The Customer Service Secret: Don’t Use A Flamethrower To Chop Down A Tree
Marshall Roy — August 10, 2009 @ 7:37 pm
It seems customer service is a bit of a sore spot these days.
This blog post on NYTimes.com has garnered nearly two hundred comments in less than a week from readers voicing their agreement and personal anecdotes about the lamentable state of customer service these days. The author, Jay Goltz, a small-business owner from Chicago, points to three confluent reasons for the decline: the high-cost of health care, which incentivizes employers to hire part-timers; the increasingly volatile sale cycle in the retail world—”manic pricing,” Goltz calls it, which floods sales floors one day and leaves them deserted the next; and the disconnect between managers and those actually performing the customer-facing interaction, be they earnest but under-trained or apathetic and remote (mentally, physically, or both).
I’ve been ruminating deeply on the question of customer service—Bonobos receives praise for its customer service pretty regularly, and the New York Enterprise Report noted us for our strategic hiring practices. But how exactly does a company go about making customer service a cornerstone of its business?
I think I finally know, but I can’t take credit for the thought—it belongs to Ninja Manager John Rote, with whom I chatted about this today.
“Most companies treat customer service like an operating expense,” he said. “But they should treat it more like a marketing tool.”
This is revelatory.
Operating expenses should be streamlined, efficient, and as inexpensive as possible. When you apply these standards to customer service, outsourced call centers and disinterested personnel make perfect sense—but that’s like chopping down a tree with a flamethrower. It’s the wrong approach. It’s looking at the situation in a funhouse mirror.
The value of marketing tools, on the other hand, is measured by whether they can earn—and keep—customers’ interest, loyalty, and esteem. When you think about it that way, the answer is obvious. Spend the effort and the money on customer service. Replace advertising dollars with delighted customers who promote to their friends.
I’m going to be using this blog to dig deeper into the question of customer service, and I’d like to hear from you guys. What’s the best customer experience you’ve had with a company other than Bonobos?
I’ll start: A few months ago I had dinner at a terrific restaurant in New York called The Red Cat. Everything from the service to the food to the ambiance was excellent, so I filled out a comment card detailing my delight. A few days later, the manager of the restaurant sent me a personal email thanking me for my kind words and letting me know she’d passed along my compliments to the chef. She thanked me again for my business and asked me to return. Not only do I plan to return, but as our friend Matt Curbeau can attest, I recommend The Red Cat to everyone I know who visits New York City. Frequent readers of this blog know that I’m also partial to the customer experience at Lululemon.
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Love that Red Cat quick sautee of zucchini….
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Which one? Too many to count.
- A pair of Jackson Browns I ordered were a little short – Marshall kindly shipped me a larger pair which is now currently my favorite.
- Dave Eisenberg let me order a promo of the Leblons before they came out and although they were a little small, I was able to return them for the original stretch khakis that are now a staple in my wardrobe.
- Matt Mullenax exchanging a variety of emails with me over the course of an order as we talked OSU/Illini sports.
- I asked a question on a pair of mint juleps I wore a couple times which had worn thin in the crotch (the older original lightweight cord material). I wasn’t expecting anything, was mostly just curious as to if this was the reason the fabric was no longer used. Despite being 7-8 months old Dave shipped me out a pair of the new ones.
- Brian Spaly going out of his way to address the need for eccentricity in my wardrobe.
I have acquired a lot of Bonobos over the last year and a half with my collection of belts, pants, shorts, and swim trunks now numbering 21 pieces and I can honestly say every experience has been memorable. However, the best customer service is that given to my friends. As a Bonobos partner I expose friends to the brand and many of which have either raved to me or told other people how well they can be treated. Thanks for that guys!
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Oops. Read it afterward, was excited at the opportunity to wax affectionately at all things bonobos customer service related. I would love to write about someone else giving me that kind of service but it has never happened, now I’m spoiled and expect what you all offer.
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John Varvatos does a great job with their customer service as well (at least at their store on Spring St). While I love their clothes, I find them a bit out of my price range, and wind up doing most of my shopping there when they have huge sales running. However, the salespeople treat it as though it’s any other day, and spend an inordinate amount of time sifting through racks of clothes for me, all with fantastic attitudes. Throw in the killer music, great store design, and a Stella or two, and it’s always a fantastic shopping experience.
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I recently had a great customer service experience from a seller on ebay. I bought a ‘92 Honda Nighthawk 750 motorcycle and the seller made the experience so easy and enjoyable. Not because he had a business and wanted me to come back and tell my friends, but because he really cared about the product. He loved the bike and was excited to sell it to someone who would love it also. The Bonobos Ninjas are exuberant about pants and care about the product and the people buying them. That makes a big difference.
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I think retail customer service is very hard. I collect fountain pens — yes, a bit old fashioned perhaps, just like fashionable clothing for men I guess.
Turns out, it is a pretty tight community and the customer service and integrity is amazing. I’ve had people mail me very expensive fountain pens to “check them out” with the simple agreement to pay them if I liked it, or return it if I did not. This is not unlike your “no questions asked” returns and creates great admiration and loyalty with customers.
As you note, this level of customer service is not inexpensive. It is hard to have great customer service with bargain products.
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Marshall Roy Reply:
August 11th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Perhaps old-fashioned, but you’re definitely in good company if that’s how the community of collectors treats one another! I have a burgundy Waterman that I received as a graduation gift a few years ago. I absolutely adore it. I think fewer and fewer people realize what tactile joy there is in writing with a fountain pen, given that we all grow up on ball-points these days. Cheers, thanks for your input!
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Same as Scott above, I have had so many great experiences that it would take to me to long and tire me out way to much to write them all down. But to sum them all up, all I can say is that I visited the HQ and got to hang out with the Ninja’s. I got to chill on the roof, and see a part of NYC that I had never seen before. Great time, Great people, Great Pants!
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Believe it or not, the best customer service experience I’ve had was at an auto service center. Perhaps my perception of the experience is a bit skewed given the level of service normally accepted at these types of places, but they truly went above and beyond to please each and every customer.
My first experience with them was around 8 PM on a weeknight. I was going to drop my car off at the night drop, then get a ride back with a friend who was running a bit late. As I sat and waited the owner came out, leaving for the day. He noticed me waiting there, and offered to give me a ride to where I needed to go! He had never met me before but acted as if we were old friends, seemingly willing to delay his night for the benefit of a stranger.
The next day I went to pick up the car, and found that they had done the routine maintenance that I had requested, plus fixed a nagging issue with the windshield wiper, at no cost to me! I then spent about a half an hour talking with the owner about cars and his business that he was growing. It was obvious that he is passionate about what he does, and it showed in the work he and his team had done.
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I had an awesome experience with groominglounge.com recently. Basically, a few months ago they ran a promo on their shampoo and I added it to my cart but never finished checking out.
A few months later the items were still in my cart when I realized I never ordered and went back to do so, but unfortunately the promo had expired.
A simple email to their customer service team and they had now problems refunding me the difference in order to give me the lower promo price! What a great experience – will definitely be back for more!
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The best customer service I’m aware of is actually through my best friend. She bought a top of the line wetsuit to race in for a number of triathlons from Zoot Sports. The first time she put it on was at a race last summer, and immediately put her thumb nail through the leg right before the race. It was still fine to race in that day, but the tear was definitely going to get larger. She called Zoot the next day, Monday. It wouldn’t have been such a huge problem had she not been racing again the following weekend, but Zoot takes their athletes very seriously and overnighted her a brand new one that afternoon. It arrived at her house before she was even back from Chicago! She sent back the old one so they could look at the tear and look further into preventing that sort of thing in the future. Situations like that where companies go out of their way to put a customer’s needs first is what sets them apart from others.
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[...] for sure, Zappos has taught Bonobos a lot—namely the importance of building a company on customer service and an attractive internal culture. Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn has more, in today’s Daily [...]
[...] Due to the increase in online retail sales, companies need to heavily consider the online user experience. In particular, the customer service experience. The customer service experience is probably the biggest factor when it comes to maintaining customers. One company that does it right is Bonobos, then Men’s pants online retailer based in New York. They have a very friendly process. You can write notes when you order, which they actually read. They have an any pant, any time, any reason return policy. In fact, they encourage you to order a couple pairs if you are not sure what your size is. The best part? Free shipping both ways. I’m not exactly sure how they can manage to do this (maybe because they don’t need to pay for the cost of running a brick and mortar store), but people love it. The company claims to have a very high customer return rate and they are not afraid to share their customer service secrets. [...]