Good, bad and ugly customer support

I’m a huge believer in exceptional customer service and support. This is evidenced by the high CSAT and NPS scores that my former company, Binary Tree, continuously received. I do miss those days… but I digress.

Due to this belief, I love to call out great customer service experiences that I personally receive vs ones that missed the mark. As you read through this, think about the experience your customers receive when reaching out to your company for support and see if there is any room for improvement.

Having recently returned from vacation I figured I would take last Friday, part of the extended Holiday weekend after the 4th of July to run some errands and catch up on my growing by ToDo list.

First up was the Trek Bicycle shop. I needed to get the bar re-taped. While this is probably one of the simplest bike maintenance tasks to perform, I still like to get it done by a professional. It literally only takes 10 minutes. I figured they may be busy so I showed up when they opened at 11 AM figuring they could sneak me in quickly and have me on my way. Especially after looking at my profile I thought, and seeing that I was a frequent customer that has spent a significant amount of money on bikes, gear and service over the years with them.

After selling me the new tape that I chose, AND a new helmet AND gloves BTW,? the clerk told me, as I expected, that they were backed up and that they couldn’t get to it right away. What I didn’t expect is to be told that they could only get to it on the 16th. 11 days later!? I could either leave it or come in then. I was a little miffed but didn’t mind too much as I thought I didn’t need this Road Bike until my next long distance event later in the month, Empire State Ride to Cure Cancer, and I would make do by training on my Triathlon Bike until then.

So I agreed to leave it. Before I left, he tried to upsell me on one of their three bike maintenance packages. Kudos on the attempted upsell which I probably would have agreed to had I not been disappointed with not being given loyal customer priority treatment and outpatient service for a job this incredibly simple.? More on this at the end of this post as my day ended back in this shop with my Tri Bike.

Back home, my next call was going to be to Apple for an issue I was having with a new iPad. Having exceptional experiences in the past with their support, I knew this would be pleasant and quick. Before calling I tried to recreate the issue I was experiencing prior to leaving for vacation and to my delight, no more issue. But I didn’t do anything different?!?! Typical end-user line, LOL. All is working as expected. A+ without even trying Apple. Great job. BTW - the Magic Keyboard for iPad is killer. This just may be a complete laptop replacement for me as Microsoft 365 works perfectly on it. We'll see.

Speaking of Microsoft... On this same new iPad I had an issue setting up email signatures in Outlook. It only allowed me to set signatures for 2 of the 4 accounts that I use. This being only a minor inconvenience I entered a support ticket on their web portal and continued with what I was doing. To my surprise I got a response within a few minutes with a follow up question. Wow, I thought this too would be fixed quickly. I replied but still have not heard back. I love Microsoft. While this ticket is up in the cloud somewhere, they get a pass (for now). The more goodwill your brand has, the more patience your customer will have. To a point. Support score TBD.

Last week I noticed a charge from ADT on my credit card. We moved out of our house a year ago and could have sworn I canceled their alarm and home monitoring service but I guess I didn’t. I called the number on their website home page and got a busy signal. Busy signal on a main number? I tried again a few minutes later and it still wasn’t getting through. I figured I would give the website’s chat bot a try. “I’ve moved, Please cancel my service and refund my last charge.” is something I figured was a common request that an AI bot could handle.

After collecting my account information the bot transferred me to a human, who then transferred me to another chat human who told me that refunds were not possible and to call another number for the cancelation to be processed. The call was surprisingly answered live instead of the customary directory tree. They took down my request but couldn’t process it. After a brief hold I was transferred to someone else who repeated my request and let me know that I would be transferred yet again. After a longer hold I was finally put in touch with someone who was able to help me cancel the service AND process a refund, but not before attempting to sell me service for my new residence at a deep discount.

Fail on the main number not working. Bad first impression on support. What if I was a new customer calling the same number? If cancelation is an “advanced” ticket, the AI bot should have immediately transferred me to the agent that eventually helped me without the 4 other agents in between. Very inefficient. His exceptional attitude and service salvaged my impression but there is a lot of room for improvement here. I just tried the main number again. It works now.

Best experience of the day was with JPMorgan Chase. They recently acquired FirstRepublic. The migration of bank accounts occurred while I was away. When I logged on, I could only see my personal checking account and not my business one.? One phone call, acceptable wait time, a short 3 minute interaction with a very friendly and knowledgeable agent who addressed my request, stayed on the line while I checked again. Issue resolved.? A+

With the daily ToDo’s completed it was time to pump up the tires and get my Tri Bike ready for tomorrow’s training ride. When I moved it, I didn’t like the loud squeaking noise I heard. The front disc brake caliper was rubbing against the pads. Something must have occurred during shipping after my last race. Total aside - blog entry here on that epic experience. Following some YouTube instruction on how to address this didn’t help. Unsatisfied with my earlier experience at Trek I went to another bike shop but it was closed so it was back to them at 6 PM.

I told the clerk that the bike still standing where I left it was mine waiting on tape and that I needed to get the brakes looked at on this one so that I could ride in the morning. He said that they usually don’t work on repairs in the last hour before closing. I asked if I could just go to the back and ask the tech if it’s safe to ride without causing any further damage. After waiting on the mechanic for a few minutes to finish what he was doing I asked my question. Pointing to my road bike, his? response was “This is your bike waiting on tape? That should have been squeezed in same day. Let me see that brake. 5 minutes later the brake was squeak free and I got a commitment that the new bar tape would be on and completed tomorrow. Not 11 days from now. Classic (and unfortunate) front office / back office misalignment.

Which one of the scenarios above describes the support experience your customers have?? If you don’t know, you definitely should, and should always have your team strive to improve it and make it exceptional.? In my experience, exceptional customer support start with exceptional people.? The kind that will leave the best possible impression with the customer. I used to describe Binary Tree as having a maniacal approach to customer satisfaction. It paid off daily and in the long run. Hire the best and your customers will be thankful.