Entries Tagged 'Customer Service Kudos' ↓

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Talk to most people about Wal-Mart, and they typically have a strong opinion.  Almost no one is ambivalent.  While other stocks are tumbling, Wal-Mart’s is seemingly doing quiet well even in this tough economy.   Still, long-term growth requires being more than the low-price leader.

Surprisingly enough, Wal-Mart actually has a long history of customer service.  Company founder Sam Walton put a lot of time into training employees to treat customers with the golden rule.  Today there’s even a specific customer service program for greeters.  The Wal-Mart service philosophy is that anytime a customer passes within 10 feet of any employee that employee’s first job is to make sure that customer is satisfied.  “That sounds good on paper, but is it being applied?” you might ask.

Just a couple days ago I was in Wal-Mart looking for a rather obscure movie in their entertainment department.  I knew I had seen it before, but it had been several months.   An employee from the department saw me staring at a movie rack for about 10 seconds, and he intercepted me. Continue reading →

Americans as a whole are a very forgiving society.  We’ll forgive just about anything as long as someone is willing to make an honest admission of guilt, and seek to make things right.  When someone covers up or denies obvious wrong-doing, it tends to make us mad.  Those are the people we want to put in jail or punch in the nose.

 In my media job, I spend a lot of time partnering with area businesses.  One of the businesses we work with is a Chicago Cubs’ minor league baseball team called the Boise Hawks.  We sponsor a couple baseball games each summer.  The sponsorship includes one of my DJs throwing out the first pitch, radio station banners hung all over the park, a couple between inning promotions, a booth on the main concourse and special thank-yous over the PA system.

At a recent game only one of those promises was kept,  a booth on the concourse.  Now we’ve worked with this baseball club for a long time, and we’ve had a very good relationship.  That said, we were very disappointed.  After the game ended, I found the president of the club, and told him what happened.  He said, “We didn’t give you any love tonight, and that’s not right.  We’ll talk about this soon, and make sure you’re taken care of.” Continue reading →

In today’s world the old cliche definitely holds true, “Time is money.”   There’s a premium on speed.  We’re willing to pay a little more if a company can make something happen faster.

Companies like Fed-Ex and UPS have built their businesses on the power of speedy delivery.  UPS puts up a little challenge to themselves right in their slogan “What can Brown do for you?”

 Recently, at my radio station we had a shipment coming of books and CDs to give away during an on-air promotion.  The promotion only ran for two days, and was supposed to start on a Tuesday.  On Monday, the business day came and went and the shipment hadn’t arrived.

 The UPS man was working late that day, and he got to the radio station around 6:00 p.m. with our package.  There was no one at the station.   Now most delivery people would have called it a day and tried again tomorrow, but not this guy.  He looked closely at the package and saw that it was addressed to Mike Agee, General Manager. Continue reading →

In these days of airlines charging you extra just to take your luggage with you, it’s nice to get a breath of fresh air from a struggling industry. 

I fly a lot.  I can tell you which seats are most comfortable in a CRJ, and which airlines still serve you food for free.   (There aren’t many.)  While every airline seems to be cutting back on something, it’s still the employees that separate the best from the rest.

I spent last week in the Fresno, California.  I flew home on Friday on Horizon Air.  The flight involved a four-hour layover in Portland, Oregon before I could reach my home in Boise.  When I got to Portland, the depature monitors said there was a Boise-bound flight in just 45 minutes.  I thought I may get to see my wife and baby several hours sooner. 

There’s a little known rule that a passenger isn’t supposed to be intentionally separated from their baggage.  (Insert snide comment about lost luggage here.)  I knew the rule because it’s been repeated to me by several gate agents, still I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.  Continue reading →

When I’m not in the studios of one of my radio stations, or traveling, I call the little tiny town of Star, Idaho my home.   It’s a small town poised on the beautiful banks of the Boise River.  It’s the kind of town where neighbors still know your name, and look out for each others’ children.

There’s only one grocery/hardware/general store in town.  It’s called the Star Merc, and it has stood its place as the center of Star commerce for 100 years. 

Long ago it probably was the only store for miles in any direction.   Today, you can drive about five miles in any direction and find a Wal-Mart, Albertsons, Home Depot or other national chain that carries everything the Star Merc carries, and at a better price.  There’s one thing those other stores can’t beat, and that’s the Star Merc’s staff. Continue reading →

Recently I took my wife to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate her birthday.  It’s one of her favorite restaurants, and we’d been pleased with the food and service on many occasions.  This occasion was an exception.

She ordered soup, salad and a sandwich.  We also ordered an avocado eggroll appetizer.  It took longer than usual to get our order.  Then when it arrived the soup had spilled onto the sandwich and made it soggy.  My wife isn’t fond of soggy bread, so she moved on to the salad, where she promptly found a hair.  It was a different color than her hair.   To top it off the server totally forgot our appetizer order.   I knew this was uncharacteristic for the chain which spends almost $2,000 training each employee down to the dishwashers, but I decided to write the manager of this store, because it’s what I do.

 A couple weeks later the manager called me and personally apologized.  Then he followed it up with the letter below: Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Mexican Fast-Food Restaurants

Being a Southern California native, I grew up being a huge fan of Mexican fast food.   There was a Del Taco just a block from my high school.  It was about all that the average underclassman could afford, so we frequented it regularly.  Further down the road, and only accessible to upperclassmen  who could drive, was the Taco Bell.   Between the two, many high school athletes garnered plenty of calories they probably shouldn’t have.

When I moved to Idaho, it was to my dismay that Del Taco didn’t exist here.  I was forced to settle for Taco Bell, which made me crave the former all the more.  If you’re not familiar with Del Taco, it’s primarily a west coast chain that has food similar to Taco Bell with the addition of burgers and fries. 

Much to my delight, Del Taco recently moved to Idaho, and I started reliving my calorie-laden high school days.  Most of the time I’m in a rush, so I use the drive-thru.  In the past couple months I’ve been to both chains three times, and my preference for Del Taco is slipping. Continue reading →

Five Things Mom Taught You About Customer Service

#5 Say “You’re Sorry”

Kimberly Clark is the world’s top manufacturer of paper products, including Huggies Diapers. Having a one-year-old in my house, my wife and I are very familiar with Huggies. We should buy stock in the company with the number of diapers we go through in any given week.

Needless to say, when you use a product a lot, you have certain expectations. We chose Huggies because they we’re reasonably priced, fit our baby well and they didn’t cause skin irritation. Recently my wife grew concerned when the cartoon characters that are printed on the diaper started rubbing off on our daughter’s skin. With a recent batch of diapers this happened multiple times. You could very clearly see the pictures and designs in color, reproduced accurately on my daughter’s posterior.

Now my wife isn’t normally one to complain, so I was surprised when she told me that she took the time to write to Kimberly Clark about the problem. She was very polite in her letter, and didn’t ask for anything in return. She just wanted to voice her concern. Continue reading →

     February 17, 2009, better known as the date that millions of American men are using as strong evidence to their wives that a new 50-inch, big-screen, flat-panel, high-definition, LCD television is a definite necessity.

 My father-in-law, Rod, is one of the millions who has successfully convinced his wife they need a new TV.   Rod is a man who likes to have the latest and greatest in technology, but not before he does his research.  After spending countless hours on the internet, he settled on the Samsung LN-T5281F.  The only part of that model number that matters is “52″ as in 52 inches of luxuroius high-definition color. Continue reading →

Twenty-three Cents Worth of Service

We’ve all had them.  They’re those long days at work where all you want to do is get home and crash, but you have something else you need to do first.  The something else for me on this particular day was to pick up groceries.

I stopped at one of those big-box, grocery warehouse stores.  The kind that are big on low prices, and typically small on service.  This particular store may have been slightly better than most by just a tad.  Still, I wouldn’t ordinarily go out of my way to shop there.  For one thing this store, like most of its kind, doesn’t accept credit or debit cards

After filling my cart, I headed to the check stand.  All the while I was chiding myself for waiting until Friday afternoon to tackle the long lines.  It didn’t occur to me until I was almost finished bagging my own groceries that I had a very limited amount of cash in my wallet.  When I realized it, I started tallying up things in my head, and realized after tax it was going to be close.

It was more than close.  When the checker announced the total, I realized I was 23-cents short.  Continue reading →