Companies make mistakes. Sometimes you receive service that is below your expectations, even at good/great companies. It happens sometimes. How you can really tell the quality of a company is how they respond to those situations. In a national news example, Jet Blue's recent bout with customer service was seen as some to be a disaster. But the aftermath showed the strength of the company and their commitment to customer service (CEO Apologizing - youtube). My own experiences with Jet Blue show the same. Of course things go wrong. But they try and fix them.

Apparently DSW is one of those kind of companies. I mentioned them a few days ago (no link provided on purpose, let's leave it in the past) for not having transferred a discount on the same ticket upon a return. Their response was a classy way of handling things. They let me know first what they're doing to retain me as a customer, mention that supervisors are being alerted (so I feel like this is going somewhere), point out that there is no standard in the industry but they will at least explore the option of inputting my suggestion.

The result: I look forward to returning to DSW.

That's how you should handle customers. Like Ryan (BJ Novak) says in The Office (US), it's ten times more expense to get a new customer than to retain an old one. We should expect little expenses in customer retention, but ultimately, those customers should make it worth it.

Labels: dsw, marketing