I recently had an email exchange with the “support” department of a company that has a Twitter client, which is currently in a closed beta.  I put support in quotes because I didn’t receive any support at all, only a bad attitude.

Here’s an excerpt of one of the emails I received from them:

its a closed beta in development we have zero time to answer any emails yet we do.  each user costs us money today…so to be very clear here providing this service to you costs me money.  you are not our customer we were kind enough to provide you with a useful service.

There are two immediate problems here:

1. Offering a popular product and then complaining to one of your customers that they’re costing you money and leave you no time to answer emails is shooting yourself in the foot.
2. Users of your free products are, in fact, your customers.  In this case, the customers are also de facto employees since they’re testing the product and providing feedback, and thus should be treated as the valuable asset they are.

And also notice how poorly the email was formatted.  The punctuation is poor, and each sentence begins with a lower case letter.  Perfection is not required, but competence is.

What sense does it make to launch a startup and offer a product if you’re going to resent the users of that product?  This experience reminded me of the Demotivator titled Apathy: If we don’t take care of the customer, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.

This customer certainly did.

I’ve been doing a lot of shopping at Lowe’s and Home Depot recently, and I’ve noticed an interesting behavioral shift in the employees at these stores.  I’m very seldom asked if I need help finding something.  (Face it, after the fourth offer it starts to get annoying.) Instead they greet me with a simple, “How are you today?”  Now this, this doesn’t get annoying.  Quite the opposite, it makes me feel welcome in the store.  It also opens the door for me to ask for help should I need it, leaving me in control rather than putting me on the spot.

This is a perfect zero-cost improvement in customer service.

AT&T is annoyed with some of its smart phone customers. They’re saying that three percent of smart phone users are consuming 40 percent of total available bandwidth on their cellular network.  AT&T is saying that they’re looking at incentives to get these high-bandwidth users to "reduce or modify their usage."

Of course, “incentive” is almost certainly going to mean “higher fees.”

Every company and service has its power users, and this is especially true in the tech sector.  This is not something that should have caught AT&T by surprise.  They partnered with Apple on the iPhone, which can (technically) only be used on AT&Ts network, offer so-called “unlimited” data plans (which are finally revealed to have a 5Gb cap, nevermind that “unlimited” in fact means “uncapped” ), and then get upset that people actually use their data plan.

Should Time Warner Cable charge people who leave their TVs on 24/7 more money?  Should your gym charge you more because you use the gym twice per day when most of their customers go three times per week?

This is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, but bear with me a moment.  Time Warner and your gym (and countless other companies) decided on a fair market price for their products and they charge that price.  AT&T should have done the exact same thing, but they didn’t, and that’s where the problem lies.  AT&T, rather than stepping up and improving their service, is choosing instead to change the rules and punish their most devoted customers.

At the other end of the spectrum, let’s talk about propane.  I recently moved into a rural home that has a propane tank, which is used to run the furnace and tankless water heater.  The company that fills our tank charges a sliding “tank usage fee” for customers who use less than a certain amount of propane in a calendar year. This fee is substantial, equal to roughly a fifth to a quarter of a full tank.  We strive to be very energy-efficient, so we’ll almost certainly be hit by this fee.

We’ll get charged more because we don’t use enough of their service, which makes no sense whatsoever. Following the logic behind this fee, doesn’t it follow that non-customers, who don’t use any of their product, should be charged even more?  I have to wonder what they’d charge us if we stopped using their service altogether.

Imagine if Citgo or BP did the same when it came to fuel for your car.

If you’re going to offer a product, offer a product and charge a fair price for it.  Punishing your customers for using too much, or too little, of your product just tarnishes your reputation, breeds resentment, and encourages them to take their business elsewhere.

I see this happen nearly everywhere I go.  Voice mails go unanswered.  Email messages too.  Tweets, if your company uses Twitter. Every communication from every customer should be responded to in a timely manner. Prioritize, sure, but you have to respond.

The worst is when this happens face to face.  A restaurant patron waits and waits to get a table.  You’re in a checkout line at some retail store and the cashier never acknowledges your presence, preferring instead to chat with a coworker about their weekend.

Problems don’t go away when ignored, but your customers just might.

I served on a quality control committee at one of my employers.  In the QC meetings the various department heads would report on how many mistakes were made in their areas, the impact of those mistakes, and what was being done to prevent the mistakes from recurring.

Except that they refused to use the word ‘mistake.’  Instead they used the word ‘variance,’ even when speaking with each other informally.

‘Variance’ completely eliminates any sense of urgency when it comes to resolving problems.  It sounds great if you want to make a good impression when talking to someone outside your company, but removing urgency is the last thing you want internally when it comes to solving problems.

I’ve never liked the saying, “The customer is always right.”  If you work in customer service for more than a few days, you’ll discover that this is untrue.  Some customers will run over their cell phone with their car and expect a free replacement.  Others will greatly overdraw their bank accounts and be adamant they shouldn’t be charged a fee. You get the idea.

When the customer is wrong, it does no good to remember the old saying I quoted above.  In fact, it can be frustrating to do so, and that frustration could get in the way of providing good service.

I propose we scrap that old chestnut completely and replace it with, “The customer is always welcome.”  The chances of this new maxim being wrong are exceedingly small, and brings with it a positive attitude that says, “We value your business. Let’s get this problem resolved.”

Let me know what you think.

1 – Make sure your customer can find your contact information very easily.  Place it prominently on your website and in your email signature.

2 – Exchange contact information, especially telephone numbers, with a customer when making an appointment with them.

3 – Where possible, give them a direct phone number or telephone extension instead of a main number where they might have to wait on hold, even if the direct number is not toll-free.

4 – If you’re going to be late to an appointment, let them know BEFORE the scheduled time.  Call if it’s an in-person appointment, email if you can’t make the conference call, etc.

5 – If you have a customer on hold update them every five minutes, even it’s just to say you’re still waiting for an answer.  Through email, update them at least once every business day.

6 – For telephone queues, the automated attendant should inform your customers how long the projected hold time will be.  This should be updated at least every three minutes.

Proactive communication is the single most important aspect of any relationship you will ever have, and nearly all of these techniques can be implemented at essentially zero cost.  Always be on the lookout for situations where a customer is left on hold, figuratively speaking, and use some proactive communication to get them off hold.

If you’re running late for an appointment with a customer, the onus is on you to get that information to your customer.  If you show up late with no notice – or, even worse, they call and ask where you are – you’ve set a negative tone for future relations, even if the appointment goes well.  For every future appointment, assuming you didn’t lose the customer, they’ll be thinking to themselves, “I wonder if they’ll show up on time this time.”

You can easily avoid this negative bias by calling your customer.  And next time, don’t be late.

I drove by a small automotive repair shop recently.  Outside the shop was a large marquee sign board of the kind you see in front of gas stations and such. The sign simply read, “OBDII HERE.”

Some quick background on the term OBDII: “OBD” stands for OnBoard Diagnostics – a vehicle’s engine computer monitors various functions related to the engine and pollution controls.  The “II” (that’s the Roman numeral two) refers to the second generation of OBD.

OBDII has been with us since 1996. Wouldn’t you be astonished to find a shop that didn’t work on 1996 or newer vehicles? The repair shop could use their marquee sign to tell us something remarkable – a current special they’re running, or perhaps that they’re experts in Mazda Miatas – but instead they’re using it to tell us something that doesn’t help us at all.

I recently had to change an airline ticket.  The original ticket, from Greensboro to Seattle with a layover in Houston, was about $230.  A pretty good price, really.

The ticket was booked through Orbitz.  The airline used to get to Seattle was Continental, and USAir was to be used on the way back to Greensboro.  I called Orbitz to change the ticket and I was told they couldn’t help me because Continental “owned” the ticket or somesuch – I forget the exact term they used.  I called Continental and was able to get the ticket changed without much hassle.

Now, the fees.

There was a $25 fee for Orbitz, a $150 change fee, and a “difference in price” charge of $177, for a total of $352.  Recall that the original ticket was only $230.

The “difference in price” charge? Can’t really dispute that.  But the Orbitz fee?  They’d already made their money on the original purchase, and they couldn’t help me with changing the ticket.  What makes them entitled to any kind of extra fee?

And the $150 change fee?  Highway robbery, plain and simple.

If we, as passengers, have to change our ticket, doesn’t that by definition imply circumstances beyond our control?  When was the last time you were compensated by an airline for a delayed flight? No, airlines can’t control weather.  Weather is a circumstance beyond their control, just like with passengers needing to change their ticket.  If passengers have to pay for altered circumstances, isn’t it only fair that airlines do the same?

Why is the relationship between airlines and customers so lopsided?  Is there any better collective example of companies that get customer service so completely wrong than airlines?