With my oldest daughter’s wedding rapidly
encroaching, this weekend my better half and I went shopping for a new suit.
The event itself will be black tie optional, but I later learned that only the groomsman
were mandated to wear a tux. Dark suits for the other male guests were strongly
encouraged.
So, we went to a custom tailor nearby and
were waited on hand and foot, shoulder, leg, and waist - literally. The sales
rep took the requisite measurements, gave us the choice of everything from
fabric patches for the suit, buttons, lining and even an optional monogram on
the inside pocket. For those keeping score at home I took it.
Everything was fed into his iPad and
seconds later the finished product was imaged for our inspection. Of course,
the actual suit would take several weeks to complete, but we both were
non-plussed by the customer service.
Now we’ve all heard testimonials of
companies that consistently get high marks when it comes to customer service,
which in my humble opinion is rapidly becoming a lost art. Like Nordstrom of
Seattle, which legend has it, allowed someone to return a car tire even though
the company does not retail automotive parts. Or a restaurant company whose
name escapes me at the moment, sent one of the servers to a nearby McDonald’s
when a child guest complained that there was nothing on the menu they liked.
Like someone once told me, customer service is not giving customers what they expect, it’s giving them more than they expect.
And it’s no different among CPAs who give
great customer service to their clients have a far greater chance of retaining
them.
Along those lines, I recently read an
article which chronicled entire cities – as opposed to single companies - that
had subpar customer service ratings. Usually, companies with the most customers
have the most customer service complaints lodged against them whereas
“platinum” retailers such as Bentley or Brietling for example, whose products
often exceed a price tag of 300K, have far lower incidents.
Thus, a company called
tollfreeforwarding.com used two methodologies to arrive at the worst customer
service city in America – Google search trends for number of complaints from
April 2020-April 2021 and FCC complaint statistics for each state/city.
With 100 representing the bottom, the
cities with the worst customer service ratings were in order:
1.
Pittsburgh 81/100
2.
Baltimore 74/100
3.
Atlanta 74/100
4.
Richmond 73/100
5.
Sacramento 72/100
6.
Orlando 69/100
7.
Las Vegas 68/100
8.
Jacksonville 66/100
9.
Miami 62/100
10.
Tampa 59/100
I guess I won’t be buying
suits at these cities anytime soon.
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