founder of naked leader
What Alison Knew, that Blackberry Didn’t
Time to Read – 90 seconds
What Alison Knew, that Blackberry didn’t, is that when something goes wrong for a customer, it is time to communicate, and some.
Moments of Truth is the name given to an award winning customer initiative by Ford Retail, led by John Leathem, Customer Relations Director, described as:
There are some specific points during a customer’s
experience where we are judged and where we have to
stand up and be counted. We call these Moments of Truth.
Every month people are nominated for awards, and a recent one caught my eye- Alison Sutcliffe, Dealership Secretary, Bradford, applied the Moment of Truth – HEAT (Hear, Empathise, Apologise, Take Ownership) principle to deal with a complaint effectively:
“Despite a customer complaint belonging to another dealership, Alison took ownership.
She kept in contact with the customer and liaised with the Barnsley dealership to ensure the customer went away satisfied. She kept her promises; always calling the customer back to keep them updated. I think she went the extra mile as she could have easily
passed this complaint back.”
If only Blackberry had applied these same principles when their customers experienced major disruption across the world last week.
What Alison knew that Blackberry have hopefully learned is that customers want to know what is happening and be kept up to date – communicated with – on when the problem will be fixed.
Yes, the Blackberry problem affected millions, and Alison had just one customer. But Blackberry has a major Public Relations machine and open access to the 24 hour, Omni present media – TV, Twitter, Facebook and the rest, through whom they could have kept in contact with every single customer.
Customers are unhappy when things go wrong, they are even unhappier at being ignored.
David
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Big business is too big to care. Customer Service is completely non existent from anybody. The businesses do not pay their alleged Customer Service Agents enough to care and all they want to do is take their money and go home. They will not be penalised for their attitude and as long as it doesn’t affect them, they really don’t care. Well done to Alison for taking the complaint on board and for letting people know what is happening. That’s all we want to know what is happening!!
I’m not sure that Blackberry left its customers uninformed. They couldn’t use the Blackberry netword to communicate to customers as this was affected. They used the national media to communicate this problem and whilst it may have left customers upset I don’t think that it was down to lack of Blackberry communicating. Blackberry resolved the problem as soon as they could and sometimes its not always possible to give assurances when the service would be back. Most customers where upset as they where paying for a service they could not use. Blackberry should rightly reduce this amount off the next bill. By the way I m not a Blackberry fan, I prefer Apple.
Blackberry? Why have one? They are a thing of the past as everyone moves on to the I phone or the Galaxy S2 which is superb.
The buttons on the Blackberry are so small it’s a wonder that anyone with anything other than petite fingers can use them.
I’ve always had a Blackberry and been impressed. Customer service notwithstanding!
Nothing wrong with the customer service, they did what they could in the circumstances. How could they contact people by phone? Like I say, they did what they could.
I phones are better. what more proof do you need?
Blackberry are getting walloped for their faux pas but could it have been avoided? There head office is in Slough. It’s major stuff to have an office there. Just ask David Brent!
I have always had an I Phone and can’t believe there is a better phone out there anywhere.
Hopefully, Blackberry will learn from their experience.
Blackberry is underrated in my view. Excellent phone, excellent service.