As part of an effective overall ministry, we need to have good customer service. Today I saw an example of both good and bad and they both dealt with an internet technology.

The Good
I was reading a story about David Progue’s interaction with Netflix. Very well done, Netflix. They use the web and customer management to know make potentially painfully embarrassing situations (losing a Netflix DVD) into something not so bad and reasonable.

The Bad
I got an email from someone who provides a service for me. In this case, I’m going to protect the guilty. But this service provided to me is one I really like and use quite often. So today I get an email that says that the service will be down for a few hours next week. Okay, no problem. They tell me they are making improvements to the system. Nice! Then they tell me that if I’m curious about what those improvements will be, I can download a 38 page PDF and read it…and even then not everything on that PDF will apply to my new and improved service.

So for me to know what I’m getting, I can download and read a 38 page document and then guess at what I’ll actually get. Ugh.

For further reading on customer service, read an article I wrote about web feedback and customer service a while back in an article called Responding to Feedback