The Sanford Berenberg Experience: Message of the Day

Good Morning,

A few months ago my family moved from on cell phone provider to another. Now all of our services are with AT&T. As expected there was the cancellation fees from the other provider, but the amount of those fees and the treatment we have had from that company since our move has been nothing less than horrific. The painful time is exacerbated by phone reps who keep giving us different information, and setting expectations which are not being met. At one time I had a call escalated up about four levels to a manager who called me back. While he apologized for the treatment of a customer who has always paid on time, had a few upgrades, he said that there was little that he could do, as it was the system they were bound by, and the expectations of what we could expect, like all of the other phone reps, has failed to occur.

I was not going to write about this experience, when on Sunday, a member of my bible study class told me about an experience he had with a financial firm he was moving his funds out of for a similar consolidation. The company not only treated him poorly, but lost funds on purpose to hurt him on the way out. He had to threaten legal action and reporting the company to the SEC before it was made right.

In both cases, these companies have lost customers for life. No matter how much money we could possibly save going back to that other provider, it is just not going to happen unless they make it right, and per the many different levels of management and representatives I spoke with, it is just not going to happen.

Why do companies do this? Is it greed? Is it stupidity? Is it just bad business?

In our economy there is very little room for savings, rather, the competition across the globe has forced companies to get leaner and meaner. Eventually the only differentiator between them is their customer service.

In a training on personality types I once learned that someone’s true personality or leadership style is best seen in how they react under pressure. That the nice facades are lost under trying situations. You see what people truly think and feel. Companies seem to be the same way.

All the niceties of treating a customer well when they are being wooed are worthless when after they leave, they are treated like dirt.

It should be like the State Farm commercials where the company is nice to the customer after they leave and open to letting them back.

As consumers today tend to move about, it is a chance for companies to bring them back with good customer service, especially when the customer leaves.

Treat them well when they leave and you have a better chance of getting them back. Treat them like garbage and you can pretty much say goodbye to that customer ever again. Oh, and those who they reach out to and share their tales of woe.

This also works on the levels of friendships and families. End a friendship or relationship in a harsh and mean way and you could find that these people will never be back. And if that is a good thing, great, but if not….

It all comes down to treating people with respect.

Respect everyone, no matter the situation, no matter how you feel or what they have done to you or your organization. You can respectfully fire a customer or an employee, or you could be mean and cruel about it.

Since we are all interconnected with everyone else, we tend to run into the same people again and again, in different capacities.

For example, I was at a Boy Scout training on Saturday, as I am an Assistant Scoutmaster for a local troop. At the vendor room (Mid-Way) was a table for the Louisville Zoo, manned by the President of the Docents. He also happened to be the President of the Louisville Pipe and Drum Band. I knew him because I am also the President of the Louisville Scottish Society. And as the Chairman of the Customer Contact Center Network, we recently had a speaker who donated part of his speaking fee to the Louisville Zoo. Talk about being interconnected.

And as we are interconnected, the poor treatment people or companies give to each other can have exaggerated impact well beyond the simple act we thing should mean nothing.

Something to think about.

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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