Bob Williams

Delta Airlines apology letter for flight delay

March 9th, 2011 | One comment | Tags: ,

I experienced a flight delay on February 21, 2011 flying on Delta Airlines from Atlanta to Chicago. The delay was the results of two events:

1. An equipment problem. It was announced as a fuel leak.

2. Weather conditions in the Chicago and the Mid West created flight delays and cancellations across the country.

I believe the total delay was around three hours. All things considered I didn’t think it was too bad. No one was upset to change planes when they heard about the equipment problem and the weather delay was both expected and understandable.

Four days later I received this letter via email:

Please Accept Our Apology Dear …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Don’t undervalue your services

September 28th, 2010 | Leave a comment | Tags: ,

Several weeks ago I filed a request for an account credit with a strategic partner due to violations with our service level agreement (SLA).  During the previous months, this partner had failed to deliver its contracted service at levels noted in the SLA for availability.  My team and I had access to a website with information, but the information was not updated in a timely manner. We use the data from the partner for research and reporting that give us a basis for decision making. The penalty for SLA violations, as is common, is financial in nature and specifies a percentage-off our monthly contracted price for the service.

After reviewing …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Three tenets of customer focus competency for organizations

December 4th, 2009 | One comment | Tags: ,

Another satisfied customer

I’m not a customer service professional by title, but I write a good bit about “customer focus” and its importance to a business.  As I interact with businesses in my personal and professional life, I’m always looking for those that exhibit world class customer focus. A marketing professor once told me that everyone is a salesman and marketer in their organization regardless of their title. His point was that whether your customers are internal to the organization or external you have a job to satisfy a need in order to complete a transaction. That’s the role of a marketer. As I think about this, you could …Continue reading >>