one night brand

Have you ever experienced customer service so unsettling that you had to write a letter about it?  Well, my therapy was this week's cartoon.  I won't go into details (it's too painful to relive in full), but I think that "vonage" should be a new verb in Webster's to denote a really bad customer service experience (as in, "Arggh, I've been vonaged")  If Google can become a verb, why not Vonage?

Anyway, it made me think how epidemic bad customer service is.  When you think about how much money and effort is spent on finding and reaching consumers, it seems crazy to throw it all away by not respecting them enough to provide good customer service.  In the early days of smoothie brand innocent, they had a "banana phone" (literally, a phone shaped like a banana) in the middle of their office that would ring with consumer calls, and staff would literally fight over the privilege to answer the phone when it rang and talk to a consumer (anyone in the company could answer the phone).  How refreshing would it be if every brand had a "banana phone" that was actually answered by someone who cared or truly worked with the brand?

 

Comments

[Kate Elzer-Peters]

Hi Tom,
I love your blog! In fact, I love it so much that I have been hounding our artists about creating some cartoons for our blog at Queensboro. I think humor is the best way to grab everyone's attention and explain things.

Our first cartoon went up today, and I am super excited!!!

http://queensboro.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/logo-love/

Queensboro has a "banana phone!" I mean, it is not shaped like a banana, but we do have a super group of Customer Service Reps that sit right in the same room with me (at our warehouse in Wilmington, North Carolina)We work so hard to put our customers first, and we receive lots of great emails because of it.

I wanted to comment to your blog somewhere because I think it is great, and more companies could take advantage of using cartoons to communicate their message. This post was perfect because of Queensboro's "Shirt Phone" mentality! Plus, our logo artists came up with the idea for the comic we posted to help our customers understand file sizes and digital printing.

Thank you for all of the great comics and marketing insight. It has proved a great learning tool for me.