Customer backlash against bad service

The biggest challenges in customer service may be dealing with consumers who are hard to mollify. For some, the sting of a bad experience cuts so deep that it transforms them from a merely upset customer into an activist no longer just looking for a refund. Take Justin Callaway, a Portland, Ore., freelance video editor. He started his campaign against the wireless company Cingular — now AT&T — in 2006 after a technical glitch that he believes ruined one of his computer speakers. He had the speakers, which contained an amplifier, turned up full blast. When his cell phone rang, he says the speaker next to it made a loud noise and then went dead.

Callaway didn't call customer service right away. But when he looked into the issue for a grad school project months later, he learned more about GSM networks, which Cingular uses, and radio frequency interference, which he believes caused the damage. "I really felt irked that they didn't disclose [it]." He got some friends together to record a tune about Cingular. One of them helped him animate an angry bandit in the shape of the carrier's orange trademark, complete with an AT&T blue-and-white pirate's bandanna and an eye patch shaped like Apple's logo. (Cingular/AT&T is the only wireless provider that offers the iPhone.) His video, "Feeling Cingular," has been viewed more than 37,000 times on YouTube.

About a month after posting the video, Callaway got an e-mail from Bob Steelhammer, then a vice-president for e-commerce at AT&T. "Justin, in the spirit of goodwill, I would like to replace the $100 computer speakers on your home video-editing system," Steelhammer wrote. "Please let me know what brand and model [they] are." Callaway, who works with video equipment, says that even if there's not damage the phone causes an irritating buzz, and feels AT&T should do more to make consumers aware of the issue. That's why he didn't accept the offer. "It wasn't about the speakers anymore," he says. He's not stopping with the video, either: Callaway is seeking class-action status for a suit against Cingular over subscribers' inability to use their phones in some settings without interference. An AT&T spokesperson says that, due to the proposed litigation, it could not comment, but it works to resolve consumers' issues promptly.

Flight or fight
Most customers, of course, don't have the time or energy to go that far in their service insurgencies. They want an apology, a human being who answers the phone, or simply some bottled water after a few hours sitting on the airport tarmac. But that doesn't mean they aren't above a few digs at executives' expense or a call to a cell phone after hours. That's especially true when a direct line to the CEO is the BlackBerry sitting right there in their laps.

More from BusinessWeek Customer service standouts Sprint's wake-up call Trader Joe's recipe for success

The US Airways plane Ron Dee was on last October had just pulled away from the gate when the pilot came on the loudspeaker to tell the Cleveland-bound passengers that they were 42nd in line for takeoff, Dee recalls. A one- to two-hour delay was expected. Later, thunderstorms delayed the flight even more, prompting another warning: The crew was coming up on its allowable flying time.

Dee, who develops real estate for a restaurant company, flies 100 times a year and is used to delays. That wasn't what upset him so much. "About three hours into the wait on the runway, there's no water left on the plane," he recalls. (A spokesperson for Republic Airways, which operated the regional jet for US Airways, says that records from its vendor show the flight was fully catered and that other beverages would have been available.)

After a quick search on his BlackBerry, Dee found e-mail addresses for Doug Parker, US Airways' CEO; Robert Isom, its COO; and Henri Dawes, its director of customer relations. His first missive, time-stamped 5:59 p.m., fired this shot: "If you get a chance, please call me and we can discuss how we handle customer service in our restaurants. Maybe that would help your company." The next, at 6:40, invoked the JetBlue Airways incident last February, a weather-induced operational snafu that was followed closely by CEO David Neeleman's departure. "What is that CEO's name from JetBlue [who] resigned? I am going to call information and get his home phone number. Maybe he can get us back to the gate." Says Dee, whose flight was delayed more than four hours: "I probably sent an e-mail every 15 minutes or so for the last two and a half hours" he was on the plane.

He had nothing better to do: The flight was brought back to the gate, and Dee spent the night in a Philadelphia hotel he paid for himself. He never spoke to Dawes, but he did get three vouchers totaling $425. Would he use the BlackBerry as a stalking device the next time he's stuck on the runway? "Absolutely," he says. "You guys as a company, regardless of who you are, exist because of me and my fellow paying passengers."

MORE FROM BUSINESSWEEK

BusinessWeek Section Front

Movers: Amazon.com, Ford, 3M, Qualcomm, Ryland Group Bloomberg, Gates Team Up to Fight Smoking Ballmer's Letter to Microsoft Employees Stocks End Higher on Earnings, Lower Oil Big Pharma: What Safe Haven? No Stock Offering for Wachovia Yet What the U.S. Can Learn from Indian R&D There May Be Oil Offshore, But For Corporate Boards, a Global Search On-Demand Computing: A Brutal Slog BusinessWeek Section Front