No shirt, no shoes, no session

Customer service is a thing of the past. Quality is out the window. It’s garbage in, garbage out. You pay for this, I give you that. You’re not a valued client, you’re a task to be completed as effortlessly as possible.

On a recent trip to Boston, I stayed at a joint in the south part of town. Upon my arrival, I had to wait while the two kids behind the desk finished their pointless conversation so one of them could check me in. Then I had to wait a ridiculous amount of time for the elevator. Once on the fourth floor, I found that my electronic keys didn’t work, either one of them. So I waited once again for the elevator, waited in line again, and said, gimme new keys. I got back up there, and once in the room, I found that hot air was pouring out of the air conditioner, and it was ninety-five outside.

So BACK down to the lobby. I said, I need a room, working keys, and A/C. The manager acted like I was putting him out. He got me keys for another room. I grabbed the business card from the desk and said, if there's another problem, I’m calling from up there. More than twenty minutes after I’d arrived, I was finally in a proper room.

And the evening just got better. I didn’t have a rental car, and there wasn’t much to walk to for dinner besides two chain restaurants. I picked the closest one. It’s a household name, they advertise on TV. Instead of waiting for a table, I decided to eat at the bar. The bartender barely spoke English. I explained very carefully, Grey Goose martini, straight up, NO OLIVES. I hate olives. He asked me anyway, “How many olives do you want?”

“NONE,” I said. “NO olives.”

Okay, he got it that time, although just before he served it to me, he asked me if I wanted it “dirty,” meaning with olive juice. “No, I hate olives. HATE. HATE. Tell me where you're from, I'll google the word for HATE."

I'm not a xenophobe. I'm very well-traveled. But I usually only do business in one language when I'm in Boston.

Instead of the minestrone soup I asked for, he brought me a salad. A little later, I had to stand up in my stool and wave my arms to get my check, because he was too busy schmoozing.

The manager asked me about my experience as I was leaving. I told him the truth. He said he was sorry, but I should be sure to come back next time, as they were always improving their service. Uh-huh.

So consider this. Make your system customer-friendly. If your customers are internal employees or contractors, same deal. Sure, they’re a captive audience, but you WANT your users interacting. If they use a system that stinks, they won’t return, or else they will find workarounds, and this often means that vital information doesn’t get captured. I worked for a place that made stupid customizations to their Salesforce screens, to the point where nobody wanted to use the system, and people started collaborating offline, using different shared folders or even email, which defeated the entire purpose.

As I cover in the book, I worked with a partner who once customized a customer's authorization process so heavily, it took 45 seconds to log in.

DUring initial testing of the Oracle identity suite 11g, the customer feedback wasn’t the most wonderful (and getting real customers to beat your stuff up takes some guts and planning, BTW). “It takes too many mouseclicks to get where I’m going,” was a common comment. “Too many steps to provision somebody.” Well, they took all that feedback, from customers and field ops guys and consultants, and they rewrote a good chunk of the GUI before it went into production.

I love Marriotts. I stay at them all the time. And for a long time, I hated calling their elite line, because I’d punch in all the identifying info in advance, and then when I finally got a person on the line, they’d ask me all that crap a second time, making me wonder why I wasted my &$^#%# time keying it all in. I complained about it, as did many others, and now once you’ve punched in your Marriott id, the person you’re connected to knows everything she (and it’s always a she) needs to know. They take your session and treat it like it's a baby.

Use a natural functional flow, sensible password policies, easy to understand help screens. When you own a piece of somebody’s id, make it look like you care. They’ll get more out of it, and you’ll get more out of THEM.  In the modern, impersonal era of menu-driven EVERYTHING, your system is a stand-in, a proxy for a human voice. Make that system reflect your organization’s values, which should be customer service with a smile, lest you end up with no customers.