In a post dated June 2, 2008, Sherri Wynters describes three Customer Service ideas that she suggests will gain Customer Loyalty. I certainly agree with the assertion that Customer Service is generally poor, and her suggestions for personal followups, calming words and phrases and giving value for inconvenience ring true.

I can look at two recent situations where I had intensive interaction with customer service reps (all in-house). With Verizon, I spent literally six hours each on two occasions trying to figure out why my cellphone would not properly interface with my Mac. After several bouts of ever-increasing frustration, I asked the "supervisor" what she could do to help me. She suggested a minutes credit with a value of $3.00 - except to me it had no value, I never exceed my minutes!

Then, on Monday, the hard drive crashed on my MacBook. After dealing with very high quality phone support, we determined that a visit to the store was proper. The rep set up an appointment which was quite near to on-time, I was called when it was done, and I'm back and running.

The difference was clear - and the reason for it was pretty clear, too. Verizon trained its support staff to keep its customers at a safe and comfortable arms-length distance - putting up a "force field" of policies, procedures and roadblocks that frustrated my efforts. Apple, on the other hand, trained its support staff to guide their customers to solutions (and, no doubt, bringing us further into the Apple family. Which one will I visit next when I need a new cellphone? Guess...

The universal lesson? If you want customers to come back, you offer a high quality product, along with customer service that advocates for the customer - instead of defending against your customer. Outsourcing vendors can - and should - begin to raise the bar for service quality and efficiency - customers will follow.