Since I am writing this around the holidays, I am reminded that a lot of the “best” practices of many of our businesses really aren’t all that great!
Take customer service why don’t we?
I bring this up because I had two entirely different customer service experiences this holiday season:
One involving Tiffany and one involving Fanatics.
Let’s start with the bad first.
One or about December 7th, I ordered my son a football jersey, Alabama Crimson Tide, because he has taken a turn that everything sports related drives him crazy.
He loves it!
So I was pretty excited to be able to still get him a football jersey for Christmas.
Along with that, I ordered a few other things for myself and my wife.
Lo and behold more than a week later, I was still waiting on my purchases to ship….not arrive, ship!
So I called customer service, sat on hold for 45 minutes, and was told that I would “maybe” get the packages by Christmas!
WTF!
I ordered on the 7th, got 5-7 day shipping, and all items were in stock.
Now, I was “maybe” going to get the stuff by Christmas.
Can you imagine how stressed I was? Because a week before Christmas, good luck getting most stuff…am I right?
Well, it gets better.
Because almost immediately the next morning, the packages “ship”!
And, then they get lost! They go from out for deliver to “delayed” to “left at front door.”
Guess what?
I called back customer service, sat on hold for 45 minutes or so….and guess what, “good luck, our system says they were shipped and delivered.”
Holy @#$%!
Wow! Right!
If my stress about the presents wasn’t high already, now it was through the roof!
Let’s compare that with the experience at Tiffany’s.
I ordered my package on Friday the 17th after the end of business hours and had it on Tuesday by lunch time.
What!
I know that this has been tortured, but here’s the lesson…
You don’t want to add stress to your customers.
In my business, I want my clients to feel like when they call me that I am going to relieve their stress.
I don’t want to add stress, I want to subtract it.
If you are in business, and you are adding stress, that model isn’t sustainable.
Your job is to remove stress. Your job is to add value. Your job is to create delight.
Remember, the bar is set so low anymore that doing just a little bit more can seem exceptional.
P.S. Eventually Fanatics refunded my money and offered to ship some replacement items to me. A little late, but I appreciate the effort. As Seth Godin says, “you only have one chance to make a first impression and you don’t know when that will actually happen.”