Tag Archives: Customer satisfaction

May 7, 2014 · 8:42 am

Service Done Right

I go on an annual golf trip – no shock given that golf is a frequent topic here on the screed. This year’s takes place in a few weeks and part of our group’s tradition (it’s our twentieth trip!) is that each guy brings “free stuff” for every other guy. Of course, it’s never free to the giver, but that’s part of the charm, I guess.

Over the years I’ve made a variety of commemorative T-shirts for the group as my gift and I’ll be doing that again this year (sorry if I ruined the surprise for any of my group that visits here). I designed them and sent the file off with my order to Design-A-Shirt, the company I’ve used several times before. What happened next is customer service at its finest.

First, when they began working on the order, they sent out proof sheets to show me how they had cleaned up what I sent them and to get an approval to proceed.  This is the first step in very smart customer service.  After all, why take the chance on an unhappy customer (bad) or on having to redo an order (worse, and a killer of margins)?  This was NOT a form email.  It came from a person and I responded to a personal mailbox as I approved what they were doing.

To this point, I’d call this above average, smart customer communication.  Here is where it gets extraordinary.  I got this note yesterday:

Hello Keith,

I wanted to follow up on the order you placed with us to provide you with a production photo of your design printed on fabric. Please see the attached photo for reference. We are concerned about the text… as it’s a bit hard to read. To fix that we would either have to move the “ball” up to make the font larger, or use a different, thinner font that would be more legible. Please advise!

Wow.  They printed the approved design on T-shirt fabric and had a human give it the once over.  That same human took the time to write me a personal note and to ask for guidance.  I should remind you that this is for 13 shirts and the total cost was around $150, far from a big order.  Even so, they made me feel as if I was ordering 13 dozen.  Giving equal attention to every customer is part of doing it right.  Not surprisingly, late last night I got an email that the order had shipped and will be here at the end of the week – several days ahead of when it was promised.

Think I’ll be back?  You bet.  More importantly, by using them as an example of perfect customer communication and service – that which goes above and beyond the customer’s expectations – I’m hoping you’ll both learn from them and given them consideration if you need to make a shirt or two.  I know I talk often in this space about how excellent customer service costs less than you think and retaining a customer is always easier than finding a new one.  Hopefully this real word example resonates.  Does it?

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December 12, 2013 · 12:07 pm

Stews Leonard’s And The Thumbtack In The Chowder

Today’s tale ended up providing a good business lesson but began as a potentially lethal bit of negligence.

Oyster crackers are better with this than thumbtacks!

Oyster crackers are better with this than thumbtacks!

I went to see my folks the other day and my Mom had something interesting to show me. On her counter was a container of clam chowder from the Stew Leonard’s store down the street from their house.  She had purchased the soup the day before.  On top of the container was a thumbtack as you can see in the photo.  I don’t know about you, but my Dad prefers crackers with his chowder and doesn’t ever consider thumbtacks as a condiment.  However, that is exactly what he found as he ate.

How the tack got in the chowder is a serious problem but not our focus today.  Obviously the commercial kitchen should not have small, sharp, unsterile objects anywhere near food but let’s put that aside and focus on what happened when I returned to the store.   Stew’s is known for great customer service.  At the front of the store here in Norwalk is a big stone that says:

We’ve been going to the Norwalk store for 30+ years and have always found that they practice what they preach.  However, we’ve never had an issue like this.  In any event, I took the tack and the chowder to customer service at the Danbury store and explained the problem.  The young woman didn’t ask for a receipt nor question me in any way.  She just apologized, asked me if I had other shopping to do and to please come back to see her when I had finished.  Upon my return she waved me to the front of the short line, asked for the new clam chowder I had picked up, tagged it as paid and refunded the price in cash.  I gave the soup to my folks along with their refund and they were happy.

We get opportunities in business to take bad experiences and make them worse or to make them better.  This was the latter which I think is a model about handling a customer problem.  Address it immediately, admit blame, tell the customer how you’re going to solve the problem, make restitution, and see if that resolves it.  I suppose if I had carried on about wanting gift cards or something more I might have got it but I wasn’t there to take advantage( I realize some customers are!).  They could have asked me for my parents’ email to send them an apology (about the only improvement I would have made).  They were being adult about it – I thought I’d reciprocate.

Many places would have denied there was a problem (that’s impossible, sir, maybe you dropped it in while you were heating it up).  Many would have demanded a receipt (maybe you were storing someone else’s chowder in one of our containers).  Some would have made me solve the problem (so what do you want me to do about it) instead of offering a solution themselves.  They did none of those things and so what could have been a series of horrible posts on social media are, instead, a blog post that praises them.

How would you have handled it had your customer found the tack?  Any differently?  Could this have been handled any better?

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May 13, 2013 · 10:24 am

Why I Won’t Be Using FTD Again

I hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day. My Mom is in Florida and I’m not so we celebrated the day separated by distance. In an attempt to bridge the geographic gap, I ordered some flowers for her last Friday from FTD. Frankly, I’m more of a “support local businesses” kind of guy but since FTD uses local florists to fill the orders and since I was in a time crunch on Friday, I used FTD’s site to place the order. Which I won’t be doing again.  Of course, there are a few lessons for any business in the midst of this.

Flower

(Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I asked that the flowers be delivered on Saturday.  It gave them 24 hours and hopefully would avoid the peak period of deliveries yesterday on Mother’s Day.  As Saturday night rolled around and I hadn’t received a phone call from Florida to let me know they arrived (my Mom always calls when we send her stuff), I began to get a little worried.  By mid-afternoon Sunday, we had already called her to wish her a great day but nothing had arrived (we asked).  Time to follow-up with FTD.

Lesson number one.  On what is one of your busiest days of the year, don’t turn off customer service.  When I called FTD’s line, I pushed “2” to check on my order status and was told (more or less) that we’re not answering the phone today because it would be overwhelming so use the web site.  No humans.   Hello?  Learn from Butterball, who adds hundreds of reps to their turkey help line around Thanksgiving.

Lesson number two.  Using the web site, I clicked to “check order status.”  I found my order number and popped it in, expecting something like UPS‘ excellent tracking or Amazon‘s system.  Nope.  Within seconds, I had an email telling me “We have received your request to confirm that your gift was delivered.  When we receive confirmation of delivery, we will notify you via email.”  First, that’s NOT what I was seeking – I knew it hadn’t been delivered (my Mom is faster than your email!).  Second, I still don’t have a confirmation email on delivery and yes, thankfully, the flowers did get delivered two hours after I began trying to get an update (and a full 52 hours after they were ordered for next day delivery).

Lesson number three.  I paid a service fee of $22 for the convenience of not having to find, to call, and to order from a local florist near my Mom.  I had, I think, reasonable expectations in return for that fee:  the flowers would be delivered as promised, on time, in good shape, and that there would be some sort of customer service to support me in the event of a problem.  Hey – we’re dealing with gifts for people’s mothers – buyers don’t want anything less than what they expect and these were definitely mixed results at best.

While digital technology has done a lot to kill local businesses (ask any small, local book or music store), there is nothing like the personal service one can get from using old-fashioned technology:  a phone and a human.  Until and unless companies like FTD figure out how to replicate that experience, I won’t be using them again.  You?

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