Customer Service: Expected and Unexpected

I’ve been on the road for about a week and a half, blending business and pleasure. A conference at Stanford-and then, after my wife joined meseveral days in the Napa Valley followed by a visit to Portland, OR, to do some business and see some friends. We’ve enjoyed some superb meals-and then there was last night.

We were dining at Wildwood Restaurant, one of Portland’s better-known restaurants and a place that has helped to define Northwest cuisine. We’d had a superb salad and appetizer, but when our entrees arrived, there was a slight problem. Mine was cold; my wife’s salmon was also cold—and overcooked.

A lot of restaurants will just take the food back and reheat it. Wildwood took a different approach. Our server apologized and took the entrees away. In a short while, he returned with an appetizer to “help keep us occupied” for the short time the kitchen was working on our dinners. [This was a croustade with a chickpea puree and a salad of perfectly fresh radishes-yummy.] Then he returned with our entrees-newly prepared, hot, and excellent.

Now consider this post from Playlist—a report by columnist Christopher Breen about some defective music he bought from iTunes. Only he didn’t realize it was defective until he heard from iTunes, inviting him to download a new, higher-quality version of the album he’d purchased and giving him free additional song downloads for his trouble. It was the right thing to do, Breen notes, but unexpected. And therefore delightful.

I was pleased that Wildwood handled our entree problem in the way that they did. And given the kind of restaurant it is, I would have expected no less. It’s easier to provide great customer service when you’re dealing with someone face-to-face, as was our server at Wildwood, and when your tip depends on it.

But what about when you’re dealiing with someone through the web, or through email? That’s an impersonal environment and it’s easy to blow off complaints or to ignore details. Breen’s post makes it clear that that’s preceisely when great customer service can make advocates out of customers and strengthen relationships with those who are already your advocates.

Remember: the web can amplify a good experience-or a bad one. I don’t mean to say that Breen’s example is the only case I’ve seen in which companies have been rewarded by delighting their customersor penalized for stupid handling of a customer service issue. But my experience reminds me that all of us need to pay more attention to how we handle these sorts of issues, remembering that our brand equals the sum of someone’s total experience with us. Problems will occur-how we respond to them when they do is what counts.