We have all had bad customer service experiences.   I even wrote about it in the book Rethink that in some cases it’s totally appropriate for an organization to offer less customer service than some customers might expect.  ING DIRECT is the primary example where their #1 brand promise is to deliver really high interest rates on their savings accounts, and if you expect anything else from them they have no problem with telling you to take your business elsewhere.  Knowing who is, and isn’t, your target customer is vital for most (though not all) organizations. 

Which brings me to my top ten list, which is really more of a bottom ten list of what I consider shocking examples of bad customer service.  I will do this in reverse order to work up to the worst.  In this case, it’s a tie for #1.

10. Amazon merchant.  Failure in the partner network.  I don’t go to a lot of costume parties, but last year I was invited to one that I knew would be great.  I decided to order part of the costume through the amazon merchant network.  Since I am a prime customer, I get free two day shipping.  So I ordered this item with plenty of time to spare, and it didn’t show up.  Four days before the party, I realized it hadn’t ever left the merchant, and there was no message to me about the delay.  While I was never charged for the item, I never did get any sort of notice.  Luckily, I was able to get the same item from another merchant, just in time for the party.  When you leverage partners, there have to be service levels defined so that when there is a failure like this, there is plenty of room for an elegant recovery.   I don’t expect much from a random merchant, but I expect more from amazon.  You’d think they would have learned a lesson in partner service levels from their near neighbor Boeing with their own delays in problems due in large part to poor partner service level management and oversight.

 9. Cucina Cucina.  Fail on customer service.   Cucina Cucina is a Seattle area restaurant chain that sells mostly Italian food.  It’s not fancy, but it is nicer than Olive Garden.  One day I went there with more than ten co-workers (this was in my Microsoft days) and we sat down in a spot over in Issaquah that wasn’t even half full.    We all ordered pretty quickly, and we waited.  We weren’t served a single item for over an hour.  Many people had to go back to the office because they didn’t have time to stay longer.    It’s hard for me to believe this sort of thing still goes on in restaurants in this day and age.  Someone should have come out and apologized and offered some explanation, but we got no such thing.  And when the food arrived, they got a lot of the orders wrong.   I realize that running a restaurant is hard work, but basic communication, at a time with the restaurant was pretty empty, is just basic.

 8. Alaska Airlines Visa.  Failure to call about a problem, and failure to issue a new card.  I am a big fan of Alaska Airlines and generally speaking their Visa card.  But last year they really blew a simple customer service opportunity.  Evidently there was some fraudulent activity on my card, so they cancelled it.  The mistake they made was not communicating it to me.  So when I tried to use the card and it was rejected, I was not only a little embarrassed, I was pretty annoyed.  When I talked with the Bank of America person about this I made it clear that I spend a lot of money every month on that card, and he interrupted me, saying that lots of people spend lots of money on cards every month.  My response to him was that that may be the case, but they only speak with a tiny fraction of those people every month, so reaching out to me to let me know there was an issue seems like a no-brainer.  Moreover, they hadn’t yet issued me a new card.  That’s just bad business.  They shut down my card which cuts off a source of revenue for them and they don’t make any effort to resume that revenue stream?  Crazy.

 7. Madison Park Conservatory – charging for butter.  This is an admittedly esoteric case, but in the last year, a new restaurant opened up in the neighborhood where I grew up.  It’s a nice spot.  From the beginning, it became known as “the restaurant that charges for butter” – the kind you use for the bread on the table.  I don’t remember if it was a quarter or fifty cents, or what the amount was, but the general reaction was that if we are going in there for a nice meal, we expect to pay for the meal, but to get nickel-and-dimed for butter just seemed like a huge mistake.  I am told they no longer charge for their butter, but people still call it “the restaurant that charges for butter” – I haven’t been there yet.

 6. US Airways – watch your watch.  I recently travelled to the East coast on a carrier that isn’t my usual carrier.  I usually fly Alaska Airlines and I have always had a good experience with them.  Getting on to the US Airways flight, I figured it wouldn’t be much different.  It was.  The flight attendants were very friendly and relaxed and were talking with passengers and amongst themselves.   That part was nice.  As time went on, on this a rare cloudless day in Seattle, I looked at my watch and noticed that we were already 15 minutes past our departure time.  Yikes.  And I had a connection (which I missed because of our needlessly late departure).  It was a very strange and frustrating experience.  Be on time.  There’s a time to chat and a time to focus on what matters, and on time flight departures matter to customers like me.  At least act like you are making an effort.

 5. Audi Financial Services – call back.  I am the first to admit I am not perfect.  Recently I got distracted by work and Summer and (for the first time ever) I missed a car payment.  Audi Financial Services was not distracted and started calling me every day, asking me when I would pay – I told them I was sorry and that I would pay immediately, and I told them I would mail the check that day, which I did.  It was understandable, but still a drag that they were calling every day, but I figured that they would also call to confirm receipt of payment, but they didn’t.  As it turned out, all of this happened over the 4th of July weekend, so for about four days, I had no idea whether they had received my payment.   I got a very nasty note from them in the mail dated July 2nd (a Saturday).  When I called to find out the status of my account, they said they received the payment on the 5th (the 4th was a holiday) so they sent me a letter on a Saturday and received payment on the next business day.  That’s a fail in my book.  If you will call me every day to tell me I am late, then call me when you get the payment and say all is good. 

4.   Kinko’s – under deliver.  This is an odd one because it’s so easy to fix.  In the past couple of months, I went to Kinko’s several times to print out a very large file.  Every time they asked me when I needed it, which I told them, and they added that they would call me when it was ready.  Every time I went at the time I needed it, having not received a call, and every time it was ready, and clearly had been ready for some time.  If you say you are going to call me when it’s ready, call me when it’s ready and don’t make me sit on pins and needles waiting until the last minute.

3. Qwest – wrong headed security.  I have actually blogged about this before, but it’s so bad, it made my top three.  I have a Qwest phone account where they send me a bill online.  The monthly cost is very low, so I often pay two or three months worth just to save the hassle of monthly billing.  As a result, I sometimes forget my account information.  So when I click “pay my bill” it puts up all sorts of security to make sure I am the right person.  This is a clear case of thinking high security is the right thing for everything on the internet.  Wrong.  If someone wants to go out to their web site and pay my bill – don’t do anything to slow them down.  Take their money.  Or mine, as the case may be, just don’t make it so hard to pay.

1. Lenovo/UPS – no signature.    I recently bought a couple of laptops from Lenovo. I got a great deal and I love the machines.  There’s only one problem.  When you order them – a signature is always required.  I had them delivered to my house and the predictability of the arrival of the UPS truck is very low.  To make matters worse, the laptops were shipped separately.  So because UPS couldn’t deliver them (because I am not at home during the day), I had to drive way out to South Seattle to the UPS customer service desk.   It turns out I am not the only one.  The UPS people shook their heads and said they were sorry – I guess it’s pretty common for grumpy Lenovo customers to have to pick up their packages.  There has got to be a better way Lenovo.

 1. Comcast – mail in cc change.  About once a year I cancel my primary credit card as a very manual protection against fraud and to make sure someone isn’t billing me every month for something I don’t want.  The hassle I create for myself is that I have to call all of the people I do want to bill me every month, from Netflix, to The New York Times, to AT&T wireless.  But in all of those cases, it was as easy as a very short phone call or a simple web site update.  And then there was Comcast (provider of my home internet and cable TV).  Comcast won’t take credit card information over the phone.  You have to know your account number to make the change online (which I don’t because I never see the bill – it just hits my Visa), and even if you do that, they say to expect it to take 30 days for their systems to reflect the change.  Netflix, AT&T, and The New York Times all did it instantly.  30 DAYS?!  And if I hadn’t figured out how to navigate their online system – they suggested that I fill in a paper form and mail it in to them and then wait for the 30 days to kick in.  Wow.  WOW.  Unreal.  That really takes the cake.

There you have it.

Send me your comments.

Clearly lots of rethinking opportunities.

-Ric

As security threats grow, and credit card fraud worsens, it’s heartening to know that someone is looking around the corner and doing some rethinking about the future of credit cards.

Having said that, I will admit to being a bit surprised at the source – American Express.  This is their second really solid idea in just the last few years.  This from the company many had left for dead at the end of the 20th century.  I believe it was a top ten list in The Wall Street Journal that listed the biggest corporate blunder of the 20th century was the AmEx refusal to participate in frequent flyer points on credit card purchases, leaving the door wide open for Visa to, seemingly overnight, crush them like a tube of Pepsodent.  And with the stigma of higher merchant fees, it really didn’t look like there was any way for them to claw their way back.

Then in 2009 or 2010 came the black card, now known as the Centurion card.  It turned out to be urban legend that there was a black credit card you could get from AmEx that required an incredibly high bar of proving your personal wealth to get this card which came with all sorts of privileges.   So what did the folks at AmEx do about this urban legend about an incredibly desirable product?  They did what they should have done, which was to take the urban legend as the blueprint for what is now the very real Centurion card.  I still haven’t seen one, but I look forward to it.

That’s great for fortifying the brand, but by definition only a tiny percentage of people qualify for this product.  What would they do to get the masses?

Well that question has been answered. Emphatically.

The new prepaid card from AmEx does a couple of really smart things,

1) Drastically reduces the risk of credit card fraud because thieves can never take more than you store on the card.

2) Gives people a good way to avoid the criminally high interest rates most credit cards charge (which I have blogged about before).

Now this isn’t perfect.  AmEx still charges merchants too much, but as soon as they sort that out, Visa is in real trouble (not that there’s really anything to stop Visa, but for now AmEx has a big first mover advantage on this).  The other asterisk which isn’t really avoidable is that by having to load the card with money before you spend it, there’s a good chance AmEx is going to make money on that float, which no doubt covers some of the money they would otherwise be getting from the high interest rates,  but for people who are really diligent about loading up their cards just ahead of need, that’s not a huge issue.

Well done AmEx. 

I don’t think this would have been as relevant ten or even five years ago, but with the recent PlayStation security breach that compromised so many cards, I think the timing on this is right on the money.  There’s probably a great partnership opportunity for Sony and AmEx to use your prepaid card for a monthly subscription and then just get AmEx or Sony to send you a monthly reminder to move your money.   In that case it would make more sense to have AmEx do it for all of your monthly subscriptions, making them more central to your day-to-day financial activities.  I’d sign up for that. . . .

I bet Michael Fertik at Reputation.com would like this idea.  He might be another smart partner for AmEx,

-Ric

I have written before about businesses predicting how lazy we want to be, or how increasingly we perceive ourselves too busy to perform pretty basic tasks.  Well, once again the envelope has been pushed.

“No one ever went broke underestimating the American public” – that’s a pretty famous H.L. Mencken quote.

And comedian Jim Gaffigan is well known for his observations about bacon, including the point that bacon is so good, that people wrap certain foods in bacon to make them taste better.  Good point.

 This past weekend, my friend Tracy and I were at the grocery story picking up a couple of items when we saw  a large display in the middle of the aisle and it was a product from Oscar Mayer (Gaffigan also has some thoughts on a product for which they are known – bologna).

There it was.   Far from refrigeration.  In a box.  Fully Cooked Bacon, ready to eat.  . . .Or leave on a shelf unrefrigerated for the next year.  

Scary.

Then we saw that this craziness wasn’t limited to Oscar Mayer.  We also saw similar products from Hormel and the Safeway (where we were shopping) generic brand.  The actual product weighed 2.1 ounces and cost about $5, which means they are selling it for about forty dollars per pound, which is about twice the price of Copper River Salmon (which is an item that evokes a more P.T. Barnum quote – “there’s a sucker born every minute”).

Initially we were horrified.

But then, with three separate brands pushing the same item for about the same price, we realized that they can’t all be awful or there woudln’t be a market for this extreme expression of laziness.  And we had some fresh maple bacon waiting for us in the refrigerator (because that’s where meat  items belong, right?).  So we decided to do a taste test of Hormel, Oscar Mayer, and fresh.  Tracy heated up the two “fully cooked” products and then cooked some of the fresh bacon,  all using a microwave.   The results were very surprising.  Yes, the maple bacon beat the competition more decisively than Usain Bolt would beat me in a 100 yard dash.  We agreed that the Hormel product was awful, too thin, bad texture, and almost no flavor.  What was shocking was that the Oscar Mayer product was good.  Good texture, good flavor, good crispiness.  I don’t plan to buy fully cooked unrefrigerated bacon again (partially on principle, partially because bason is too salty to be a regular part of my diet, and partially because the amount of packaging from 2 ounces of bacon that will end up in a landfill is shocking).

So in the spirit of rethinking, I do tip my hat to these companies for staying in touch with what their customers want, and bravo to Oscar Mayer for making it yummy.

-Ric

Exactly why did Linkedin beat Plaxo?

I distinctly remember a conversation nine or ten years ago with a high school classmate of mine named Tom who now lives out of town, we were excahnging contact details, and I asked if he used Plaxo or Linkedin and he said he used both because they were about the same and his contacts were split among the two.  At that time, neither was clearly dominant in terms of users or functionality.  In fact, both were pretty klunky as I recall.

How times have changed.

Last week Linkedin went public and took off like a rocket ship and I didn’t see a single mention of Plaxo in the news.  These days I have over 600 contacts on Linkedin and I use it several times a week.  I can’t tell you the last time I logged on to Plaxo.  I am not sure I even remember my Plaxo password. 

What happened?

It’s pretty obvious why Facebook beat out Myspace (and lots has been written about that so I won’t re-hash that), but the last time I was a regular user of both Plaxo and Linkedin, no one was any better than the other in terms of features and function, and as far as I know Plaxo didn’t stumble in any big way (as Myspace did).   Was it just a tipping point?  Was it viral?  Was it the suggestions to re-connect with old friends (was Plaxo too passive while Linkedin got more proactive)? Was it the business services that Linkedin offers?

I don’t have a good answer, so I am really asking – send me your comments and feedback.

-Ric

To my knowledge the newly launched search engine Blekko is the first to have its own superhero (Blekkoman – on the left).

Buy that’s the only reason I like it.

I read this article by Damon Darlin and could not have agreed more with the basic premise of the company, which is that because search has proven to be a many billion dollar industry, any dent they can make in terms of attracting users will be worth a slice of the many billions, and with *only* $25 million in venture back, even a $100 million slice makes it a worthwhile bet.  Smart business.  You don’t have to win – you just have to be a little bit relevant to be in the game.

So I went out and tried Blekko on some things that I commonly search and I have to say, their results had much more relevant first page results than I ever get from bing or Google.  So from my subjective perspective, they are already on to something.

I also like Blekko’s blend of humans and technology where they combine the muscle of smart algorithms with a bit of dirt-under-your-fingernails human input by having “experts” rank the relevance of content (a la the Amazon Mechanical Turk, but with free wiki-like input, as Darlin explains).  I think this is some great rethinking and I bet Blekko has a very bright future at this rate (though there’s nothing to stop bing or Google from fast-following this approach).

Having said that . . . if I were a venture capitalist working with Blekko, I would give them some additional guidance.    While I think the use of slashtags (described in the article) is a very good way for us to improve our search results, if I really wanted to carve out a search niche, I would really focus on some top search verticals, such as healthcare and look to not just get a raw X,000 searches per day in the land of ComScore, but have it be industry/category specific.  Once you have established at least a toe-hold on a niche, that’s a lot more interesting and valuable to advertisers and that makes you a lot more interesting as an acquisition target.  Follow the money and the money will start to follow you.

I did already add Blekko as a favorite site, and if I continue to get better results, I will make it my homepage.  If I had to make early guesses on who should buy Blekko, I would think bing before Google, but Blekko could also license their model to specific industries, and I would think someone like WebMD would love to have better search, as one example of a less expected suitor.

-Ric

Uber is a cool new car service  that Jenna Wortham recently wrote about in this article for The New York Times.  Intersect is an equivalently cool new site that for all practical purposes is the opposite of Twitter that is all based on location and what is happening in a specific location at a particular time so it becomes a chronology of everything that happens at that location.  Their web site does a better job of describing it than I do. 

So what?  And what do these two totally different companies have in common?

I’ll get there, but it reminds me of something my friend Tom, who is an executive at Microsoft, was telling me a couple of years ago about modern phone technology (in this case the design of Windows Phone 7).  He pointed out something pretty obvious, but at the same time prettty incredible.  Historically with computer technology the size of the screen of the device software was written for was known and fixed.  Also, things like “up” and “down” were fixed.  Now with mobile devices like phones and tablets, we expect to turn the device upside down and have it turn the screen around for us, and if we want to change the amount of information in the screen, we are now able to pinch in and pinch out and slide – and we expect that.  That has been trasformational for mobile devices.

Back to Uber and Intersect.

It wasn’t so long ago that it was a safe assumption that when we were on the internet and using technology, that we were sitting down looking at a screen in a pretty knowable location, such as home, work, a coffee shop.  What has changed just in the last couple of years is that more and more of us use our mobile devices all the time all over the place, checking sports scores, checking to see if The White House is going to release the recent photos of bin Laden, e-mail, you name it.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that Intersect is taking that fundamental shift in assumption, and they are assuming they want to write about what they are doing wherever they are.  Foursquare makes a similar assumption.  Intersect takes a different tack and uses the location of the cars to determine which car is closest to the customer and then lets the customer track where the car is as  it gets closer.    The Intersect assumption is that everyone (in their target market) has a mobile device with location services and they then use that location information to bring together two people who don’t know each other, and who haven’t met, and who might never see each other again.  Location based supply and demand in real time.  That wasn’t possible  for the masses until very recently. 

It’s companies like these that are going to continue to transform the way we socialize and transact business and rattle core assumptions we used to have about how we get through our day.  It’s all opportunity for the entrepreneurs out there, and all risk for the established organizations that don’t take a step back and rethink what this means for them.

-Ric