The Ever Challenging Art of Customer Service

Customer service is an aspect of business that, for most companies, always has room for improvement. Rarely have I encountered major brand names and been highly satisfied with the support. In fact, Sprint is learning first hand how damaging low customer satisfaction can be.  For those of you out there who once used Sprint, you know exactly what I'm saying. For those of you out there who are still using Sprint, you have my deepest condolences.

Sprint is one example of all around poor support. Every aspect of their system is broken and so the problems are obvious enough that anyone with a little intelligence can spot them. Fixing them will still be expensive, but finding them should be a piece of cake. And yet there is another, more stubborn problem affecting many companies. I am referring to that special point when marketing gets together with the accountants and they come up with "innovative solutions" instead of just trying to make the customers happier. Here comes the example.

Up until very recently, the movie theater closest to my home was owned by Consolidated Theaters. Overall I would have to say that did a fairly good job of ensuring that they kept my business. The prices were reasonable, the food wasn't bad, the place was very clean and the staff was polite. But perhaps their best attempt at keeping their customer's business was their frequent movie goers card. The entire system of rules and rewards can be easily summed up as follows:

A card has 25 purchase icons on it. If you buy one ticket you get one icon punched. If you buy two or more tickets you get two icons punched. Every five punches you get a free item (drink, popcorn or ticket) up to 15 punches and then once you get 10 punches after that (to bring your total up to 25 and finish the card) you get an additional free ticket.

Now, this system is one of the best rewards systems I've seen for any company and the reasons are deceptively simple. Take a close look at the benefits of this system. The customer always knows where he stands in his progress towards receiving free products (he just has to take out his card and look at it because there are pictures of the items at the 5, 10, 15 & 25 spots on the card), the rules are both simple and clear, because there is no misdirection the customer doesn't feel like he or she is being cheated, there is no email verification nor is web access required, personal information is not demanded and the customer has to do nothing to get this card other than to ask. Overall it is a wonderful system.

All that has changed now because Regal Theaters bought this cinema and did away with the old system in favor of their own hideously complicated one. Here are the new rules this theaters patrons can be expected to remember:

As a member of the Regal Crown Club (I just love being in clubs, they make me feel so special) you will earn 1 credit for every dollar spent on movie admissions. (maximum 12 credits per card, per day) You earn extra credits for any concession purchase, the rates for those being 2 credits for any purchase. Unless of course you are buying a promotional item, then you acrue points at the rate of 4 points per dollar with the maximum of 1 concession transaction per card, per day. You will have to see the concession stand for the current promotional offers. Got all that?

But wait, it gets better! Once you earn the completely arbitrary amount of 120 credits you hit Star Status. Star Status members receive 2 extra credits on concession purchases daily, plus 5 extra credits with paid admission each Thursday. Additionally, every Crown Club member gets a free small popcorn every Tuesday, with paid admission. I hope you took notes because now it is time for the test.

You go to the theater and buy 3 tickets, a large popcorn and a large drink, how many rewards do you earn?

Well, if you were operating on the old system the answer would be two punches for your card. But that was the old way, the new way is so much more fun. For instance, with the old way all you needed to know was whether or not you bought one ticket or more than one ticket. With that system, the number of punches you could ever get could only be either 1 or 2. With this new system you now need to know the price of everything you purchased in addition to the current day of the week. So, as it stands now, you can't give a valid answer until I provide more information. How about we set the price of a ticket to be $10, the price of a drink to be $8 and the price of the popcorn $7. Oh, and it is Monday.

In that case we earn 30 points for the ticket (1 point per dollar x $10 x 3 tickets) and 30 points for the food (2 points per dollar x $15) for a total of 60 points. But wait! What if we order the promotional Indiana Jones Crystal Skull Comemorative Drinking Glass at which point we earn double points for the drink but standards rates apply for the popcorn. This brings our new total to 76 points (30+32+14).
But wait! What if it is actually Thursday and not Monday! Then what is your total? Why it is. . . still 76 points! Because, if you recall, I didn't actually say that you had earned at least 120 credits and thus you weren't a Star Status Regal Crown Club Member. Let's dare to dream big and assume that you had indeed reached Star Status. Then how much would you earn? Here it is in all its glory: 30 points for the tickets + 32 points for the drink + 14 points for the popcorn + 5 extra points for the tickets + 2 extra points for the food which gives us a grand total of 83 points. (up from our original total of 60 points)

Under this system it is possible to earn more rewards for less money than under the old system. However, as I sat here double checking all my math and cross checking the various rules (you get 2 extra points on concession purchases each day, but you only get 5 points on Thursday, but both rewards only activate if you've already earned 120 points) it ocurred to me that my first thought was not about how much money I would be saving but rather how painful this process is. I think it is a fair assessment to claim that very few, if any, customers will be able to correctly figure out how many points they earn on large purchases without the rules in front of them and a piece of paper and a pen handy. To me, that is a broken system.

You may be wondering why I'm ranting about customer service when WWDC is so close. After all, new products are in the air, shouldn't I be covering that? Here are my thoughts on that. And this is a message for all of Apple's competitors out there. You probably aren't going to be able to effectively compete with Apple's new products anytime soon, but you can decide to compete with them on customer service anytime you like. Policies like this make customers hate you and right now they don't need another reason to flock to Apple. So it is my humble suggestion that before you start trying to out-design Apple you first look around and try and figure out how to make your customers more satisfied.