There has never been a greater opportunity for business owners to exploit the horrendous customer service follies of their competitors. Good has sadly become the new great under this new customer service paradigm. Over the next decade, I believe we can expect new companies to spring up by merely meeting customers’ core needs. As consumers, we are striving to simply get what we pay for and that simple aim is rarely meet.

 Has the pendulum swung all the way to the sterility of e-business with it’s less for less mantra? Are we finally working back to a customer-centered philosophy and away from sales goes to the lowest bidder? The answer is clear: companies that reintegrate the human touch back into their company and strive for concierge levels of service will thrive.  Even the banking industry, with a presumably higher customer tolerance for the impersonal reports:

"This is a relationship management business," said Stephen Stitle, chairman, president and CEO of National City Bank of Indiana. "People still want to know their banker."

The head of a local accounting office made a similar observation:

"I believe that in the long run, personal service will still be the main differentiation for companies that are high performers," said Theodore D. Dickman, partner-in-charge at BKD LLP in Indianapolis.

It is indeed a fascinating paradox that despite the overwhelming knowledge that nearly every industry has become more competitive, business should respond with countless barriers to their customers. Antiquated policies and limited thinking binds the growth of these stalled concerns. Both retail and general industry has defined new rules for their business that clearly serve their company, not their customer.

The mom and pop business dutifully hangs the request “no food or drinks” sign at their front door. Why? Because that’s what all small retail shops do - a classic case of follow the ass in front of you, or as what may be called “following the loser”. In business, we may call this knee jerk response the “homeostatic impulse,” an overwhelming desire to do what has always been done. These customer-repelling policies are not even grounded in common sense as any minuscule damage that may be caused from a wayward café latte are insignificant in the landscape of customer freedom and a warm welcome. I have always wondered if any of these small business owners have pondered a marketing book while sipping a hazelnut late at Barnes and Noble. Yes, that’s right, the company that sells the most coffee soluble product, books, allows and indeed encourages you to enjoy your coffee and scone freely.

Imagine if you can if you were told to finish your coffee at the Starbucks counter before venturing out into Barnes and Noble. I believe that we would not have seen the Barnes and Noble or Border’s book phenomena without their sensible customer ergonomic policies.

 I suppose we can forgive the hapless small proprietors with perhaps limited marketing savvy, but how do we overlook the customer repelling policy borne from the corporate boardroom teaming with MBAs?

Policies like hostile security systems that should be transparent to their customers that simply chase customers out of the store feeling like criminals, inflexible return polices that require customers to jump though hoops on simple returns. Many corporations seem to hate their customers, and consumers have had enough!

During the eCommerce revolution we have trained consumers to simple click away to another competitor if only slightly unhappy. According to a recent survey by customer analytics company TeaLeaf, 42% of customers who have a bad customer experience in an eCommerce transaction abandon the sale or make the purchase with a competitor, while 52% who experience terrible service from a call center following a problem online will never shop with the company again.

Many companies overtly harvest money from there customers, and if their customers are not happy well, that’s not a problem. Gail McGovern Professor Harvard Business School points out that unhappy customers do not necessarily mean less profit, she points out:

"When you are a company and your most profitable customers are your least satisfied, you're doing something wrong. Take the cellular industry. The person who picks the worst plan for themselves, who feels the most hosed and taken advantage of, they're dissatisfied and also the most profitable for the company.”

At the cash register clerks panhandle trying to sell you first a store credit card then an extended warranty and then finally guilt you into contributing to a charity for witch their company will take the kudos. It not just enough to get our sale, they want it all; greed is now an expectable business strategy. There is an old saying in sales “everyone wants to buy but no one wants to be sold” companies need to retire their sledgehammers and create a soft customer sales flow.

We must retool our thinking and undo the damage that e-commerce has done to the company customer relationship. Draconian customer service policies that serve only the company will be replaced with collaborative win win standards. We need to get back to the customer, yes it seems simple and obvious, but it is everything. Dave Thomas, founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain stated simply “It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.”

It’s no secret that the most successful companies are the ones that operate under the mindset that they are on the verge of losing every customer - - and will do anything to keep that customer’s business.

Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton knew this when he said that there is only one boss – the customer. Furthermore, the customer can fire everyone in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his or her money somewhere else.

Old Sam Walton had a point. Granted, there aren’t many certainties in life. But any short list of things we deem absolute would include death, taxes, and the connection between good customers service and good corporate profits.

So why aren’t companies paying attention? Sure, Americans businesses pay lip service to good customer relations, but the statistics don’t bear that sentiment out. The American Customer Satisfaction Index, a bellwether for consumer spending attitudes, has reached at all time low, especially for the utility, technology and airline industries. Customer service complaints with the air travel industry alone are up 70 percent over the past two years due to confusing fares, crowded and oversold flights, delays, cancellations, missed connections and job actions by airline employees. Another 2003 study from Business Week Online reported that 77% of the more than 400 people who responded characterized their customer-service experiences during the previous 12 months as either fair or poor, vs. the 20% who said their experience had been good.

 

The Information Age hasn’t yielded any better service. According to the business research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, only 22 percent of sites surveyed in a 2002 study responded to customer e-mail inquiries within six hours of receiving them. That's down from 32 percent in 2001 and worse than the previous low of 29 percent set in the second quarter of 2000.

Jupiter also found that customers had little intention of returning to sites that respond too slowly to their service inquiries. 79 percent said they would be less likely to buy online from the same company. More significantly, 53 percent said they would be less likely to shop at the merchant's brick and mortar offline channels--a big red flag to companies with both an offline and online presence.

Yet sub standard customer service is the norm in most industries, says Ramon A. Avila, a marketing professor and director of Ball State's Professional Selling Institute. "Expect rude treatment and expect companies to do the bare minimum because their bottom line is more important than a disappointed customer," he said. "We are witnessing the death of customer service in this country."

Either companies don’t realize customer service is a critical problem or they don’t care that good customer service is the keystone to retaining and attracting consumers. "One survey tells us that an angry customer will relate their negative experience to 72 people while a truly happy customer well tell about 12 people," Avila says. "Six outstanding events have to take place just to break even against one bad customer service experience.

Sure, a few companies---Disney, Continental and Southwest Airlines, for example---are finding ways to buck the trend by increasing customer satisfaction in a time of general declines. And yes, consumers may well reward these firms not only now but with increased loyalty down the road.

But these companies tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Just how bad is customer service in America? Consider these examples:

 

• After going to great lengths to beef up its e-commerce offerings, one online portal company found itself in a slippery situation. And it responded in true snaky fashion -- by trying to slither its way out. Instead of notifying the usual 20 prize-winners per day in a game contest, the portal firm’s marketing area mistakenly distributed announcements to thousands of visitors saying they had each won $500 worth of shopping credit. The firm reneged on the announcement, saying that many of the alleged winners were actually people who learned -- the word had spread via message boards -- that by hitting the refresh button on their browsers multiple times, they could magically become winners. The company’s response was to just say no -- basically throwing out all those who qualified for the $500 prize during its spell of over-generosity, giving everyone except 20 "real winners" a booby prize of $1.

• At a high profile fitness company with fitness centers all over the country, observers recently witnessed how not to handle customer complaints. A witness walked by the front desk saw a clerk screaming at a woman who apparently had forgot her ID card but who wanted to work out anyway. One employee speaking to her manager was overheard to say, "I tried to tell her but she just wants to argue with me..." in front of the customer and everyone else working out nearby. As the customer was leaving obviously, she said, "I bet you're happy treating customers like this.." to which the manager yelled within earshot of a handful of other members, "No ma'am - but if you don't want to talk to me, then oh well..."

 

• A major hotel chain that advertised a 6:30 complimentary breakfast failed to open for business at 6:30 a.m. as announced on the sign. Customers were still fumbling around in the darkness at 6:40. The breakfast buffet was barely ready for customers at 6:30, the sausages were not cooked thoroughly, and the final items were brought out of the kitchen at 6:50. The solitary server was still setting tableware on the tables at 6:45. She barely acknowledged the presence of customers, and she did not offer anybody any services such as coffee refills. Most troubling, however, was the absence of any management personnel overseeing the restaurant operation to ensure timely service and customer satisfaction. This problem was the most serious of all, because it enabled and allowed all the others to exist.

 

Then there are the more commonplace customer service snafu’s, like the hotel chain that charges you $325 for a basic room then expects you to pay $3.00 for a bottled water from the room’s mini-bar. Or the department store clerk who’d rather chat on the phone with her friend than take your money and ring up your transaction. Or the universal tale of the retail store that greets customers with a negative like a “No Food or Drink Inside” sign before you even enter the store.

That’s not to say that all customer service experiences are bad. Some companies have even learned how to take bad customer service experiences and turned them into positive ones.

Take Amazon.com. Amazon had promised to deliver the new Harry Potter book on the very day that store sales were authorized to begin to everyone who had pre-ordered it by a specified deadline. Over 250,000 books were to be shipped -- and Amazon and its partner, Federal Express, came very close to pulling it off.  But not quite. According to news reports, about 3,800 people did not get their books on time due to a software snafu that misread mailing addresses on some orders. Amazon said that 1.5 percent of the books did not make it into the hands of Potter's fans on the day the firm had promised.

A 98.5% success delivery rate is not too shabby. Still, Amazon admitted its mistake -- first to its customers and then to reporters who wanted to know how the much-publicized delivery went. Then the company offered to make it up to the customers who received late shipment by giving them full refunds of the purchase price -- plus shipping and handling -- and they got to keep their books.

That’s the return on investment that good customer care can bring to a company. Unfortunately, more and more, good customer service is a foreign concept to too many businesses.

In this book No Food or Drinks, I’ll explain why poor customer service is poison to a company’s bottom line. I’ll explain why the concept of customer service is dying on the vine and why too many businesses are content to let it stay that way. Through narrative case studies and vivid examples of some of the worst customer service horror stories available, I’ll show how deep-seated the problem of poor customer service really is – and how easy it is to solve that problem.

Whether it’s a Fortune 500 firm or a small mom ‘n pop shop, the death of customer care is a prickly problem for any business. But solving that problem isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity.