24. January 2008 by kevinmhuff.

Early in 2007, a friend of mine moved to London, effectively giving up his right to watch NFL Football. Fast forward to Kickoff Weekend… and enter, Slingbox!

After almost 3 months of flawless slinging, I made the mistake of changing IP providers and my buddy in London lost access to the slingbox, and more importantly, to DirecTV’s NFL Ticket!!

I shipped the slingbox to another friend…but the router they had on their WICKED fast FiOS network wasn’t listed as supported…

This is where the raving begins.

From my remote location, I started an online chat through the slingmedia website. Kathy was my tech. She was incredible! After a minute of quick chatting, she realized she needed to be chatting with the local host, not me as a remote user. I had my friend at the location with the slingbox start a chat session and Kathy grabbed her as soon as she came on. Kathy maintained her chat with me so I’d be aware of progress, and with the permission of my friend, took over control of her PC and edited the router settings enabling port forwarding. It took all of 2 minutes to complete and we were all back in business!!!

Through it all, Kathy was kind, patient, intelligent, singularly focused on a quick resolution, and all-around wonderful to work with, presenting a decidedly better customer service experience with a technical help desk than I’d experienced in quite some time.

Thank you, Kathy and Sling Media, Inc.

Posted in Web and Internet, Retail, Customer Service | 2 Comments »

30. October 2007 by kevinmhuff.

Service has NEVER existed like this. Never.

I was recently in the market for some background soundtracks for several professional podcasts I’m producing. After hours of searching the web, listening to track after track, I stumbled upon the Music Bakery. What a great selection and after a short time I was able to pick out a few tracks for purchase.

The online purchasing and downloading of tracks gave me almost instant access.

Here is where the REAL service kicks in: I received a personalized video-email from Kelly, making sure everything went smoothly and offering me an opportunity to grab a short-term offer from the Music Bakery. I took them up on the offer and thought I had entered the correct promo code but an oversight on my end caused me to pay full price.

I intended to get in touch with the Music Bakery but as I was traveling I put it off until I could come home. I forgot about my plans to contact Kelly for a partial refund when, about a week after my purchase, I received a phone call from Kelly. She simply wanted to make sure everything went smoothly and that I was pleased with my purchase. WOW. I thanked her for her personal touch and then told her there was one thing I thought went wrong. She immediately applied a refund to my credit card and I thanked her again expecting all was done.

Within minutes, I received another personalized video-email from Kelly addressing our conversation, thanking me, and of course inviting me back at any time.

Kelly, YOU delivered service like I have NEVER had before. THANK YOU.

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Posted in Web and Internet, Retail, Customer Service | 2 Comments »

18. October 2007 by kevinmhuff.

OK … if you haven’t heard the rave-worthy story about Zappos Customer Service, you are probably in the blogosphere minority.

I Heart Zappos is a great blog and evidence of the incredible word-of-mouth / viral marketing tool that is the web. (I’ll post elsewhere about why Seth Godin is wrong about word-of-mouth v. viral marketing.)

I already have Zappos website bookmarked and the next time I need shoes (clothes, etc.) and am shopping online, I will strongly consider purchasing from them.

Seth Godin, a popular author, marketer, and blogger comments that he doesn’t believe this is a PR stunt. The fact he has to do that is evidence of our bent as a society. What the company did for this lady was incredible and do you think for a minute they asked her to tell her story (and their story!) on the web? NO WAY! That would be so transparent it would have backfired and we’d be reading a RANT, not a RAVE. (If you like rants, enjoy this blog by Kevin Mogee.)

I am taking a few minutes today, raving about Zappos, because they deserve it. They did nothing for me…but in a world where crap e-mails with fake feel good stories are so commonplace it makes me sick, it is refreshing to read this lady’s Zappos story. Read the I Heart Zappos blog, you will RIGHTLY place Zappos at the top of your online shopping sites.

What other companies are delivering RAVE-worthy service?

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Posted in Web and Internet, Retail, Customer Service | 1 Comment »

18. October 2007 by kevinmhuff.

I recently gave my wife a high quality set of pens I purchased at Office Depot. While away last week on a business trip, she called to inform me one of the pens wasn’t working and asked if I could point her to the receipt. I could not.

She decided to take the pens (without receipt!) to Office Depot and ask for a straight exchange, so this is her story:

“I must have looked lost — having never been in the store before — because when I walked in I was immediately greeted and asked if I needed assistance. I explained the challenge with my new pens, my lack of receipt, and the store employee didn’t hesitate, taking me to the display case where they keep their finer writing instruments. Unfortunately, the exact color pens my husband had purchased were sold out so I couldn’t do an exchange. The employee paused for just a moment, then said, ‘well if these other pens are the same model, would it be OK if I took one of the ink cartridges out of one of them and placed it in your pen to see if it works?’ I was excited he offered because the color of the pens was important to me…overall, it was a wonderful customer service experience.”

Well, the swap worked and my wife is happy with the purchase, possibly even happier with the excellent customer service she received from a store she did not frequent…until now.

Thanks, Office Depot.

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Posted in Retail, Customer Service | 2 Comments »

18. October 2007 by kevinmhuff.

I was dreading my return of some bad headphones to the local Best Buy. It seems most “customer service” experiences these days are really, really horrible. I’ve had quite a few poor interactions with companies, like DirecTV, lately…so when I found myself walking toward the Best Buy front doors I was trying to mentally prepare for the worst.

I was stunned how quickly, cleanly, and hospitably my return was handled. As I approached the Returns desk, there was only one employee working and he was already with another customer. On my way there, another employee noticed and quickly opened another register to help me. One question, “Was there anything wrong with these?” was all I had to answer. The next thing I knew, the smiling employee handed me a receipt that showed a credit was put back on my credit card and we were done.

Way to go, Best Buy! I’ve purchased many, many times at your store, but never have I had service like you delivered earlier this week.

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Posted in Retail, Customer Service | 1 Comment »