Comments on: 1 tip to make your customers love you

By: Dave Mauldin

Dave Mauldin — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:29:29 +0000

I frequently see an ad for match.com that states: “If you don’t find someone special during your initial 6-month subscription, we will give you an additional 6 months at no additional cost to you to continue your search.”

It’s not just a response to bad service. It’s what they advertise as a benefit of their service. (re-phrased): “If you don’t get what you pay for in 6 months, we’ll give you 6 more months of the same!”

Since when was this kind of thing OK?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:53:53 +0000

I had a very similar problem with Overnight Prints in the past. Since then, I can’t, in good conscience, use them. At least you got a response from them. If I recall, I never heard back from them regarding a decent-sized batch of business cards that were poorly printed.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:51:34 +0000

@Ryan, the only point to that part of the post was to vent about a lack of response to that request. I didn’t get the promotional pricing, and, in fact, I still haven’t gotten a response to that email, even to say “no, sorry, we don’t do that sort of thing.” As far as I can tell, it had no impact on the order getting processed in a timely fashion. I didn’t get an explanation of the cause of the delay when I contacted customer service. Rather, the response was “well, delays happen”.

@IL, a response I would have been happy with would have been a thought process like this from Overnight Prints: “Oops, there’s a delay in this order. Oh, and it has 2nd-day air delivery, not ground. Maybe he has a deadline? Let’s contact him to see if a delay will cause problems on his end.” The name of the company is Overnight Prints, after all.

A response I would have raved about would have been something like this, after contacting me: “Oh, I see you really need it Thursday, but with our delay it won’t make it there with 2nd day air. Would you like to upgrade the shipping?” That would have been much better than what did happen—my finding out it won’t be there on time, when I had a hard deadline, and with absolutely no word from them. I did not get the product for free, and would have been willing to pay more shipping fees to ensure it got there on time.

Surely I can’t read my customers minds any more than the next guy. But if I had a chart on my site that said, effectively “order by Monday and choose 2nd day air and you get it Thursday” and then a problem on my end kept me from living up to that promise, I sure would try to do something about it, rather than ignoring the issue. In fact, I think it makes sense to have more sensitivity to this as a business owner rather than just a standard consumer, as I try to do everything I can to make my customers happy, so seeing an example of the opposite is even more striking.

By: IL

IL — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:37:02 +0000

Granted, customer service should have responded with an email, but from the sound of your blog post, you expected Customer Service to either anticipate your needs (which you did not make clear), or to, at their cost, upgrade your shipping for a product you were going to get for free? They can’t read your mind.

I would expect this attitude from a standard consumer, but as you are a business owner I’m disappointed. You can’t read the minds of your clients, and I hope you certainly know better than to make decisions for them based on what you think is best for them.

By: Ryan Sandridge

Ryan Sandridge — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:11:02 +0000

Was your original request to get their special promotion pricing the cause for the delay? I suppose it is a moot point, but you mentioned it in your post, so I’m a bit confused what role it played in your dissatisfaction. Agreed though that had they made it right for you, you’d likely be a repeat customer that referred business to them. Unfortunately I see this sort of thing most of the time, and rarely see businesses do the right thing.