If you want an example of how to create loyal customers, check out a company called Bushwacker (http://www.bushwacker.com).  They get it!

My wife put fat tires on her Jeep Wrangler and found that because they stick out way beyond the fenders and we live on a muddy county road, her Jeep was always covered with mud.  She decided she needed some wider fender flairs and after shopping around settled on Bushwacker’s Extend-A-Fender type flairs.  We purchased them from a Bushwacker on-line dealer and were quite happy with the price and delivery time.

The flairs came with a rubber molding that is to be attached around the edge of each flair where it meets the vehicle body.  For some reason we received only enough of the molding to trim three of the four flairs.  I called the customer service rep at Bushwacker in hopes of getting some more molding.  Here is what transpired:

1)  I got a real, live person on the phone within less than 2 minutes.

2)  She was very polite, pleasant, apologized for the shortage and offered to ship out additional molding right away.

3)  Without being asked she offered to ship it FedEx and include some additional hardware, just in case I should need that as well.

4)  Less than 48 hours later the additional parts arrived at my house.

And that AT&T is how you develop and keep loyal customers.

If Customer Loyalty begins with Employee Loyalty then it stands to reason that the surest way to drive customers away is to disrespect your employees.  I have watched the morale among AT&T employees steadily decrease post Cingular merger and this is now translating into disrespect toward their customers.

Case in point:  many folks purchase the popular Blackberry devices because it allows them to combine a PDA and a phone into a single device.  It syncs nicely with the data contained in Outlook on their desktop machine and means having to only sync and carry a single device when away from one’s desk.  AT&T has decided that everyone who purchases or has already purchased a Blackberry device must pay an added cost monthly “unlimited data” plan whether they want/need it or not.

For those who need instant email on the go the data plan is a necessity.  For those who simply wanted a phone with the built in convenience of a PDA, but don’t need instant email, they just got the shaft.  This change in policy was made with little consideration of their customers and without warning.

Disrespect for employees leads to disrespecting customers which leads to a lack of customer loyalty.  So, AT&T how’s your ‘”churn rate” looking these days…….