Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Column

Service is knowing how to say you're sorry

By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published February 26, 2007

It was the best of customer service weeks. And it was the worst.

But for any business fighting for customer loyalty and likely to face an inevitable rough patch with the public, there were lessons galore.

Once-lofty JetBlue Airways suffered its worst nightmare, facing days of round-the-clock media criticism for its massive cancellations and marooned passengers amid winter storms.

To its credit, JetBlue went public rapidly with its mea culpas and apologies. In a masterful YouTube video at www.jetblue.com, CEO David Neeleman, in unscripted style, says he's sorry, asks for a second chance and promises to make things better. How? By unveiling a cutting-edge "customer bill of rights" that explicitly agrees to pay passengers for delays.

This damage-control effort may rank up there near the Tylenol cyanide tampering fiasco of the 1980s handled so well by drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.

In its March 5 cover story, Business Week magazine for the first time ranks the top 25 companies in customer service. The magazine planned to include JetBlue, but dropped it last week.

Yet the magazine's Web site asks viewers to vote whether they would have kept the airline on the top 25 list. By a margin of four to one, the first 685 respondents said "Yes" - a good indicator that JetBlue's strategy of redemption is working.

So what is really good customer service? To paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it.

Business Week's top pick among its 25 is USAA, the financial firm prominent here that caters to the military. It was cited for customer responsiveness.

Two Florida companies, St. Petersburg's Raymond James Financial and Lakeland's Publix Super Markets, made the top 25. Raymond James suffered its own mini-JetBlue headache last week when regulators fined it $2.75-million for poor supervision of its 1,100 branch managers.

Sure, good customer service means avoiding slipups. But when problems arise, really good customer service also means acknowledging mistakes and learning to avoid them.

Like JetBlue, Raymond James has its own "client bill of rights" spelled out at www.raymondjames.com. Chet Helck, Raymond James' president, explained Friday that his firm depends on customer goodwill and tries to keep customer service "top of mind" through a program called "Service 1st." Helck added: "We like to believe it is more than a platitude."

Still another measure of good service came in last week's University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Among banks, Wachovia was ranked No. 1 in customer satisfaction. This makes an impressive six years in a row. The bank, a major Tampa Bay player, already is running print ads touting its record. Today, its adds television commercials.

In its hometown of Charlotte, N.C., Wachovia could not resist crowing, just down the street from archrival Bank of America.

In Wachovia's headquarters atrium, CEO Ken Thompson celebrated its latest No. 1 status by leading a "We are the best" cheer with bank employees.

When was the last time your business gathered to share such a communal yell - and mean it?

Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8405.

[Last modified February 26, 2007, 01:08:06]