Earlier this week I wrote about my recent experience on Air France. The net-net was that the clerk at check in wasn't paying attention,
caused a number of problems, and was asking me to pay an extra 200 Euros for a seat I'd already paid for.

In the end, I ended up with my ticket - but I walked away with a negative feeling about their airline.  Undoubtedly, there are marketing people spending millions upon millions, canvasing radio, television and print with advertising to attract new customers. This clerk lost them potentially thousands of dollars of my future business. 

I'm a pretty rationale guy, if this type of service was an isolated incident, I'd write it off as such.
Unfortunately, it isn't - it is only the latest of a number of instances where I've interacted
with a company I've done business with, and walked away disappointed and likely not to engage in any future business with them.

In our industry, we spend hours talking about service oriented architecture (SOA). but in order for us to be able to debate SOA, our organizations realistically need customers.

This requires a core focus of our organizations on the relationships with thier customers, providing the foundation for a truly "service" oriented enterprise.

Prior to joining Microsoft, I worked for a company called Gazelle Systems.  Gazelle wrote sofwtare in the
hospitality vertical, specifically around CRM for restaurants.  The company had a core belief that 20% of customers were responsible for 80% of the restaurants business. People had great experiences and they told their friends, their colleagues, and if quality was maintained, the buzz grew and so did their clientele. 

The flipside is that while good news travels fast, bad news travels faster. People who have bad experiences tend
to tell people to avoid these businesses like the plague. In a connected world, information travels further and faster which can really cause impacts.

Think about the last negative experience you had with a company. Did you tell/warn your friends in the hopes to avoid them the same pain? I bet you did.  And the worse the experience, the more passionate your explanation. This kicks of a domino effect where people tell their friends, etc.

We seem to have a bad trend in customer service - here area a few other recent examples:

Capital One

A few years ago, I was a principal consultant in Microsoft Consulting Service, working out of Latin America. I'd been offered a credit card from Capital One, but it had never arrived, and had disappeared enroute to me.

Funnily enough, a bill from Capital One for an annual fee did make it to me in the mail.  I contacted the company to let them know I hadn't received the card, thus hadn't activated the card, and thus had not intention of paying any fees. Unfortunately, Capital One saw an opportunity to impact their bottom line by outsourcing their call center. The challenge was that the staff they hired were non-native English speakers, and had significant challenges when discussing items outside of established scripts.

This situation was one of those that were off script. While the credit card company saved money by hiring these individuals, it was now costing me in my time and patience to attempt to describe the situation several times, in hopes that each new description would finally click with the customer service rep.

Eventually, I gave up and asked them to cancel the card. Because I cancelled the card and it was within the first billing period, there was no issue about charges. The annual fee assessed would be reversed and the account would be closed.

I thought it was, but found out otherwise when I moved to Redmond and was shopping for a house. The card account was still open, the annual fee had still been assessed, and as it was not payed, it'd reflected negatively on my credit.

After another 4 hours of my time, I had the issue resolved and received an apology letter from Capital One. They added savings to their bottom line, but now they've added a level of inconvenience to me

They are inundating the airwaves with millions in advertisements, and this customer service rep has ensured that I'll never have a Capital One card in my wallet.

Fortunately for me, I checked my credit early on in the house hunting process. Knowing that this could have caused major problems for me, I'm extremely negative on this brand.

Overstock.com

I purchased a Tag Heuer watch from Overstock.com. This was not an inexpensive purchase (>$2000), and my credit card was charged. Several days later, I was told they didn't have the watch, wouldn't have the watch, and my card would be refunded. They made an offer of a $20 gift voucher as a consolation. Disappointed with the situation, but still willing to give them another shot.

I went back to their site and saw what I could get for $20. I found a DVD that I liked, saw that they had it in widescreen, and placed my order. When the DVD arrived, it had 'full screen' in large letters on the case, however the invoice indicated it should have been the wide screen version. I called customer service, and sure enough, they goofed. 

Even then, I'd not written them off. Then I was told what I needed to do to resolve their mistake.

To get the item I orderd, though, I'd need to either pay them again and return the DVD they sent, or return the item.  If I returned the item, I'd have to wait up to 5 business days for an envelope to return the item, and then another 5 business days for them to receive it.

This was a movie I was looking forward to seeing, and now would have to wait an extra 10 days to receive what I'd ordered initially. Now, I'm a lost customer and a negative evangelist. A month later, I've still not received the envelope to return it.

If you've turned on a TV in the last 3 months, you know this company is easily spending millions of dollars on advertising, but they're losing people in the last mile due to non-customer friendly policies.

Mistakes happen, it's how you respond to them

I'm not saying that companies can't make mistakes. Most customers understand mistakes happen, it's how you respond that defines the relationship going forward. The sad thing is, I could have been 'saved' as a customer in all of these scenarios. And it wouldn't have taken much - for less than the cost to acquire another
new customer, or combat the negative evangelist that ensues as a result.

These sorts of things are more common now than in years past, and it really differentiates a brand when a company gets it right.

Amazon.com

Amazon is a great example, and in similiar situations to Overstock. I've had challenges when the wrong item was shipped to me, or there was an unplanned delay. The key differentiator is that their customer service team made it right, and got me what I needed, when I needed it.  The actual costs involved for them were trivial, but
the way they responded increased my loyalty to their brand/site. While initially I bought books from them, that comfort level has led to thousands of dollars in purchases for non-print items.

Ritz-Carlton Hotels

Ritz-Carlton hotels is another company that 'gets it'.  They recognize the value of their clientele, and empower their employees to make things right and have a strong focus on service.

They effectively employ technology to record guest preferences for VIP service at their properties.

Going beyond doing the expected level of service

But let's look at going beyond the basics and really adding value -

Use technology to recognize John Smith from Boston when he visits <business/> in Seattle.
If you've never seen John before, you might not give him the same VIP service that your colleagues in the Boston location do,as  he spends alteast $1000 each time he visits <business/> in Boston, and does that 3 times per month.

And when John takes his wife to Hawaii on their anniversary and wants the same pink champagne the night they were engaged and had dinner at the Boston location, and the maitre'd in Maui can identify it easily. It's that sort of service that inspires loyalty and customer evangelism.

Having had these various experiences with corporations as a consumer, a deliverer of services, and VP of development for a CRM company, I've seen some recurring themes.

The folks that get it right have three key things in common:
 There is communication from the top that the customer relationship is crucial.
 The customer facing employee is reasonably empowered.
 There is technology in place to assist in managing the relationship.

When I was developing products in this space, one of the big challenges in bringing this to fruition were infrastructure and technology. With poor bandwidth, real-time data services weren't realistic and to handle the data necessary for such a system required the developer to get very creative  with replication. But that was then, this is now.

The hurdles from the technology perspective have all but disappeared. Connectivity is now more pervasive and both PC hardware and media storage  costs are a fraction of what they once were.

So why write about this now? When this recent incident occured at the airline ticket counter, a short while later I was checking my email and reading about the SQL Server 2005 launch. It was then that I was reminded that of an article/statement I'd read where Bill Baker from the SQL team talked about the future of BI.

I forget the exact wording, but the gist was that SQL 2005 would bring the capability to deliver analytics to not just executives, but everyone in the organization, including those on the front lines, dealing with customers and helping shape the customer experience.

As a consumer, I'm really looking forward to seeing people take advantage of the product and run with it.