November 30, 2007
Customer Service - Is there a right and a wrong way? Web 2.0’s take!
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Hey, I just made a post about an awful customer service experience with TheKnot and WeddingChannel, and than it occured to me that I had just read Rich Schefren’s report about the very same thing! In this well written report, he talks about how truly horrendous customer service has affected even large companies, to the point of bringing them to their knees. That’s not my goal here, but it’s interesting that in this day and age, bad customer service simply doesn’t pay off.
For as long as I can remember, we’ve always treaded all our customers as friends. That means speed service, always a refund when asked, etc … do whatever is necessary to keep the customer happy (and that’s not always easy). Some customers can be quite hard, and quite hard to deal with, so I hired people to do this for me. One crazy customer can ruin your day, so I no longer do it myself, but the thought remains - do whatever you need to do to make sure people are happy. Live life in a positive way, and do business in the same vein.
Have we lost money treating people as well as we do? Sure we have! Has my temparature skyrocketed when I believe I’m being taken advantage of? Sure it does! Will it stop me from treating our customers as freinds? Likely not! Customer wins, end of story. We go so far out of our way to have happy customers that we’ve often lost money doing it. It’s just the way it has to be. Didn”t you ever see the Secret? 
We get very few returns, since we have stellar products, but we still get some! Crazy as it sounds, some of these returns have turned into our greatest fans! If you haven’t seen the Internet Marketing Attention Age Doctrine I do recommend reading it. It’s free, and an interesting comment on where the world of business and marketing is heading!
In the report, he gives an example of 5 companies that were truly affected by Web 2.0, and bad customer service.
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TheKnot.com, shame on them! I can’t believe a company would put another company through this. We put a small advertisement with them for our Wedding Dance Mastery System, and they’ve been devils to work with ever since. Small companies beward, they have threatened to turn us over to collection, and to enforce a contract we were never notified of, and never saw or signed.
The Knot, is a big company, in the wedding services sector.
We advertised with them for one month, saw NO traffic, tried to cancel, was told we could not, were delivered a total of SEVEN leads over a six month period, and then asked to pay for the advertising, at a an astronomical rate.
Unable to cancel, unable to stop payment, unable to fight back, we’ll likely give in. We’ll have to pay TheKnot, The WeddingChannel, or the myriad companies this behomoth owns. But let me ask you why?
Why if you are a noted company. Why if you actually do business with other people. Why if you have a shread of morality, would you rip off small companies?
Why would you charge a company for services you couldn’t, or didn’t, deliver? Why would you charge a company when you completely failed to do any actual advertising? Why would you resort to hiding paragraphs in a contract, deep where people can’t see it, require no signature, and then come after the other company, even when it’s clear you’re wrong?!
The hysterically sad thing here, is the Knot never asked if I was happy. They never wondered if they had performed any advertising whatsoever. They simply didn’t care! Their focus is entirely on what they perceive as "their" money, and no in their service (which is entirely lacking).
There was NO customer service. There was NO shred of business decency at all. Forget business deceny actually, just overall caring in any way, shape or form.
Well, I’ve decided that to vent for myself, to create a blog of my experiences with TheKnot.com. Yes, complete with emails between me and the company. Let’s see if they’ve treated other people like this, and if so, how many?
I’ll post the blog URL for all to see, and we’ll be up and running in a week. Let the dialog begin, and once again, Shame on you TheKnot.com. This behaviour makes you appear like a scam.
