MetaFilter posts tagged with customer

The Seven Types of Bookstore Customer

shothotbot — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:12:04 -0800

Hoping to work his way around to describing the graphic novel bookstore he wants to open some day, big box bookstore employee the Rocket Bomber has made strides in natural history by delineating the seven types of bookstore clients. Some snark in the comments has led to a followup post with additional how-to-run-a-bookstore musings.

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile

growabrain — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:47:46 -0800

Zappos brings customer to tears (in a good way)

Get Satisfaction

chunking express — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:12:13 -0800

Get Satisfaction has launched. It's crowd-sourced customer service -- or something like that. "[It's] a new way for customers and organizations to work together to get answers, solve problems, and share ideas to create new and better products & services." It reminds me a bit of Ask.Mefi. I noticed it a while back when Pownce first launched. It is open to everyone now.

Now that's service!

Blingo — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:59:34 -0800

...no one here has any intentions of helping you with anything. I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with.

IT vs User... FIGHT!

smallerdemon — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 15:33:05 -0800

Half of IT managers admit to hating their users... a lot. - But it's ok, because the users hate IT too. No, they really hate IT. Perhaps IT isn't meeting customer demands. And it isn't like either side's attitudes have changed much over time (July 2001).
In the long term, it simply may never work out between IT and the users. After all, IT support is just like any other customer service job. And we all know customers suck enough for people to start web pages about it... again and again.

Alaska Air blows more than a hole in its fuselage

bitter-girl.com — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 09:20:08 -0800

Jeremy Hermanns' flight on Alaska Air #536 was out of the ordinary, to say the least. A baggage handler ran into the plane before takeoff and didn't bother to report it. So when the plane reached altitude, its cabin suddenly depressurized, and was forced back to Sea-Tac Airport. Jeremy, who has experience as a pilot, posted about what happened on his blog. Rather than offer an apology, Alaska Air employees have taken to bashing him from company IP addresses.

This brings up a larger question, though. What should companies do when their products or services fail, and consumers (almost inevitably) discuss it in a public forum? Jeff Jarvis' Dell incident comes to mind. In that link, he mentions Dell's no talking to customers on blogs policy.

Would you rather have a company that reached out to disgruntled customers, or pushed them away? I've seen more than one small software company comment on a blog or take direct action as a result of a post -- is that the preferable route today?

Nasty, Nasty Clients!

13twelve — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 10:17:06 -0800

The customer is always stinky (some swearing and references to genitalia)

tranquileye — Wed, 22 May 2002 13:25:34 -0800

"We have done more than 100 surveys and reports since late 2000 and this survey has the most overwhelming, and negative, response to a company or technology we have ever seen." A survey by investment and research firm ChangeWave of its clients who are current and former subscribers of America Online showed that 40% of respondents were dissatisfied with the service.

tippiedog — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 07:39:25 -0800

No more Muzak™ and classic rock? "The [IBM] interns collaborated on something called Hold Freedom, a way to ease the tedium of being on hold while waiting to talk to a human. The program enables callers placed on hold to listen to news, music of their choice, enter a chat group with other customers or even make another phone call without losing their place in the queue. The choices would be based on personal profiles that the customers had previously completed on the call center to phone company's Web site." (Also cool that the idea comes from summer interns.)