Customer Service

Want to improve your relationships with clients, friends, and families? Here’s a tip. Go “old school”, forget about e mail, and occasionally send people hand-written notes.

Unfortunately society has stripped communication to its lowest possible denominator. We are so busy that we can’t even take the time to write complete words; instead we text bizarre short hands. We send hundreds of e mails and copy thousands of people just because we can. And as a result words become less impactful.

So if you want to stand out, take five extra minutes, jot down a few kind words in a card or letter, and snail mail it. I guarantee you it will stand out amid all the fast and frequently fake communication we all receive on a daily basis.

And here are a few ways to make it really special. Invest in some nice embossed note cards. Brush up on your penmanship and buy a nice rolling black pen – or make it really interesting and get a fountain pen. Infuse a little art into your communication. People will appreciate the effort, and you might be surprised at the results.

About a year ago I wrote an entry to complain about Netflix, and their practice of “throttling”.  Essentially throttling is Netflix’s misguided practice of dealing with their best customers.  The premise of membership in Netflix is to be able to watch as many movies as you want.  But what Netflix does not tell you is that if you rent too many movies, they will make it difficult or impossible to obtain the newest releases.  Members that flip some internal “rented too many movies” switch all of a sudden don’t get to rent the newest releases in a timely fashion.  When they check their queue it shows “long wait” – which means you don’t get to rent the movie until it is no longer in demand.  Case in point….  I tried to rent Wall-E since the day it was released, and two months later it is still not available to me.  So depending on your movie watching habits this becomes a huge issue.  If you like old classics or simply belong to Netflix to rent Ed Begely Jr. movies you will never be throttled.  If you want to watch new movies when they come out, your Netflix membership could be worthless. I have been a Netflix customer since they started, and I find this a very strange and dishonest way to deal with your customers.  And worst of all, when I called Netflix to complain a very flippant employee told me I could quit if I don’t like it.

So of course I vote with my wallet and work with a competitor.  I have been forced to open a Blockbuster online account.  The good news….  The newest releases are available from Blockbuster.  The bad news….. aside from the throttling issue, Netflix is a better service.  Much better website to navigate, and much faster to ship and return when they do ship.  In fact, in terms of functionality and ease of use, there are not many better sites on the web than Netflix.

And Netflix is also way ahead of the curve when it comes to future technologies.  Now you can buy Netflix enabled Tivos, video boxes, televisions, and Blu-Ray DVD players that eliminate the need for discs and allow you to download directly to view.  Ultimately we will move to a download model, which will eliminate the need to throttle.

So I have a love/hate relationship with Netflix.  I think they are an incredibly smart company that will be a leading force in streaming home entertainment to consumers.  They are making all the right moves by integrating their technologies into existing devices, as opposed to building a business model based on selling us extra hardware.  Their site is superlative.  It’s just a shame that their current business model abuses their best customers.

During this economic crisis I think I am more sensitive than ever before to the quality of the companies I do business with.  Good companies may bemoan the sorry state of commerce, but they also see these times as a painful opportunity.  Bad companies will fail, ultimately opening up the marketplace for better run operations.  There is big growth ahead for those that make it through the thinning of the herd.

But the single biggest factor any company faces is the quality of their employees. A company may have great products at great prices and still fail due to the fact that their employees don’t care.  Certainly management has a responsibility to create a work environment that fosters good work and concern for the company and the customer.  But the worker also needs to realize that they play a key role in the company’s future, and during tough times they need to pitch in and take ownership in the future of the company they work for. 

I was reminded of this fact a couple times a couple weeks ago.  I went into a NW grocery chain – Fred Meyers – to pick up a few last minute supplies.  I am a fan of Fred Meyers.  They stores are typically clean, well-stocked, and pleasant to shop in.  I went to the fish counter intent on buying a large piece of salmon – a potentially very pricey purchase.  When I approached the counter the woman managing the department said “sorry, it’s after 9 – we’re closed”.  I looked at my watch, which said 9:01.  “Can I just get that piece of salmon”, I said, pointing at what would have probably been a $20 to $30 purchase.  It would have taken the woman under thirty seconds to grab the fish and wrap it, but she said “nope, can’t do it.  I got home late last night and have to be on time tonight”.   I left the store disgusted, amazed that this woman cared so little about her company that she would not take thirty seconds of her time to please a customer and make a large sale.

I often hear people complain about their employers, yet take no responsibility for their own actions.  I am sure Fred Meyers did not instruct this woman to be a clock watcher and treat customers rudely.  I am sure the airline did not tell the flight attendant to be surley, or the customer service agent on the phone to be a jerk, or the salesperson in the auto parts store to be lazy and make no effort to help me, or the waiter to be so rude I rushed out the restaurant.

In some way we are all salespeople for the companies we work for – even if our positions are not classified as such.  And if our employers do well or go broke we share some of the responsibility.

In a sign that karma does exist, a major business Weasel was sent to prison this week.  Steve Warshak, founder of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals (better known as Enzyte – the so-called hard penis people) was sentenced to 25 years in prison.  Warshak, his mother, and several others were accused of bilking customers out of millions of dollars via false advertising and bogus credit card transactions. In fact, they took so much money that they were also fined $500 million dollars in addition to the jail time! 

Viewers may remember the “Smilin Bob” Enzyte commercials that promised to turn every average Joe or Bob into a sexual powerhouse.  Warshak was indescriminate in his dishonesty.  In addition to stealing from customers, he would also refuse to pay his advertising agencies, claiming he was going bankrupt and tying them up for months in court in an attempt to delay and ultimately reduce payment.

It’s always good for the advertising business and consumers when these kind of scam artists get sent away, but although Warshak deserves it I was still a bit suprised at the severity of the sentence.  25 years!  He apparently underestimated how serious men are when it comes to their erections. ”Steve Warshak preyed on perceived sexual inadequacies of customers”, said the Judge when he handed down the sentence. 

One must wonder if there are any disgruntled customers where Steve is going. Perhaps the fact that Enzyte doesn’t work will make prison a less painful experience.   

Ah Comcast….  For many years I and many others thought you deserved the Yugo award for worst customer service.  Your technicians were late or didn’t show up at all.  Work was sloppy.  You acted like you just didn’t care.  Then a couple years ago things seemed to get better.  You operators were friendly and your installers were on time.  Your guys wore spiffy uniforms. You began advertising how much good you do for the local community. Your digital cable is just, well, COMCASTIC, and your broadband service is really fast!  We all had high hopes.

But somehow, someway, you have slipped again.  Perhaps into a much more evil place than just rude or incompetent.   Recently you came under fire for blocking your subscribers’ access to certain web sites, and then not telling them you were doing so.  In fact…. is it possible you are now being run by the Chinese government?  [click to continue...]

I had the awful revelation that perhaps my blog was turning all negative and, well… whiney. And while I really enjoy raking Weasels and other incompetents over the coals, I don’t want to ignore the many great companies that periodically help define customer service, and make me glad to pay a few extra bucks for a great product. A few current examples;

Bose. I first became familiar with the venerable audio brand when I was in high school in the 1970s. At that time the ultimate male audiophile fantasy included a Macintosh amp, a Denon turntable (kids, ask your parents what a turntable was), Bose 901 speakers and Olivia Newton-John (not an ONJ album mind you—my fantasy included the real girl.) Since I had neither the cash for the equipment nor the connections to meet Olivia, my fantasy had to be put off a few years. For the last couple decades I have been able to afford Bose equipment, and now I am a dedicated customer. Most recently, I was more than a bit surprised when I sent my three-year-old Bose noise-canceling headphones in for service. A few days later I received a pair of the latest model—sent Fed Ex and free of charge—bravo Bose! Now, any chance you know Olivia Newton-John?

Briggs & Riley Luggage. Fifteen years ago I purchased my first B&R bag, a roller that still accompanies me on almost every trip I take. I estimate the bag has logged well over a million
miles. I have slept on it, spilled on it, dropped it down stair cases, and generally abused it in every way possible on multiple continents. Every couple years I send it in for service, and B&R makes it look almost new, free of charge! As a result I now only buy B&R bags for myself and my wife, and every problem has been met with the same excellent customer service.

Sage and Loomis fly rods. I am a maniacal fly fisherman, and over the years I have built a great collection of high-end fly rods. The great rod companies, including Sage and Loomis, via their lifetime warranties, have set the standard for customer service. Unfortunately, at least once a year I break a rod (if you believe my initial story it is due to an enormous fish—in reality it’s sometimes a tumble down the hillside). I send the rod off, and without any discussion or hassle the repaired rod arrives a week or so later, making me proud to be a fly fisherman!

Warrior companies understand the value of long-term relationships and take care of their customers. If you admire a company for their great standards of customer service, spread the word!

A couple days ago I called Northwest Airlines to change a flight. I had already paid for an expensive ticket, and was fully prepared to endure the often stunning additional charges the airlines levy for making the most minor of alterations to your travel schedule (funny, but the airlines never compensate me when they change my schedule by being five or six hours late).

After navigating my way through the difficult and often incomprehensible automated phone menus, I finally arrived at what I hoped would result in contact with a live person. I was stunned when a recorded voice said “Due to high call volumes, we cannot take your call at this time. Please call back later.” Northwest then hung up on me. No offer to hold, no place to leave a message for a call back, just a basic “screw you for calling.”

I fly a lot, and I have never been a big fan of Northwest Airlines, but even for them this was particularly heinous customer service. But unfortunately Northwest is not the only company exhibiting complete disregard for their customers via their bad customer service policies. While I certainly understand that having live bodies talk to customers is an expensive proposition, and in some cases automated phone lines can actually be a good thing, increasingly companies are opting to save money by flipping the finger at their best clients.

I am in the process of canceling a Bank of America credit card I have held for over 10 years because calling them to report THEIR error took almost an hour. After being taken through a Rubik’s Cube phone menu, I was flipped through three different “customer service agents” before reaching one that spoke reasonable English. Despite the fact that I have spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars with the company over the last decade, I was essentially told the following:

• Credit card companies do not make mistakes—and even if they do it is still my fault.

Since I pay my bill on time and do not normally incur interest charges, I am not a particularly important client for them, even though I charge up a butt-load of money. Though I tried to maintain a professional demeanor through the conversation, I finally had to resort to silly threats and elevated voices to get them to credit for the mistake they made. And after the experience, I decided it was time to find a new credit card company.

While automated phone lines, cheap off-shore customer service people and online assistance as a replacement for live help might look appealing to the number-crunchers, in the long run it might be devastating to many companies’ bottom lines. The technologies that make cheap customer service possible also allow customers to complain about cheap customer service. In this Web 2.0 age, consumers increasingly have the upper hand. Once voice can reach hundreds or even hundreds of thousands when they encounter a company that just doesn’t care.

And by the way, hey Verizon, quit padding my bill with stuff I didn’t order.

My wife and I are avid wine lovers, so when we saw a new winery going up near our home in the central coast wine country of California, we were thrilled. According to the press for Roblar Winery, it sounded like quite a deluxe place; a winery that also offered great food and cooking classes in a lovely setting. We anticipated being regulars at the place as it was so convenient for us. So we were quite excited last week to attend our first event at Roblar—a “harvest barbecue” that they were promoting quite heavily. According to their advertising, it would be an evening of wonderful food, wine and entertainment. Although the $75 per person charge sounded steep for a barbecue, the facility looked really impressive from the outside, and we anticipated a terrific night.

How wrong we were! From the minute we walked in to Roblar it was clear this was not a place for wine lovers. Instead of being offered a wine tasting to showcase their products, we were given two coupons for glasses of wine, and told if we wanted more we would have to purchase at $10 a glass (after sampling their wine, I suspect they did this because the vino was so mediocre it was probably best we not taste).

The band they hired for the evening was loud and just plain bad—a poor choice for the tranquility and elegance one normally expects at a winery.

But all this mediocrity paled in comparison to the truly awful food. Wine lovers understand the essential relationship between food and wine—a relationship that the Roblar folks completely ignored. Their harvest barbecue consisted of chicken legs and mashed potatoes. No salads, no classic corn on the cob, just the cheapest food they could have possibly purchased, laid out on an ugly buffet table that was completely self service. And if bad food was not enough, they quickly ran out of the garbage they were serving.

The crowd was shocked and then quite disgusted. “The only edible thing here is the bread,” complained the table next to us.

Since it made no sense to eat and drink swill when we were surrounded by many fine restaurants, we got up to leave (along with most of the crowd). I do understand the challenges of launching a new business, and hoped this was just an early mistake by management. I stopped to talk to the manager, and nicely told her of our disappointment with the meal.

Her reaction put the entire affair into perspective for me. She was immediately hostile and rude, and replied “what do you expect for $75 bucks?” I told her quite honestly that I had eaten much better food at a $10 Kiwanis picnic, and we quickly left, surmising that Roblar Winery is probably just a tourist trap interested in luring people in once, making as much as they can, and moving on to the next sucker.

As we walked to our car in the parking lot, we met up with a crowd of similarly disgruntled patrons. We all agreed we would head to a fine local eatery for a real dinner and good wine, and never return to Roblar.

The next day we had quite a different experience when we attended an afternoon function at another nearby winery, Brander Vinyards. Unlike Roblar, which I later learned is owned by some kind of large holding company, Brander is run by it’s founder. They were having their harvest function, only Brander knew how to do it right. For $20 each you received unlimited wine tastings of both their current and future wines. The food was simple but spectacular—French cheeses well matched to the wines, and a barbecue with delicious salads, grilled meats and vegetables. A very talented guitarist serenaded the group. The staff was friendly, knowledgeable and helpful.

Now I must admit I expected nothing less from Brander. I have belonged to their wine club and been a patron for 15 years, and have probably spent thousands of dollars on Brander Wine. We have a long term relationship that I appreciate, and I will continue to be a patron.

Great wine makers understand that their business is all about relationships. The relationship between their product and food. The relationship with their customer—that if handled properly it can last decades. I thought it was a shame that Roblar would go to such expense and trouble to build such a grand facility, but ignore the importance of relationships.

And relationships are at the heart of almost all successful businesses. Managers that become hostile when a client complains are simply bad managers. A client that takes the time to relay their dissatisfaction is doing the company a big favor. Most people just silently leave and never return, often leaving the business owner to wonder why they failed. Managers need to understand the customer is doing them a favor—allowing them to repair a damaged relationship.

Thank God for witless starlets and horny politicians, otherwise what would they print in the newspapers and magazines? While I guess I wasn’t surprised that another formerly “conservative” politician from Idaho was caught trying to take his pants down and share his love for America, I was surprised where he was caught. As I have written in the past, I spend a lot of time in airports, and accordingly, sometimes frequent airport restrooms. I had no idea that there was an underground network of “between-flight Plato’s Retreats,” where sex-starved guys tap out erotic ads under bathroom partitions.

Personally, I try to keep my conversation, eye contact and gestures to a minimum in public restrooms. And while I have had my share of wild times, I don’t remember my libido ever being at a level where sex in a smelly toilet sounded the least bit appealing.

I spend a lot of time in the air, and accordingly I am forced on an almost weekly basis to endure the indignity of airport security. Something is seriously wrong in America when we force our citizens to be strip searched in public and have their shampoo sniffed by twelve-dollar-an-hour faux security guards. A few weeks ago I watched as TSAs forced a hundred-year-old woman in a wheelchair to do a perp walk through an electronic blow machine, apparently convinced that she was hiding a vial of TNT somewhere up her ancient rectum.

I cringe when I see uniformed strangers hold up plastic bags full of very private stuff for the entire airport to peruse. “Sir, in the future you might want to buy condoms wrapped in plastic as opposed to foil so they don’t set off our metal detectors.” “Sorry Ma’am, you can’t bring that 6 ounce bottle of laxative on the plane – 3 ounces is the limit.” The piece of shrapnel the vet has in his left buttock as a souvenir of his freedom fight now guarantees he’ll get “wanded down” and probably miss his flight.

And who is policing the police? Earlier this year I had an expensive camera stolen out of my checked luggage, most likely by the same people that left the “your luggage has been inspected” coupon tucked into my bag. I can’t help but picture an enormous hairy man deep in the bowels of the airport rummaging through my wife’s luggage, gleefully inspecting her panties.

While I am all for keeping Americans safe, I think common sense and intelligence should trump mindless bureaucratic process. Like the Iraq war, our ridiculous airport security smacks of an expensive knee-jerk reaction that doesn’t solve the problem. The terrorists that brought down the towers went to flight school and spent years in preparation before attacking us. I doubt a serious terrorist would be dissuaded from hijacking a flight because he can’t bring a shoe bomb on board or carry napalm in containers larger than 3 ounces. Despite the ban on sharp objects on planes, I recently discovered that for the last several years I had inadvertently been carrying a cigar cutter on every flight. The razor sharp instrument, which is just as lethal as the famous box cutters, had been buried in a folds of my computer case and had gone undetected through at least a hundred security checks.

And as a businessman, I can’t help but marvel at the inefficiencies of airport security. Why space inspectors twelve feet apart (well within each other’s siteline) and have them both ask for my photo ID? Could I have somehow morphed into a terrorist, like some kind of Al Qaeda shape-shifter, during those three or four steps?

September 11th ushered in major changes for this country, almost all of them negative, but one of it’s saddest impacts on America is the irrational fear in has infused on our society. While I certainly don’t negate the danger that terrorists pose, they have already won if we let them transform our way of life into a police state in the name of security.