With the amount of competition in the world, especially our capitalist society, a single bad or good experience can make or break your opinion about something. When there are a hundred dog food brands, a thousand protein powders, and dozens of car brands, the tiniest things can impact your decisions. However, it’s easy to avoid developing negative feelings for many of those brands since their employees often aren’t selling you the products. You won’t be upset with Purina if the cashier at Petco has an attitude, although it could still give you a negative association with the brand.
A brand we haven’t had bad customer service with
When you’ve had years of positive or status quo experiences with a brand, you’re invested in their product enough to tolerate some questionable times. Within the last two years Sony, Costco, American Express, and Amazon have made some mistakes, but I’ve continued to use their services because the offenses really only cost me money or some replaceable good. More importantly, they had delivered on their promise time and time again for years.
I had a rough flight with Jet Blue once but they rewarded all passengers with vouchers. It wasn’t asked for but still was greatly appreciated. United Airlines, however, is one company that I will never give any business to again. Not only that, but I will definitely tell those who ask me who to fly with to avoid United at all costs because of their unforgivable act of customer service. The original offense was atrocious but it was their failure to follow-up with it that cost them.
Time Warner is another company that falls into that pit of the worst of the worst. I would never give them my personal business, although we have a huge account with them at work. Even though we’ve had issues with Comcast and AT&T that led to our cancellation of their services, we would go back to them. Time Warner would never get our consideration. I would forfeit our ability to watch television before calling them back.
Which leads me to the point. The companies I listed above don’t care about my use of their product. It would take hundreds or even thousands of people to make a dent on their business model and revenue. However, if you’re a young and small company, you can’t get caught with your guard down. You have to think about the grassroots efforts and the small investments in order to succeed when looking at the big picture. Whether your goal is to be the hippest brand or just make a ton of money, in this competitive world, you need a decent enough product to do so. No matter what your position is or what company you work for, customer service is always key and you can’t get caught forgetting that because it can cost you big. If you’ve made a mistake, take ownership, apologize, and try to make it up to the customer because the repercussions can be catastrophic, or they can just be a brush of the wind. Is it worth the risk, though? As always, stay hungry and fit!
