| |
| |
|
Customer Service Information |
|
|
|
Sorry, No Customer Service After 4:00 P.M.
A few months ago, I wrote about ingenious styles of customer service that every business should know about, mostly because their employees were inflicting them on their customers. For instance, I warned about "in your face customer service" and "run for cover customer service", two equally effective opposites...like pouring too much sugar on your Cheerios one day, and pouring too much cayenne pepper on them the next. I also warned about "do-it-yourself-extortion", "consistent filibuster customer service", "Invisible Man customer service", "present-at-attendance customer service", "customer service on steroids", and "satirical customer service". You will have to read about these clever anti-sales pitches at:
We were on our annual honeymoon, a three-day escape from parenthood to lick our wounds and give our tattered spirits a chance to recuperate. To tell the truth, the weekend was more like a marriage encounter. It gave me a chance to find out just who is that strange woman passing me in the hallway at full throttle, pinching her nose and radiating the sweet smell of mushy diaper as she whooshes past. And it gave her the chance to discover the even stranger man who blows a muffled "Oof!" every time Little Lady invents a new "Hop On Pop" dance move. Check-in at the fairly expensive Resort-on-the-Edge-of-Nowhere was 4:00 p.m., and it was made very clear that we would not be welcome until then. It's always an ominous sign when a resort begins by warning you when you will not be welcome, so we arrived at 4:00 p.m.. At 6:30 we stopped by the front desk on the way to dinner to request an additional pillow. Being in a sleep-related establishment in, we figured there would an off-chance that this request might be reasonable. Wrong. The desk clerk could not provide a pillow because the laundry department closed at 4:00, and he had no way of accessing anything that was not right at the desk, he told us with a deadpan face. "But we were not allowed to check in until 4:00 p.m.," I protested. At this point, Deadpan Clerk pulled from under the desk a box big enough to hold almost half a pillow, and started rummaging helpfully through it to see if he could find a pillow. He could not, he announced. In the hospitality business, folks should know how to treat people hospitably, or so I thought. If that were the case, I suppose I would never have written about Hotel Stella and the Wicked Witch of Lido ( http://www.thehappyguy.com/Hotel-Stella.html ) or about the paper-thin walls in many hotels these days ( http://www.thehappyguy.com/hotel-jokes.html ). OK, so the latter was largely fiction, a desperate search for a column topic, but the Hotel Stella torture story was 100% true. Back at the fairly expensive Resort-on-the-Edge-of-Nowhere, Deadpan Clerk proceeded to assure us that we were not the only ones he mistreated. Phew, what a relief! In fact, just a few minutes earlier a man had come looking for an iron for his wife (probably for his wife's dress, as men rarely iron their wives, but Deadpan Clerk never clarified that). He proudly related how he had explained to the man that irons were not available after 4:00 p.m., unless he had one in his magic little box. "But we were not allowed to check in until 4:00 p.m.," the man protested. He sent the man back to inform his wife that she will have to attend the dinner theatre in a dress looking like a prune (the dress, not the wife...at least, not that we were aware of). NOTE: Although no missing persons report has been filed, we did not see the man again. Deadpan Clerk was proudly informed us that he had sent the man away without an iron. Apparently we did not rank high enough to deserve even their very worst customer service. I should end this story on a happy note. But how? I escaped alive, along with the strange woman I pass every day in the hallway. It turns out she is my wife, go figure. And a most compassionate wife, too...she even helped Deadpan Clerk escape alive, too, at least until I return to the fairly expensive Resort-on-the-Edge-of-Nowhere. About The Author David Leonhardt is a humor columnist: http://www.TheHappyGuy.com/positive-thinking-free-ezine.html Read more satirical articles and funny stories: http://www.TheHappyGuy.com/humor articles.html Read more personal growth articles: http://www.TheHappyGuy.com/self-actualization-articles.html Read more travel articles: http://www.TheHappyGuy.com/travel-articles.html
MORE RESOURCES:
Customer-Service - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Breaking the Ice and Winning Over the Client! Wherever you turn these days you'll find articles covering every business strategy and tactic available to man, from how to make a great presentation to strategies for success all the way to negotiations and prospecting and getting a client to commit. But hardly anyone touches on the subject of breaking the ice with a new client and winning them over. Customer Satisfaction Is Your Business Regardless of what business you are in - you are really in the business of satisfying customers. The degree of customer satisfaction you deliver determines the level of long-term success you will achieve in business. You MUST Sweat the Small Stuff It's The Little Things That Make or Break a Small BusinessIf you make a poor impression in small things, why should customers trust you with larger ones like buying your product regularly or giving you a big order? In the last two days, I've seen this simple fact proved three times.I ordered software from Company A. Adjustment DENIED It's just a simple thing - I bought a new set of shelves for my office. It wasn't a real problem, but when I got the shelves home, I found dents on the front of the shelves where the package had been leaned up on some other object, the shelves had been removed from the original box and put into another box. Dealing with Difficult People 1. Don't get Hooked !!!When people behave towards you in a manner that makes you feel angry, frustrated or annoyed - this is known as a Hook. Marketing as a Spiritual Practice "Marketing as a spiritual practice." It sounds contradictory - how can sales and promotion possibly be considered spiritual? But the secret is, once you truly understand that marketing isn't all about struggle, jargon, tricks or gimmicks, spiritual practice is the very root of success. Putting The Serve Back Into Customer Service Good service is easy to spot and hard-to-find. Mediocre service occasionally stands out but only because it's the cream-of-the-crap. The death of customer servie The other day a reporter call to interview me on the "Death of Customer Service". My first reaction was to deny that charge and claim that customer service is very much alive and well. Keeping Clients Happy Keeps them Coming Back Whether you are a seasoned small business professional, or you have just opened your doors to new clients, your marketing strategy should not only involve bringing in new business, it should also include keeping your current clients, your most important asset, happy and coming back for more or referring your services.Top-notch customer service is the most important contributing factor in the success of your business. And The Difference is... Attitude I returned a rental car at an airport yesterday. As the person who was going to check me in approached, he smiled (which shocked me) and said, "Hello Mr. Make An Action Plan To Improve Customer Service Customer Service is a critical factor for keeping your clients coming back and ensuring they'll refer you to others. Growing your business will be a difficult task at best if you don't perform, meet and exceed your client's expectations, and provide service that creates customers for life. Boomerang Customers- What You Might NOT Think Brings Them Back! With all of the calendars and PDA's and lists I make I recently did a really dumb thing. I forgot my best friend's birthday and her anniversary. What Type Of Software Is This? The other day while at the book store, I came across some accounting software CDs strewn with other CDs and books in garage sale box.How can any self respecting businessman (even a small one at that) pick up a copy of this cheap sale accounting CD from the box for his business to use? He'd think "what type of accounting system is this that would end up in a garage sale?". Post Office, Incredible Lady Postmaster There are two Post Offices that I routinely visit. One is the office that delivers my mail and the other is frequently on the path of some daily errands. The Drawback of Hacking Off a Blogger Through Weak Process Gaps and Pathetic Customer Service With all of the recent data theft in the financial sector, it is important to make sure that we don't go crazy trying to protect ourselves from risk. Risk management does have a value but this value lies mostly on the front end. Dont Be Afraid To Give Problem Customers The Boot Q: In a recent column you made the point that the customer is always right, which I agree with. However, in the same column you also said that it is sometimes necessary give problem customers the boot. The History of CRM -- Moving Beyond the Customer Database Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts that swept the business world in the 1990's with the promise of forever changing the way businesses small and large interacted with their customer bases. In the short term, however, it proved to be an unwieldy process that was better in theory than in practice for a variety of reasons. The Added Value - Is YOU! If there was a restaurant in your town that was physically attractive and clean, had a pleasant variety of entrées on the menu, served food that was prepared in an attractive manner, and the service was outstanding--the maitre'd greeted you by name, remembered which was your favorite table, stopped by later to inquire about your needs and satisfaction, the waiters and waitresses bent over backwards to make your dinner a pleasurable experience and always treated you as if you were their most important patron--would you be willing to pay a little more than other restaurants charged?Many of us will pay a more to obtain better treatment. Why? Today, outstanding customer service has become the exception rather than the rule. What Every Employee Should Know About How to See Customers Problems from Their Creative Side Customer Service is a blessing and a curse; a blessing to the customer and a curse to you, the employee. At least so it seems. Minimize The Pain of Check Recovery $350 million in bad checks are written each and every week. That fact alone makes bad checks a serious problem for American businesses.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |