Jump Stretch – Bad customer service (and what you can learn from them)

I’m a huge proponent of building Raving Fans within your business.  The whole idea behind it, is that you CARE so much about your customers that they end up telling everyone about your company or your product.  By doing this, you have a whole customer base basically advertising your product for you.  And we all know that a highly recommended referral from a friend means MUCH more than anything you’ll ever see in an ad or hear from a salesman.

Angry Justin!  (god this pic is old!)

This brings me to my crazy story about Jump Stretch.  They make resistance bands that people use when working out.  I ordered 2 resistance bands from them back in September and the order never came to my house.  I was in between moving so I figured they got hung up at the post office, so Ill wait a bit longer.  I call them back about 3-4 weeks later after they still haven’t arrived and they said that someone signed for them at my house with a name I’ve never heard of before.  They said they don’t know what happened, so they’ll send me some new ones.

The new ones still don’t arrive, I’m starting to wonder if they are at the Post Office.  So I go to the Post Office on 2 seperate occasions and they aren’t there.  At this point I got wrapped up with other things, I was traveling, then in the hospital for 8 days, then the holidays came and the JumpStretch bands didn’t even cross my mind.  I just remembered them this past week when I was watching a WestSide Barbell clip on YouTube.  So I call them back and tell them what has happened.

The customer service lady proceeds to tell me this is all my fault, because I took so long to call them.  WHAT?  Nevermind the fact that they can’t ship a product properly or just ask the DHL guy to make sure that I sign the package.  They tell me they have shipped the package twice, and that it was signed for both times (by a different person each time).  I asked them why didnt they require my signature on the 2nd package…. No answer for this one.

I continue to talk to the lady for 10 minutes and she tells me this is all my fault and that she can’t do anything because I waited too long and that’s our policy. I tell her that Id like to speak with her manager or someone above her.

20 minutes later I get a call from the CEO, Dick Hertzell.  Dick sounds like a nice guy, a blue collar athlete type.  He tells me customer service is his number one priority, so I’m thinking this sounds good, we’re gonna finally get somewhere.

Three minutes into the conversation I told Dick I run a fitness website and I was buying the bands to see if they would be a good fit for our site.  I told him we could send him a lot of business in the next few years if they’d like to work with us.  Apparently this flies straight over his head, as he begins to tell me that I’m at fault here because I didn’t call within 3-5 days of the order being processed to let them know I didn’t get the bands.

After this he tells me he’s been in business for 35 years, and that I’ve only been in business for 2, so he knows what he’s talking about (sounds like good customer service huh?).  Then he continues to talk down to me like I’m his 10 year old son, I politely tell him I don’t appreciate how he’s talking to me and that we need to figure this situation out.

I told him I know I waited a while to call and that was my fault. I had many other things come up in my life and JumpStretch bands were not the number one thing on my mind everyday.  I told him I don’t even care about the bands any more, it’s the prinicpal of the situation.  I said just please refund my money, and we can part ways.

NOPE!  He tells me he already sent me bands twice, and that it was MY FAULT that I didn’t get the bands.  So he wasn’t going to refund the money.  At this point he keeps shouting at me, and then proceeds to just hang up the phone on me!  The CEO of this company just hangs up on me.

I sat there in my chair just shocked at the whole situation.

Major mistake by Jump Stretch.

What can you learn from this?

As my friend Gary Vaynerchuk says “listening to your customer is one thing, but actually giving a shit and caring about them is what truly matters”

Jump Stretch had a chance to make me a raving fan and they blew it.  Unlike 50 years ago where no one would hear about this… customers actually have a voice today.  Your customers have platforms where they can speak and people will listen.  They have blogs, facebook, twitter, Yelp, City Search reviews etc, Google reviews etc….

This message could have been TOTALLY different had the CEO actually cared about me. He had a chance to make me a true raving fan.  If he would have gotten in his car, and drove the bands to my house (only 3o minutes from his office) I would have been stunned and singing Jump Stretch’s praises all over the internet.  Seriously I would have made a GREAT post about them on here, on Twitter, to my newsletter list and even started promoting them on our site.   I would have been a Jump Stretch FANATIC for life.  Instead they lost all of my trust, and we’ll probably be sending all of our business to their competitor.

Your customers and readers are the lifeblood of your company.  You should NEVER think “oh well its just one customer”.  Your customers have a voice now and treating them like they don’t matter, or responding to them by saying “that’s our policy” just doesn’t cut it any more.

You don’t get labeled a good customer service company by telling people you’re all about customer service.  You do it by shamWOW’ing their pants off and they end up spreading the word.

In the world of Google, your competitor is just a click away.  Make your customer’s raving fans, and you’ll never have to worry about them jumping ship.

-Justin