Journal lukewarmfusion's Journal: Customer Service 3
It's easy to claim that customer service makes your business a success, but it's hard to actually do it. Good service requires time and energy - and unpaid work, sometimes.
It's fantastic when you're the recipient of good service. It makes you want to continue doing business with a company. In fact, there is so much competition for your business that you should really only work with folks that are willing to go that extra mile. (Yes, this post will likely include cliches)
We were torn between two local banks for handling our business banking. Both are big enough to offer the services we need but small enough to give us someone we can talk to in person. When we called one bank to set up an appointment, the lady was snotty and rude - "We don't do appointments. Just come in and someone will help you when they're free." The other bank's representative invited us to come in and have coffee while she told us about their services. We were sold before we even went in. Since then, I've had the wonderful experience of watching someone drop everything to talk to me and answer questions. Not for more business, but because I had questions and I'm a customer.
The same goes for regular vendors. In dealing with a client's hosting company, I wasted over half an hour with an incompetent support tech who failed to ask me what the problem was until 20 minutes into the call! I called up the company that just bought the hosting co. and got an understanding, technically competent engineer to fix my problem in two minutes.
Sometimes it's a matter of talking to the right person... but sometimes I have to wonder if I want to do business with a company that relies on the wrong person.
agreed (Score:1)
I have a new reason why almost no one in the airline industry has the right to hold the title, director of marketing. As I understand the concept of "marketing," it doesn't exist in this industry. Here's my latest: I book a flight to France for this May. I pay a decent, but not fabulous fare to fly Continental Airlines, which by the way is touting its international service these days. I decide a week ago tha
Re:agreed (Score:2)
We flew to Philly on United Airlines last week. The service was pretty good from O'Hare to PHL, but when we got to the airport for the return flight we discovered a line so long we would have missed our flight by an hour. I couldn't see the end of the line at all... my business partner went to see about getting our flight moved and the lady
Re:agreed (Score:2)
Absolutely. Everyone's ready to write a letter of complaint, but rarely one of praise. After all, you want that person to a)be rewarded and recognized, and b)hopefully be promoted so as to better help the whole company be like that.