Sharpening the Sword is a regular column by retailer John Riley of Grasshopper's Comics, a 1300 square foot comic and game store in Williston Park, New York.  This week, Riley begins a series on customer service.

My last few articles covered the concept of constant improvement, the process Toyota has used to become the dominant auto manufacturer on the planet.  The reason making constant small improvements is so powerful is that the total is much greater than the sum.  Similar to making many small deposits to a compound interest-bearing account, the interest builds upon itself. 

For us in the hobby industry it's natural that these small improvements will usually be in customer service.  So for the next few weeks we'll be talking about customer service, and how it applies to comic and game stores.  I honestly can't tell you how to improve the customer service of your shop.  All our businesses are different.  But we can look at other industries, and we can examine customer service from the perspective of the customer (which is a viewpoint many of us sometimes lack as we are usually stuck in the mode of 'retailer').

I started thinking about this after Captain America was assassinated.  That Wednesday everyone was complaining.  My customers came in very upset and I was equally upset.  But what I didn't realize until much later that day was that we were upset for different reasons.  My customers were upset because the story had been ruined for them before they even got a chance to read it, because they didn't know in time to reserve a copy, or because the death hadn't taken place in Civil War itself, or just because he'd been killed.  I was upset for totally different reasons. As a retailer I was upset that I couldn't satisfy all the customers that had been created for this book.  I was upset that on a professional level something couldn't have been done to give me the information I would have needed to make an intelligent ordering decision on this item.  I was upset that Marvel was unwilling to take the risk of doing an over shipment.   This shocked me when I realize that I was speaking for an entire day with my customers, not realizing we'd been having two entirely different conversations.  And I started thinking about customer service all over again.

At the same time, the new issue of BusinessWeek showed up with a list of the top 25 customer service companies in the United States.  What I found so interesting about this article wasn't the companies listed, but rather the one company BusinessWeek decided to pull off the list at the last minute.  That company was JetBlue, who had big problems during a massive snowstorm a few weeks back.  Due to the storm, JetBlue had been forced not only to cancel hundreds of flights, but also stranded thousands of customers, including some on planes for up to 10 hours at a time.  It culminated when JetBlue's computer systems crashed, overwhelmed by trying to re-route and reschedule everyone.

JetBlue had earned its reputation on customer service.  They didn't provide any frills or even food on their flights.  But they did provide inexpensive airfare that was almost always on time. They had new planes with a TV screen for every seat, pleasant staff, and basically an enjoyable flight. They satisfied their customer's desire for efficient, inexpensive, enjoyable travel.  But as a result of this one weekend, enough damage had been done to their reputation to make people question the company's future.  What I found so interesting about this article was that other airlines in New York suffered similar problems.  JetBlue's delay that weekend was 230 minutes on average, but Delta's was 205 minutes and American's was 202.  So how come everyone was talking about JetBlue?

Because JetBlue was the leader. They had focused on the details to improve the experience for their customers, and as a result their customer expectations were much higher.  When they had a crisis, like every other airline in NY had that weekend, their customers expected that JetBlue would naturally handle it better than everyone else.  When you are the market leader, when you continually improve to the point of leadership, you will also have to live up to those expectations.  And that is the downside of constant improvement.   Despite your best efforts you're going to occasionally be blindsided by an event, be it a snowstorm or Captain America dying.  You're going to have to deal with that event in a positive constructive manner, and beat your customer's expectations even in times of crisis.

So how did JetBlue handle it?  Well the one thing they didn't do was blame the weather.  Instead, they apologized, offered some type of free travel to everyone who had been delayed, and described the improvements they were going to make to ensure that a situation like that will be handled much better in the future.  They kept with their culture of quality service and improvement by stating that what happened to their customers was inexcusable, wouldn't happen again, and they were going to guarantee it.  And in doing so, they further reinforced their image as a leader in customer service.  While they have a lot of work to do to apologize to the passengers affected, all their other customers are surely even more impressed by their dedication.

An apology goes a long way, but only if your customers are already vested with you.  So that's what we're going to talk about next time: your customers' emotional bank account.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.