It happens in every business, sooner or later.
Your customer wanted one thing. And you dispatched something else by mistake.
Or she wanted it next week for her daughters birthday, but your despatcher forgot that you get new stock only 3 weeks from now.
What happens when you mess up?
Do you fess up and make it right?
or
Do you play ping pong with the customer ?
At what stage in your growth do you decide that meeting your customers every desire is not necessary?
Is there really a point where you think you dont need to worry about your customers any more as long as you keep investors happy?
Do you take that decision or is it taken for you by poorly chosen sub-ordinates?
Earlier in a similar blog at this site, I had mentioned my experience with Comcast in blog titled “How not to grow your business – Comcast Style.”
But Comcast batted a good one in the form of an employee who contacted me within a few hours of posting and offered to redress my issues.
Here is a synopsis of my friend James’ experience with Verizon.
Recently his current cable company raised prices of Cable and Internet Service package.
My friend shopped around and found that FiOS from Verizon had a slightly better rate for him. He could cancel anytime if he called within 30 days, they offered.
He went online and signed up for FIOS Service.
When he called his existing vendor to cancel, they offered him an even better deal and he decided to keep his Comcast service.
My friend immediately goes online to cancel the newly registered FIOS Service. But wait, he can’t find a link to the cancellation page.
==> I guess the idea might be to have a human handle the cancellation request and if possible to lead him into continuing service.
So he calls the 1-800 number and after a long wait, some one comes online and informs him that he will have to call the local office to cancel. Huh?
So he calls the local office of Verizon and requests that his order be cancelled.
The lady on the phone could not find his order, even when he gave her the order number. So this enterprising person creates a new order and then proceeds to cancel it. Huh ? huh ?
I beleive most of you reading this have caught my drift.
Here is a company that claims to be #1 among 10 telecom companies( Source: http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2008/verizoncom-my-account-and.html.) in online satisfaction. I dont know how a company that forces you to go offline to cancel a service can call itself good online.
The head office or wherever the 1-800 number is located cannot cancel an order ? Have they heard of Systems Integration?
The person at the local office could not find his order. So what is the process in such a situation? Any company worth its salt has processes for almost everything it does. “Process” – You say?
Dont think there is one at Verizon. Who in his right mind would create a new order to cancel an existing order?
But wait, there is more.
The day after he cancelled his order with the local office, he saw that a part of his lawn had been marked to show the presence of underground pipes. He got concerned and waited at home the next day for fear that someone might dig up his lawn for an order he already had cancelled.
And he was not disappointed. Shortly after noon, the crew showed up with digging tools and cables. He somehow managed to convince them that he had cancelled the order and they went away without any damage to the lawn.
Next day was Saturday, and when he got home at noon, half his lawn had already been dug up. He again managed to convince them that he had cancelled his order and send them packing for a second time.
Well ! By now, you could be forgiven if you totally lost your cool. What a shoddy treatment of a customer.
James got home Tuesday evening and finds that someone had dug up his lawn, laid some cable and also disconnected his Comcast connection. Now he has no TV, no phone and no Internet. The poor guy hates cell phones, so he had to go to the Pay phone at the gas station to make a call to Verizon.
Waiting time, 41 minutes, on a pay phone. NOT nice! He had to spend another day waiting at home for someone else to show up and re-connect his cable.
Apparently there exists a major disconnect between the company database and the records maintained by the contractors who are send out to do the cable laying work. Or the contractors are ignoring cancel orders so that they get paid for the work. In either case, the cost to the company must have been higher than the cost to the customer.
Not to mention that James will talk to everyone he comes in contact with about his experience.
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So the question is: how do you ensure that your customers never face such an experience?
How do you make sure that your employees give as much attention or more to customer service as you might have given?
Do you have systems in place that can manage this automatically?
Do you have a complaint handling system that is manned by someone with authority to actually redress the issue?
How would you communicate to your employees what your vision is for customer experience?
