A Quick Lesson in Building Customer Loyalty
Great machine, too.
Quick lesson in building customer loyalty:
I needed a new computer–my MacBook was fading after three years of constant service.
So, I bought an iMac. You may know that Apple offers a great service: they’ll clone your hard drive from the old puter and transplant it to the new machine, thus saving you hours of torture when you get home.
Okay, that alone is great service. But what’s better is they told me it would take about one business day to do this. I could come back the next day at 5 p.m. to pick up my old machine and the new one– fully-loaded with all my files, programs, music and stuff.
Well, why not? One business day is a small price to pay for the time and effort it would’ve taken for me to do it myself.
That’s not the lesson, though. Here’s the lesson: they called me less than three hours later to tell me my computers were ready for pickup. Not a day later, but a mere three hours later. Do I have to tell you how thrilled I was when they called? When I first picked up the phone I was sure they were going to tell me something was wrong. Nope. They were just finished being highly efficient. I’ve had other good experiences with Apple–and this just reinforced my brand loyalty big time.
Under-promise, over-deliver. Simple concept. Works every time.
Too Busy to Take My Money?
I called a vendor (name and city of origin to remain anonymous) to inquire about hiring them. Actually, to be more precise, I called and emailed a vendor many times at the request of a client who wanted me to use said vendor on a project. The budget was several thousand dollars–not tens of thousands, but enough so you’d notice it on a monthly balance sheet.
In case the vendor wasn’t getting my calls and emails, I checked with his receptionist to make sure the vendor was in the office–she said the vendor indeed was, then transferred me to the vendor’s extension. I left a message.
Long story short, after entreaties for a call (or email) back over a span of two weeks, I gave up and hired a different vendor.
Not sure if it was me (not everybody likes everybody), a busy schedule or what, but the vendor’s inaction lost my business–and my client’s–probably forever.
I don’t get it. Had the vendor just returned the communication to say “we’re swamped,” or “we’re not interested in that project” I would have said fair enough and moved on–and still kept that vendor on my short list for future projects. But now….nope.
Why? Because I wasn’t given the professionalism of a civil reply.
I’d venture to say that if you’re so busy you can’t take ten seconds to send a reply email or designate a subordinate to do it for you, then your busy schedule is probably an accident or a result of poor time management–because you’re sure not great at attracting new business.
Who knows? Maybe this vendor didn’t need the money.
Ha.
Not in Front of Company
I always thought it bad form for a wife and husband to argue in front of dinner guests. It’s just not cool. All it does is make the guests wish they could crawl under the rug. (Well, okay, sometimes it’s pretty entertaining–as in Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor entertaining, but usually not).
I feel the same way about business. If you have to bawl out an employee–excuse me, I mean if you have to clarify or correct behavior–do it in the backroom, your office or virtually anywhere except in full view of your customers. The same applies to staff arguing openly amongst themselves. Check out this review of a restaurant in Maryland:
“atmosphere unpleasant” by ****
November 07, 2009 – The food is good but some of the staff needs customer service courses. We showed up at 2:00 pm thinking we got there in time before they closed which is 3:00 pm. We waited 40 minutes to be seated only to hear time again that the grill was closing. Some of the staff were arguing, in front of me and several other customers, about seating us because it was too close to closing time. It was a very embarrassing experience because, “hello, I’m can hear you.” I actually thought they were going to turn us away because we were too far down on the seating list. When we did get seated we were rushed and got second rate service. No food is worth indigestion.
Wanna bet they never went back? And what effect has that review had on the restaurant’s new customers?
Being polite. What a concept.
This sounds like obvious advice, but I have–more than once–been exposed to bickering couples and business managers yelling openly at their staff. Both times it made me uncomfortable and reluctant to spend any time with the offending couple/business in the future.
So, if you have a staff member who needs “correction,” take it outside–and make sure staff know you expect them to keep their cool in front of customers when you’re not around.
If you find yourself arguing with your spouse in front of company, then perhaps you should serve less (or more?) alcohol. Whichever works best.
Verizon’s Bad PR Situation: War Widow Forced to Pay $350 Early Termination Fee
This is where having empowered customer service reps –employees who can take common-sense initiative– can save your company a ton of bad publicity, and potentially a ton of dough:
After a woman’s husband died in Afghanistan, a marine felled by an IED, she moved back to her home town to be closer to her family and grieve. In the smaller town, she couldn’t get any reception from Verizon, so she called them up to cancel. Despite being a widow and Verizon not living up to its contractual obligations to provide actual cellphone coverage, they slapped her with a $350 early termination fee.
If you don’t have any coverage, you’re supposed to be able to break your contract without penalty, but customer service reportedly told the widow “Nothing could be done” about the fee.
Reached by CBS13, Verizon’s PR department promised to look into it.
via Verizon: Die Fighting In Afghanistan, Pay $350 Early Termination Fee – The Consumerist.
It’s pretty simple: usually the most common-sensical, decent thing to do is best. Or, you can have your PR people work overtime to clean up the mess.
Good Customer Service…to the Core!
It can never be overstated that when you give your employees the authority to make decisions that impact customer satisfaction, you’ll win in the long run. I’ve written about this before in more detail, but let me share a recent anecdote.
I had somehow managed to make the ‘Y’ key on my MacBook stick, and no amount of my efforts to fix it succeeded. As I need my MacBook to make my living, I knew I had no choice but to bite the bullet. I went online and made an appointment at my local Apple Store “Genius Bar” for later that afternoon. (I should stop here and say that the mere fact that I could make an appointment online and get real customer service just like that is a minor miracle these days.)
I went in, expecting to have to leave my Mac for a costly repair. The “genius” at the store fiddled with the offending key for a few moments, did some diagnostics and sighed. He then took out a piece of Scotch tape and stuck the key to the outside of the Mac. He didn’t ask, just did it, then picked up the phone and made sure that they had the parts needed to fix the machine.
I braced myself for what came next. You see, I had been complaining online (Twitter, Facebook, email) for months about a cracked case on my Mac after I was told over the phone that Apple would not–even though they admitted the case was a design defect–fix it for free. It would cost $317.05. Well, no way, I said. I’ll have a cracked Mac and think twice before buying another MacBook.
Anyway, back to the other day: I just knew the the genius at the store was going to say I would have to pay for the new case. Instead, he said “Yeah, we need to replace the keyboard. We’ll replace this cracked case while were at it.”
No charge.
And it gets better: it was ready in less than an hour.
That Apple Store genius was empowered to make a decision on his own initiative to fix the computer and make a defect in the MacBook design go from being my liability to what is rightfully theirs. In so doing he also ensured that I will definitely buy a pricey MacBook Pro when I upgrade my computer next year.
And all those Tweets I made complaining about the cracked Mac? Well, I certainly made up for them already with my Tweets and Facebook posting about how well I was treated. (“I love Apple to the core!”)
It cost so little for Apple to not only make me happy, but to ensure my loyalty and inspire me to tell the world on Twitter, Facebook and this blog.
Do you empower your employees to make these types of decisions? Shouldn’t you?
