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Dear Verizon Wireless,

I have been a customer of yours for over eight years. For the last five years, I have owned several Blackberry’s which I use for both work as well as personal use. I believe that I have the most expensive plan you guys have totally unlimited minutes for both phone and data because of the huge time I spend on my phone. My bill is automatically paid through my credit card each month and before yesterday I don’t think I have ever contacted your customer service . I guess what I am trying to say is that I believe I am one of those customers that you want to keep.

The Blackberry I presently own is about a year and half old but it is already starting to show some wear and tear because pretty much I am the greatest product tester in the world. No matter how good a product is, I will find a way to destroy it in one way or the other. Since my phone is on its last legs, I have begun looking at a new Blackberry to purchase. Unfortunately, recently Verizon you guys have been getting your butts kicked by your fellow wireless competitors on phones. First obviously enough the iPhone and now AT&T has come out with the Blackberry Curve and all you got is the World Edition Blackberry which pretty much is exactly identical to the phone I have now except a wee bit thinner, no thank you. Oh and by the way, it is ugly as sin.

I have begun to think that maybe I should look to change providers who can offer me the kind selection I am looking for. Though before I do that, I decided to start looking online to see when and if you guys are going to come out with the Curve or other Blackberry’s. You know what I discovered, there are a number of blogs and discussion boards that are taking guesses when and if Verizon will come out with new phones, but there is absolutely no news or conversation coming from you! Why is that? Why wouldn’t you want to keep your customers informed of what is happening and what kind of new products and services are coming out in the future? I don’t know if you guys of heard about this internet thing, but there are a lot of companies that have this crazy thing called a corporate blog.

Last night I was on your website, verizonwireless.com and I saw you had a web chat feature that you could speak with someone at Verizon and I decided to give that a shot. Here is the conversation I had:

You are chatting with Greg

Greg will be right with you (Mind you I waited 6 minutes for Greg)

Greg: Thanks for contacting Verizon Wireless, how may I help you?

Cord: Yes, I was wondering if Verizon is coming out with any new Blackberry’s?

Greg: Yes they are!

Cord: Great, when will that be happening?

Greg: I do not have a date on that.

Cord: Well, will it be happening in the next 3,6 or 12 months?

Greg: I do not have a date on that.

Cord: Do you know what Blackberry phones Verizon will be supporting?

Greg: I do not have that information.

Cord: Ok, do you have any information that you can share with me other than that sometime before I die Verizon will be coming out with a new Blackberry?

Greg will be right with you

Greg will be right with you

Greg will be right with you

This is when I was put on chat hold I guess and after several minutes of waiting, I finally just hung up.

Verizon, it is time that you start communicating with your customers better. Your contract cancellation fee is not going to stop your top customers from leaving if they do not believe that you are meeting and exceeding their expectations.

I am wiling to place significant odds that no-one from Verizon is bothering to monitor what is being discussed about them online and no-one from the company will contact me from this post. Anyone wanna place a wager?

Technorati Tags: Verizon Wireless, Blackberry’s, customer service, Blackberry, Verizon, Blackberry Curve

I began shopping online about a month ago for my fiance’s birthday and have run into so many problems with some etailers that I felt it necessary to post my experiences. I began like most of us do when shopping online by doing some searches in Google. I found some etailers that I knew and began surfing around. My first stop was Bluefly.com

BlueFly.com – I think their site is pretty well done. It is easy to navigate and you can break your searches down by not only a product but by size as well. I found several things I thought Leigh would like so I ordered them. When I added the 4-5 items to my cart, they were all listed as “In Stock” and according to Bluefly’s web site, all packages are shipped out 3-5 days from ordering. No problem, I was ordering a whole month in advance. Order placed, my job was done.

Three weeks go buy and I get or hear nothing from Bluefly. I submit a question about my order through their online form, I get no response. Finally I decide to call them and the nice operator tells me that they have recently moved warehouses and all orders are backed up. I respond, “Well, why didn’t you tell me that when I ordered online?” Yea, she did not have an answer for me. I told her these were presents and I needed them. She told me she would put a rush on my order and get it shipped out. Nice operator, thank you. I then get an email from Bluefly two days later telling me that my ENTIRE order is out of stock!! Bluefly may you rot in fashion hell forever! You will never get another dime from me!

I now have to move on and find something else. So my next stop is Newport News.

Newport News – The site is again pretty well done, finding things are easy and once again I find several items that I think Leigh will like. I once again place the order, but before I click submit I want to find out their shipping information to make sure I have enough time to get it delivered or do I need to pay for quicker shipping. This is what is written on their site.

Standard Delivery. An order that is in stock and placed online by 5 PM Eastern Time will usually be on its way to you the next business day. Most items should arrive in 3 to 7 business days.

Great, I am two weeks away, no problem. I placed the order after 5 pm on Wednesday Aug. 1st. Today is the 6th and I still had not gotten an email letting me know my stuff has shipped. So once again, I went to their customer service section to try to find the status of my order, but because I did not have a customer number I could not find that online, so I called. The nice operator told me my order shipped out today except one item that will not be delivered to Aug. 23. I asked why if the item was out of stock hadn’t the web site told me that before I ordered? Once again, she had no answer. I asked when will my order arrive, she said Aug. 15th. The 15th!!!! Fine, Newport News, you got a stupid name and now I am not ordering from you again!

I have several more stores to talk about, but this is already too long so I am going to end with this. If etailers would start putting more money into customer service and delivery, they would not have to spend so much money on PPC and advertising to keep getting new customers. How much money does it cost to get a new customer compared to keeping an existing one?

Technorati Tags: etailers, shopping online, Google, Bluefly.com, Newport News

I apologize folks for the lack of postings this week. I have had a couple of campaigns launch this week and just have been underwater with work. Though I did have a story that I really wanted to talk about.

In a previous post, I discussed my unhappiness with LinkedIn and their lack of customer support. Very soon after I wrote that post, I was contacted by Mario Sundar, LinkedIn’s Community Evangelist, as well as a blogger I have always respected and he and a LinkedIn customer support representative, helped me with the issues I was having.

Several weeks ago, I was meeting with one of my clients and we were discussing a new program they were rolling out and they wanted my thoughts on how we could market this program online. Based on the target market they were going after, we discussed a number of possibilities including doing some advertising on LinkedIn. I believed that advertising on LinkedIn was one of several ways that we could get my client the attention they were looking from their target market.

So several weeks ago, I logged onto LinkedIn and clicked on the link on the bottom of their site that clearly reads, “Advertise with Us“. That took me to a couple of pages describing the kind of advertising they offered and based on the amount of money my client was looking to spend, I was taken to a contact form where I filled out my contact information. The form said I would be contacted in 1-4 days. Groovy.

And then I waited.

A week went by, no contact from LinkedIn. So I went back to the contact form and filled it out again.

And then I waited.

Another week went by and you guessed it, no contact from LinkedIn. I then thought maybe I need to think “outside the box” to get someone from LinkedIn to talk to me. So what did I do? I logged into LinkedIn and did a search for sales people who WORK for LinkedIn. I found many and sent them all emails using crazy enough – LinkedIn!

And then I waited. Once again, no contact.

From the first time I filled out the contact form, it has now been over five weeks and I still have not heard from anyone. I finally thought as a last ditch effort, I would post a personal letter here to anyone at LinkedIn who might have an interest in taking some of my clients marketing dollars.

Here it goes:

Dear LinkedIn,

I work with a Fortune 100 company that would be very interested in advertising on LinkedIn.com if someone, anyone would actually be willing to pick up the phone and call me. As I stated each time I filled out your contact form, our ad budget for the rest of this quarter is right around $100K and call me crazy, but I kinda thought you guys might want some of that money? If I am not totally off base, could you possibly when you have a chance give me a ring? If it is a big deal call me collect, I will accept the charges or at the moment, I might even settle for an email. What do you think? I long to hear your voice.

Best,

Cord Silverstein

csilverstein AT capstrat.com

Technorati Tags: Mario Sundar, LinkedIn

Since the launch of this blog 6-7 months ago, I have written several critical posts on Yahoo! and it’s properties. Last week, I had a new experience with Yahoo! that I am hoping will never happen again. On Tuesday of last week, I tried to login to my Yahoo! Mail account and was denied. I proceeded to go to the page where I can reset my password, but it would not allow me to do that either as I got an error message saying that my physical mailing address did not match up with their records. Hmmm, interesting. I thought maybe Yahoo! Mail were having issues and I just left it alone for the day.

On Wednesday, I tried to login again and once again no dice. I tried the reset password page again and again I got the error message that said what I typed in as my address was not what they had in their records. I then went into their help section and tried to figure out what else I could do. After reading many total useless pages, I finally just went into their contact us and filled out a form telling Yahoo! what had happened and asking them for some assistance. I gave them two other email addresses since I could not login into my Yahoo! Mail. Wednesday came and went and I never heard back from them.

Thursday, I was just too busy with some work stuff and just did not even bother with Yahoo! other than just trying to login and once again it did not work. Finally on Friday, after still not being able to login, I tried one last ditch effort. I found within Yahoo!’s pages that there was a way to reset your password if you had ever used a credit card with Yahoo! before. I decided to give it a shot and bam, I got back into my Yahoo! Mail account. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that MY Yahoo! Mail account was not mine anymore….

Somehow, someway, my Yahoo! Mail account had been hacked. Someone changed the name of the account as well as my mailing address which is why I could not reset my password. Even worse, my dear old hacker went through some old emails I had and found information on an account I had on Ebay. The hacker then proceeded to login to my Ebay account and starting bidding and buying like it was Christmas time.

So a great deal of my time this weekend was spent trying to clean up this mess, cancel accounts, change passwords and freeze my credit to ensure that my identity was not stolen as well. Oh by the way, never heard or received back any type of communication from Yahoo!.

Now here is my question, Yahoo! offers the web email free of charge, but even if it is free, don’t they have to have some sort of customer service especially when it comes to situations like this when my account was literally stolen from me and time is of the essence? We are seeing more and more that web companies are willing to give away a great deal of stuff in return for our time and attention on their web sites. What kind of responsibility do these companies take on when they give away things for free?

Oh by the way, I sent an email directly to Jerry Yang about this incident, did not hear back from him either.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, help section, hacked, Ebay

Dear Sprint,

As a marketing guy, some of the things that you have been doing recently has really befuddled me and I would love to understand what you are thinking. The most recent numbers I have seen is that as a company Sprint is losing over 220,000 customers a quarter. The biggest reason for those people leaving is because of Sprint’s poor customer service. You then announced last week that you will be firing over 1000 of your most “problem customers“.

You might of thought this would of freed up some of your call centers, but I believe all you did was give every unhappy customer of yours an idea of how to get out of their contract without having to pay a penalty. If you would be willing to share, I would be willing to bet that your customer service call volume actually increases and not decreases after you kick these problem customers to the curb. If that was not enough, this week you announced a roaming increase from $.50 a minute to $.69 a minute beginning August 1st.

And you have been doing all this smack dab in the middle of the biggest and most anticipated cell phone launch in the history of cellular communications with the iPhone. Oh by the way, The iPhone is exclusive with AT&T (a competitor of yours). Can you share with us just what you are thinking? Cause I just don’t have a clue.

Thanks for your time.

Best (One of many of your ex-customers),

Cord Silverstein

Technorati Tags: Sprint, poor customer service, problem customers, call centers, customer service, iPhone, AT&T

Hopefully someday I will have the opportunity and the time to go back and maybe get an MBA. So let’s start this post with a little business riddle. Let’s say that you run a company that is losing over 220,000 customers a quarter. Your company is plagued and known for having terrible customer service and very long wait times for their call centers. You are in a very competitive industry that is only going to grow as time goes on. What would you do to turn your company around?

If you said fire more than 1000 “problem” customers. You would be right! Well, I don’t know if you would be right, but you would have chosen the same thing that Sprint has just done. Sprint sent out “Dear John” letters to over 1,000 of their customers telling them that because of their excessive complaining, they will be let out of their contracts and will need to find new providers. In other words, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

According to Sprint,

“The average customer calls customer service less than once a month, but the 1,200 clients getting the boot call 40-50 times as often. Rather than continue to operate in a situation that was unsatisfactory for Sprint and our subscribers, we chose to terminate our relationship with those customers to allow them to pursue other options.”

I have mixed feelings about this. If these customers actually called Sprint 40-50 times a month then maybe it was a smart business decision. I would also like to say to the people who really did called Sprint 40-50 times a month, you guys really do need to find a hobby.

Technorati Tags: customer service, call centers, Sprint, Dear John, excessive complaining

A couple of weeks ago, I decided with summer coming it was time to get myself a new pair of sandals. I did what many many other people do when they are searching for something online, I began at a search engine. In Google, I typed in Birkenstock. From there based on the natural search results, I don’t click on PPC, I began looking at many different web sites to see what kind of selection they had, what their prices were and what kind of experience they gave me on their site. In today’s world, what a user experiences when they land on a web site will have a significant impact on not only if that person buys, but also, how that person thinks and feels about the company, brand and products. In other words, if your web site is crap, users will equate your company with crap as well.

As I surfed on these sites, if I ran into any problems like not being able to find what I was looking for quickly and easily, poor content or product pictures, I would immediately close that browser tab and move on to the next result in Google. You have one chance when a user lands on your site, if you do not take advantage of that chance, you most likely will not get another.

After looking at a half dozen different sites, I finally landed on a site that I really liked. The site had a clean look and feel, good navigation, great content and product pictures. Before even knowing what I wanted to buy, I had already decided where I was going to purchase from. After a little bit of time surfing and exploring different styles, I decided. The checkout process was easy and before you can say, “Damn Fricken Hippie” my new sandals were purchased.

Now many E-commerce players out there might believe that this ends the customer experience. I would disagree and say that once an order is purchased, the experience continues with the kind of service a user gets post purchase.

About a day or two later after ordering, I got an email from the company saying that my order had shipped. Fabulous! The company did everything right in the email which included a link to UPS so I can track my order. I clicked on the link with great anticipation to see when I could expect the package and that is when the wheels came off the wagon. UPS’ expected delivery was 9 days. NINE DAYS?!?!?!? Was this package coming in from Neptune or had the pony express come back?? NINE DAYS?!?!?!? What takes nine days to be delivered these days?

Annoyed, I went back to the companies web site and found in very small letters that ground shipping can take from 3 to 11 days. Now maybe I should of looked more closely when I was ordering, but I would guess that I am far from the only person who had ordered from this company and then was surprised at the great length of time it will take for delivery. If that was properly communicated to me during the checkout process, I would of probably been willing to pay more for quicker shipping, but instead this was hidden from me.

This company just lost any chance of me becoming a repeat buyer for them. But even more importantly, they turned a user, me, from a possible customer evangelist into a person who will never recommend this company to his family and friends. No matter where a customer is in the process, the customer experience never ends.

Technorati Tags: search engine, Google, Birkenstock, PPC, E-commerce, customer experience

UPDATE: Friday 10:50 AM. I am sorry folks, but the petition site I chose is having all kinds of technical problems so I have switched it to a new site. If you have already signed up for the petition can you do me a favor and click the link again below and sign the new petition? I am sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you!

In response to my earlier post, that Circuit City has announced that they are laying off 3,900 of their best employees just to hire less experienced ones, I have created an online petition to try to get Circuit City’s attention before they go through with this. I want to ask everyone if they would not mind to go and sign the online petition. We will be sending it to Philip J. Schoonover, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Circuit City.

I am also posting below an image with a link to the petition site. Any of my fellow bloggers that would like to take the image and post it on their own site, please absolutely feel free to do so. If you do not know how to upload images to your own site, I am supplying the code that all you need to do is copy and paste it and drop it on your blog. I appreciate your help very much. It is time that companies realize that they cannot get away with things like this and expect us to continue to give them our money.

I know my graphics abilities are limited so if anyone wants to create a better image, please feel free. For anyone who just wants the code please just copy and paste below:

<a href=”http://www.petitiononline.com/CircuitC/petition.html”><img src=”http://www.marketinghipster.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/circuit_city_petition.gif” border=”0″></a>

First off, I want to apologize for the lack of posts over the last week or two. Work responsibilities has taken a great deal of my time, but I am absolutely going to try to make sure I am posting on a much more regular basis. So without further adieu, let’s get to some news.

Dell announced the release of two new programs, Studio Dell and IdeaStorm. Studio Dell is a video application that allows people to view videos about Dell and it’s computers, technology and tech tips. While Dell IdeaStorm is to be an honest, a blatant Digg knockoff where people can make suggestions to Dell on their company, computers, etc. Now even though there has been some rumblings in the blogosphere about Dell ripping off Digg, I personally think both of these applications are a great step in the right direction for Dell. For a very long time, Dell was known for their customer focus and service, but between Dell shipping all their customer support to India as well as numerous other problems, they have lost their luster and their reputation has suffered.

In regard to Dell’s IdeaStorm, what will truly determine it’s effectiveness and success is what Dell does with this feedback. Anyone can ask for suggestions, but if you do nothing with it, very quickly users will realize that they are just yelling at the moon and move on. It’s interesting because some of the most popular suggestions are issues that I don’t think Dell can do anything about. For instance, bar none, the most popular and numerous suggestions are about Dell’s customer service in India. There are many posts of people requesting that Dell bring it back to the US. While I would love to see that happen, I think that will happen right around the same time hell freezes over.

One of the other great suggestions is Dell shipping their computers without all the BS software on it. I am referring to AOL, EarthLink, etc. Wow, I would not of even thought of that, but that is a great idea. When I buy a new computer, the first thing I do is uninstall all of those offers. Though just like the overseas call centers, the software offers add revenue to Dell’s bottom line and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

What will be definitely interesting to see is if Dell does anything with these comments or is this yet another example of a company putting all their efforts trying to make themselves look better instead of actually being better.

Technorati Tags: Dell, Studio Dell, Dell IdeaStorm, Digg

Before I begin, I want to give you a little bit of info on me. I hate to shop. Going into stores and walking around with a lot of other people is not my cup of tea. Going to a mall is what my nightmares are made of. I won’t even drive past a mall, let along go into one. Now you know my feelings on real world shopping I can begin.

Last night coming home from work, I had to stop off at the dry cleaners. In the same shopping center as my dry cleaners is a Staples. I have been meaning to pick something up so I decided since I was going to be there, I might as well go in and by what I needed from Staples instead of just ordering it online like I usually would. <– Mistake #1

I go into Staples try to find what I was looking for, no luck. A good employee saw I was floundering and came over to help. He knew exactly what I was looking for and showed me right what I was looking for was located. Fabulous customer service, life is good so far. I looked at a couple of options I had to choose from and finally decided on one and took it to the register. <— Mistake #2

There is of course only one register open and it is staffed by a two people (one woman and one man). The woman had a big TRAINEE sticker on her shirt. Naturally, my powers of intuition took over and I realized that the woman was new and training and the man was her trainer. Ok then. There were 3 or 4 people in line waiting to be rung up and a woman at the register writing a check for her purchase. I was prepared for the woman check writer as there is a law in North Carolina that says anytime I go into any store of any kind, a woman standing in front of me in line must write a check. But that is a totally different subject.

The check woman is finally gone and it seems that I might get out of there before my 9 am meeting this morning when all of a sudden the dreaded phone rings. Not mine, the store phone. The trainee stops ringing people up and begins to talk on the phone. This could be my greatest pet peeve in the world.

Dear store owner/manager, I am in your store. I am in line waiting to check out and more than willing to give you my hard earned money. Though instead of paying attention to me, let’s have your employee focus their attention to someone on the phone who is sitting at their home, on their butts eating Bon Bon’s and watching Oprah! Which by the way is exactly what I would like to be doing if you would let me out of here!!

Anyhow, this went on for like 3 minutes and then finally I had enough. I said in a louder tone for everyone and all to hear, “Excuse me, it is time you hang up with whomever is on the phone and actually take care of the people who are here in your store and wanting to buy!” <– Mistake 3

Between you and me, looking back, I might have been a bit harsh. After saying it, the trainee had that deer in a headlights look and I have no doubt she was either going to cry or jump over the counter and stab me with a jump drive. I did apologize for raising my voice to her when it was my turn, but at the time, I think the only thing she was hearing was the loud cursing coming from inside her head.

I think the only good decision I made during this trip to Staples was that I paid in cash so there is no chance that trainee girl can track me down.

What’s your biggest pet peeves when it comes to customer service?

Technorati Tags: customer service, Bon Bon’s, Oprah