Every once in a while I have an experience with a company so extreme that it makes me either never want to deal with them again or makes me a customer for life. In the last 2 months, I've had both kinds of experiences.
Bad Experience:
A little over a month ago, my Treo started malfunctioning. It would put people on hold at random intervals and would text people blank messages constantly. Needless to say I was peeved, but it had been *almost* two years since I had gotten it. In fact, I was about 4 days shy of two years. Thus, I went to my friendly neighborhood Sprint retailer to see if I could qualify for my "two year discount". After a lengthy wait I was told that they couldn't give me the discount on a new phone, but if I were to call their 800 number, they could give me the discount (I obliged, but why can't the store manager give me this discount?? I've been a customer for over 10 years…don't ask why). So I called, waited on hold for 30 minutes, and was put in touch with a woman who decided that I while I didn't qualify for the discount I did qualify to fill out a claim on my Treo. I spent an additional 20 minutes on the phone with her, was told I couldn't buy a new phone even if I wanted to, and had a fairly miserable experience. So miserable that I just hung up. Regardless, I called back again, and kept getting pushed from person to person until I finally got my discount. In total, I wasted about 2 hours of Sprint's time, and 4 hours of mine. How much did this cost both of us in the name of bad customer service??
Good Experience:
Luckily, I've had two great experiences in the past month. The first was with Zappos. I ordered a pair of shoes which they overnighted for free. Turns out they were the wrong size, so I called up admitting to my mistake and they offered to overnight the correct size for free! They also gave me free return shipping which was fairly easy to take care of.
My second good experience was with newegg. I ordered two optical cables for my entertainment center at home. Unfortunately, I didn't do the due diligence required on my receiver and after-the-fact realized that my receiver didn't have an optical input for my DVD player. Bah. So I email Newegg so as to order the correct cable. Newegg then emails back saying that not only will they ship me the correct cable for free but they don't even want me to return the original cable!
I am forever a customer of both companies, and will recommend them to everyone I meet. Good customer service is possibly one of the best marketing schemes that companies can employ. They don't have to waste valuable employee time dealing with customer complaints and repeated phone calls, and they also get their customers to rave about them to all of their friends!
Hopefully we can employ this knowledge with WebNotes to give each of you a better experience.
