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Hi Everyone: I hope you’re all doing well. I’ve been bouncing around the country speaking to some truly wonderful audiences from California to Puerto Rico. I mean, who could know that working with the International Cemetery and Funeral Association on Friday the 13th would be so much fun? This month’s article was generated because of a couple of reporters who know how much I travel, and that it's not always quite as idyllic as the airline commercials would have us believe. Customer service of course applies to you whether you work with external or internal customers. All the Best, Barry
Motivating Customers to Speak Out: If Your Customer Service
Headlined USA Today By Barry Maher
We all know that tales of poor customer service spread faster and farther than reports of great service. But I have to admit my surprise when a relatively minor horror story that happened to me ended up on the front page of USA Today and in newspapers ranging from The Cincinnati Enquirer to The Peninsula in, of all places, Qatar. To avoid having to hassle with getting copyright clearance to record an incident from my own life, here’s a paraphrase of the way the story appeared in The London Times.
That’s as far as the story went in The London Times. There’s a limit to how much space a major newspaper can devote to a single small anecdote in a much larger story on lost luggage. Since there’s also a limit to how much time you want to spend reading about this, I won’t go into the rest of the hassle required to get restitution for the ruined books. I’ll just say that it wasn’t easy. And through most of it I got the strong impression that Delta’s customer service reps might just be more concerned with keeping me from getting restitution than with helping me to get it. But one important detail was left out of The London Times, USA Today and every other newspaper I know of that reported the story. And that was the extraordinary service I received from that men’s clothing shop in Roanoke, a store called Davidson’s. Both the salesperson I dealt with and the owner did everything humanly possible to find me the clothes I needed, then make sure the pants were properly hemmed and pressed, and get me back to the conference hotel in time for my presentation. It was one of the finest examples of customer service I can remember. And I raved about it to the reporters who contacted me about the incident. Not one story ever mentioned it. Not one story even mentioned the name of the store. But millions of people have now read about the poor service I received from Delta. And that reflects two simple facts we all need to remember, whether we’re dealing with external or internal customers. First, complaints do spread far faster and far quicker than complements. Second, every company that gives lip service to customer service but doesn’t really deliver it opens up opportunities for those few companies that actually do practice extraordinary customer service. If you’re ever in Roanoke and you need men’s clothing, check out Davidson’s. You won’t be disappointed. Even though it didn’t get in front of millions of people in USA Today, The Indianapolis Star, The Qatar Peninsula, etc., I've told thousands of people about Davidson’s. Literally thousands. After all, I do speak on customer service. And now I’ve told you. # # #
http://www.barrymaher.com/motivating_customer_speech.htm
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