Customer Service in the Age of the Internet
In the last week I’ve been the witness to two divergent but equally telling stories of customer service from two companies who have nothing to do with each other. I was not involved directly with either customer service interaction – rather, I heard about the experiences through old fashioned word of mouth – which makes the instances all the more valuable for sharing and learning from.
The first case involved Intermedia, which is the world’s largest provider of hosted Exchange email services. It seems that during the latter part of last week, Intermedia experienced technical issues which resulted in email service outages for multiple days. For a company with an SLA guaranteeing 100% data protection and less than six minutes of Exchange hosting downtime per year, this is a huge deal.
My company doesn’t use Intermedia for hosted Exchange so you may wonder how I heard of the issue in the first place. It turns out that First Round Capital does use Intermedia and I saw a tweet from Josh Kopelman expressing his concern and a call for help (or at least an update from Intermedia). Apparently the message did not get through, and Kopelman followed up with an extensive and somewhat scathing (albeit deserved) blog post that does not speak kindly of Intermedia’s efforts.
In contrast to this rather sad attempt at customer service, I received a forwarded email today from a good friend. He and his wife had ordered a pair of pants from Bonobos as a gift for a parent’s birthday. For those who don’t know, Bonobos is a NYC-based company that makes unique men’s pants with a goal of eliminating “khaki diaper butt”. In addition to making extremely fashionable pants, Bonobos strives to provide unparalleled customer service, going as far as to call their customer care team “Ninjas.”
In the forwarded email, I got to see the effect of a Ninja in action. Apparently the ordered pants had not arrived in time through a mistake by Bonobos. Rather than copping out or providing an excuse, the Ninja took full responsibility, as seen in the email below:
Date: Monday, April 19, 2010, 1:22 PM
[customer name redacted],
Happy belated birthday! Sorry that your order is also going to be a bit belated. 100% our mistake in not getting that to you in time.
I just wanted to reach out to say happy birthday, apologize for the delay, and see if I could send you one of our polos on the house. They’re very breathable, lightweight, and good for the Louisiana heat and humidity.
I’m glad to send one your way on the house if you want to tell me any size or color preferences.
http://www.bonobos.com/store/cat/polos
Hope your week is off to a good start.
Best Regards,
John, Ninja Manager
In short, the response from Bonobos to a potentially bad scenario could not have been more different than the actions (or lack thereof) from Intermedia. Through this example, we see a few defining principles of customer service in the Internet area taking shape. Josh touched on several in his post, but there are a few more worth talking about here:
- It pays to be proactive – Bonobos didn’t wait for a customer complaint before reacting. Rather, they took the opportunity to take a negative situation and completely turned it on its head, even building some customer goodwill in the process. The price of the free polo will almost surely be made up in repeat purchases and incremental increase in lifetime value of the customer due to this high level of service.
- Customer service today is public…and private – There has been a ton of focus on Twitter, Facebook and social media strategies for customer service over the last couple years – and with good reason! The asynchronous nature of Twitter and the network effect (both positive and negative) of these sites makes it imperative to have an effective public customer service strategy and execution. But there is still, and perhaps even more than ever, incredible value in direct, personal interaction with customers. By taking 5 minutes to craft a personalized email that mentioned two facts – the birthday reference and the Louisiana heat detail – Bonobos made the customer feel like a valued person rather than simply another faceless transaction. This was not a PR stunt or a made-for-Twitter interaction. It was a singular gesture which speaks volumes about the customer care culture the company has created. This obviously gets harder and harder to execute as companies scale, but I’m hopeful Bonobos will be able to continue to offer this personal touch as they grow.
- Word of moth is alive and well – I touched on this above but it’s so important that I’ll mention it again. I heard these two stories without having a direct tie to either. People today have the tools to share their experiences in more ways and with more people than ever – and they are. In addition to the public forums, blogs and personal emails that fly back and forth everyday, I have no doubt that the same stories will be told over and over again at dinner parties and cookouts for the coming months. Since this is the case, why shouldn’t companies spend considerable resources to make sure the conversation is at least positive?
