With all the raves about customer service around, do companies really care if the customer service they provide is going to translate into Brand Equity? Maybe we should give a thought to that.
I was reading the blog of a lady called Brenda, who put her iPhone in a purse along with a sauce sachet.. You guessed the rest! The iPhone was floating in a ketchup pool by the time she got home. Needless to say, the apple of her eye, her iPhone stopped working. Absolutely aghast at the prospect of losing it forever, she goes to one of Apple's customer service guys whom they call a "Genius Bar Person" (trust Apple to make a job title sound cool).. The guy informs her that the pin inside the jack hole of her iPhone had been permanently damaged and it is not repairable. Adds on to say that the warranty obviously doesn't cover damages arising out of such misuse.. And then when she's having her "Oh Nooooo" moment, he informs her that since its the first time Brenda's walked into an Apple customer service, he'll make an exception for her and replace the iPhone at NO EXTRA COST!
Will Brenda ever vouch for any other company other than Apple in the future? Will she miss telling her husband about this? Will she forget to tell each of her friends about her story the next time she meets them? Will she miss buying many more apple products for herself, her husband and her 4 kids? Will she skip a chance to blog about this? Answer to all these questions is a resounding NO.
Lessons to be learnt-
1) Make customer service sound personalized and ensure that the customer knows that this is being done "specially for him/her".
2) Never give away anything on a platter or else it fails to make an impact. Give the customer his "Oh No" moment. Make it sound that its virtually an impossible request. Don't make him expect it out of you. Give it out when he least expects.
3) Customers think its a pain-in-the-a*s process to get something repaired or to get some issue sorted out. Make it a pleasurable and memorable experience for them. Make it sound cool and fun- like with apple's "Genius Bar Person" tag :)
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1 comment:
wow that sounds cool venky... and i had a similar experience with NO-Kia when the customer service not only refused at first to repair my phone but later i never got to see my nokia phone again. the reason the bloody Cust-mar service guy (and this guy is supposedly head engineer or whatever for nokia in chennai and runs his own repair shop in the name of NOKIA repair shop in front of "Gyaan da Punjabi dhaba" )said 'ur phone is worth not repair sell it second hand for some pennies...' and i had this feeling why on earth did i buy nokia !! and the second mobile i bought was definitely not nokia.
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