I love posters in Airports becuase they have to convey a simple idea to you very quickly. You’re walking by and the poster has about 1 second to capture your attention, communicate a message and make you remember it.
I saw this DHL poster in the airport in Berlin and loved it:
Ithink it’s the perfect summary of good customer service. I’ve made some customer service mistakes in my time, but the one thing I’ve learned is that you just need to practice saying “Sure, I’d be happy to do that for you.”
Real Life Example
This happened the other day with DropSend. I had a customer email me because he wanted to cancel his account. Well, one of the nice things about DropSend is that you don’t have to ask us to cancel your account. You can do it yourself by just going to the ‘My Account’ page and clicking ‘Please cancel my account’. Bam, your done.
I started writing this response:
Hi xxxx,
We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! All you have to do to cancel your account is login, go to the ‘My Account’ page, and click ‘Please cancel my account’.
All the best,
Ryan
However, after a second of thought, I changed it to:
Hi xxxx,
We’re sorry to lose you as a customer! I’ve cancelled your account for you.
Hope we can serve you in the future.
All the best,
Ryan
It meant I had to spend time logging into the DropSend Admin, searching for his account and clicking ‘Delete’. Time I didn’t want to spend, but looking back, I think it was important.
I never heard from that customer, thanking me for doing this. And I didn’t expect to. But hopefully it made his life a little easier.
anonymous
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:02 am
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should i worry about someone canceling my dropsend account through email?
Mimi
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
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well done. and well done to write about it. you had once somebody who wanted his money back. i think you’ve learned your lesson.
Ivar
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:27 pm
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Do you have a survey for people to fill out upon cancellation and such?
Seems to me that when a user wants to cancel, you could put a link or something in the email asking for some feedback as to why they wants to cancel etc.. Obviously not everyone is going to take the survey, but the few who does, may help you in improving your product…
Then again I don’t own a company, so I may just be unrealistic here…
Jon
September 24th, 2007 at 11:46 am
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It was a nice gesture to perform the task for your user.
I would have found it tough to take the time to help someone to leave though!
jamesy
September 24th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
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I think you should of made more effort to prevent the customer leaving or at least like Ivar suggested speaking to the customer to get some feedback.
Opera the web browser people do this really well when you uninstall their software - try it!
Tamlyn » Keep Walking
September 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
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[…] Just after reading Ryan Carson’s two posts about airport advertising, I was in Johennesburg airport yesterday and noticed these: […]
Craig Swann
October 1st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
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Be a perfect opportunity to inquire about reasons for leaving or input on how to improve or provide necessary service to maintain the customer. The same effort to cancel them could also be put into attempting to understand them or acquire valuable customer input.