to email your customer service team instead. Again, this was not straightforward. I couldn't simply email them, no, I had to fill in an online form. I did that and to my surprise got this message after submitting the form:

“Thank you for your email. We aim to reply within 14 working days.”

14 working days, Peter? That's almost 3 weeks! I know IKEA is headquartered in Sweden where the pace of life is a little slower, but 2 weeks to reply to an email, Peter? Some Glaciers move faster than that!

Anyway, I was pleased to learn from the same response that in urgent cases I could ring your team [which now had a waiting time of 2 hours] or speak to Anna, your virtual assistant.

At that point I got curious, maybe Anna could help me? Peter, here is an extract of my conversation with your virtual assistant Anna:

I said: You delivered some wrong parts of a bed and I need you to pick them up.

Anna said: If you have a query with your delivery. Please contact us for further assistance. Please see the page I'm opening now for contact information.

I said: No, the wait is too long. Can't you help me find a way to pick up the bed that I don't want?

Anna said: There are many options for bed available on our catalogue. In order to narrow your search select one specific category from the ones listed on the window below me.

I said: I don't want to buy, I want to return!

Anna said: You don't have to do anything you don't want to.

I said: I know I don't need to do anything I don't want, but can you please come round and pick up the bed?

Anna said: Sorry, that's not something we sell. You can see all the products we currently sell at our stores on this web page I am opening for you now.

I said: I don't want to buy it, I want you to pick it up.

Anna said: Unfortunately IKEA does not currently offer the service of store pick-up for online orders.

I said: I don't think this conversation is going the way I want, what do you think?

Anna said: Ask me about IKEA stores, products, and services. My knowledge about all issues related to IKEA improves every day.

I said: Can you call me?

Anna said: Unfortunately details left here cannot be passed on, if you require us to call you, please email us or use our online chat service. Thank you.

I said: I can't email, only submit a form, and the wait on the phone is 2 hours. Is IKEA the worst company ever?

Anna said: We take all complaints seriously, and do our best to resolve them. Please contact us directly to allow us to help you. See the page I'm opening now for contact methods.

I said: How old are you?

Anna said: I prefer not to discuss my age; let's talk about IKEA.

I said: Do you want to hang out sometime?

Anna said: It's a very kind offer, but I'm afraid I'll have to pass. Thanks anyway.

Okay, I admit. Towards the end I got carried away a little. So, back to my problem with your customer service. Anna couldn’t help me, you aim to reply to emails within 14 days, and let customers wait for 2 hours on the phone. Seriously, what kind of customer service is that?

Instead of waiting 2 hours on the phone I trusted that the form I submitted would get to someone eventually. However, one week later I got an email from IKEA telling me that there was a problem with the online form I submitted and the content got lost. Peter, why does it take one week to figure that out?

Peter, your company vision states:

At IKEA our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people.

Now, let me think about this for a moment. Yes, I believe we both agree that you failed me on that. In fact, I am so hacked off that I promise to never buy anything from IKEA ever again.

So Peter, it would be fantastic if, after over 9 months, you could finally find someone to pick up the bed parts that still fill my garage.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Bernard Marr

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I believe that even companies with a 'pile it high, sell it cheap' business model can't afford to fail customers like that. In the online space IKEA is now competing with the likes of Amazon and based on my (I admit limited) experience, is failing miserably. Maybe they should stick to their original model of store pick-up only and leave the more complex customer services to companies that are willing to invest in that area.

My key reminder to any company: At times when customer complaints can get 20+K reads in a day, no company can afford to fail on their promises.

What are your views on IKEA's customer service? Or customer service in general? 2 hour wait on the phone, 3 weeks response time to emails? Any good or bad stories to share, about customer service in general? Please let me know your thoughts...

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Terrible indeed. They are rude, not at all efficient! I’ve placed an order on first of March, paid for shipping and after many unforeseen events, I’m still waiting. Fifteen days I’ve been waiting and trying to reach them. Later today I received a call from them and asked politely to speak in English because my Dutch is not that good and they just hanged up on my face. 🤡

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Chrissy Brown

Development Coordinator at Community Foundation for Southwest Washington

2mo

I ordered a kitchen cabinet for a sales office I was decorating for a friend back in April of 2023 they still have delivered the 5 missing pieces and it's January 22, 2024!! I have waited on the phone for hours so I tried the live chat version with no luck because Billie the robot said he would get me a human to converse with but nobody ever came to help. Very frustrated with Ikea right now. You can not tell me they don't have enough money to higher real customer service agents to handle the massive orders from all around the world???

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Klinsman Camilo

Chief Accountant at OLE l ACCA

6mo

IKEA IS A SCAM WHEN IT COMES TO AFTER SALES SERVICES. I guess its all about the revenue and not customer satisfaction.

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Veronica Phillip

AI-Enhanced Technical Writing: Revolutionizing IT & SaaS Documentation for the Future. I'm a consultant specializing in meticulous Software Documentation, intuitive Help Systems and efficient Workflows.

1y

In 2022, if that is possible, they've gotten waaay worst. I received two of the same bed frame part. Waiting 3 weeks now. Kept on hold for hours and had no movement. Sickening!!!

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Service in Ikea Israel is very bad, I cannot reach response via mails, phone, WhatsUp more then 1 month. 😠

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