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You may recall last issue’s editorial mentioned my run-in with a Phoenix hotel. Claiming “it’s our policy,” the hotel refused to refund my deposit because I cancelled my room reservation less than 24 hours in advance. The reason I cancelled was because my flight to Arizona was called off because of bad weather.

A funny thing happened a week or so after that issue of Progressive Distributor started to appear in readers’ mailboxes. The hotel called to say they wouldn’t charge me for the room after all.

“People have been faxing your editorial to us,” the hotel clerk said.

So, thanks to readers of this magazine, I saved $263.

The editorial prompted several people to tell me their own horror stories about poor customer service. One of the worst examples occurred this spring.

High winds during a thunderstorm uprooted a tree, knocking down a telephone line next door to a friend of mine. While repairing the line, an Ameritech repairman cut my friend’s phone line, causing her phones to go dead.

The repairman knocked on my friend’s door and asked if her phone was working.

When she told him it wasn’t, he said, “You’ll have to call Ameritech so I can make the repair.”

“Aren’t you the phone repair guy?” she asked. “Why can’t you just fix it?”

“You have to call it in first so I get the authorization I need.”

To add insult to injury, she had to place two separate calls to get Ameritech to fix the problem its own repairman caused, since she has both a personal and a business phone in her home.

While she called from her cell phone, the repairman was never more than several yards from her home and could have easily fixed the problem, but did not.

There are a couple of lessons in customer service here for distributors. First, examine your company’s customer service policies to make sure they actually add to — not detract from — your goal of providing the kind of service that encourages customers to keep coming back. The second lesson is to make sure your employees are empowered to do what they need to do to keep the customer satisfied. If not, while they’re waiting for authorization, the customer may be looking for a new supplier.

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