Would you rather listen to this article? You can do that here.
Are you experiencing some good and not-so-great services/customer experiences lately that affect your level of trust with the business/company?
Goodness knows I have been.
Some snippets from last week…
While waiting at WalMart for a curbside pickup, I got an email from them at 8:42am thanking me for picking up my order. Hmm… had been waiting for almost a half hour and had no delivery. I called their number and learned that they send that when prepping your order so they can close it out even before you receive it.
Sandy’s Thoughts: It makes their numbers look good in terms of customer wait time. Their system shows me waiting for 31 minutes. Reality? My order didn’t come out until 9:08am – almost an hour after arriving.
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“Pops” (a mechanic at Firestone) has been the only person to work on my car. He passed over Memorial Day weekend and I’ve been nervous about taking Sally (car) to “just anyone”. My car has had this horrid rattling for a few days – got it checked out at Firestone yesterday.
An hour later, they fixed it, checked out the rest of the car and thanked me for my continued business. No charge.
Sandy’s Thoughts: They know that Pops is the only guy who’s ever worked on my car and wanted to help me build trust with the Firestone brand overall rather than with one individual. And the service and care they showed definitely helps.
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Back in April I ordered a SleepNumber® bed with delivery scheduled for June 10th.
June 8th delivery was confirmed for the 10th. I moved client calls, took my existing bed apart, got rid of the frame (they don’t do this) and was so excited. If you follow me on Facebook, you likely know I suffer from insomnia and am typically playing Wordle (and its lookalikes) after midnight.
Delivery window came and went. No call, no email, no bed.
I called support and spoke with a supervisor. She told me that my bed hadn’t yet been made due to supply chain issues and they could waive delivery costs as they “dropped the ball” (her words) and the bed would arrive in another six weeks or I could cancel the order. And then she reminded me that they have no competitors.
GRRR! She indicated there was no one else I could speak with as she was the highest level supervisor. I took the revised delivery date.
Then I called the store I bought the bed from. New story: Bed is ready and sitting in a warehouse, drivers got Covid and all deliveries were canceled. “What do you mean no one called you???”
They rebooked delivery for June 25th (yes, it came!) and can’t understand why the support supervisor noted six weeks out and supply chain issues when neither was true.
After I contacted them on Twitter, Corporate office called and gave me 10% off total price with multiple promises that they’ll look into what happened.
Sandy’s Thoughts: Corporate office knows I use social media (it’s how I was able to get to them) and, after my experience, want me to be as happy as possible not knowing if I’ll go back to social media detailing everything (yep, there’s more!).
I’ve had the bed a few days now and the best sleep of my life – will I shout that from the rooftops? Nope… I don’t trust their customer service process/systems.
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A local farm offers a CSA from June – December – every week SugarFoot Farms will drop off a bag of whatever’s ready to your front door. I was a member for two seasons and then stopped as I didn’t like the majority of veggies I was getting and ended up giving them all to neighbors (who were very happy!).
This year, they added a list of all the veggies they’re growing and you can rate them 1-5. “1” = never want it and “5” = give me all you got.
That one shift brought me back.
Sandy’s Thoughts: Farmer Darel (his name) initially lost several customers who weren’t fully utilizing their deliveries (or giving them away) and adjusted his process to 1/ grow what people want and 2/ give people what they want. And now, I’m excited each Thursday when my delivery arrives knowing he cares. 🙂
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For over a week I’ve been receiving twice daily invites to a July virtual workshop from a well-known international business mentor. I was a member of one of this company’s programs last year and assumed they saw the workshop invite as a way to bring me back.
Yesterday, I emailed to accept the invite and get all the details. Came in the office this morning to an email telling me that since I’m a former member, the invite doesn’t apply to me. I can, however, rejoin at the current price point.
Sandy’s Thoughts: This company which prides itself on having/teaching systems isn’t using their own. For over a week, I’ve been getting these twice daily invites to the same email account that I used when a member of their $2400/mo program. They could easily have segmented the list to exclude all former members. To make matters worse, a couple weeks ago they were selling their new CRM platform which is Keap, Active Campaign, Kajabi and more all rolled into one – and yet they didn’t (can’t???) do a basic list segmentation. Will I rejoin? Nope. Trust blown.
Some examples of how companies are adjusting/serving to keep/get customers and clients and build trust and some examples of what Dan Kennedy calls “sales prevention”.
When was the last time you experienced what it’s like to be a client for your business? Isn’t it time?