My grandfather recently came to visit me from Texas and while he was here, I overheard him arguing with various customer service representatives at Sprint about his account. He had been a Sprint customer for over 10 years and recently canceled service for three phones all due to several run-ins with poor customer service.
He had been battling with them over a phone that had been dropped in a toilet and they refused to take it off the bill. For ten months he had been fighting with them and became so frustrated that he severed a decade-old relationship. He was satisfied with the product but yet driven to the competition. How do you keep your customers from doing the same? What are the keys for keeping customers happy?
In talking with a former client, he reminded me of a few of the things that we did that kept them faithfully coming back for more:
- We established a relationship and kept track of each transaction. We assigned a team to each customer who provided a consistent face. Every issue was recorded so that regardless of whom they talked to, the resolution continued to move forward. Our folks were personally interested in our customers and provided top-notch service to them, for which they were also monetarily rewarded.
- We were willing to forgo short-term gain for the long-term relationship. Our team kept our client’s best interests in mind and more than once talked them out of a project that did not make good long-term sense for them. As a result, we sometimes lost short-term dollars but it was worth it in order to maintain our integrity in the longer term relationship.
- We took ownership of their problems without regard for source. Because our software was one of many that kept their manufacturing plants running, pinpointing the exact cause of a problem in the system was complex and took time. When the issue was critical, we didn’t worry about whether or not the breakdown was in our system or someone else’s, we focused on getting them operational again. Servicing the customer came first - determining the source of the problem came later.
Some would argue that dealing at a b2b level as we did can not be compared to the massive scale required with consumers. This does not mean it can’t be done. While it is difficult to develop customer intimacy when dealing with the masses, Sprint did a poor job of recording the progress of my grandfather’s case and circumstances, causing him to repeat the same story every time he spoke to someone new (which was each time he called or got disconnected). Keeping a record of conversations, at a minimum, would have alleviated a tremendous amount of frustration. They also could have waved or reduced the penalty fees to save the relationship, especially since they were to blame for the deterioration of the situation. Had someone taken ownership of the problem, removed the bogus charges, as well as the cancellation fees (x3!), the customer would have been salvaged. Although losing one customer, even with three phones, isn’t going to break the bank, you can be sure that my grandfather will let others know about how he was treated and work to persuade them to choose an alternative whenever possible. There is nothing more dangerous than a customer scorned.
