I have a quote by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com taped to my door that says: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.  If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

I have been involved with customer support with many different companies for many years.  This creates an interesting consumer experience in my daily life as I am constantly evaluating the service I receive as a consumer.  This is important, as I believe that one evaluates each customer experience they receive not against other like companies but comprehensively against any and all experiences they have had in their lifetime.

I recently returned from a business trip where I was able to evaluate my own customer experience at a major hotel chain (Radisson).   While my perspective may be a bit different based on being a part of the “Customer Support” industry, and I may believe I know how people should be treated, I find I have to remember that each company has its own challenges in its back office that the public doesn’t get to see. 

The Radisson experience was an interesting one.  I had stayed at this hotel before, so upon making the reservation had asked for a room at the back of the building because the front of the building has a busy street and the noises from the traffic made sleeping a lot more difficult.  Upon checking in I found that there were no rooms available at the back of the building, but they did move me to the top floor (7th floor not so high) to escape some of the noise, and to check back tomorrow and they would see if a room at the back of the building had become available.

Although, a great customer experience to me would be the hotel telling me if a room at the back of the building had become available, I checked back 3 or 4 times that day always being told to check back later, and never having a good result.   The second day brought the similar experience of ‘check back later’, with the same result, no room available.  By the 3rd day, I became a little more persistent, but I still didn’t get a room.  After calling the front desk for the 3rd time that day and told I was still out of luck, I then experienced an ‘interesting’ customer experience.  There was a knock at my room door, and upon answering it, someone from housekeeping was there with some earplugs compliments of the concierge.

Was this an insult, a bad customer experience?  Or was this a sincere effort by the front desk to make my stay more enjoyable?   I am not sure. I have to be honest and gave the “earplug maneuver” the benefit of the doubt, and that the action was done with good intent and for that matter, the last night at the hotel those earplugs worked perfectly.  I did not get the solution I was looking for, but I did get a solution that worked.   But I would have appreciated more of an explanation, and I let my confusion and satisfaction level be known on the survey that the company emailed me.  Let’s not forget I am also telling those ‘6,000 friends’ of my experience.

Again I believe that we measure each customer experience we have with all those that we have had previously.   I want your customer experience with SOE to be the best customer experience you can have.   There will surely be things we can do and can’t do, and you can’t make everyone happy all of the time, but there is a lot that we can do.   Let me know how your SOE customer experiences go!

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox
Executive Director of Global Customer Service