A 100% proven way to piss off (and lose) a customer forever.

We all know the phrase that is now de rigueur in retail sales: 

“The customer comes first.” 

I’d like to know a retail company that has thrived over a long period of time with any other modus operandi.

This is the reason I wonder about the long-term prospects for companies that take advantage of booms…

…and let their customer service slide.

The airlines come to mind.

(Judging by the number of complaints pouring in to the FAA, at least.)

Another – more-close-to-home – example?

FedEx.

I deal with them from time to time – most recently, last week:

I was sending a package overseas to a business whose working hours are from 10 AM onwards…

…yet the courier attempted delivery at 8.20 AM…

(Even though I noted that the package shouldn’t be attempted before 10 AM.)

But it’s all right, errors happen – no biggie. I’ll just call customer service and tell them to re-attempt tomorrow after 10…

Only to be met with AI on the other end – which was utterly useless.

And perhaps even worse than being useless…

It was excruciatingly frustrating – it kept telling me if I wanted to sign up for tracking updates…

(Which I already was…)

…and that all the information it could give me was already available on the tracking page.

But somehow, SOMEWAY…

I persuaded it to patch me through to a human operator.

And that human experience? It was actually… great?

The operator apologized for the courier error…

…and said he’d have them put a note on the shipment to be delivered only after 10 AM.

His apology sounded like he truly meant it as well.

I realize this email is not about… well… EMAIL marketing for a change…

However:

Customer service – and how quality it is – is one of the points I pay attention to in choosing who I work with.

And it’s very straightforward why:

I can do my Email Storyselling magic – I can drum you up quite some extra business with my email approach…

But it’s all for nought if YOU can’t actually deliver the damn supplements to your customer.

I’ve been in this space for 9 years now…

And I’ve seen A LOT of supplement brands fail gloriously on the delivery side:

• Order that should’ve arrived in a few days took two weeks…
• Customer opening his box only to see the protein tub had spilt all over it…
• A protein powder arriving clumped into a brick despite being nowhere near expiry…
• A subscription customer getting charged again even though he cancelled (and did it IN TIME…)
• Ordering three tubs of pre-workout but only getting two…

Guess what happens after each of those cases?

They call your customer service.

Now put yourself in the shoes of ANY of those people:

At THAT point in time… when you’re the MOST agitated/flustered… when it’s literally a MAKE-OR-BREAK moment of whether you keep buying from this brand or write them off forever…

How happy would you be hearing AI on the other end?

FedEx can get away with it because they’re the biggest player in an industry with only a few competitors.

You’re not FedEx – you’re much more replaceable.

There are 3000 – 5000 supplement brands out there.

So if you try playing the same game…

…you’ll get flicked off like a bottle cap.

You can probably speed up responses to customers by replacing human agents with AI agents.

That stands…

But perception IS reality.

(Inside the customer’s head.)

So the question then becomes about how the customer feels about the substitution…

…and NOT (only) what the substitution accomplishes.

Spreadsheet merchants can’t wrap their heads around this for some reason.

So if you’re one?

Then nothing I say further will probably help you for that matter. 

In that case, just put this email on the shelf and don’t give yourself too much heartburn over it.

Just you wait though.

(*taps* -> “Why AI might be killing you diabetes-like slowly” on my Email Echoes page.)

If you, on the other hand, take your customer service seriously…