A few customer service experiences in the last week have shown me that details matter in a way that they didn’t a few years ago. In the first case, I was trying to resolve a complaint I had with an organization which shall remain nameless as I really don’t want to punish them (yet).
I had tried a number of ways to get heard by the company but no one seemed to be paying attention to me. I sent messages to general mailboxes that were ignored. I sent emails to people by name but in five attempts had received not one response.
So I went on Twitter and found the person to whom one email had been sent and I sent a tweet as well to the founder of the company. Well Twitter obviously is the go-to place for customer service as I got two very quick replies after several months of trying.
From the customer service person who had been ignoring me I got a tweet reply, a phone call, and an email which resolved the problem. In the case of the founder, I got a quick reply to send him a direct message with details. Which I did and we are now exchanging messages.
Before Twitter, Yelp and countless other social media channels, a company could ignore a customer and know that there would be no public record of their failure and that only a few close friends of the aggrieved customer would ever know.
Since this is no longer the case and it is possible to make a very public and direct connection with company employees, details now matter in a way they never did before.
Companies need to execute flawlessly which is a real challenge for leaders but more than that, they have to be very quick about rectifying situations when they don’t execute flawlessly.