In the past I’ve written about my esteem for Cook’s Illustrated. They make it easy to be a great cook.
Tonight, however, Cook’s has lowered their reputation with me considerably, by trying to scam me out of my money.
May 30
What can you do when you just can’t get satisfaction from a software company despite your best efforts? What if the company’s tech-support script monkeys have left your computer nonfunctional, worse than it was when you started, and they refuse to provide any more assistance?
May 17
While visiting New Jersey this weekend, I stopped at the Williams-Sonoma store in the Short Hills Mall. Williams-Sonoma is an upscale kitchen-accessories store. The Short Hills Mall is an “ultra-premium” mall, the sort of place where the anchor stores are Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomingdale’s instead of JCPenney and Target. What should’ve been a premium shopping experience turned into a frustrating trip that makes me unlikely to visit that store again.
Feb 14
While egosurfing the other day, I came across an interesting entry at Chris Keane’s blog that links to my Art of Turboing article.
In “8 tips for improved turboing: customer service workarounds,” Chris details a few tips that can help you take turboing to the next level. Continue reading »
Jan 12
In 2003, I wrote the following blog entry:
I’ve recently inherited a house. The air conditioner, a jumbo window model from Carrier, is operable, but the mode selector knob is broken. Although it can still be used with judicious use of a pair of pliers, I wanted to get a replacement knob.
It turns out that Carrier understands a key tenet in customer service: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Even though this air conditioner was made over a decade ago, it won’t be a problem for me to get the knob. In fact, Carrier will send one to me at no charge. They make replacement knobs for all their room air conditioners available for free, just for the asking. Their web site offers instructions for requesting new knobs online.
This is how you make customers happy. A small, inexpensive part that would be hard for service centers to stock, creating a logistics nightmare… is instead centralized and turned into something that makes customers feel “taken care of.” This kind of small gesture is what leads to repeat customers.
Jan 11
This blog entry was originally published on November 10, 2002.
Some people have written to me suggesting that my experience with CompUSA was due to me being unreasonable. I recently received an email that suggests differently… from someone who works at CompUSA.
Read on to find out what “X” thought about my article… Continue reading »
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