I was in the sandwich shop today buying a sandwich, and I was
treated so badly I determined not to ever return to that particular
store.  While that may not be remarkable in itself, it made me think,
“How many of my customers (or ex-customers, perhaps, by now) feel that
way?  I determined to go straight back to the office and educate myself.

I called a customer who had done business with us for a long time,
but whose orders had started to dwindle.  “Hey, Bob, Allan here.  How’s
it going?”  The response was much more curt than I expected.  “Fine,”
said with some finality.  “Well, the reason I called was I had a bad
customer service experience at lunch today, and thought I’d call some
of my best customers to see how their experience has been dealing with
me.”

At that point, I got an earful.  Not only had his experience with my
company not been a happy one, there had been some sort of problem
almost every time he dealt with us.  I was shocked and appalled.  I
didn’t know what to say.  I begged his forgiveness, made several
promises and hung up with some hope of resurrecting our relationship. 
Several more calls revealed other problems (though none quite as big.)

I realized that somebody in my organization didn’t see things and
feel about things the way I did (big surprise.)  What was a surprise,
however, was how big a problem I had without even knowing.  I thought
we were doing great.  We had company meetings on the importance of
customer service, and the word inside our company was that we were
doing great.  I hadn’t gotten any contrary word from outside our
company, so I thought everything was fine.  Needless to say, we made
some radical changes (in personnel, as well as policy) and started to
move forward.

It comes down to this:  I could have lost everything, all for the
lack of caring on the part of some $5 per hour person.  I had let
myself become complacent.  In the early days, I dealt directly with our
customers every day, but as we grew, I was distracted by other — “more
important” — things.  My proposal to you is, there is nothing more
important to your business than your customers.  If you haven’t talked
to your customers in the last month, you’re out of touch.

What you don’t know about customer service can hurt you.