Yesterday I had polar opposite customer service experiences – all in the matter of a couple hours. I was appalled by one, and amazed by the other. I put out a tweet/facebook post about the first (the bad one) and got so much response I thought I’d tell a bit more of the story.

Started when I brought my car in to Toyota of Kirkland (you’ll see why I’m naming them later) for a repair of a door lock. A bit later I get this call, “Mr. Ferrin? Good news and bad news. The good news is the door is covered by the warranty. The bad news is that they’re saying your warranty expired 17 days ago.” (This was a 7-year warranty! Insert heavy sigh here.)

He gave me the number of the insurance company and the conversation on the phone went like this: (no exaggeration…truly)

Me: Toyota has told me that the warranty I bought from you guys expired a couple weeks ago and you won’t honor the repair.
Insurance Phone Guy: Correct. It expired on the 5th.
Me: It’s still the same calendar month. Any way you can honor it?
IPG: No.
Me: I’ve never even used – let alone abused! – the warranty for seven years.  
IPG: Sorry. We can’t help you.
Me: So…you’re telling me you have no flexibility at all?!?
IPG: Let me ask you this? Let’s say your car broke down two weeks before the warranty was up. Would you like it if we called you and said, “I’m sorry, but we’d like some ’flexibility’ on our end, so we’ve cancelled your contract two weeks early”?
Me: Seriously?
IPG: Yeah. I’ve got no flexibility. If we gave you two weeks, we’d have to call every customer we have and let them know we’ve extended every contract.
Me: (borderline speechless at this point) I understand “letter of the law” decisions, but there are also “business” decisions. I’ve refunded people hundreds of dollars before simply because they weren’t happy with something. Did I do the job? Yes. Could I have charged them? Yes. Did I want them to see that people are more important to me than the letter of the law? Yes.
IPG: I don’t know about your business, but this is a contract, and we can’t be flexible.

Click.

I was dumbfounded. After getting a few more things done in my office, I went back to Toyota of Kirkland, where the scene was a little different. Mike said to me, “I’m so sorry about this. I wrote up the paperwork so that you’re not charged for the time our guy was inspecting your car and the other diagnostic testing. You can just go inside and pick up your paperwork. Oh…and by the way…I moved your car to the front of the line for a car wash and vacuum. It’ll be pulled around in about 10 minutes.”

Speechless again. But for a different reason. This guy had actually put some real time and work into this and charged me nothing. And washed my car!

How often do we make “letter of the law” decisions instead of “people” decisions? Don’t we realized that when it comes to business, rudeness sits squarely under the umbrella of the “Penny Wise…Pound Foolish” umbrella?

One guy made me want to tell everyone I know never to use that insurance company again. The other guy – sometime down the road – will probably end up seeing me hand him several thousand dollars the next time I need to buy a car.

What’s your best/worst customer experience story?