A Manifesto for Retail Customer Service

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United Airlines.   ATT.  Citi.  These companies all spend 9% of their annual budgets on advertising to convince us that they offer customer service (Friendly?  No wonder you need to do ads, United--could there be a more hostile customer experience?). Why?   Because they're mean, selfish, miserable brands.

If you hesitate to agree, you obviously haven't ordered anything from Zappos.   I'm not saying they're perfect.   I'm just saying I've never ended up in tears from a shoe order.

So here are some standards.   If your company doesn't pass all of these, you're not offering customer service.   Stop lying!


  1. No automated voice systems (note:  this means none.   No option 7.   Nada.   Humans only.)
  2. Refunds and corrections are posted as quickly as sales are (note:  we all monitor the fact that new sales hit the credit card account in less than a second.   That's your standard for refunds.)
  3. Phone and email are never routed out of the country where the order was placed.
  4. No legal contracts for retail purchases (they only protect the seller--that's not service. Sorry, but fire your general counsel and get back to doing business the right way.)
  5. Single database. (CRM has been around for two decades.   It's not difficult.  Try the Citibike system in NYC.   They know every inch of every one of your rides.   It's run by a bunch of bike geeks.   If they can do big data CRM, so can you, ATT!)
  6. Never, ever use non-contextual positive language:   my current most obscene version again goes to ATT:  "Have I done everything I can to make sure you have a wonderful day?"   What an appalling coverup for the fact that, if you're on the phone with ATT, you're already having a shitty day by definition.   An insulting day.   An ineffective day.   What sort of lunatic HR and training folks came up with this insulting language?

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