For as much as I like Apple, I hold a certain disdain for their retail stores.

I’m sure you have experienced the overcrowded, over heated, wall-to-wall people atmosphere inside an Apple Store.

Like a meat market, you need to take a number to be served, then wait upwards of a half-hour or more to see an associate. All the while you’re shoulder to shoulder with people who for some reason feel the need to come in, sit down at a computer, check their email, surf the web and chat online like it’s the local Starbucks with free laptops.

I just don’t get it.  But I’m told it’s what makes the stores “sexy” – whatever that means.

I needed to get a new power supply for my laptop, so on Tuesday I headed over to the Apple Store in Boca Raton, FL. As usual, the place was swarming and I’m sure the number of people in there exceeded the number allowed by law.

There was little room to walk through the store, no clear sense of what to do or where to pay for your items. As I pushed and shoved my way to the back of the store, stepping on people’s feet and rubbing up against strangers, I found two versions of the charger I needed. One was 60 watts and the other was 85 watts.

Mistake #1 – Not knowing which one I needed.

I grabbed them both, thinking that someone in the red shirt with an apple on it would be able to tell me which one I needed and would sell me the appropriate one.

Mistake #2 – Thinking that everyone is knowledgeable on the products they sell.

After finding where to check out, I handed the associate the two chargers, explained what laptop I had and inquired whether I need the 60 or 80. His answer, “I don’t know, go over there and ask the girl in the red shirt.”

Looking where he was pointing, there were three girls in red shirts.

I slammed the chargers down on the table, said “f**k this,” and out the door I went. The associate, went on to the next customer.

Befuddled by what just happened, I ran the event over and over again in my head wondering why I just got hit with poor customer service from a company I thought I loved.

Maybe it was the heat in the store. Perhaps it was an overabundance of free loaders checking their email. Or, it was just another customer service person who doesn’t understand what their job is.

This incident reminded me that in business, you need to put your most knowledgable, outgoing people in customer facing roles. If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing yourself or your business any favors.

After all, you wouldn’t want one bad Apple to spoil the whole bunch.

On a weekly report I got this morning, the word “churn” came up several times.

Sorry Paula Deen fans, we’re not making our own sweet cream butter here, we’re talking about “churn” as in loss of customers.

In business it’s one of the seven words you never want to hear during the weekly meeting. What the other six are, I really don’t know. I would imagine “fired” is one of them.

As I read the reasons for possible “churn” I shuddered a little. The reasons all had to do with lower than expected sales, especially during the 4th quarter of 2011.

But wait? Weren’t eCommerce sales up for everyone? The media would sure like you to think so, but they only interview the big boys, it’s the little guys on Main Street USA suffering it out that we rarely hear about.

I never like to hear about any business closing their doors, but it’s a fact of life. If the sales aren’t there to support the operation, lights out. Everybody.

So, wanting to hear first hand why these eCommerce stores decided to call it quits, I made some phone calls. For the most part the reason was what I was expecting to hear – the ones with the deeper pockets are pushing out the ones with the smaller ones. I heard the word amazon mentioned a few times, spoken in a tone reserved for when you find out your mother-in-law is coming to visit.

It’s definitely not easy competing with the eCommerce giants, but it is possible. You may not be able to do it on price, but I know you can beat them on service! To most consumers, service before and after the sale is more important than a low price.

I looked at a few of the websites that were closing, and there was pretty much a common theme – no telephone number, an insane return policy (one store only took returns for 15 days after the sale), a note saying emails will be answered within 48 – 72 hours, and one with products so common you can buy them at every corner drugstore in America.

After a while, I didn’t feel too bad for the store owners. Many feel that the Internet is the “field of dreams” where if you build a website, shoppers will come. All of us know that isn’t true, and building a website that is a successful one takes time, dedication, time, patience, time, hard work, time and a lot of band-aids to cover up the wounds along the way.

The store owners I talked to opened their stores to either to “test the waters” as one put it, or to supplement their income, which explains the poor customer service policies. That may have been the way to do it 10, maybe 15 years ago, but not today.

The Internet has evolved, shoppers have become more savvy (and demanding) and making money off the ‘net is harder than you think. I wouldn’t want to be one of these guys who opens a new store today, the rules have changed immensely from when I did it in 1994.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up on eCommerce. God forbid! I’m just being the realist you all need to hear from. If this is the year you take the leap be prepared to work hard, play less and bust your ass every day. Keep on top of your competition, your vendors, your drop shippers, your employees, even the package delivery guy.

In the end the strong will survive.

The rest will just churn away.

Utilities. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we gotta have ‘em.

Having a relationship with the cable, water, gas, telephone and electric companies is like being in a bad marriage that even a divorce can’t help.

They all boast about awards they receive for customer service, but I have rarely witnessed any award-winning service from any of them.

I have had problems with my cable company, Comcast, in the past (read part 1 here, and part 2 here). Mainly because the people they employ at the end of an 800 number don’t have a clue about what to do with a customer using a CableCard in a non-Comcast receiver.

For those that don’t know what a CableCard is, it’s a little “card” that slides into a television receiver or DVR like TiVo that unscrambles the cable signal, authorizes the channels you’re paying for, enabling you to watch them on your TV. They’ve been around for a long time, and all the TiVo units on the market today require a CableCard for use.

Like cable boxes provided by the cable company, these CableCards are a one-way communication device that are programmed by the cable company’s central office where a signal is sent to the card giving it the “go ahead” to turn your service on.

This is standard-issue cable company stuff here!

My latest run in with Comcast happened Wednesday, when the CableCard in my one TiVo box suddenly lost it’s programming and my premium channels suddenly went dark. Knowing that all they needed to do was reauthorize the card, I called 1-800-COMCAST and spoke to a technician who “claimed” to know what to do to fix my problem.

We started out by rebooting the TiVo, which is basically a waste of time. 8 minutes of wasted time to be exact. He had me change channels, which did nothing. After explaining to him what he needs to do, he did nothing but walk me through useless exercises and eventually scheduled a service call.

Knowing that this was a simple issue that could be fixed by someone who actually knows CableCards, I called back. The second person I talked to didn’t even want to hear my problem. As soon as I said CableCard, she saw that I had an appointment scheduled and told me to wait for the appointment.

Strike two. Will I strike out on a third call?

Just to get my facts straight and to get the exact steps Comcast needed to take to get this issue resolved, I called TiVo which happens to have a dedicated support line just for CableCards. After explaining the situation to the tech, he confirmed what I knew all along. Comcast needed to reauthorize and re-pair the card. Since non-premium channels were working, it wasn’t a problem with the card, but a problem with the programming on Comcast’s end.

Third call to Comcast and I gave very detailed instructions to the technician on what they need to do in their computer system to get the authorization to CableCard. The gal I talked to once again was about as experienced in these issues as I am with open heart surgery.

Frustrated, I gave up.

Later that night, when I felt like I wanted to get hit on the head with a brick one more time, I tried Comcast’s live chat. Maybe, just maybe, I would get “someone” on the other end who can help. No such luck. Instead I spoke to someone in a foreign land who turned my live help session into a “Can I call you” session.

I bit. But even a call resulted in loud head scratching on the other end.

Knowing I was getting nowhere, I reached out to Bill Gerth who handles the @comcastcares Twitter account. He helped me before with an issue and called upon him once again.

Unfortunately, Mike never emailed be back, but he did forward my email over to Meredith in the Boca Raton office who was supposed to help me, but only really confirmed my service appointment. I told her the steps that were needed to authorize the card, but I don’t think she tried any of them.

So here I sit on Saturday morning waiting for the Comcast tech to come out and look at the CableCard. At 9:36am my phone rang and it was an automated survey call from Comcast asking how my appointment went, even though nobody showed up yet.

14 minutes later, Meredith called asking how the service call went. I explained to her that I’m still sitting here waiting. She did a little research and told me that the automated system that confirms appointments in the morning did not get an answer from my phone number.

My phone never rang, as the screen shot shows.

Frustrated beyond belief, I flew off the handle and hung up on poor Meredith.

I don’t feel bad tho. If you’re in business and don’t know how to support the product you’re selling, that’s not my problem. A quick search in Google will show you just how frustrated CableCard customers are with Comcast’s lack of knowledge with these devices.

Add myself to that list.

I know “someone” from Comcast is going to read this blog and will be able to solve my problem, so take a minute and work your magic on CableCard 0-011-251-803-109 and Host ID 0-350-127-308-244.

Prove to me that @comcastcares is more than just a Twitter username.

Something tells me this is going to get fixed.

I’ll keep you all posted.

With only a few hours left until the holiday shopping season shifts into high gear, I have to ask…. are you ready?

No, I mean are you really ready?

Here are some things that I thought of that maybe you haven’t in regards to getting your operation ready for the mad rush.

Customer Service:

• Adjust your customer service hours to accommodate early morning and late evening shoppers. This time of the year not everyone is going to be a 9 to 5 shopper. It may cost a few extra dollars to staff your customer service department a few more hours a day, but those extra hours should bring in extra sales.
• Make sure all your reps are fully trained on your store’s policies and they have a copy of policies in reach at all times. All reps should be “on the same page” with policies, a quick meeting with your staff to go over polices and get rid of any gray areas is also suggested.
• There will be one-off situations where you may have to deviate from policy. Make sure this deviation doesn’t become the norm by having such deviations approved and noted by a supervisor. It’s also a good thing to let the customer know that you’re making an exception for them as a one time courtesy.
• Attitude is everything! Your customer service department is going to be busy, so make sure you’re not overworking your reps to the point where they’re not providing courteous service to your customers. Make sure they have scheduled breaks so they can de-stress and prepare to get back to work. Providing motivation throughout the day goes a big way too, bring in some pizza, hop on the phone yourself to help out when it’s busy and don’t forget to acknowledge good service when you see or hear it.

Warehouse:

• Just like customer service, you are going to want to adjust your warehouse hours accordingly to keep up with the holiday demand. You don’t want orders sitting in a warehouse for two, three or four days because you’re not staffed properly. Your customers expect their orders to be shipped on time, so don’t let them down.
• Always make sure that express packages that customers are paying extra for, get out on time. You don’t want to be issuing refunds for shipping because the warehouse “forgot” to get air orders out before ground.
• Spot check packages to make sure the items inside have been packaged properly. You don’t want breakage – especially this time of the year! Pull packages that have been packed and prepared for shipment and open them up to make sure breakable items are wrapped properly, the right amount of dunnage has been used and any promotional material has been inserted with the items.
• If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to move your fast selling items to the head of your pick line. This saves lots of time and keeps your warehouse moving.
• Safety should always be on the top of everyone’s mind in the warehouse. While the pace of operations has increased, common sense should still prevail. Make sure no short-cuts are taking place that could result in injury and that your warehouse staff is trained on proper lifting and equipment use. And never, ever, let people operate machinery that they haven’t been properly trained on.
• Create daily goals for package output and accuracy – and reward your staff for hitting those numbers. A pizza party on Friday goes a long way and be sure to constantly motivate the guys and gals doing the heavy lifting! They’re the lifeblood of your operation and they’re literally busting their butt for you this time of year. “Atta-boys” all around!

Your eCommerce Store:

• What does your store look like? I hope you have a nice holiday header that’s free of flashing lights, blinking reindeer noses and falling snowflakes littering the screen. Just like department stores decorate for the holiday, you should have your store showing some spirit as well. But don’t go overboard! You want to put people in the holiday shopping mood – not turn the off.
• Create a gift buying section on your site broken down into categories that make sense to your customers. Gifts for Him, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Kids 12 and Under…. you get the picture. Don’t make customers hunt all over for gift items, lead that horse to the water!
• Make sure your polices are up to date – especially your return policy – and provide a link to your policy page in your order confirmation. One thing you don’t want to do is make your policies so restrictive nobody wants to buy from you. Returns are a part of doing business and you’re going to get items back, don’t look at returns as an enemy!
• Prominently post your customer service telephone number, extended holiday hours and any other contact information on your site for easy shopper reference. A telephone number should always be in the header of your website.
• If you’re using live chat, USE IT! I’ve seen way too many sites offer live chat but when you go to use it you’re prompted with a “sorry, we’re closed” message. Most live chat programs allow you the ability to use a different graphic when your chat reps are unavailable – take advantage of that. Don’t promote live chat when nobody is around to, well…. chat.
• Check your home page featured items. If they’re out of stock, remove them!

Its original intent I’m sure was a good one.

“Pick me up and tell someone this rest room needs a good cleaning” the sign suggests.

But somewhere along the line someone decided that reporting a bathroom in need of servicing wasn’t important anymore:

This photo was taken in the C terminal at the Newark Liberty International Airport, where customer service (and restroom cleanliness) doesn’t seem to matter.

When a pet passes on, it’s just like losing a member of your family.  I’ve gone through it many times already and am not looking forward to going through it again.  Animals share an incredible bond with their human companions and when they suddenly pass, you immediately notice that missing member of the family.

Friday night I learned that friends of mine had their beloved dog pass away earlier in the day.  It was unexpected and they were besides themselves with grief.  Their dog did everything with them and she was treated like one of their children.  Knowing the pain that they were going through, I decided I would try to brighten their day by sending them a flower arrangement through 1-800-Flowers.com.

Saturday I went online and placed the order and since I already missed the “same day delivery” cut-off time, I opted to have the arrangement delivered on Sunday, May 16th.  Finding it unusual that I didn’t receive a phone call, email or text message acknowledging the flowers, I decided to check to see if the flowers were actually delivered.  I called into 1-800-Flowers.com‘s customer service department and explained the situation.  He proceeded to tell me that the florist in the area was not open on Sunday.  I proceeded to say, “then why was I allowed to choose a Sunday delivery date and why didn’t someone call and let me know.”

I was put on hold.

He came back and said, “I tried to call the florist to see if they are delivering it today, but I didn’t get an answer.”

I explained once again that the flowers were ordered on Saturday, were supposed to be delivered on Sunday, so what can be done.  In an arrogant tone he said, “I’ll pick another florist and have them delivered tomorrow.”  I proceeded to say that was unacceptable and they should be delivered today as they are now going to be two days late.  He replied with, “I’ll pick another florist and have them delivered tomorrow, is that acceptable?”

The customer service representative I got expressed no empathy, never mentioned the word “sorry” or offered to do anything other than deliver the flowers tomorrow.  But what more could I expect considering several things went wrong here:

1. The website allowed me to pick a Sunday delivery date even through they acknowledged that the florist they use in that area isn’t open on Sunday.

2. No telephone call, email or any form of contact was attempted to advise me of a possible delay.

3. If the flowers couldn’t be delivered Sunday wouldn’t you expect them to be delivered the next day?

So now my flowers will arrive two days later than anticipated.  However, I have no intention on paying for them.  Once the flowers are delivered, I’ll be contesting the charge on my American Express card.

Screen Capture of the Order Confirmation Showing the Delivery Date that Never Was

The year was 1993.

I was 150 pounds lighter, 16 years younger and fresh out of college with a degree that doesn’t guarantee a big income. You see, I went to school for mass communications, and before I wasted those four years of my life spent hating my professors, I wish someone would have told me that there wasn’t any money to be made in radio. If I knew that, I probably would have pursued my other career objective of becoming a proctologist. But alas, graduation came and I needed a job.

A friend of my sister happened to be in the human resources department of Commonwealth Telephone Company (now Frontier Communications) in Dallas, PA. She manged to get me in for an interview for a customer service position in the company’s cable television division. I landed the $8.50 an hour job and the rest is history.

After spending a year fielding calls from people complaining that their cable was out or the pay-per-view porn movie wasn’t working, I applied for an open position in the technical support department of the company’s newly formed Internet Service Provider (ISP), epix.

I went from complaints about cable television to helping people configure their 28k modem to connect to this new thing called the world wide web. There was no Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. We still were running Microsoft Windows 3.1 and the “Internet” was basically pages of text, but it was a start.

Knowing that there was somewhat of a future for this new technology, I started toying with the idea of selling product online. Not to bore you with the story you have heard over and over about how I traveled on this crazy road of success, but it was during the time spent at epix that I launched one of the very first eCommerce stores and learned about the technology behind the Internet.

In between taking tech support calls, I was building a website, adding products, hard coding HTML and playing around with a very primitive “shopping cart” that was nothing like the carts of today. At lunch and after work I would go and order product to fill the orders and get them shipped out.

There were only four or five of us in the epix division in ’94, but with the growth of the Internet, the group grew pretty large before I finally left the company in 1999. After moving up from support, I had various other roles within the company, the last one being a Sales Engineer. One of the folks I worked pretty close with was Carl Fedak.

Carl joined the division in the support department and like me moved up the ranks. When Commonwealth was sold to Frontier the epix brand was killed along with the positions of many people I had the pleasure of working with over the years, including Carl’s. He applied for a job at Solid Cactus and has been with the company for a few years now and today spends his working hours as an account manager in the call center.

When I visited the Wilkes-Barre PA Call Center yesterday for their holiday luncheon, Carl surprised me with a gift that brought back a few memories. There was a lot of promotional merchandise which bore the epix name over the years. I still have a beach towel, the shirts and sweatshirts I had are long gone and I had plenty of coffee mugs, but I can’t remember ever having one of the baseball hats that Carl wrapped up and gave me for Christmas.

Thanks for bringing back some memories, Carl!

Anyone who has done business with or worked with me knows that I take customer service very seriously. In business I don’t create policies that aren’t customer friendly and I don’t tolerate team members who don’t embrace my “above and beyond” philosophy for making a customer happy.

I created the “above and beyond” concept of customer service when I started my first business in 1994:

• Give your customer’s the service they not only expect, but deserve.
• Exceed your customer’s expectations in every interaction.
• Treat every customer with the same courtesy you would expect in return.

Thirty-eight days ago I embarked on a journey that right up until the very last minute, proved to me that customer service may be dead. Some businesses and their employees just don’t get the fact that if it weren’t for customers, they wouldn’t have a paycheck.

My journey begins with my desire to move from Palm Beach further south to Delray Beach, FL. I enlisted an awesome Realtor, Scott Stiepleman, from Keyes Realty, who came highly recommended from a close personal friend of mine (thanks for the referral Pam!).

When Scott found me the perfect place to call home it was time to arrange financing. Using his recommendation, I called AmTrust Home Mortgage, who is a big lender in southern Florida and has several offices in the area. Scott worked with them in the past and never had any issues with them. Until now.

Before I get into the details, I want to be perfectly clear that southern Florida has seen a tremendous amount of foreclosures, short sales and real estate crises’ due to the overbuilt market. Banks have the right to be picky with who they lend to down here but that does not give them the freedom to treat customers like, well, you know what.

When I called the mortgage broker, who I will call “Betty,” she was more than happy to get my business and promised that we can make this deal happen quickly, painlessly and within the 30 days as stipulated in the sales contract. Her responsiveness in the beginning was great. Phone calls and emails were answered quickly and voice mails were returned promptly. But once the commitment was there and it was too late for me to start looking for another lender, Betty became the prime example of customer service gone bad.

Along with the standard application, I had to provide volumes of information detailing my finances and business interests for the underwriting department. The requested information was always sent within hours.

Betty, however, seemed to have a problem keeping all the information I would send her. On at least three separate occasions, Betty requested information that she already had received, sometimes requesting the same information multiple times! Several times I replied to her request with, “you already have that” and would receive a, “you’re right, sorry.”

In the middle of the process, Betty went on vacation. Talk about throwing a monkey-wrench into things. While she was away, her replacement took over and started asking for things that Betty already received once or twice.

Knowing that we had 30 days to close the deal, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with Betty. Emails went back and forth between her, Scott, my attorney Todd Surber from Independence Title and the seller’s agent. We all were getting frustrated and just wanted to get to closing and put this behind us, but the nightmare continued.

I reached my limit when seven days before closing, I get an email from the person handling the closing at AmTrust asking for my email address. Yes, I received an email asking for my email address!

Closing was scheduled for Friday, October 16th and it was supposed to be done via FedEx since I would not be able to be there in person. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, all of us were asking Betty, “are we closing on Friday?” With no answer coming from Betty, my attorney had no choice but to file for an extension, with the closing date moved to Tuesday, October 20th. This did not make me, the seller and the seller’s agent happy, but what choice did we have, we were at the mercy of AmTrust.

11am Tuesday arrives. All interested parties are gathered to make the deal happen. Papers are signed but AmTrust did not wire the money needed to close. Frantically, everyone starts calling Betty to find out what happened. Guess what? Betty is nowhere to be found. Her office line rings to voice mail (which she finds time to update on a daily basis with the “today is Tuesday, October 20th and I’m in the office all day” greeting, but she can’t find time to return a phone call). Her cell phone rings but goes to voice mail as well.

After trying for an hour to reach someone at AmTrust, we were able to contact the person who emailed me for my email address. She then initiated the wire transfer and funds were disbursed ending the worst customer experience I ever encountered.

Betty violated every principal of my “above and beyond” philosophy for customer service:

• She did not give her customer the service he not only expected, but deserved.
• She did not exceed her customer’s expectations in every interaction.
• She did not treat her customer with the same courtesy she would expect in return.

But most importantly, Betty made her company look bad and turned off a brand-new customer. For all I know, AmTrust could be the best bank to deal with. But for me, Betty was AmTrust and my experience with her makes me believe that they are not the best bank to deal with.

The team that I had working for me, Scott and Todd, went above and beyond and I would recommend them to someone looking to buy or sell a home. Betty could have turned this experience into an opportunity to gain future business not only from me but also from Scott and Todd, but I don’t think that will be happening anytime soon.

In today’s economy, businesses are all fighting for the sale. Times are tough and we all need to work harder to gain our customer’s trust and ultimately their business. If you’re company has a “Betty,” you may not know it until it’s too late and she costs you business. It may be time for you to give your business a customer service checkup. How?

• Sit in your customer service department for a day and listen to what goes on and how your people interact with customers.
• If you have the capability to monitor customer service calls, do it!
• Review your customer service policies and see if they are “customer friendly” or brick walls.
• Talk to your customers! Pick some at random and call them to learn about their experience with your company.

All of us work hard day in and day out to make a sale and earn a buck. Don’t let a “Betty” come between you and your company’s success.