Recently I had the need to call my personal cellular phone company about my lost phone. I also needed help accessing my online account (ok, ok I forgot my password and user ID combination). What transpired during my two contacts to “The Cell Phone Company” (or CPC for Short) was night and day, and ultimately a set of experiences to remember and share.

When I got home on a recent Monday night, I dialed up the 800 number of ‘CPC’ around 6pm. I was eager to make sure the lost phone was not used or abused. I tried to look online to review recent usage but, as I mentioned, I could not access my account. I also needed to restore service to the lost phone number by switching telephone numbers on several phones that we already own. This meant that I needed ‘CPC’ to take one phone that already had an assigned phone number and change it to the lost phone’s number. Then, I needed ‘CPC’ to replace the second number by attaching it to an old phone currently not assigned to any ‘CPC’ telephone number associated with our account. After selecting all the right prompts on the IVR and waiting about 4-5 minutes in queue, I heard the phone system ring into an agent’s extension. Ah! Silence, did I go off into space? Get disconnected? No, not exactly. After I said hello a couple of times, the agent spoke… “Hello this is Rikka, can I help you”.

Customer experience problem #1: Rikka was not ready to take the call. Maybe her headset was not on correctly or maybe she was rushing back to her workstation. I can’t really say other than the impression I got was that Rikka wasn’t prepared to greet the customer. So let’s move on to

Problem #2: Rikka didn’t take gentle control of the call. Yours truly had to take the lead, but I guess you already surmised I’d do that anyway, right? In reality, I was hoping she’d take the lead so I asked if she could tell me what the normal protocol was for reporting a lost phone. My intent was to stop anyone from using the lost phone and I really needed to reassign the lost telephone number to another phone. I never did get an absolute answer from Rikka but she did verify that there was no usage on my phone within the last few days so I thought things were at least looking up with Rikka and we were making progress. Then I asked the tough question. I said to Rikka, “I want to change some phone numbers through a series of changes to the phones I own. Can you do this?” Rikka said with great hesitation and reservation, “Yes I think I can; let me check”.

Problem #3: I wasn’t confident in how she stated the above, so her “confidence quotient” was low in my opinion. After about 3 minutes she came back on the line to start the procedures. I gave her the first phone number change and answered a number of questions she asked. She placed me on hold again for what seemed to be a very long time without explanation.

Problem #4: Long unexplained silent holds with little or no progress is considered service malpractice. In fact, this happened three more times in the next 25 minutes of our conversation. It was becoming apparent that she was searching for “how to’s” but was unsuccessful in finding any help. Either that or she had given up and was staring at her screen without a clue as to what to do. I actually had to ask if she was still there (she also didn’t use the hold key). Finally, at about minute 30 of our call, Rikka threw in the towel (well not exactly, but I knew better). Rikka said that the procedure would take some time to process so I didn’t need to hang on the phone. She said she‘d call me back within the hour. I was ok with this because, a.) I was hungry and this call was eating (pun) into my dinner time and, b.) It was pretty clear to me that Rikka was confused. Problem #5: Two hours passed and no return call from Rikka. She didn’t follow up and broke a promise to the customer. Why I was not surprised?

At 9:15pm, needing to get the use of my cell phone restored, I feared no evil and dialed the 800 number of the ‘CPC’ once again. I was ready to do battle with the poor soul (agent) who would receive my call randomly from the ACD. The winner was Kia. No, not the car; it was the agent’s name.

Customer Delight #1: KIA greeted me with a smile.

Delight #2: After my long winded dissertation about the poor service earlier in the evening and identifying my problems, KIA took real ownership of my issues. She exuded confidence stating, “I’m up for the challenge, Mr. Barber”.

Delight #3: She went right to work on transferring telephone numbers, never placing me on hold. We chatted about the steps she was taking to update the replacement phone. Success was at hand. Challenge number one complete! I said to myself, the next issue is harder. “KIA, I want you to take this old phone I have and make the phone number of the phone we just moved ring to this old phone”. KIA, with confidence said, “Yes” again. Well, Kia hit a roadblock. The KD no longer listed the instructions to reinitialize the old phone I asked her to move. Keep in mind that KIA was communicating all of this to me to keep me informed, again never placing me on hold. Did KIA give up? Not on your life!

Delight #4: KIA thought about it and said, “You know, Mr. Barber, your model (old phone) is a lot like model XYZ. If you don’t mind, let’s try using the steps for the XYZ model to reinitialize your old phone with the phone number you desire”. You guessed it, KIA got it working. So, as impressed as I was, there was one more test for KIA. I needed to gain access to my online account information.

Delight #5: After conducting the proper validation to insure I was who I said I was, Kia not only sent me an email with my proper user and password information, she went the extra mile to reset my password to a word of my liking, then she tested it on her side first to insure that everything was working so the next time I signed on it would be seamless. Going the extra mile frankly WOWed me even more.

The moral of the story is simple. You can spend 30 minutes engaging the customer, as KIA did, to create a memorable customer experience, or you can spend the same 30 minutes to create a memorable disaster like Rikka did. KIA knew that with each call, it‘s a “Moment of Truth”. She instinctively knew that she could make a difference by delivering more than expected. She knew that distinctive service takes commitment. On the other hand, Rikka spent 30 minutes thoroughly frustrating the customer, hoping I would go away while crushing the service image of her organization in my eyes. So, on the next call you handle, as well as the one after that, will you be a KIA or a Rikka? You have the power to decide. You have the power to execute. You have the power to deliver consistent, distinctive service with commitment, confidence, and a smile.