The great $1.6 million mistake
These days, there is one organization setting the bar for great customer service: Zappos.
Their response to the technical glitch they experienced on their sister site 6pm.com over the weekend was amazing. I only wish I had been shoe shopping at the time of the problem…
In all seriousness, the right way to deal with problems is to own them and not penalize your customers when money is involved. Zappos hit it out of the park and, in so doing, only reinforced their position at the top of the customer service food chain.
Here’s the link to the original blog post: 6pm.com Pricing Mistake
Image credit: lowlevelrebel
Tweet“Help Me Help You”
This blog is intended to thank people for great customer experiences, but when I don’t have any and nobody else shares any, I’d like to write about customer service in general.
When I saw this tweet today, it got me thinking about phone calls and customer service. (Rarely a great combination in my experience.) Specifically, why a phone call was necessary in this situation when the caller was looking for what seemed to be a simple answer.
If you go looking for information on a company’s website and you cannot find it, does that cause you to form an impression of that company’s customer service philosophy? If not, it probably should.
It costs companies to provide customer service in the form of call centers or other interactive means, such as email. Not just from a money perspective, but from a risk perspective. How many times have you made a phone call with the same result as this tweet? Or sent an email and never gotten a response? Or better yet, made more than one inquiry (through the same channel or different channels) and gotten different answers? (Yep, that’s me raising my hand.)
Allowing customers to serve themselves is not only cost-effective for the company, but a great benefit to customers for several reasons, not the least of which is the ability to find what they want when they want it. Especially when they really don’t want to call you for help. This seems to me to be a relatively easy way to build a great customer experience and companies should be all over it. Yes, I understand that not everything can be made available in a self-service format, but for the stuff that can, why not do it? Save your customers the need to sit on hold for 20 minutes only to find out they can’t be helped via phone. Save yourselves the negative tweets, facebook and blog posts. Do something that endears you to your customers and help them help themselves.
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A little about this blog
I love and appreciate great customer service and that's why I started this blog...to help say "Thank you" to all of those individuals who go above and beyond to deliver a great customer experience. Won't you help me pass along the kudos to these deserving people?
If you're curious about me, click here.
