Survey Says: Poor Customer Service Ticking Off Consumers

Businesses everywhere, notably large ones, should take note of a recent consumer survey which revealed that many big name companies provide poor customer service.

The brunt of the consumer angst is directed at telecommunications companies– AOL had the worst rating with Comcast right behind – but a variety of retail and service providers dot this list.

The survey was commissioned by MSN Money and conducted by Zogby International. See the companies’ rankings here.

Historically, small businesses have used exceptional customer service to attract customers alienated by the giants, but I don’t think size is the problem.

The top 10 companies (those with best customer service according to the MSN survey) are as follows: Marriott; Sheraton; Amazon.com; Hilton; Trader Joe’s; Google; Hampton Inn; Nordstrom, Whole Foods Market and Holiday Inn. Nordstrom has 55,000 employees; Hilton has 100,000 employees; and Marriott has 151,000 employees. Size doesn’t seem to be a problem with them.

My experience is that large companies provide poor customer service either because of understaffing (to save themselves money) or poor training of front-line staff. Often, it’s a combination of the two.

Take Food Lion, for example. Forget about running in to grab a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. If you are silly enough to try, at least bring a book, because it will take awhile to get the poorly-trained cashier to move through his or her paces. The manager at my local store always waits until the line is finally down to the one person before she rushes to open a second register, as if she’s helping. This is frustrating to customers, like me, who have decided to drive the extra two miles to Publix, where they somehow always get it right (11th best rating in survey, by the way).

Good customer service can be achieved, I don’t care how big or complicated your operation.

Properly train your employees. Put enough of them on the front line. Incentivize them to do well. Get rid of those who don’t. Survey your customers. Hold people accountable.

If you can’t figure it out, please hire someone who can help.

MSN Money will do another survey next year. You can either elevate yourself like Nordstrom or you can sink into AOL-dom and end up on my blog again. You’ve got one year to figure it out.

Until then, see you at Publix.

On Digitally Documenting My Daughter’s Life

Thanks to modern technology, my wife and I are capturing on film or video nearly every meaningful event in my 5-year-old daughter’s life. The significance of this feat is that my daughter, when grown, will own a thorough print, audio and video record of her young life, much more so than the vast majority of adults of any previous generation.

Contrast this to my own childhood. When I was 5 – in 1970 – nobody had a digital camera, cell phone camera or camcorder to record every moment. My parents had a bulky Kodak Instamatic capable of producing quick-to-yellow snapshots and a cumbersome 35mm camera my father used at Christmas. There is no video of me as a child. Granted, many adults of my generation have more childhood images of themselves than I do, but probably nothing like my daughter’s collection.

We’ve captured my daughter on at least 1,000 digital photos and another two dozen hours of video and audio. At a minimum, we have photos of her during every month, if not every week, of her life, beginning with sonogram pictures and a video of her in the womb. We’ve never had some master plan to capture all these images; the technology simply made it so easy. (We own a digital camera, cell phone camera, video camcorder and audio tape recorder. Even my daughter has her own cheap digital camera.) We will continue to document her childhood, and I’m sure that throughout her teen years my daughter will take thousands of photos – and dozens of hours of video – of herself and her friends.

Now fast forward 20 to 30 years. Unlike her parents, my daughter won’t rely solely on faded memories, a few snapshots and stories from her parents and grandparents to learn about her childhood. She’ll go to the photo album or videotape and let the camera’s unblinking eye tell much of the story. Beyond the nostalgia factor, such an opportunity raises a number of questions, including how my adult daughter’s ability to review her own childhood so vividly in digital format will affect her perception of her formative years.

I don’t know the answer, but I’ll offer this hope: that it shows her how much her parents loved her, and still do.

Time to Pause and Count Your Blessings

The recent tragedies in Myanmar and China make me pause and reflect on my good fortune in life.

Recently, a cyclone struck Myanmar and killed an estimated 100,000 people. Another two million people are without clean water or basic necessities. In China, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake killed 50,000 people by toppling buildings – including 6,900 schools, killing thousands of children – and requiring the amputation of some people’s legs just to free them from the debris.

These events have reminded me “not to sweat the small stuff.” It’s a lesson I’ve learned many times before and slowly forgotten. For example, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that recently I was frustrated because my grocery store ran out of my favorite cereal.

I hope the lesson sticks with me this time. Today, I know that if somebody cuts me off in traffic, it’s no big deal. If I get a flat tire, I can change it. And if I can’t eat Wheaties tomorrow morning, I guess I can survive on any of the other five cereals in my cupboard.

I suppose it’s human nature to always want more than you have today. But when life throws you a little curveball, it’s worthwhile to take a deep breath and count your blessings, because there are millions of people in China, Myanmar and elsewhere around the world who only dream of living the lifestyle – problems and all – that some of us take for granted everyday.

On Remarkable Advances in Technology

I’ve always considered myself a slightly “ahead of the curve” guy at understanding new electronic gadgets and toys. Still, I’m amazed at the technological advances of the last 30 years and the sci-fi nature of some products on the market today.

 

To provide a reference point, when I was about 10-years old in the mid 1970s, my mother used to visit the bank every Saturday morning to withdraw cash for the week, chatting up the friendly tellers. The bank closed at noon, and if she was late, we’d be cashless until the bank reopened Monday. One late Saturday afternoon, Mom said she was going to the swing by the bank to make a withdrawal. “But the bank is closed by now,” I told her. “I know,” Mom said, “but I can get cash from the machine there.”

 

Say what?

 

Yes, she explained, the bank had installed an automatic teller. Just insert your card, punch in your secret password and presto, the machine WOULD GIVE YOU MONEY! I couldn’t believe it. Today, ATMs are an afterthought, but 30 years ago they were a startling invention (at least to me). How did the machine know it was really you and not some crook asking for your money? And how did the machine know the bills weren’t sticking together as it dispensed them? I was amazed.

  

Ten years later, as a college junior, I saw a commercial – I think for Microsoft – that showed three scenes in quick succession. First, a car zipped through a toll booth as a disembodied voice asked “Have you ever paid a toll without stopping?…” The next scene showed a man relaxing at the beach with a laptop computer as the narrator asked “….Or checked your messages at the beach?….” The last scene showed a team of surgeons in an operating room speaking with other doctors via teleconference, as the narrator asked “…Or been operated on by doctors half a world away?” The final scene showed a simple logo as the narrator stated “You will!”

 

I was skeptical. Checking messages by portable computer at the beach? Doctors operating on me while standing in a different room? Come on!

  

But the commercial was accurate. Electronic toll collection, wireless email and telesurgery are now commonplace. Still, it wasn’t long ago they were science fiction to the average person.

 

Today, my daughter in Florida makes video calls to her grandparents in Puerto Rico through our home computer, seeing and speaking with them in real time using about $50 in plug-and-play technology. Meanwhile, I’ve just read that scientists have learned how to teleport atoms across small distances, and it occurs to me that I regularly surf the Internet and check email on my Blackberry (yes, at the beach).

  

This was all science fiction to me 30 years ago. It’s all fact today.

   

I can’t wait to see the next generation of technological surprises.

On Social Networking to Death

Although I’m quite busy juggling my roles as an employee, husband, father and friend, I’ve long enjoyed networking online, a pastime both personally and professionally rewarding. Lately, though, I’ve felt a little overwhelmed with my commitments to so many social websites.

  

Awhile back, I started with a Facebook account and quickly added several friends, exploring extended networks and laboring over every word in my profile. Later, I built a blog on WordPress, still nurtured to this day (http://robertpeek.wordpress.com). Between the two sites, I felt reasonably plugged into digital culture.

  

Eventually, though, I received an offer to join the wikizine platform Zimbio. It was free, and I figured I could just replicate my blog there, so how much extra work could it be? Sure, sign me up!

 

Shortly thereafter, a friend asked me to join MySpace. I was a little hesitant because I already had an active Facebook account, and I was spending time each week on WordPress and Zimbio, adding blog posts to my accounts and commenting on others. Still, I didn’t want to be left out. I jumped into MySpace and quickly started adding friends – several of whom I already knew through Facebook.

 

Recently, a coworker asked if I had a LinkedIn account. No, I told him, but I’m on Facebook and Myspace, plus I have two blog sites. Was that sufficient? My friend winced disaprovingly. “You really ought to network professionally on LinkedIn,” he chastised. Not wanting to be left behind, I established a free LinkedIn account and started connecting with others. To really show my social networking prowess, I promptly joined two LinkedIn forums and regularly contributed comments to a number of blog sites. Of course, I was still updating my WordPress and Zimbio blogs, networking on Facebook, updating MySpace……

 

And then, two days ago, it hit me. I was overdosing on virtual networks. I needed to step away from the computer, feel the sunshine on my face and maybe ask a friend to have lunch in the park. You know, break bread and talk face to face, like old times.

 

This morning, I opened an email from a colleague: “I’ve requested to add you as a friend on Doostang, a new invite-only career community…..”

 

(Sigh.) I sent this reply.

 

“Thank you for the invitation, but I’m sorry to report my online brain is full. If you need me, I’ll be in the park, networking.”

 

Then I had that lunch, and I’m proud to report that I’ve never felt so connected.