It's all in how you say it...

An analyst, who does not have a blog, asked me to post the following rant.  I think it goes nicely with the theme of communications since it addresses the apparently radically different ways two companies -one large, one small- interact with their customers.

Separately, I started thinking about the issue of "voice" and how sometimes you can tell who wrote something just by the tone.  Any ideas which analyst wrote this?

I am enraged. I am pissed off about soda. Well, mainly, I’m pissed off about companies that present themselves as paragons of product excellence and customer care. I won’t name the company in question, I’m above that kind of pettiness (their name rhymes with “Lhomas Lemper”) and I’m not looking to cause them any problems (they are based in the Pacific Northwest, a city that has a Space Needle). I’m simply using my recent experience with them to illustrate larger points concerning hypocrisy, fatuousness, and other words that I don’t want to take the time to learn. Here’s my story:

Over the past several months, our family has become enamored with the sodas produced by this company – particularly their root beer and grape soda flavors. Being a typical suburban guy, if I like something, I want to have it continuously available. To that end, I made a trip to Costco (a very good company, BTW) to stock up for the holiday season, filling our garage refrigerator in the process. Last week, I moved a six pack of grape soda from the garage to the main reefer in the kitchen. I noticed that some of the bottle caps were chipped and bent and, upon further examination, found that the bottles were only half to three quarters full. Thinking this was strange, and certainly something the company would want to know about, I sent them an email with a subject line of: “Product quality/tampering issue?”. In the email, I explained the situation and provided full contact information. When a couple of days passed without contact, I decided to give them a call. Their automated voicemail system must have been spec’d out by someone who had totally committed to a vow of silence. They had many options, but the product quality selection brought me to a menu that required me to input a specific name in order to be connected. Dialing 0 did not bring up an operator; in fact, I couldn’t get a live person at all. After many minutes of frustration, I left a message outlining my problem in their general voicemail box. My last words were “I’m not trying to beat you out of free soda, I’m just trying to alert you to a potential problem. But if you don’t care about your product quality, then I don’t either.”

A few more days have passed since that message and I’ve yet to be contacted by the company. Some might say that I shouldn’t expect them to jump on this – after all, they’re only human and they must get a lot of this type of thing. But I’d like to relate another story along the same lines to illustrate the difference between these pious a-holes and a real company that puts their “customer first” money where their mouth is (or something equally pithy). About six months ago, I purchased a 12 pack of Coke Classic from my local grocery store. When I got home and poured myself a glass, I noticed that both the carbonation and taste were off – not horrible, but bad enough to send it into the sink. I opened another can and found the same thing. I went to the Coke website and sent them an email explaining the situation. To my great surprise, I received a return email within 12 hours, asking me for the product batch codes, date of purchase, etc. I provided the info and figured the matter was closed. But no, we weren’t done…my phone rang the next day and I was greeted by a Coke customer service rep looking for more details and offering up an apology. I received yet another call telling me what the problem was (the grocer took a bunch of loose cans and repackaged them into another 12-pack – against Coke policy) and offering me a replacement. I was bowled over by their attention and dedication to product quality and customer service. Which explains why I am so angry about a small company who boasts that they “…brew every one of our sodas using only the finest ingredients available” and that “every batch is truly brewed from scratch” the subsequently screws up on the quality and service piece of the business. If you’re going to up the ante by an implied superiority to bigger, more impersonal rivals, then you’d better well live up to it!  There’s a lesson in there somewhere for someone, but I’ve expended my rage and am tired of typing….

Bonus round:

Anyone remember which analyst said, "HP is toast." earlier this year? 

Posted at 07:06PM Nov 05, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Analysts  |  Comments[2] Tag it: