Service recovery from Heitz Cellars

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about three wineries that all handled a missing or delayed wine shipment in different ways. (See Good, Bad, and Ugly ways to handle the same problem.) Since then, Heitz Cellars has made a bit of recovery.

Heitz Cellars was my "ugly" example in the post because I had called three times to check the status of some missing wine and they had short shipped my order twice. Yesterday, the last two missing bottles finally arrived. The modest recovery came from the refund they issued to my credit card. This means the end result was I finally had my delicious wine ('07 Zinfandel) and I didn't have to pay for it. Heitz Cellars makes some terrific wine and this gesture was enough to keep me as a customer.

This also serves as another installment in my collection of stories that prove the longer you take to solve a customer service problem, the more expensive recovery will be.

Related posts on expensive service recovery:

• The rising cost of recovery at the Sir Francis Drake
• Cox vs. Brinks: The cost of incompetence
• Avis service recovery

Update on Cox Communications: Recovery Attempt

I posted a story earlier this week about some frustrating experiences I had with Cox Communications. One of my main points is I had received poor service and two Cox employees had missed the opportunity to fully rectify the situation. With this in mind, I was a little surprised to see that Cox was apparently trying to reach out to me through my blog by making the following comment on my post:

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Some friend you are, Cox!

Updated on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 12:59PM by Jeff Toister

Cox Communications has a tagline, “Your friend in the digital age.” Yeah, some friend. If Cox is a "friend" then they are that stoner buddy who wants to move in with me, sleep on my couch, and eat all my Cheetos instead of looking for a job.

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Cox vs. Brinks: The cost of incompetence

Companies that don't invest in hiring, training, and supervising capable employees often pay a big price on the back end. Consider this update on the battle royal between Cox and Brinks. (Read previous post here.)

What happened?

A third technician (first one was from Cox, second one was from Brinks) came to the house to restore my home phone service. Nate was a Cox sub-contractor, so in a sense he represented a third company. He took a quick look at my system and told me the biggest problem was the system wasn't set up correctly. Nate was very professional and wouldn't accuse the other two technicians of not knowing how to do their jobs. All he said was, "I'm here now and I can fix this."  Everything was up and running after about 30 minutes.  Thanks, Nate!

The Cost of Incompetence

Let's look at the cost Cox Communications paid for not sending a competent employee to the house the first time:

1. Initial installation.  ~ 2 hours
2. Return trip to fix problems with house alarm caused during installation.  ~2 hours
3. Repair trip six months later, caused in part due to poor installation.  ~ 1.5 hours
4. Call center rep time to schedule repeat visits. ~ 30 minutes.
5. 2nd repair trip. ~ 30 minutes.
6. Total time: 6.5 hours

According to Nate's diagnosis, the problem would not have happened had the system been installed correctly the first time. This problem effectively cost Cox 4.5 hours of wasted time. Multiply this by the many customers who have certainly faced similar problems and Cox has a huge opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and simultaneously reduce service costs.

Cox vs. Brinks: I lose, nobody wins

There was a power outage at my home on Tuesday that knocked out my internet and cable-based phone service. I was able to restore my internet connection, but the phones remained dead. This little incident has led to a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred war between Cox Communications and Brinks Home Security to avoid responsibility. So far, nobody's won.

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