Today I spent over 3 hours on the phone with Verizon trying to clear up a 4-month disaster-of-an-experience with said company. While on the phone, I grew amazed at my continued desire to be a Verizon customer despite the fact that in all my experiences with Verizon there should be no desire left in me to be their customer.

This is a case of a company with a product so desirable that not even a crappy customer experience can thwart off the customer. It’s called FiOS - Fiber Optic Service.

FiOS is to broadband (cable, DSL) what broadband was to dial-up. It is the most powerful residential Internet service available and it is available exclusively at this point through Verizon.

I will spare you the 3 completely ridiculous separate scenarios I have experienced with Verizon as a customer since 2001, but let there be no doubt that with this most recent one, there are few products, if any, that I would continue pursuing after such horrendous experiences with a company. FiOS seems to cut through the grime and be the exception to the rule that businesses must provide value beyond its commodities.

When it comes to selling cars, dealerships do not have this luxury. Car buyers can get a desirable product from most anywhere and so the stakes are higher for car dealers to polish their message and customer experience. I have pulled away from buying cars from my own dealership customers because of piss-poor customer service and I have gone far out of my way to purchase a vehicle from a dealership that could meet my own levels of expectation.

So if you aren’t selling FiOS, don’t count on your product compensating for a poorly executed customer experience.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Automotive Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.