Manic Meltdown

Sanity In An Insane World

• Home
• About
• Contact
• Money Making Opportunities
• Privacy

Too Little Too Late; lessons for every business

I’ve been thinking about customer service a lot lately. As someone who does/has done a lot of work and a lot of selling online, for many years now, and who also had a  lot of (basically tortured interesting) experience working with the public face to face in retail,  I have a lot of experience with the importance and difficulty in keeping high levels of customer satisfaction.  Yet my recent experiences with one of the biggest companies online not only left a bad taste in my mouth but I realized also gives some important lessons for the smaller guys too, including myself.  In a nutshell: customer goodwill is priceless. To think otherwise is completely insane.

Yes, I’m partly talking about Ebay. After spending literally thousands of dollars with them yearly since 2003, and I’m of course a very small player there, I’ve been watching with morbid fascination as they went public, apparently disregarded everything they were founded on (transparency, open environment, etc.) and policy-changed themselves into literally thousands of people saying “I’m outta here.”

I read a news story this morning, relatively recent, on CNN money here, about the big Bay’s stock tanking big time.

This article says in part:

At about $12 it’s trading barely above a 52-week low of $11 and is down 56% in the past 12 months. Like the rest of the market, the Internet company is essentially back to where it was when economic panic set in last fall.

Well, that’s true, but the problems there have been going on for years, and seller after outraged seller, from little fry like me to sellers who had been spending half a million or more with the formerly-known-as-a-fun-place-to buy-sell-and trade, became vocal in their frustration, tried to make the bay see reason, and finally left in droves.

Now, yours truly has a background in marketing and communications and one of the dearly believed tenets of those fields of course is that “perception is everything.”

For at least the last couple of years, the bay has made policy change after policy change, from the nonsensical to the greed based, and I’ve been watching over in my corner fairly quietly.  (and I began slowing down my listings quite a bit over at least the last two years, largely because of the increases in their cuts, etc. etc.)

Fast forward to the last few days when for some reason, one of my very few remaining listings got pulled due to a policy change in 2008 that I had supposedly violated.  I called to verify that this was indeed the case, and they said it was, and the (rather nice woman) I talked to pointed out that “if I wanted to give ebay feedback that there was now a link where I could do so.” In other words, she at least pretended to care what I had to say.

The thing is this is far too little far too late, and I had seen the heartache and anger of far too many of my fellow sellers who mourned the loss of the company the Omyidars built–for me to be able to believe at this very late date that they really care one whit about what THEIR business decisions (bad ones) are doing to my business. They got big, they got greedy and reckless, and they quit caring about the happiness of their customers (the sellers who pay their fees and generate their traffic–NOT the buyers who spend $100 on the bay a year. They allowed a perception that they don’t care what sellers think to build up over a million little actions over time. (And believe me this is not just my perception.)

So let it be a lesson to us all. Once a negative perception has taken hold about a company, there is an exponential effect and a snowball effect and it’s very difficult to change course. Maybe impossible.

No the customer is NOT always right, but it’s critical (and simple common sense)  that all of us doing business know where our bread is buttered, and whether you’re a large player like the bay or a small player like me, perception might not be everything, but there is no substitute for excellent customer service and for genuine concern about the way your customers perceive your service and your business.

It’s also clearly important to know, and address, the way that customers are talking about you and your business, as well.

At this point, even if the bay sent me three dozen roses this morning and refunded 50% of all the money that I’ve ever spent with them (yeah, right!) I would still be somewhat to very skeptical as to whether or not their organizational culture had changed enough to *really* give a toss about what their sellers think and feel about doing business with them. The perception out here is that bad.  And that’s sad.

So, in a process that started for us and our business a while back, which due to time constraints, etc. has been rather casual and listless on my part… is now going to ramp up, with regard to finding someplace else to spend my online auction efforts. There are several likely contenders including Delcampe which I know little about but whose rep on the street (so to speak) is FAR more positive than that of Ebay. If they give me even a tiny reason to believe that they may care two hoots about my comfort level then maybe I’ll start spending all my money with THEM. (We sell antiques and collectibles among other things.)

Let it be a lesson to all of us. There really isn’t a business or operation that is so big that they no longer have to offer value (and appreciation!) to the customer.

I don’t have any hope for the Bay, from where I sit it would take a full stop and reversal of the majority of the policy changes that they’ve made in the last few years coupled with VERY public apologies for the way they’ve treated their SELLERS. I’m not holding my breath.  Facebook did that very thing in 24 hours re: their TOS.

Ah well, it’s their loss. It’s not the loss of my business that’s too bad for them, It’s me times the thousands of people who have gone elsewhere.

Live and learn.

February 21, 2009  Tags: business, common sense, customer service, Ebay, economy, money, online auctions, Resources, sanity  Posted in: Insane, Resources, Sane, Tips

• « Previous post
• Next post »

• 
• 
• 

• Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org