stevenclark.com.au

Mine is the world of book lovers. We open, caress, make lives with and endure the odd faux pas in the presence of the written word. My obsession with the english language is inherent in the blogs that roll from my fingers year after year, over 450 posts on this one alone (and its about the fourth iteration). I’ve been blogging at least every second day and often daily for around six years.

Enter Amazon. We had five books in an Amazon order in what must be the mad rush to service the world of Christmas. Only the wrong parcel arrived. We received three books (including a Malcolm Gladwell book I already wanted to read, lucky me) which should have gone to Ireland – no doubt our’s were delivered there. But its not the mistake in Amazon shipping that is important, its the story of their amazing customer service.

When we opened the box and found the wrong contents and invoice I immediately contacted Amazon and within an hour had a real human sending me emails with a reference number so they could keep track off our conversation. They offered a fast, polite and ultimately relationship-building reconcilliation of our order.

Within an hour and a half I had sent them the critical number off the invoice they needed. It wasn’t cost-effective to resend these to Ireland so we got to keep them FOR FREE. And Amazon immediately re-ordered our five books and sent them priority delivery so that we’d receive our presents in Tasmania before Christmas day! And they did so by taking the second invoice total from my account and replacing it with a few dollars more to ensure that I wasn’t robbed by fluctuations in exchange rates overnight. The result – I was impressed.

Lessons to learn from the Amazon experience for other businesses wondering how to handle customer service.

1. Amazon provided a human being able to provide real time reasonable feedback
2. That person had the power to make decisions like letting us keep the books
3. That person was polite and didn’t make an assumption I was the problem
4. Amazon realises that in my customer mind that person is Amazon
5. Amazon know that small generosity brings much larger dividends in the long run
6. Amazon understand its not about someone getting something for nothing from them
7. Amazon made no attempt to justify their mistake (what’s to justify – fix it and move on)
8. Amazon ensured I was better off after the mistake than before the mistake

In my world as a customer of Amazon I’ve got a far different worldview of both the mistake and the resulting effort to sort it out than if they put up barriers to resolution. No, I’m not only not upset, I’m telling the world they’re a fantastic company. And its a world who on the whole knows this already, and knows it better every day. So there you go. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Andrew J. Bacevich’s The Limits of Power: The end of American Exceptionalism and a copy of Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea sit on our shelves as a legacy AND we’ll also receive our ordered books by Christmas. Further, it was an indirect promotion of America as a tourist destination (yay for a rising GDP and sustainable economic growth).

If you’re a business out there I’d like to ask you how you handle your customer service and complaints? Honestly. Do you look for relationship (lucrative money making into the future) resolution without being self-focused? Or, like a recent bad customer experience that I’ve had, do you post a reply on their negative article saying they were lucky to get the service that they received… and try to justify yourself indignantly? How dare the customer feel unsatisfied – off with his pesky little head! [Yes, Alice]

Ladies and gentlemen. If you want to make money in the long run, if you want to be rich and do well and have your little franchise magnify and capture the effects of good word of mouth – look to Amazon. Seriously, they’re masters at it. The point of a recent article about my customer unhappiness wasn’t so much the penalty fee imposed by the store for using 3rd party glasses frames (don’t get me wrong I’m pissed off but it’s not the focus of that article’s intent)… it was about the hidden unrealised loss over the long term. Every lost recommendation. Every negatively influenced borderline decision. Lost sales you’ll never realise on your profit margin. If you’re in business you need to quantify that loss or make sure you don’t incur it.

Amazon get it. Total Eyecare definately do not get it. Do you serve your customers? Or do you truely believe that you’re the most important one in that relationship? Hint: follow the money… which way does the arrow go? Amazon has nailed that paradigm to the wall.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 9:31 am and is filed under books, business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.