From the brilliant to the ridiculous!

To gain that competitive edge you need to be able to make customers experience memorable for all the right reasons of course.

Last week, I keynoted at an event in New York in the Hotel Jumeriah. When I was booking in, the customer service attendant presented me with a hot towel – just the pick me up after a long transatlantic flight.
Different – definitely; memorable and clearly a great promotional tool for the hotel! (I have blogged and tweeted about what could be described as a great example at how to exceptionalise a moment of truth with your customer.)

Have you spent time thinking about how you could exceptionalise your service?

Clearly the following case study is an example of a company who clearly haven’t even grasped what customer service means!

Just recently my father who still runs a small shop and petrol station asked me to follow up on difficulties he was having with some key deliveries.

In summary, he had been waiting on a significant credit to his account for some months now.

The customer service attendant conceded a refund was the appropriate outcome but didn’t have the power to effect change.

Her direct line manager accepted my father’s account should have been credited, but she hadn’t the power to make the necessary corrective action either! She had referred the account with recommendation up the line. That was August 2009 – two weeks ago my Dad’s account was suspended, the credit still hadn’t been sorted out!

On his instruction, I contacted the company again.

The manager was out on holidays so no one could try to fix the problem in the short term as they had no power. One new customer service attendant had no record of the ongoing communication that was happening between us and this organisation!

Also there was no interaction between accounts and customer service so regardless of what discussions were taking place with customer service, accounts wouldn’t change their position on overdue amounts.

And finally from the bizarre to the ridiculous! On my last call after another frustrating encounter, I hung up the line and decided to call my Dad. When I lifted the receiver, I noticed that the line was still live to this company. It turns out the attendant had failed to disconnect the line! I listened to a long conversation in which, I was branded as a liar as the girl had no email record of past conversations, she wondered who would speak to me the following day as I was demanding action, and she mused whether or not she was suitable for customer service to her colleagues!

So what was happening in this organisation?

Customer service reps and managers with no power to make any type of decision at source – a recipe for PR disaster. ( To put it in context we are talking about an amount of a few hundred euros – very little compared to the brand damage incurred.)
A policy of hoping the problem will go away.
No deadlines on action.
No transparency on accountability.
Bottom line – probably the worse example of poor customer service that I have ever experienced.

It made me realise that to assume that everybody still grasps the need for exceptional customer service in challenging times is a major oversight.
This organisation needed more than a motivational speaker!

Find out why so many have recruited him as a keynote speaker in Europe, Asia and the US.

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