The American Automobile Association recently provided a "chilling" example of the impact unsynchronised information has on the treatment of profitable customers. One AAA member called them when he ran out of gas one cold night in northern Vermont. "This was my first call to AAA in six years of membership. I was put on hold while they verified my status by calling the three different states I lived in, which have different computer systems. After three frigid hours, I spent $100 on a towing company instead. I'in done with the AAA." The result: the firm lost a lifetime customer after his very first transaction with the company.
It's not that long ago that train companies in the UK were greeted with a mixture of scepticism and derision when they started referring to passengers as "customers". A reflection, perhaps, on the notoriously bad service offered by the UK train companies? But now, everything is customer-focused. Suddenly, telephone lines become '`customer carelines", we have the introduction of "customer charters", "customer relationship management" and "customer research". As consumers we're at the heart of every business strategy - nothing, it would seem, is too much trouble. Customer care is one of the buzzwords of the late 1990s. Mystery shopping has become a widely used technique, as have surveys of call centres, e-mail response times and shop staff attitudes by journalists and the media. There is nothing more the consumer likes than to read about the fail- ures of big companies to do something as simple as answer a telephone with a human voice, or reply to a letter within seven days.