Vonage Customer Service Fail - The Joseph Jaffe Trainwreck; UPDATE: Resolved

You know the Golden Rule: "Treat others the way you would want them to treat you."

We've heard it since childhood and it still makes sense.

Especially if you deal with customers -- you know, those people who your salary?

In fact, since the advent of digital technology, which lets us record nightmarish calls with customer service or take videos of sleeping repairmen ... you would think every business that wants to stay in business would have taken notice.

Every smart business in 2010 should have a sentence in their Employee Handbook that reads: Every conversation you have with a customer may be recorded for defaming purposes.

But somebody forgot to tell Vonage.

Take a look at the following Tweetstream from Joseph Jaffe (@jaffejuice), which I've been following for the past hour or so ...

It's the latest textbook example of customer service gone wrong, thanks to dual-use technology in the hands of customers. By dual use I mean that, like sickles or hammers, Twitter can be used for peaceful purposes or as a weapon of war.

And Joseph Jaffe, as you can see above, is on the warpath. Very publicly.

Look. It is never a best practice to threaten a customer ("We will have to block you") as Melissa, the soon-to-be-former customer service agent, is quoted as saying above.

But it's a worst practice to treat customers rudely now, when that conversation is instantly made public to millions of people, as it is on Twitter.

So here's a new Golden Rule of Customer Service, submitted for your approval (and Vonage's education):

"Treat others the way you would want them to treat you ... so that you won't mind if they share it with the planet."

UPDATE: There is a happy ending to this story. Within the hour, Vonage called Jaffe to fix things. Good catch by Vonage! I hope Melissa gets to keep her job ...

(Kevin M. Donlin is author of Guaranteed Marketing for Service Business Owners.)

The $40-Million Marketing Secret from Seth Godin #sethgodin

Looking back over my notes from Seth's lecture last month at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis, I found this nugget:

Little Miss Matched is not in the sock business. They are in the conversation business.

When 12-year-old girls get a 3-pack of non-matching socks from Little Miss Matched, they can't wait to tell their friends.

And with socks starting at $8.00 for 3 (plus shipping), there's plenty of profit left over for Little Miss Matched, which did $40 million in 2009, according to Godin.

The breakthrough for Little Miss Matched -- like most successful businesses -- came after they discovered the business they were really in.

It turns out, as you'll see in the video below, Little Miss Matched is in the business of starting conversations ... conversations that equate to millions of dollars in word-of-mouth sales.

Zappos isn't really in the shoe business. They are in the business of delivering happiness. (Sounds like a book title! -- #irony)

FedEx isn't really in the express shipping business. They are business of making your shipping department look good.

Action Step: Ask yourself this $40-million question: "What business are we REALLY in?"

Pick a niche. Deliver an unexpected experience that's remarkable -- literally worth remarking about to other people. Then clean up.




(Kevin M. Donlin is author of the Special Report, Guaranteed Marketing for Small Business Professionals.)