Broken Phones, Promises and Processes

Whenever I arrive at the airport in Tel Aviv, my first stop before leaving the terminal has been to the counter of one of the country's largest cellular communications providers. I have done this three times a year for the past five years. I rent a pre-paid cellular GSM phone. I never question the price. I always replenish the phone account with extra minutes. (Yes, I know it would be cheaper to buy a phone. Don't ask why I rent, but you do have to wonder!) This cellular company always profits handsomely from my business. That is, until yesterday, when it lost me as a customer, likely forever. As in most industries, it has a strong competitor, and next time I will try them out. My experience highlights how the marriage of poor processes and bad technologies can cost a business revenue and hurt profits.

My rented mobile phone died within 48 hours of picking it up. I dialed the main number of the cellular provider from my hotel phone, which transferred me to service. I asked if I could stop into a local store and swap phones. No, was the reply, I would have to travel to one of the service centers and deal with it there. I told them I was only in the country for four days on business and was unable to get a cab to travel to a repair center in the next town. Well, they said, that is all we can do.

Upon leaving Tel Aviv, I left my mobile phone at the airport office where I picked it up. I asked the representative if I could pay only until the time I called the provider for mobile phone replacement. Basically, I wanted a 50 percent discount for having had no phone for three days. The representative had no record of my call to the service center three days earlier, nor any way to look up a call. She looked at the phone I returned and tried to turn it on. When she couldn't, she returned it to the bag and printed out my bill. I said, "So, you are charging me 100 percent of the total for a phone that does not work?" She, of course, had no authority to do anything else but that. None of the five people at the office had any authority to make any decisions, nor was there anyone with more authority whom they could call. I asked if she could at least make a note in my payment record that I was dissatisfied with the service. She said she would write it down and tell her boss. I asked her why she did not just enter it into the system. "Because sir, there is no system."

Would this be your company's response to a long-standing, profitable customer on his or her first encounter with a defective product or bad service? How do you know?

World Cup Fever: Do Your Fans Tattoo Too?

With the excitement surrounding the World Cup, Magnus Soderlund's work on customer loyalty led him to note that the highest level of customer loyalty he could identify was when customers tattoo themselves with the logo of their supplier. The obvious and rare commercial example is Harley-Davidson customers. But in soccer, it's common for fans (not customers) to tattoo themselves with their team's insignia. Are your customers so emotionally tied to your organization that they tattoo themselves with your logo?

In asking that question during the past two years, I've only come across two examples where companies found that their customers had tattoos. Both were in the food industry, where branding is strongly funded.

Do you have an example where customers tattoo themselves? Is there a proxy for tattooing that you've noticed emerging among your most loyal fans? I'd love to hear about it.