If you’ve followed my blog in the past and/or read some of my past entries you’ll know that Customer Experience is something I’m very passionate about. There are two main reasons for this: 1) I used to work on a research team at Forrester Research dedicated to the importance of Customer Experience and showing the real ($$) benefits of companies taking this seriously, and 2) when I moved to Spain I realized how I had really taken customer experience for granted in the US. Spain had a LONG way to go. Fourteen years later the whole Customer Experience “thing” has definitely gained importance over here, but the customer is still not always the priority. In general in Spain I usually go into “Atención al cliente” calls assuming that they will tell me I’m wrong or being the one to blame. Some companies are better than others, but overall it’s still not a priority. You can find a number of past articles in my blog about my experiences.

One thing I’m pretty clear about: customers don’t easily forget bad experiences! Now, as we’re on the brink of a severe economic crisis that is affecting and paralyzing almost all sectors, it’s the best time for companies to show customers that they care about them and give them something memorable. When the COVID-19 crisis is over and things get back to normal (yes they will), I can guarantee that people would be more than likely to do business again with a company that has treated them well and/or showed them care during the crisis than ones that have put their own priorities first or ignored customers during this time of uncertainty.

A couple of my experiences:

• Hotels. I had 2 different trips that have completely gone out the window (and 2 possible out the windows) with this crisis. In both of the non-salvageable cases I wrote directly to the hotels that I had reserved to cancel. In one case I paid for a non-refundable weekend stay at a hotel in Barcelona. Given the situation I wrote asking to use the already-paid for weekend at a later date, not trying to get my money back. I was very happy to receive a personal note back a few days later saying that this wouldn’t be a problem. In the future if I have to make another trip I will definitely consider booking with Hotel Balmoral again. In the other case I had a hotel reserved in Marrakech with free cancellation; I’m still waiting for them to get back to me to confirm the change.
• Airlines. This is a big one. The airline industry is being completely destroyed by this epidemic, and there’s not much that can be done with global travel restrictions. However, again, at some point in the future people will start traveling again and airlines will be back up and running. Although loyalty in the airline industry is pretty much limited to gaining points and not any real loyalty to the brand itself, I’m sure that a customer will be more likely to try to fly with an airline that has treated them well with any reservation cancellations or flight changes during this time than one that has not. I’ve spoken with quite a few friends that had trips that have been cancelled, and they’ve had pretty much a lack of response/clear answers from the airlines. Tomorrow I have to call Iberia to cancel a reservation I made with avios; since it’s not completely cancelling a full-cost flight, but rather one booked with points, it should be easier. Still I’ll be interested to see how they handle the call.
• Online shopping. This is probably one of the few areas that is having an incredible boost these days. All I have to say is thank goodness for Amazon! We may not be able to leave the house, but I’ve been able to order a number of things to keep the kids entertained, and the delay has been minimum.
• Also, another great experience with Mizuno (not related to the current crisis, but just a great example of customer experience): I bought some new running shoes a few weeks, a new style from Mizuno, a brand I love. Unfortunately for whatever reason the new style just didn’t work for me – I tried running with them 4 or 5 times, but every time afterwards ended up with pain in my legs. (I’m pretty sure I was straining some muscles that I wasn’t used to using.) Anyway, I contacted Mizuno to ask if I could return the shoes even though I had already used them a few times. Their response wasn’t 100% clear, but I tried anyway. If not it would have been 140€ thrown down the drain. After shipping the shoes back to Mizuno (with a pre-paid return label) I was happy to receive an email less than a week later acknowledging their receipt, apologies that I wasn’t 100% satisfied and telling me that a credit was already being processed to my account.

Now, as soon as I can actually leave the house and go outside to run again the first thing I will do is order new running shoes from Mizuno. They will definitely count on my business in the future.