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I hear it all the time. “The customer is king.” Or, “Consumers have so many options now, we have to earn their business.” Well, talk is cheap. I keep being told by companies that I’m a preferred customer. Then I deal with them. I’d hate to see how these companies handle people they don’t care about. The crazy thing is that customers should be king. They do have more options than ever before. The only way organizations are going to prosper in tough times is to pay close attention to what customers need and to what makes their lives easier, then to provide it for them—without hassle. This isn’t easy, but it’s essential. Unfortunately, recent experience tells me we have a long way to go. A few weeks ago, my wife and 2 1/2-year-old twins had a flat tire and were stranded on the interstate in our Lincoln Navigator. On my wife’s behalf, I called the premium roadside assistance service that was included with the purchase of my car. A helpful guy in the call center told me that assistance would arrive within 30 to 45 minutes. I pressed him to be sure I could give my wife a sound estimate, and he assured me that he was being realistic. About 10 minutes later, someone called my wife directly and told her it would be at least 90, if not 120, minutes before anyone could get to her. While she was still deciding what to do, the highway’s own emergency service showed up and offered to change the flat for no charge. The service finished changing the tire just as the auto company’s roadside assistance representative showed up. Did he apologize for the confusion about how long it would take to get to my wife? Did he express sympathy about the problems my wife had trying to keep the kids calm? No, he harassed my wife for not waiting for him. Almost as soon as the flat tire got fixed, my brother called me. He said he was surprised I hadn’t said anything about the birthday gift he’d sent more than a month before. I confessed that I had been a little surprised that I hadn’t yet received anything from him. My brother said he had sent a bottle of wine from wine.com. When he checked with the company, a representative assured him it had sent the gift in plenty of time for my birthday. Obviously, it hadn’t, because the next day eVineyard Inc. sent me an e-mail gift certificate. EVineyard never explained the connection with wine.com—eVineyard recently bought the company—and never offered my brother or me a single word of apology for losing his order. AT&T Corp. (www.att.com) has become even more of a nightmare. The company had worked so hard to gain my business. It wooed me away from Sprint Communications Co. (www.sprint.com) for long-distance service even though I had been a Sprint customer since deregulation in the early 1980s. AT&T’s One Rate service got me to use the company as my wireless provider. AT&T convinced me to switch my local phone service from SBC/Ameritech (www.ameritech.com). AT&T sold me broadband cable modem service, which I love. With a little wrangling on my part, AT&T even allowed me to consolidate the bills for all my services and let me pay by credit card. So what does AT&T do? After all this, the company has now decided it would be better for stockholders if it broke into four separate companies. I now get four distinct monthly statements, have to call four different numbers for assistance, and need to visit multiple Web sites to get information or serve myself. I also had to find a file cabinet to keep track of my correspondence with AT&T. The customer is king? Not Yet.
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