A few unusual or off-the-wall customer service tricks and tips caught our eye at ARMA recently:

Scott Ginsberg wrote a post with four tips concerning customer engagement that could probably all be put in this post.  One suggested he makes in particular is to “lower the threat level.”  Its definitely a bit of pop psychology, but we think there’s something propping it up.  Ginsberg thinks, “People have been sold, scammed, conned, manipulated and used too long—and they’re tired of it,” and he’s probably right.  So look at your processes, look at your workflows.  If there’s a juncture where you can decrease the possibility of confrontation and make it easier for your customer, do it.  Check the link for an example of how.

Mila D’Antonia at the 1to1 Blog emphasized the importance of acknowledging consumer power.  The tip here is somewhat implicit, but spelled out its pretty simple:  Pay attention to sea change.  Netflix is the easiest example of a recent giant that fell to the empowered consumer bloc.  Don’t let yourself make the same mistakes.

From the Consumerist, what we have is more of an anti-tip.  They recently reported on a story where an airline passenger’s laptop was “lost” somewhere between checking in and arrival at her destination.  “[The airline representative] immediately told me [the airline] was not responsible for checked computers and she wanted to know why I had checked my computer, which was a real clincher.”  Without discussing the wisdom in checking something so valuable, its pretty clear that this is customer disservice.  Let’s talk about what the passenger did.  She used Craigslist to locate her laptop and in conjunction with police, they discovered that the folks who had stolen the laptop had another 10-15 more that were later identified  to be stolen from the same airline.  This was obviously not one person’s mistake, which means that the airline needed to step it up. 

How would you have dealt with the lost laptop, either before or after the discovery of the other stolen computers?