The Haggler: Advice to Customer Service: Don’t Blame the Computer

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You're the Boss Blog: When the Customer Is Not Right

An owner’s dispatches from the front lines.

I have a friend who has an 18-year-old son. He is a big kid, with a friendly disposition and a kind and respectful demeanor. He has a very good part-time job at a respected restaurant in an affluent suburb of Chicago. He works at the carryout counter where he reviews customer orders, asks the customers if there is anything else he can get for them, and then asks if they need help carrying their food to their cars. He has worked there for more than a year, and I’m sure the training and support he has received will serve him well in future jobs.

Recently, I happened to ask his mother how the job was going, and she gave me a disappointing report. Last week, she said, a customer came in to pick up an order, looked at her son and asked him to say, “What’s happening!”

Did I mention that the young man is African-American? And for those too young to remember, there was a well known character on a 1970s sitcom called “What’s happening,” who was black and obese, wore a red beret and suspenders, and would go around saying, “What’s happening!” His name was Rerun, and he was played by an actor named Fred Berry.

Now some of you may think, “What’s the big deal?” — but I hope not many. To most people, this is offensive, and whether you consider it stereotyping, ignorance or racism doesn’t matter. What does matter is that this teenager went home, related the story to his mother and cried. He doesn’t understand why someone would ask him to do that, as if he is there for their amusement.

But here is the worst part, the part that makes me sick as a boss, as a father and as a friend. He felt obligated to say the line, because he was trained to take care of customers, to do whatever he has to do. His mother told him that he should have said, “I’m not really comfortable with that.” And that is certainly a better answer than I came up with. But her son is not sure what the company would think of that response.

And I understand why he feels that way — even though I happen to know the owner of the company, and I am pretty sure he would be horrified to hear the story. I believe the owner would give him advice similar to his mother’s.

This is not the only uncomfortable situation he encounters. His mother tells me that about once a week, after he reviews an order with a customer in his charming and pleasant manner, and leaves the room (but remains within earshot), a white customer will say to the white cashier something like, “He’s so nice! I didn’t expect that.”

I’m not sure what’s worse, thinking it or saying it. But I’m very sure the cashier is uncomfortable, and I’m pretty sure these customers are clueless about what they are doing. Granted, no one is getting shot, pulled over or accused of a crime, but there is damage done. I asked his mother what she says to him when this happens? She said she tells him that there is racism in the world and that it will always be there. I cringed. I asked if she was sure it was racism and not ignorance. She said it really didn’t matter — it hurts either way. She said that for the first 14 years she did say it was ignorance, but at some point she got tired of defending ignorance and painting a rosy view of her world. It gave me a different perspective.

As a boss, I believe I have a responsibility to make sure my employees understand the difference between dealing with an angry customer and dealing with abusive behavior — or perhaps in this case, ignorant and rude customers. The white cashier could ask “Why would you be surprised?” This might actually do the customer a favor. As for the “what’s happening?” customer, I’m sure that he’ll be back, and I’m sure he will do it again — because he probably thinks he’s being funny and friendly. I am hoping my friend’s son will muster the nerve to say, “No, I’d rather not.” I think he needs to speak with his boss.

What would you tell your employee?

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

The Haggler: At Quicken Loans, a Culture Geared to Customer Service

REMEMBER the recent column about DailyCandy, the e-mail service for discount deals, and the customer who sent e-mails for six maddening months, trying to get an $85 refund?

Well, after the matter was thoroughly investigated, we learned that an employee at Group Commerce, which handles DailyCandy’s order fulfillment, had marked the refund as paid, even though it wasn’t.

This explanation, of course, explains very little. What we still want to know is why so many companies, in similar circumstances, fail to deliver. Time and again, you get the sense that these companies are filled with employees who are trained to keep their heads down and keep stamping. Or perhaps communication has broken down. Or it’s always someone else’s job.

How did so much customer service become so wretched? It’s a mystery that hangs over nearly every one of these columns.

Not long ago, the Haggler got an idea of what is going wrong after a close look at a company that is getting it right. It was during a trip to Detroit where the Haggler — or, rather, his duller, windier alter ego — reported a story about Dan Gilbert, the founder of Quicken Loans, a privately held mortgage lender. The article looked at Mr. Gilbert’s efforts to revive downtown Detroit, but while there, the Haggler got a close look at a company that has thought seriously about how to keep customers happy.

The thinking has paid off. Quicken Loans was rated highest in customer satisfaction among mortgage originators in 2010, 2011 and 2012, according to J. D. Power & Associates. The company has also been ranked in the top 30 of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” for 10 consecutive years.

What is Quicken Loans doing to earn such accolades? It boils down to culture.

Mr. Gilbert and Bill Emerson, the chief executive, spend a lot of time and energy instilling a very particular work ethos into employees. For newcomers, this involves a daylong speech/indoctrination led by Mr. Gilbert, who, on the day the Haggler caught his act, spoke for eight hours, with a break for lunch, wearing a clip-on red bow tie. (Presenting the serious in the guise of the slightly comic, with plenty of punch lines, turns out to be one of his specialties.) The speech occurs once every five weeks or so and is delivered to recent hires, usually in a conference room of a hotel.

You can learn a lot about Quicken Loans from this presentation, which revolves around the company’s “isms,” a set of pithy summations of principles. Some, like “Responding with a sense of urgency is the ante to play,” are self-explanatory. Others, like “Every client. Every time. No exceptions. No excuses,” come with their own wittily phrased elaborations. (“Clients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”)

And many, like “We’ll figure it out,” make sense only with elucidation: “Not everything comes with a set of instructions. The innovators of the world are often exploring uncharted territory.”

Let’s stipulate that none of these ideas are blazingly original, and some are so obvious that one wonders why it’s necessary to say them aloud. (“It’s not about who is right, it’s about what is right.”) But what Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Emerson have done is create a set of expectations as well as a sense of community and mission. Employees at Quicken Loans have it hammered into them: care about the customer, sweat every detail, improvise when you need to, always deliver.

These employees are also encouraged to enjoy their jobs; they work in an atmosphere so buoyant that the Haggler was not surprised to find a karaoke machine in a room filled with a few hundred mortgage bankers.

“If you don’t create a culture at your company, a culture will create itself,” Mr. Emerson said in a phone interview. “And it won’t be good. I sometimes hear people say ‘We don’t have a culture at our company.’ They have one. But if it hasn’t been nurtured, if no one has spent on any time on it, you can assume it’s the wrong culture.”

THE Haggler can think of a dozen problems brought to this column that it’s hard to imagine could have emerged from Quicken Loans. And here is just one small piece of evidence:

A few weeks back, when the Haggler was trying to get the attention of DailyCandy, he turned to Twitter. Using his Haggler account, he sent a post into the ether, asking someone at DailyCandy for a call. No one ever replied.

Last month, the same experiment was tried with Quicken Loans, though the Haggler raised the degree of difficulty a little. A post was sent from a Twitter account opened by the Haggler with a name that was not the Haggler’s — or that of anyone he knows. The post had no hashtag and was not sent to Quicken Loans’ Twitter account. The message read:

“I am not happy with Quicken Loans! And you can tell because I used an exclamation point.”

A response arrived within hours. “How can I help?” wrote a Quicken Loans employee, identified as Bianca. “Please send me an e-mail,” she added, providing her e-mail address.

This turned out to be Bianca Mutti, part of a team that monitors the Twittersphere for Quicken Loans-related comments. The Haggler sent her an e-mail last week, from his Haggler e-mail account, and explained: “That tweet was a test. And you passed.”

“Thanks for solving this mystery for us!” she wrote back. “I mean it, and you can tell because I used an exclamation point.”

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

The Haggler: Companies That Get Customer Service Right

EVERY few weeks, the Haggler receives e-mail from happy customers eager to praise companies that have treated them well. Given the howls of dismay and fury that typically fill the Haggler’s in-box, these letters are startling and exotic — like finding a yogi in a mosh pit. When enough unsolicited huzzahs pile up, the Haggler likes to present them in a column.

Why? Because the Haggler’s never-ending quest for an improved, more responsive service economy includes the occasional round of applause for companies that get it right.

And further, if all you knew about the consumer experience in this country was learned from this column, you’d never leave the house. Or answer the phone, or order anything online. Which is a highly skewed portrait.

So with that preamble, the Haggler steps aside and hands the microphone to a species that is rarely spotted in this space: the satisfied customer.

Recently, our three-year-old Cuisinart coffee maker started making noises akin to a strangled parrot, and then ended its life with a theatrical puff of smoke, like a magician’s finale. When contacted about this, Cuisinart — which is owned by the Conair Corporation — immediately shipped us a newer and better machine, even though ours was long out of warranty. The company also provided a box to ship the old one back, presumably for an autopsy.

The whole process took less than five days. Well done, Conair. You have a customer for life.

CRAIG STUART-PAUL, Catonsville, Md.

•

Several months ago I bought one of those LED light bulbs that are supposed to last a couple of decades. It was a Philips that cost nearly $40 and I expected it to outlast me.

It died after five months. To my surprise, when I called to complain, Philips offered to refund the purchase price plus the sales tax. They asked only that I return the dead bulb, presumably so they could determine why it failed. A couple weeks later, a check for $40 came in the mail, along with a prepaid label for me to return the bulb.

Very impressive.

BILL FARREN, Monroe, Conn.

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You are sort of the Miss Lonelyhearts of the retail world. So, I thought you might like to know that I just bought a ton of stuff from West Elm and it all went flawlessly. I talked to human beings — not answering machines — several of whom called me to arrange delivery times and inform me that back-ordered items had arrived. I thought this might brighten your day a bit.

NANCY LEROY, Montclair, N.J.

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After about five years of faithful service, my TiVo digital video recorder died. The company offered a good price on a replacement if I sent back the dead unit, which I did. However, I neglected to remove the cable card before I shipped the unit. I didn’t realize my error until the new unit arrived.

I sent an e-mail to TiVo, asking if there was any way they might be able to locate my cable card and send it back. They wrote right away and said they would contact the warehouse, but that it might be difficult.

Lo and behold, a week later a package arrived with my cable card, saving me $75 to replace it and earning TiVo my everlasting customer loyalty. This is the way to run a business and retain customers.

PAUL C. MENDELOWITZ, Park Ridge, N.J.

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My husband recently took a flight from Appleton, Wis., to Eugene, Ore., a trip that included a stop in Portland. The Portland-to-Eugene leg was canceled, so he rented a car in Portland and drove to the Eugene airport. He arrived right around 3:30, which was great because that is when I was supposed to pick him up.

We contacted Delta Air Lines and it responded promptly, politely and apologetically and agreed to refund the unused Portland-Eugene ticket. It would not refund the $100 for the rental car and gas, but offered a $100 gift card from a small selection of companies. My husband went with L. L. Bean.

Given what I read in your column, this all seemed amazing.

ELLEN JOHNSON, North Bend, Ore.

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A U.P.S. driver came to my door with a prepaid label to pick up a baby monitor being returned to Amazon. He accidentally took the wrong box, which contained a rather expensive espresso machine, on its way back to Nespresso for repair, sending it to Amazon instead.

One call to customer service and Amazon found a quick way to handle the problem. The company let me pick a new espresso machine from its inventory, and sent it to me, at no cost.

I’ve always loved Amazon. Now I love it even more.

MORRIS TABUSH, Brooklyn

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I bought a General Electric microwave last summer and upon opening the box found that the clear plastic overlay on the control panel was wrinkled and bubbled. This made it hard to read the symbols on the panel. I thought that I could live with this, but it just got more annoying over time.

I decided to call G.E. customer relations with the expectation that I would probably have to ship it back, at considerable cost. The G.E. representative was pleasant and she asked me to remove the serial number label and to send it to her. “We will send you a refund,” she then said. A check arrived soon after.

DAVID SEGAL, Philadelphia

(The writer, whose name really is David Segal, is not related to the Haggler. But the Haggler still hopes that he will immediately cease and desist from using the name. Please, let’s keep the lawyers out of this.)

•

See? Some companies know how to cultivate loyalty. The Haggler salutes them. Really. And now, having finished that salute, this column will return to its regular programming, which is delivering the written equivalent of a Dutch rub to any consumer-abusing chuckleheads that need one.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.