Continue reading »]]> As you may know, I’m a big fan of Twitter for a variety of reasons.  However, my favorite reason is to create relationships with people and companies with whom you otherwise would not have contact.  Take two recent examples of excellent customer service by two different companies with a presence on Twitter.

First, an experience with Granite City Food & Brewery (@gcfb on Twitter).  I’ve recently committed to making running a part of my regular routine, and as part of this commitment I’ve become much more conscious about what I eat.  To that end, I like to check the nutritional information of restaurants before I eat there, just to get an idea of my options.  It turns out Granite City doesn’t post their nutritional information online.  I tweeted about this, and it wasn’t too long before I got a direct message from Granite City offering me contact information for the proper person to contact about obtaining the nutritional information.  We exchanged a few tweets, and all was good.  I’ve always been a fan of Granite City, and their reaching out to me just increased my fandom.

The second was an equally satisfying experience in the end, but started with frustration on my part, and involved Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets on Twitter).  You see the line was über long, and wasn’t moving.  The staff was cranking out the online orders, and the line grew to some 60+ people standing staring at the staff.  I tweeted about my frustration, and it wasn’t long before I had a response from Chipotle asking me to fill out a form on their website.  I did this, exchanged a few more tweets, and was satisfied.  Fast forward a few days, and I get an email from their marketing department indicating:

I agree with you that there must be a better way to handle the mix of customers and online orders. I apologize for the long wait that you experienced as a result of our poor customer management, I can understand how this would be frustrating. I’ll forward your comments along to our store and local area managers so they can help our teams to better manage these competing needs.

Since we let you down I’d like to try to make it up to you. If you’ll give me your address I’ll send you a Burrito Buck – good for one free burrito, bowl, salad or tacos entree. I’m confident that your next experience will be much more pleasant.

Very cool, and very responsive.  Despite an otherwise disappointing experience, Chipotle reached out to me, validated my feelings, and indicated they’d be discussing their handling of future similar situations.

Often times, when I’ve had a poor experience, I just want to know my concern has been heard, and that my concerns will be used to make my next experiences better.   Both companies did an excellent job of reaching out to me, and addressing my concerns.  Best of all both companies reached out to me without me having to reach out to them directly.  Proactive customer service is even better than the sit back and wait model that seems to be so common today.

Continue reading »]]> In Minnesota, auction start times have traditionally been scheduled for 10:00 a.m.  A few years ago, we moved our start times to 9:30 a.m.  We thought it might help us get a jump on the competitors in the area – especially on days when there are numerous auctions in the local area.  

At today’s auction, we again experimented with the start time.  Rather than go with the traditional start time of 10, we went with a start time of 8:30 a.m.  It was a bit scary because we didn’t know if people would get out of bed so early on a Saturday morning.  Well, by 7:30 it was obvious we were misguided in our assumption that people wouldn’t be raring to go at 8:30.  Quite the opposite was true.  We had over 200 numbers out before we started the auction at 8:30.  

By early afternoon, I was conducting a very unscientific poll of bidders to see what they thought about the early start time.  Much to my happiness, and somewhat surprise, the early start time received many positive comments.  They mostly centered on buyers being able to come to the auction spend most of the auction there, and still be home by 1 or 2:00 p.m.  

I’m hoping that we learn from this lesson, and make a decision as a company to move our auction start times to earlier in the morning.  There are a few cold snowy days in the winter that would prevent winter days from starting so early.  However, there is no reason the other 8 months can’t be spent starting auctions early in the morning.

On a related note, we held a real estate open house a few weeks back that ran from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.  The open house time also received great reviews.  Perhaps, at the initial urging of our clients, we have stumbled onto a concept that might help fight the 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. mass exodus that seems to happen at most auctions.