swansonager – what is matt up to?

So yesterday I placed an order at a reputable company for a new toy – they didn’t take Amex which was a complete letdown – but then again, the processing fees are higher with them so I can understand.

So I went off to use my Paypal account – since they took Mastercard, I used the Paypal Plugin to auto generate a mastercard # so I could buy my toy. Turns out, while this store accepts Mastercard, they don’t accept the Paypal auto generated Mastercard # – what a major pain.

Anyone else seen an issue like this where a store wouldn’t accept a Paypal Mastercard #?

Well, for my friend Shane, it was 13 strikes (or steps) to how Comcast can lose a customer…Shane makes some awesome points on customer service and how not to do it. Also, take a read over the barriers that Comcast put Shane up against when trying to answer the most simple questions about their channel lineup – simply amazing.

I know that each one of my friend that has told me they were going to get Voice service over Comcast, I’ve highly discouraged them. Don’t mess with something that isn’t broken (i.e. POTs) – but hey, do as you wish. I would venture to bet that more folks than not have experienced issues with running VOIP on Vonage or Comcast. The whole 911 service still bugs me too – not sure why but it does.

So, did I touch a nerve?

What stories do you have that either (1) show how a company can kick butt with customer service or (2) drop the ball big time like Comcast did in Shane’s example of how Comcast dropped the ball

Comment on this post to share with us – we’d love to hear good stories and the bad…

Today’s topic is customer service. What would you do to keep a customer for your business or organization. In my case, a mere $6.98 on the part of Blue Sky Cycling cost them my customer loyalty for life.

A Chance to Win a New Customer for life

We all have chances everyday in the way we run our business to either:

1. Make our Customers happy (and ger free PR by how great we are from a customer service standpoint) or 2. Turn our Customers away (and let them tell others for us what happened if the situation didn’t turn out so great)

Here’s how things went down today with my transaction with Blue Sky Cycling – they had a chance for #1 above but ended up with a #2 and lost me as a customer over just $6.98.

So I placed an order this morning for a new WTB Pure V Saddle for my Cannondale along with a new Crank Brothers Power Pump from Blue Sky Cycling. Order went through easily and all was well. This afternoon I got a call from them saying that the saddle I had ordered was not in stock and that it was on backorder with no date in sight as to when it might be back in stock and available to ship.

Already having Firefox open, I fired up their site to see if they might have another saddle that I could use instead (they didn’t have one in solid black, I asked that first). They did have one that was $2 cheaper but it had silver on it – so I was going to settle for my third option. Then I asked for what I really wanted.

When shopping earlier in the day, I had the saddle, the power pump, and some ($8.95) Azonic/O’Neal Element Gloves in my cart. I removed the gloves earlier in the day before I placed my order since I didn’t need them.

Ask for what you want to make things right

Now seemed like it was the time to ask for what I really wanted since I was essentially being given a substitute product. I asked the rep if he’d throw in the gloves for free …. free is relative here since the substitute saddle was $2 cheaper than the one I had ordered earlier in the day, so the gloves really came out to $6.95 net/net.

He put me on hold a second and then came back with, “I’m sorry sir, $8 is as cheap as we can offer you the gloves”. Bleh – I ended up just canceling the entire order and will end up going elsewhere to find my WTB Pure V Saddle.

The missed opportunity

This is where Blue Sky Cycling had a chance to either get me as a customer for life, or have me move on and cancel my first and only order – and search for find someone else to fulfill my recent mountain biking bug with component upgrades.

If they had eaten the $6.98, I would have blogged about how great they were to me in a pinch since I was taking a substitute product and they had led me to believe it was in stock, etc. (I can understand something not being in stock and that’s not the issue for me though, it’s really how they had the chance to make it right and didn’t)

But now this transaction has inspired me on the flip side to ask you what you are doing to go beyond and keep a customer for life in your business.

Blue Sky was very polite and professional and I really appreciate what they did in calling me right away, trust me, they were great from that standpoint.

But when they had the chance to win me for life as a customer over $6.98, they failed this time around. How are you winning your customers in this new economy we’re living in?

[Update]

So just after posting this last Friday, I found the items I wanted from Bike Bling so I placed my order at 6:05pm on a Friday night (EDT). Just 18 minutes later at 6:23pm, I received the “Your Order has been Shipped” email and 1:40 after that received the UPS shipping confirmation with my Tracking Number. Now that’s FAST Bike Bling. I’ll let you know how the gear arrives when I get it.