How important is Service?

Each and every day, I watch television. Each and every day I see the news,
and sometimes I watch sports, and I get to see, inevitably, commercials, about
firms who attempt to brand themselves--at considerable cost--as being customer
and service driven.

One of these examples, is American Express. Has anyone ever tried to even find out
who one of their corporate officer's is? Has anyone ever tried to talk to anyone there
who was not part of a underpaid phone bank?

I have been a customer of Amex for 25 years, and I have found, that they would rather give
lip service to customer service, than actually provide it. The sad thing is that, all large firms
seem to be alike.

UPS and Fedex are other examples of firms who preach service, but in real life applications,
do not actually practice good customer serrvice. This makes no sense to me, as what it really
says is that we, consumers, are all stupid or foolish, as who in their right mind wants to get treated
like cattle. Who in their right mind does not understand the disconnect between what they say and
what they do?

However, in spite of their true nature, people keep supporting them, with their dollars. Blindly and stupidly,
I might add, as the saddest thing to me is that we do not use our spending money to punish those who
do not really give any concern to their customers. Ask me, none of these firm's senior management
want to speak to their customers, why? Why can't I speak to a corporate office at Amex? If anyone at
Amex was my customer, at any of our locations, I would be happy, as President of Box Brothers, to speak
with them. How could I not speak to a customer?

I say this because I cannot even send them an email, to let them know how I feel as their 3 decade customer.

Real vs. Imagined

Many times in business, it is easy to see something or view a set of facts that can
lead to a certain result or conclusion.

I had a heck of a day, yesterday, due to certain things that happen in my job at Box Brothers.
In some senior management settings, it is hard to be able to control what takes place in an
operational setting, and at Box Brothers, we have 20 different locations that see over 25 customers http://www.boxbros.com/
a day. If we are good and lucky, 99% of our customers will have had a good experience with our
services or products and our personnel. Monthly, that is about 750 in store customer interactions,
and possibly more, as some customers visit us to collect information about an upcoming move or
shipment.

However, the problem I have is more with vendors, than it is with customers. I would rather try, today,
to help a customer with a problem than face another vendor who thinks he is doing me favors if I buy
from them. The worst tend to be the larger ones, who think about customers, but are afraid to speak
and interact with them.

With our 20 actively managed locations, we will see about 15,000.00 customers a month and in addition,
we speak to about 2,000 or more other customers who inquire about our services over the old fashioned
telephone. I am not ignoring our customer visits to our website, which is also in the thousands, but I wanted
to focus on face to face customer encounters, whether in person or on the phone.

I am proud of our family here and I think we do quite an excellent job of taking care of our customers. We have
worked very hard to not only deliver to our customers, but exceed their expectations. If we do this 99 out of
100 times, that would amount to maybe 150 customers who may have felt that they may not have received the
best possible service from us (15000 monthly customers X 1%= 150)

The truth is that we are better than 99% approval rating, as I do not get very many complaints from customers,
maybe two last month, and I had, it seems to me, more issues with bad vendors with bad policies than
anything else.

Customer service is not hard, but it requires a commitment to do the right thing, which is why large firms
can’t do it. It is hard to do it from afar and they would rather give lip service to it, than deliver it. It makes
no sense to me, but if you speak to a customer, and you know what you are talking about, it is not that
hard and you can tell the one who are virtuous and the ones who just want to take advantage of a mistake.
http://www.boxbros.com/packing
For example, try talking to someone of authority at American Express, or Federal Express. You can’t and this
is not by accident. The senior managers of Bank of America will not talk to me either, never mind I have been
their customer, for 25 years. I think this is true of most large firms, but what I do not understand is why we
perpetuate their existence, by patronizing them, when they really do not care how we are treated.
Anyone out there who thinks that UPS really cares about them or their package, should re check their facts
and their thinking. I spend quite a bit with UPS and they could care less. They do not have a representative who
can even call me back in 24 hours and I spend 6 figure income with them. If I treated my customers the way they
treat me, I would not be in business.

It is a crazy world out there and I hope some sanity comes into view soon and that consumers start to think
how and with whom they should spend their money. Giving it to firms that could care less about them is no
way to reward bad behavior. by : Mark Frydman http://www.boxbros.com/contact-us