May 12, 2007
Excellent Customer Service at Anthony's Hearthfire
My wife and I visited the new Anthony’s Hearthfire Grill in Bellingham soon after it opened. I ordered the American Kobe Beef Hamburger, which looked pretty good. When I heard they were out of it, late on a Saturday night soon after opening, I was understanding and ordered something else.
Last night -- weeks after our first visit -- I returned and ordered it again. The server (the same one as on our first visit) came back and apologized again. She even remembered us and that we’d played this scene before.
I ordered something else, and wondered if I was going to see customer service in action. I never ask for special treatment; I want to see how other businesses handle things on their own. I speculated to my wife that a free dessert or a complimentary entrée would be a good move by the manager in this situation.
So I was really impressed when my credit card was returned without a bill -- no charge for our dinner for two.
Anthony’s adjacent seafood restaurant already gets a lot of my dining business. We take visitors there, buy gift certificates for employee recognition, etc. Last night’s experience reinforced my belief that our money is well spent, with a business that knows how to serve customers well.
And it ensures that I'll return -- again -- to finally try that burger....
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2006
Great customer service fixes everything
I’ve been Avis Preferred for ten years.
Last week I rented from Hertz, in order to get a specific car my wife wanted to try. I had my assistant set up a Hertz #1 Club account in advance, so that I wouldn’t have to waste any time at the rental counter.
When the Hertz bus dropped me off, my name wasn’t on the board. At the counter I learned that first-time #1 Club members have to check-in at the counter even though avoiding the counter is the point of the #1 Club. And that the car I asked for, listed on the web site and specially noted in my reservation after I phoned to check, is not available at this location. And that no car in that class was available. ("It’s a sunny day. People return cars late.")
At least I'll get a blog entry out of this, I thought.
And this is it. But this isn’t the angry customer service rant I imagined. Because the team at the counter was fantastic. They were sympathetic. They scurried around to find me a vehicle. And, when they couldn't find what I'd reserved, they gave me the brand new, just arrived, premium leather Ford Explorer with their apologies.
Using Hertz was a hassle. I didn't get the vehicle I requested. But Hertz's staff still left me feeling good about the experience.
Even the best systems will fail your customers sometimes. Great customer service is the backup that fixes everything.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 06:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 22, 2006
No, you can't cancel your service
By the time someone calls to return a product or cancel a service, they probably already feel like they have gotten a bad deal exchanging their cash for your product. It’s a great time to apologize and ask, as you help the customer, what you could do to serve them better in the future.
Or, if you’re this rep at AOL, to refuse to cancel the service, because "Well, what's the matter man? We're just, I'm just trying to help here." Caught on tape.
(Thanks, PunditGuy. Follow the saga at Insignifcant Thoughts.)
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 05:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 11, 2006
No, thank you, I won’t be bringing my patience cap
I am on the road with my family in a big, vinyl-wrapped motor home, promoting my company’s latest release. (That’s why the blogging has been light.)
The other day I had a minor maintenance crisis first thing in the morning, on a day when I had to drive five hours to a presentation. Fortunately there was a Camping World nearby, so I went over there to see if they could help me.
The Camping World parking lot was full of RV’s waiting their turn in the busy service bays. I explained my problem, and my tight schedule, to someone at the service desk. After consulting with his manager, he came back to tell me that there was just no way they could help me quickly. He handed me the card of a smaller competitor down the road, though, and said that he had already called to confirm that they could help me immediately.
I called the shop to tell them I was coming. There an exasperated voice wanted to know who was paying for this work. I explained that I was traveling on business and would pay whatever it cost to fix, even if it wasn’t covered by warranty. I also explained that I had a tight schedule and hoped they could look at it right away. “Well, bring your patience cap,” I was admonished.
Well, I didn’t want to bring my patience cap. I didn’t want to bring them any cap at all. So I got some parts and ideas at Camping World and, right there in the parking lot, fixed things well enough to get back on the road.
Camping World will always be my first stop. Even though they couldn’t help me, they took my problem and my schedule seriously. The smaller shop probably could have helped me, but they treated me like an annoyance, not a customer.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 04, 2006
Staying open around the holidays
Our company takes Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as holidays. In the past, when one of those holidays fell on a Saturday we observed it Friday; if on Sunday we observed it Monday.
In 2005 we looked at the calendar and saw a four-day closure around Christmas. We would be closed on December 23rd, when a lot of shopping was still happening, and again on December 26th when people who had found our product under the Christmas tree might be calling for technical support, or to exchange or upgrade.
We decided to stay open on Fridays and Mondays around holidays that fall on the weekend. Employees could then take the holidays as floating days in the surrounding months.
Some departments just closed down on Friday and Monday around Christmas, but all of our customer contact departments (sales, customer service, technical support) stayed open with reduced staff. We had fewer calls, which fit well with the reduced staff, and the customers who did call were surprised and delighted to find us there.
As far as I know, every employee got the holidays they wanted. Some moved New Year's Day closer to Christmas for a longer break, some saved all three days for an extended vacation in the first quarter, and some took the old schedule.
The customers got service on the standard schedule, the company got sales on three days when there would normally be no revenue, and the employees got holiday flexibility. I know this is old news in retail businesses, but it was a profitable innovation in our five day work week.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 06:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 27, 2005
Sorry, we're closed
At 6:30 pm my wife called the local kitchen shop to ask when they closed.
"8:00 pm" was the answer.
After dinner she went out the door to quickly pick up a gift that I had seen there the night before. After parking and running through the rain she arrived at the door at 7:47 pm to find the shop closed.
Why was she surprised? It was rainy, and dark, and most of the other shops in the boutiquey neighborhood had closed at 6 or 7. How much business would it cost to close a little early?
A lot. Because next time my wife won't bother with the little kitchen shop. She is more likely to head straight to Bed Bath & Beyond where they are open the hours they post and don't kick you out if you linger a bit.
Honoring your posted hours is not a little-local-store versus big-national-chain issue. I have sat in a Dairy Queen at 9:05 pm and watched the staff dismiss incredulous customer after incredulous customer because, despite the 10 pm close time posted on the door, "We close at 9 pm in the winter."
Honoring your posted hours is about being trustworthy and respecting your customers. It is the absolute minimum standard for a retail business. Padding your hours like Starbucks, which opens ten minutes early and closes ten minutes late, delights instead of annoys customers. Weren't you grateful the last time you rushed to get somewhere before they closed and were let in 5 minutes after closing time?
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 06:15 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
December 08, 2005
What the dentist taught me about ignoring customers
I liked my dentist, but I see now that it wasn't for any reason beyond his nice smile and my inclination to trust professionals. Blessed with great teeth, I had only spent much time with his chatty hygienist; his "exams" were cursory pokes and pleasantries. Spending time with the dentist himself was a valuable and humbling lesson in paying attention to customers.
Blissfully uninitiated in the ways of oral torture I showed up recently for what I was later told was "the simplest procedure of the day" -– for the dentist. (It was the most complex procedure of my day.) I foolishly sat down and opened my mouth as instructed, imagining that after a quick look the dentist and his assistant would tell me what they were going to do, how long it would take, and other useful information. Instead they unexpectedly shoved a sheet of magic latex in my mouth and I disappeared.
Well, I think it was magic latex; I never actually saw it. But apparently it did make me disappear, because neither the dentist nor assistant saw me again until it was removed. They chatted with each other about contestants on reality TV. They casually observed, after almost finishing and raising my hopes for removal of the latex gag, that the dentist had worked on the wrong tooth. Without apology or explanation they just started over on the right (?) one while continuing their conversation.
They acted like any two retail clerks sharing a few moments of gossip while stocking shelves, except that, unlike the shelf stockers, they both had their fingers in a conscious customer’s mouth.
Make that ex-customer's mouth.
If my dentist can forget to see the customer inches from his face, how much easier is it for me to ignore my much more remote customers? The week before visiting the dentist I was at a trade show where we had a large booth with a meeting area right in the middle. Often I continued meetings with colleagues while a customer perused our literature and waited for a salesperson to help him. Being ignored by my dentist days later filled me with shame for letting customers see me sit there with co-workers while they went unattended.
It is alright to spend time on things other than the customer. It is okay to talk with colleagues. It is not okay to ignore the customer in front of you. When the dentist is in the exam room the patient should not be ignored. When I am in the trade show booth the customer should not be ignored. Disney's guidelines for employees –- referred to as cast members -– have it right: when we are with customers we are on stage. And if we too often forget it, we will lose our audience.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 09:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 28, 2005
Why I pay more to park at the airport
For years I parked at the Jet Motel when flying out of Sea-Tac Airport. It looked a bit dumpy, but it was cheap and the staff was friendly. The only annoyance was the form I had to fill out every time I parked: name, address, phone number, date of return, make, model, color and license plate of car.
Many times I suggested that they create a Frequent Parker’s card, or a customer account number, so that I wouldn’t have to spend so much time filling out paperwork when trying to catch a flight. They never did.
When MasterPark opened nearby, they looked good: they had multiple lots and slick graphics, uniforms, and buses. They were also more expensive than the surrounding lots. I was happy to stick with the dumpy little motel and save a couple of bucks a day.
Then a colleague drove and took us to MasterPark. We stepped out of the car, our bags were whisked to the bus, and a uniformed attendant asked what day we planned to return. He then handed us a ticket and pointed us to the bus with a “have a nice flight!”
I haven’t filled out the Jet Motel’s form since. MasterPark looks great, but it was the customer experience that sold me. And the tragedy is that Jet Motel could have done the same thing at almost no cost. They don’t need handheld wireless terminals and remote printers. A paper file with my account information would have been enough to avoid the annoying form and keep my business.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 07:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 03, 2004
IBM doesn’t want my money
There’s an old adage in business that you’ve got to ask for the sale. There’s an older adage that a man has to stand on a hillside with his mouth open for a long time before a roast duck flies into it.
I’d like to suggest that if a roast duck (or sale) is flying towards your open mouth you shouldn’t close your mouth. Nor should you require the duck to fill out lots of paperwork before you deign to eat it.
A few years ago we purchased a license to an expensive piece of software. It wasn’t hard: we read about it, checked it out on the web, and then used a credit card to order. When we wanted an upgrade we just called the company and a sales rep handled the upgrade.
Two years ago IBM bought the company that made this software. Soon after that I received a long, detailed email from them informing me (under the headline “Your Role as the Site Technical Contact”) that I am responsible for ensuring that my company’s support personnel understand how to work with IBM’s support via the web. In two months, the email continued, I would receive further instructions explaining how to register and optimize my company’s access and delegate Secondary Site Technical Contacts, as well as how to register all of my employees with IBM for direct access.
Two weeks later another email detailed imminent changes to license key management and alerted me to the upcoming Proof of Entitlement document which would arrive by mail with a very important account number. For emphasis, this email arrived again an hour later.
Months later an email FULL OF CAPITAL LETTERS warned me that unless I took action immediately, IBM would stop reading any email I sent them. Five bullets points outlined what I must do (NOW) for the privilege of having IBM continue to process my emails. (The email helpfully repeated itself in French and German.)
Since I’m not part of IBM’s secretarial pool, I declined to follow their multi-step clerical process. Or even read it all.
I’d hoped that our new incommunicado relationship would be the end of urgent emails from IBM, but despite their unwillingness to process my emails they continued to pester me with announcements for expensive conferences. (I can just imagine the paperwork and blood tests required to attend.)
Recently the need arose to use the software product again, and I realized that we’d need to upgrade to the latest version. I called the sales rep who had last sent me an upgrade quote (on paper – how quaint!) to place my order. He’d been reassigned and helpfully transferred me to the new rep.
I told him that we were ready to upgrade and that I was interested in buying a second license, too. All I needed was a price and to give him my credit card number. Not too complicated, right?
Wrong. He was unable to tell me what the upgrade would cost, though he had our account record on the screen. He’d have to email me a quote. He was also unable to give me any pricing for a new license, because he’s only able to quote maintenance licenses. A separate rep would have to be contacted in order to provide a quote for the new license.
And the credit card? Forget that – you can’t order with a credit card. You have to use a purchase order.
Now I don’t have a purchase order form. I’ve ordered everything by phone or web for years. The few times I’ve placed an order big enough (say, over $20,000) that it really needed a signature and a check the seller provided the documentation, ready to sign.
No problem, the rep assured me. I could make one up, as long as I included all the required fields, which he would email to me. (Look! I’m doing IBM’s paperwork again!)
I got the email with the quote. But my quote had no quote number, which is required to place the order. And that extra new license I wanted to buy? I was still waiting to hear from the other rep about that.
Conclusion
I’ll admit that I’m not the typical customer for this software. IBM would probably rather sell 200 licenses to a large corporate customer than worry about the 1-5 units I’m likely to purchase. IBM doesn’t want to pay the 1-2% credit card fee. And the bigger customers probably have purchasing agents (not to mention Site Technical Contacts and their deputized Secondary’s) who live for this kind of stuff.
On the other hand, this is a software package at around $1,000. It’s not like it’s unaffordable or unusable for a company our size. There are probably lots of small software companies that could use it.
It’s pretty comparable in price to a high-end Adobe package, and they’ll take my credit card on the web, even though they also sell to large accounts and do license management.
Dell will sell me thousands of dollars in hardware on a credit card. In fact, the cost of invoicing and collecting and paper-handling are probably in excess of the $15 IBM is saving on the credit card processing charges.
Online ordering does put me in the role of doing order entry – but at least it places the order right away, without the hassle of my having to write and print (on official company letterhead, I’m admonished) and fax my own order. Lots of companies without online ordering will at least provide a quote with a “sign here to accept” line so that I don’t have to do all the paperwork to send them money.
Why is it so hard to send IBM money? Isn’t this the company that once asked its employees to personally flog individual copies of OS/2 to their family, friends and neighbors? Why is it so hard to place a $2,000 order?
Probably because $2,000 is chump-change to IBM. All this whining is a petty waste of time because they aren’t set up for and don’t care about little customers. They’re IBM.
So why am I wasting this time?
Because I want to get the message to IBM that this type of hassling on the little stuff will put you off my list for the bigger stuff. We spent $300,000 this year on products we could have bought from IBM. Not much compared to your big customers, I know, but coming up from chump-change. And we’re just one of lots of similarly sized (and growing) customers you’re turning off.
And I hate to see bad business practices. I think they should be pointed out as warnings to others – and to myself.
I also sell a $1,000 software package, and lots of smaller ones. Are they easy to buy? Do we make it a hassle to place an order? Logos customers (or would-be-customers) – let me know! Even if you’re just tossing tiny little morsels of roast duck at us, I want to make sure the corporate mouth is open to receive them and that we’re appropriately grateful for every bit of business you send us.
Update
The IBM reps I’ve spoken with have been pleasant and apologetic. One went to his manager on his own initiative and came back with a generous offer and a personal apology for the hassle. They’re just victims of the system, and they’re being very helpful to me, a fellow-victim of the IBM system. But good business systems shouldn’t be making victims out of anybody.
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 11:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 13, 2004
Business for the Asking
Dear Furnace Dealer,
I confess. I didn’t check my furnace filters last month.
There’s a three year old furnace in my basement. Designed right into it is a slot for storing the manual and service records. A sticker on the slot has your name and number and acts as a log for all service visits.
I saw this recently and thought it was a great idea to make sure that the records and documentation don’t get lost. I even pulled out the documentation, just to see what was there. What I found was a shocking surprise.
I’m supposed to be inspecting my furnace filters every three to four weeks. I’m to clean them when they’re dirty, and to replace them when necessary. (A convenient 40 cell table is provided to figure out which filter I need.) A nine point checklist is included along with an admonition to be careful lest I make a mistake and suffer “personal injury or death.”
Once a year (or at least every other year, the manual concedes) I’m supposed to have you out for “regular dealer maintenance.” You have an even longer checklist, and, I presume, less fear of death while completing it.
Now I suspect that most furnaces get their three week filter inspection on the same day of the week that most coffee makers get their weekly diluted vinegar cleaning. But I’ve seen a really dirty coffee maker and I’m getting nervous about the three years since my furnace has been examined. Maybe it’s full of muck, too.
For a moment, looking at the furnace, I had a sense of appreciation that you conveniently put your number right there on the furnace. As I looked at the dated service log, though, my appreciation faded away.
The only entry on the log is when the furnace was put into service. You know a lot more about the furnace than I ever will. You even knew the date it was installed. Why didn’t you call me to schedule the inspection a year after installation?
Sure, if the furnace stops working, I’m going to call you. It’ll probably be during some cold month when lots of other people are calling, too. Wouldn’t you rather do the maintenance during a slow month? Couldn’t you offer me a discount if I agree to have it done on the same day you visit everyone else in my neighborhood? Don’t you want a chance to talk to me about adding a humidifier or an air conditioner or upgrading to a more efficient furnace?
You installed the furnace. You know that it needs regular maintenance. Why take the risk that I’ll open the yellow pages? Just call me and ask for my business. You’ll get a profitable repeat customer and I’ll be absolved of guilt, knowing that my furnace doesn’t look like those coffee machines.
Sincerely,
Bob
Posted by Bob Pritchett at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack