When is bad customer service bad PR? 8 May 2008
Posted by Catriona Pollard in PR tips.Tags: customer service
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Recently I bought a gorgeous pair of shoes from Edward Meller Mosman. The service was great when I bought them, but it was a different story when I had to take them back..
I wore the shoes once and then realised that they were faulty. The left shoe was cut .5cm different to the right one. Obviously I took them back. After a forceful discussion, they said they needed to speak to a senior person, so I left them there and didn’t hear back. I chased them, went in to the store and they replaced them.
Not graciously. AT ALL. No apology for selling me faulty shoes. She made me feel I was at fault for not realising they were faulty before I wore them and then refused to give me my receipt back. I was forced to leave the store without proof of purchase.
It made me think – so now what is my perception of this shoe shop? Will any amount of PR or advertising change my bad experience? Is customer service more important that any marketing a business does?
They are really important questions any business needs to ask. I think it comes down to how important are your customers? Essential I would say. So it might be worth working on your customer service strategy as at the same time as your marketing and PR. They go hand in hand.
For some reading on customers service tips and articles:
http://customerservicezone.com/
http://www.proedgeskills.com/customer_service_articles.htm
http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/customer-service/2976306-1.html
http://derekstockley.com.au/newsletters/customer-service-articles.html
I’d take the line of ‘We used to be terrible, but now we’re great’, that way you can be transparent enough about the old service, but plant the seed for a quality new service.
Or just get them an award for great customer service, then you would presume you had had a one of bad experience.
This is just off the top of my head.
This post made Jo’s PR top 5 http://strivepr.com/wordpress/2008/05/09/may-9th-jos-pr-top-five/
I totally understand the bad customer experience – it happens too regularly and it’s great you’ve done a post like this to make business owners more aware of the ways people can share their experiences (not just through word of mouth).
In this instance, I doubt a personalised letter or phonecall would change your viewpoint on this, so I agree that it’s really in the business’ best interest to provide excellent customer service, because they have no idea who they’re serving!