Know When to Stop: How to Turn a Good Customer Service Experience into a Bad One – Stonemaier Games

Know When to Stop: How to Turn a Good Customer Service Experience into a Bad One

I had memorably bad experience at a bank recently that left me thinking about customer service from a business perspective, so I’d like to share it with you.

It’s incredibly rare that I actually walk into a bank. I bank online, and I rarely spend cash. I’m probably not alone in that experience, so I understand that a bank might want to take advantage of one of the few times a customer enters their doors.

The experience started off really, really great. As soon as I walked in, a greeter said hi to me and asked if she could help. I mentioned why I was there, and she directed me to the teller. She also noticed the parking ticket in my hand, and she said she would stamp it while I waited in line.

When a teller was available, she took my information and started processing my request. Things were moving so smoothly that I thought I would be finished within a few minutes. As someone who values time more than anything else, this was turning out to be an incredible gift.

It got even better from there, because the teller noticed that I was eligible for an account upgrade. No extra costs–just a better interest rate and the ability to avoid a fee I was going to incur that day. After confirming there was no downside, I told her she could apply the upgrade to my account.

What should have happened next was that the teller simply clicked the button to activate the upgrade, completed the original transaction (the reason I was at the bank), and sent me on my merry way. In multiple ways, I would have walked away enthusiastic about the visit. After all, so many elements went better than I could have imagined.

What actually happened was that the bank used the account upgrade as an opportunity to try to upsell me. They turned a moment of great customer service into a dismal sales pitch involving two separate offices and multiple bankers. I wanted to leave, but I was trapped because I had already accepted the waived fee that was contingent upon the account upgrade.

Fortunately, I was very clear with the second banker that I did not have time for these shenanigans, and he did what the teller should have done in the first place: He clicked a single button, and I was all set to leave.

As you can tell, though, the damage had already been done. I like to focus on the positive–I hope that’s clear from the good things I mentioned about this experience–but it was a great reminder that a good customer experience can so easily be tarnished. The bank was so close to getting it right.

What does this have to do with entrepreneurs and creators like you and me? Don’t use trust as a tool. Good customer service isn’t entrapment. It’s great if you’ve built up a loyal following through a series of customer-facing decisions. That’s enough. You don’t need to leverage that trust. Just earn it and keep earning it.

What’s your takeaway from this experience? Have you ever had a similar experience as a customer?

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19 Comments on “Know When to Stop: How to Turn a Good Customer Service Experience into a Bad One

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  1. Here’s a customer service question… I recently had an experience with a board game company (a big one… but not Stonemaier), and I’m wondering how unreasonable I’m being.

    I bought a game, I got it. The components were perfect but the box was WRECKED. Like, not just “non-mint,” but torn, falling apart, and generally unusable as a functional storage solution for the game. I contacted the retailer about it and they said I’d need to send it back to get a replacement… which during the current pandemic, I just opted not to do since the game itself is fine.

    But I did contact the publisher to see if I could get a replacement box to store the components and insert. The answer I got was “we don’t have any replacement boxes.” Full stop. And that kind of bugged me. I get why they wouldn’t have replacement boxes (seems like a lot to store). I’m bummed that they can’t help me. But mostly, I’m just annoyed by the customer service experience. I told my little story. I asked for help. And they just said “we can’t help you” and moved on.

    I’m trying to think what would have made things a little better. They make the game, they know the dimensions of the box. Maybe they could give those to me and I could try to find a box of the same size. Heck, maybe they know where to get boxes of that size. Maybe, as a board game publisher, they know of 3rd parties that offer decent storage alternatives for games. Maybe there’s an expansion coming out and they could say, “if you order that, you’ll get a box that’d work” (obviously that depends on whether that’s true or not). Or… I don’t know. Anything other than “Can’t help. Bye.”

    Am I expecting too much?

    1. Joe: Thanks for your question, and I’m sorry you’ve gone through this. My perspective as a publisher is a bit biased, but I can answer from that perspective. You’re right that publishers don’t have replacement boxes. We have spare parts for everything inside the box, but the only boxes we have are those in shrinkwrap with complete games inside. When we sell games to distributors and retailers, we entrust the box to them–it’s their responsibility to package the game in such a way that it arrives at your door in the same condition as when we sold it to the distributor/retailer.

      You’re right that the publisher could have gone above and beyond to offer other solutions for you. You are important to that publisher, and they want you to have a good experience with the game. However, given what I said above, you’re asking the publisher to do someone else’s job–this is the job of the retailer from whom you bought the game, and these are questions for them to answer.

      One other way I can answer this is you could bypass both the publisher and the retailer and post on a board game FB group or on Board Game Geek to see if someone doesn’t need their box for X game and if they’d be willing to sell it to you. I think you’re being overly generous to the retailer who didn’t package it well for fulfillment in the first place to take this burden onto yourself, but that is an option to explore.

  2. I feel like there are more and more news reports about the death of physical retail and how much its hurting business, and yet time and again the customer service in physical locations is completely terrible. Corporate upselling is such an irritating idea, that everyone who comes in should be sold thing X because in the words of Dr. Seuss, ‘simply everyone needs a sneed’. Upselling can be a positive experience when done by someone passionate who listens to the customer and responds to their needs, our local Games Workshop manager knew every gamer by name and every army they played and his ‘upselling’ made people better players and better painters every time, the store’s profits dropped sharply when he left.

    The closest thing I see to this in the world of tabletops and Kickstarter though would be add-ons to projects. There is a project running on Kickstarter right now which I stopped by to check on Kicktraq one day when it had -2 backers and almost $2,000 raised on a given day, because it was a day when they had released another add-on and loyal backers had upped their pledges enough that thousands were raised even though the number of backers had dropped. Its more about using FOMO and completionist tendencies than upselling as such, but it always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth when a project that I backed on day 1 because it was one thing then slowly pulls off the mask to show that its something twice the size and triple the cost.

  3. As someone who has worked in the service industry for the majority of my professional life in just about every position including management I have to say that customer service isn’t as strait fwd anymore. It’s about “customer” & “service” no where is there company or I in that statement.

    Jamey it use to be that customer service was part of the expense reports but no longer is that the case. Customer service is part of the metric for profits, everyone has a dashboard and everyone has a sales quota, this I believe is in large part the reason we’re seeing so many retail failures.

    Upper management no longer cares about the companies longevity, mostly this is because the average CEO is gone in 5 years, along with the board and many time even a new set of investors. 18 months in Congress is considered”long term” planning. Global socialist agenda has taken over thinking.

    But I believe also that we can blame main street more than walstreet for this. You live in Missouri just take a drive to Hannibal and you’ll see what I mean, it’s a dumpy little town with high prices and cheep imports.

    For years main street refused to innovate remodel and they sold themselves out to the “good ol boys and girls society” rather than invest in community.

    I could give you 100 examples of being laughed at, yelled at, run out of and worse from main street.

    As lower management my job(as I see it) is to push back against the owners and fight for the customer experience and employee engagement with the company ( one disconnected employee can do the damage of 10 angry customers).

    The average businessmen thinks customer service is a sales pitch. My question to you, (answer privately) how much have you spent on customer service in the last quarter, annually and in the last 5 years? Do you recognize it as an expense or just an avenue to open doors to sales?

  4. Banks must be the worse. We recently went to a bank to open a new checking and savings account. We do most of our banking with a small local bank but we travel a lot. Sometimes we need cash on the travel and use an ATM. Our small bank can’t help us with charges. We picked a big global bank. Told the person we don’t really like big global banks as they have done us wrong in the past and this was our first tentative step to reentering that world. We have a trust and forgot to bring our paperwork. So we made an appointment to come back the next day. We came back the next day and were ignored. We watched the person who was suppose to be talking to us scurrying around helping another customer. For 15 minutes she just ignored us entirely. Then she told us a few more minutes. At this point I told my wife the clock was ticking. After she missed the next time limit without acknowledging us or offering to make another appointment, we walked. There were plenty of other big banks to choose from.

  5. Ah well yeah banks are amazing. I had bad experiences in 3 different banks. In one, once they noticed a substantial amount of money on my account, they summoned me for a meeting (or tried to). Yes, the language they used was literally “you need to come to our office at blabla to meet our adviser who can will explain to you how to use your money better.”
    So basically they wanted me to end up in a situation in which you ended up by accepting the upgrade :P. What really pissed me off is the wording, they made it seem I had no choice!

    Once I was looking for company loan, they lied and manipulated me. I spent so much time and energy on their 5 meetings, only to at the end receive an “amazing deal” as they called it, tailored especially for my needs, which was in fact worse than anything I imagined, giving me nothing and taking all the risks, while they took none and reaped benefits whatever happened.

    Third one is a charm.

    So when I was starting my company I mentioned I might be getting small % of revenue from public bodies (municipality, ministry) because prior to that I was freelancer. As a consultant for SME’s regarding EU funding opportunities, also lecturer on EU monitoring and evaluation systems, I sometimes received public money. No big amounts though…

    Well because I said that, they blocked my account for 6 months, saying they are doing a money laundering check.
    So ironic, considering they participate in money laundering of billions…but I guess they wanted to show on my example that they do their job…on transactions of up to 1500 euros haha!

  6. When I opened an HSA, my bank failed to mention I would incur fees if I had under $1,000 in it and lost my insurance that allowed me to contribute into it. Sure enough, I lost my job and my insurance and they would not allow me to contribute into it or withdraw from it, meanwhile I was incurring fees on it. Lost $100 because there was “nothing they could do”. I hate when people say that.

    C’mon, you are not mindless automatons slaving for an artificial intelligence. The computer system doesn’t own you. You are people capable of making simple and logical situational decisions. If I am fined for having less than $1,000 in an account but not allowed to add money into that account to prevent the fines, there should be an exception made.

  7. Channeling your inner Seth Godin with this one :)

    I found this especially insightful. Thanks for sharing!

  8. I can tangentially relate. I loosely follow Stonemaier Games and all that you do. I know that you offer great customer service but you also offer customer loyalty (to a degree) through your Champions program. This is all unlike the experience I’ve had today. I was helping my father attempt to lower his cable / internet (Comcast) bill. 2 years ago, he opted for some upgrades to his service and locked in a nice discount (extra discounted for the first year and then not so extra discounted the 2nd). 2 years later that discounted deal is finished and we were just looking to lock in a new deal. This experience has been nothing but frustrating. If he wanted to keep the not so extra discount he could get upgraded to the best of what they offer (great, but more than he needs). If he wanted to just keep what he has they didn’t seem too thrilled to offer him a deal on such, and if he wanted to cut down on some of the things they claim he’d be getting a deal then but it doesn’t feel like it.

    It didn’t help matters that if he pretended to be a new customer he could get a great deal but the moment he reveals he is not in fact a new customer he no longer can have the deal.

    Everything about this experience just felt so wrong. My father has been with his current provider as long as it was possible for him to be with his current provider. He literally couldn’t be anymore loyal.

    This experience would partially be like if you started running a promotion for your Champions program that new subscribers would only have to pay $6 / year unlike the $12 / year that current subscribers would be paying. Oh and you wouldn’t offer this new sub discount to current subs. Best you could do to keep them happy is knock a dollar off.

    Now I grant you these are small numbers compared to my example but the point is still there.

    Honestly, some of what happened here may actually be reasonable but I felt like ranting and this seemed like an appropriate situation to do so. This type of industry feels so unlike most others that. Most fast food places through some form of an app reward for being a loyal customer. Buy so many sandwiches or coffees and get one free. Retail stores, spend so much and gain free rewards (typically gift cards / store credit).

    Also, this experience makes me wish more providers like this could be like the American mobile provider T-Mobile. No BS, no gotchas, no hidden costs. You know what you’re getting and you know what it costs and they even have free weekly rewards as a part of their T-Mobile Tuesdays program. Sure they may largely be the same but the key difference is that (just like Stonemaier Games’ Champions program) they don’t have special pricing and promotions for new customers, and they don’t secretly nickle and dime you over the price you are paying. That would be like if you told Champions, sure you can pre-order this game, get free shipping and get your copy before anyone else but you’ll have to pay a $5 fee to do the pre-order.

    I’ll just close by saying it doesn’t help when you’re known for having some of the worst customer service in the world! Thankfully Stonemaier Games has some of the best even if I’ve never really needed it (yet). :)

    1. Cole, you claimed that SM has some of the best CS but could you give an example of any SM CS experience? I’m not even aware they have a customer service program in any fashion. It’s just Jamey in development and Allan in logistics as far as I understand?

  9. That would be a frustrating experience. I can’t think of a specific parallel example, but I certainly have had many customer service encounters where it feels slimy like I am just a number or pawn in their goal of monetary success. Where I work, our #1 core value is Integrity. It seems to me that this bank either does not have that as a core value, or at the very least has some employees who have drifted away from that.

    Regardless of how positive a person is, or how an overall experience can be positive, it seems that those strong negatives can stick out. I don’t know if this is backed by science, but to me it appears to be overall human nature and a primal necessity for those parts to stick out to us. As long as we don’t dwell on them or project them onto other areas of that experience (or other experiences altogether), they can act as a learning tool for us and a warning for the next time.

    You shared some good insight and I think this part sums it up: “You don’t need to leverage that trust. Just earn it and keep earning it.” I think it also frames how fragile trust can be and how building it up takes considerably more time than breaking it.

  10. Speaking of customer service, when I enter a website, your system insists that I put “http://” in front of “www.” apparently not recognizing the “www” as an indicator of a url.

  11. Any time we have had a large balance in our checking or savings account someone eventually wants to try to sell me some financial service I don’t want. Has happened at every bank I’ve ever been with, so no surprise they did it to you.

  12. I’ve gotten a couple of calls from the local media giant asking how my current service is. Even though I let them know I’m not 100% satisfied and have occasional internet issues, they still try to upsell me with their online TV packages. Even after I tell them I really don’t watch TV and am completely uninterested.

    There’s really no point in trying to sell somebody on something that they have already said they would never use or are uninterested. It just makes me start my thinking towards using another company instead. It’s interesting to see that some companies just don’t understand when they are making things worse and actually pushing you away, yet keep trying the same tactic.

  13. This behaviour is simply par for the course in retail banking. It is actively encouraged as a legitimate sales technique. Staff are often under a great deal of pressure to hit targets and this can lead these underhanded approaches. Managers often turn a blind eye to the bad practices so long as targets are being hit. It’s an incredibly myopic way doing business. Anyway, as digital banking increases and with the growth of a cashless society retail banking is heading the way of the dodo.

  14. This is a peek behind the Stonemaier curtain. This explains why Stonemaier is known for excellent customer service. Because you recognize what makes customer relations a positive experience and how quickly it can turn into a negative one. You build relationships with your customers instead of just selling to them. That’s what sets Stonemaier above the rest. Kudos. Keep up the good work!

  15. A family member had a similar experience while trying to switch over from a different phone carrier to the family plan in person. The up sell information had omission and things were changed and added that were not wanted. The guy wouldn’t stop.

    It took 2 times to fix the account. Fortunately, the other people we dealt with were the normal good service. Only partially due to this, we are with a different carrier.

  16. Jamey, I had the same experience with a bank that had changed its tagline, and eerily acted on that tagline in a similar fashion, to the point that I eventually moved most of my business elsewhere. I could not make a simple deposit without being asked if I wanted a home equity loan, investment advice, or some other service.

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