Chapter 29 - The Importance of Customer Service
Everyone has bad customer service stories - and looking online, many customers seem to like to share their bad experiences with others. The more dramatic, the better, even if they need to exaggerate or embellish the story to make it more interesting. And the fact that some outrageous stories are entirely accurate and true lends greater credibility to tales that are exaggerated and overblown.
In the age before the internet, bad news travelled slowly, as a person told their friends and each of them decided whether it was worth passing the warning along to others. In the age of the Internet, a customer who's been mistreated can post their side of the story to the public before they even leave the store. Every negative story about your brand is a warning to others to stay away - whether it's one comment that has a major impact or hundreds that each have a small impact, your reputation is damaged and your ability to win business is decreased.
(EN: My sense is the author, like the customers he describes, is also fascinated with the negative stories. Check other sources on online reputation for some better news - that customers also speak about their good experiences, and defend your brand against unjustified attacks.)
This tendency to share bad news is one of the reasons the author stresses the importance of customer satisfaction: regardless of whether you have fulfilled your contractual obligations, the clients will hold you responsible for ensuring that their expectations are met - not only in the benefits they gain from using your service, but in their comfort with the sales experience along the way.
This also underscores the importance of keeping in touch after the sale rather than merely moving on to your next client. You should want to be their first call when something goes awry so that you can address any issues before they fester and stories start to spread. There's a bit about the moment when you're trying to get out of the office and the phone rings - and advice to make the customer your main priority over whatever else might be going on in your life at the moment.
In particular, customer service can no longer be treated as a reactive proposition - in which you expect the customer to call when something goes wrong, and they expect that if ever they hear from you it will only be to sell them something else.
He mentions the restaurant experience, in which the waiter brings the food and disappears, coming back when he sees your plate is empty. If anything was less than satisfactory, it's too late for him to do anything to remedy it. His suggestion is that the waiter should linger when the food is served to make sure everything is OK, and then check back a few minutes later so that he can remedy any problem quickly.
(EN: wait staff in restaurants are a particular problem, but it's generally one of management in that the goal is to turn tables quickly and minimize staff expense, hence there are not enough staff to provide attentive service and they perform only the basic tasks of gathering orders and carrying food to the table, rather than waiting on their customers - which is ironically enough reflected in the way may restaurants stopped calling them "waiters" at all.)