Shep Hyken

Spirit Airlines made it big in the news this past week, for two reasons. Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons.

Spirit Airlines is known as a low-cost, no-frills airline.  They charge extra fees, as many airlines do for baggage.  They even charge for carry-on bags that go into the overhead compartment.  More on that in a moment.  First, the big PR nightmare for Spirit came when Jerry Meekins, a Vietnam veteran who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, asked for a refund because his doctor told him not to fly.

The response from the customer service rep at the airline was flat out, “No.”  The rule is no refunds and that’s the rule.  It’s company policy.  Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza supported his employee and made it clear that he would not refund the $190.00 airfare.  That was until Mr. Meekins went on a national public relationships campaign to get all veterans (and others) to boycott the...

Recently I had an email exchange with Jeff Frank of Simplicity Sofas, an online furniture retailer.  Simplicity Sofas uses their website as a showroom, and have evangelized their customers who give some of the best word-of-mouth advertising ever.  Jeff shared an email exchange that is worth featuring in an article.  One of his customers had a problem.  Read the email and you’ll be… amazed.  What would the world be like if all problems or complaints were handled like this?

Hi Mary,

It’s nice to hear from you.  Simplicity Sofas has come a long way in the 3 1/2 years since you bought your sofa.  I am attaching a summary of what has been happening to us since then.

Since we first opened in November, 2007 Simplicity Sofas has now sold its furniture to over 2500 customers.  In all that time the company has never received a negative review either from a customer or from...

For this last week in April, the final week of International Customer Loyalty Month, I want to share several more interesting statistics about customer loyalty. These statistics focus mostly on Business to Consumer types of businesses, and while the numbers may not apply to Business to Business, the concepts do. Read them with the idea of how the concepts apply to your industry and company.

Ed Hadley, Senior Marketing Manger of Neolane, Inc. posts in Cross Channel Conversation Blog the following statistics:

The average U.S. household has enrolled in more than 18 customer loyalty programs, but is only active in 8.4. (Colloquy, “The Billion Member March: The 2011 COLLOQUY Loyalty Census”) My take: Just because someone signs up for your loyalty program, it doesn’t mean...

Usually I send out just one newsletter every month.  Once in a while I send out more than one, and this is one of those times.  First, it’s still April, and that means we’re still in Customer Loyalty Month.  What are you doing to build a stronger relationship with your customers?  And second, we’re still celebrating the one year anniversary of “The Amazement Revolution” which hit the major bestseller lists including “New York Times,” “Wall Street Journal” and more.

If you read the last article, you read a list of customer service tips that anyone can put to use immediately.  This is the second half of the list of 40 quick customer service tips.

By the way, the last article actually had two lists.  The first was a list of ten much desired outcomes as a result of delivering excellent customer service.  The second list was the first...