After a couple of days trying to access my client’s e-mail system without success — and with so much on my plate I had no time to deal with their IT support group — I happened to mention the problem to one of my contacts. It turns out the company’s IT department had changed the way remote users (like me) access the system.

My colleague forwarded what appeared to be a broadcast e-mail message to company employees. As someone using remote access, did I get a direct message? I can’t recall seeing one. And I certainly didn’t get a two-step warning, with a few weeks’ advance notice and a reminder a couple of days before the plug was pulled.

So that’s the “takeaway.” If you’re making a change that affects people who use your system, buy your product, visit your store, please tell them. Tell them more than once. Don’t make them find out by chance.

Oh, those funny folks at Honda! They’re doing a good job of keeping in touch with me, long-time Honda owner that I am. But their enthusiasm for selling me a new car always seems to overtake their good sense.

I bought a 2009 Honda Civic last year, and I’m happy with it. But one of the first pieces of mail they sent me after the purchase was a flyer promoting their new 2010 models.

Today, they sent me an e-mail. Surprise! It recognized that I am celebrating the one-year anniversary of my purchase.

“We appreciate your loyalty to our dealership and invite you to take advantage of the coupon below,” the note said. I wondered if my “owner loyalty certificate” would cover a free oil change, or maybe a half-price car detailing. No, it was $500 to use on my next vehicle purchase.

In small print was the note that the coupon expired within 30 days.

I guess despite the fact that I kept my last Honda for 10 years, having my newest car turn one year old means it’s time to get rid of it.

What I learned from my correspondence from Honda is that it’s not enough to know a few things about your customer. You have to pull together all the pieces of information you have on your customer — remembering to find and include the information held by other departments in your company (hello, Sales? meet Service). Did she just buy a car a month ago? Then there’s probably no reason to send her news about the latest model. Did she keep her last car for 10 years? Then a promised discount to buy a new car after just one year is not likely an incentive.

If you don’t make the connections, then you’re just wasting your time.

Having been away for a week, I’m a little nervous.

A few weeks ago, I managed to live through a day where no e-mail messages made it to my in-box. It took a while to find out, because I could send messages; but the replies didn’t make it through.

Of course, I had a satisfying chat with Bell’s customer service folks in another country:

Me [after visiting the Bell web site, which proclaimed its e-mail service was "available"]: I am not receiving e-mail.

Bell: Please do not worry. This is a problem on our end. Our server level technicians are already working on the problem and it will be fixed as soon as possible. We really appreciate your patience.

Me: Oh, then why does it say “this service is available” on the Bell site?

Bell: I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. [Notice question not answered.] You will be able to send emails but there is a server issue which is causing a delay in receiving emails.

The problems lasted just the one day, but I feel compelled to add “as far as I know.” Because now, when I don’t receive a prompt response to an e-mail, I begin to wonder if the person sent it weeks ago, and is now getting cheesed off with me for lack of response.

All of this to say, please be sure to respond to people. If you don’t have the answer, a short note to acknowledge that you got the request and are looking into it is perfect. Even saying “I’m crazy busy, will answer some day” works for me. And if you didn’t get a reply within a day or two from a person who usually gets back to you quickly, there’s no harm in calling; sometimes that’s when you’ll find out he or she is away.

Or am I expecting too much?

Can you tell me…

Why my bank has hired people to make “courtesy calls” to customers — which seem to be thinly disguised ways to sell other products/services — but cannot tell me that they have discontinued my paper statements?

I have no problem getting my statement online, but I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen a paper statement for months without seeing confirmation that it would no longer be mailed to me. Online, I see that I have the option of choosing one paper statement free, and any others will cost me. I have three accounts, and I only want one statement anyway; the free version is not applied to this one. Who did it? The bank’s not saying. This is the bank, by the way, that hired people to call and ask me if I thought the bank “cared” about  me.

Why a department store hid a similar statement fee notice in a densely worded document from a financial company?

When I first saw the notice, I almost threw it out as  junk mail, because I didn’t recognize the financial institution, and there was no obvious mention of the store or its logo. Inside, point #15 revealed that a $1 processing fee would be charged for each paper statement, but you could instead register for online access and get an e-statement.

As I say, I have no problem with online statements, or charging a fee to get one mailed. I do have a problem with companies not making change obvious to customers. Don’t you?

As the end of January approaches, I’m a little nervous. Bell has alerted me that they are “making changes to our e-mail systems which will require you to update the settings on your e-mail software…Please note that if you do not update your settings by January 31st, 2010, you will no longer be able to receive your e-mail.”

Does that seem like excellent customer service, to make a change that could possibly result in customers not being able to use the service they have paid for?

Bell has helpfully provided an “Internet Check-up” tool to see if any updating is needed. Oh, but too bad for me, it’s “currently only compatible with Windows.” As the Bell site curtly informed me, “You are running a Macintosh operating system.” Not to worry, though; “Efforts are ongoing to provide a Macintosh compatible version as soon as possible.”

Bell has been tinkering with their system for a few months now, causing random unexplained grief. First, the mail system stopping playing nice with the e-mail program I use. Then, I discovered that I had somehow been given a limit on how many messages I could send in 24 hours, without being told I had a limit. So although I administer a mailing list of about 230 association members and have been regularly sending messages to them for about two years, I suddenly got an error message that said, “Requested action aborted. You have reached the limit for how many messages you can send in 24 hours.”

I tried to e-mail Bell’s support account to find out what was going on, but of course I was over my secret limit. So I tried online chat and found out my limit was 250 e-mail messages a day. When I explained my problem and asked that my limit be raised to accommodate the mailing list I administer, here’s what happened:

Bell: I would need to escalate the issue to a higher tech support to get this issue resolved.

Me: Please do so.

Bell: I suggest you wait for 24 hours for the limit to be raised.

Me: You mean I can’t e-mail anyone else today?

Bell: Sorry to say a yes.

Me: That’s not very responsive service. I can certainly wait 24 hours to send a bulk e-mail but another 10 to 15 today doesn’t seem like much to arrange.

Bell: I do understand your concerns but we need to wait.

Well, the limit has been raised, although I didn’t get official notice of it and have no idea what it is. All I know is that I’ve been able to send several bulk mailings to the group. But you see why I am a little worried about the changes happening January 31.

So if you are a company upgrading your systems, please make sure it’s a change that will actually improve customer service. Otherwise, you are just like the companies who advise they are “changing” their fees when really they mean “increasing” their fees — it’s not good news to the customer.

I turned down an assignment today that wasn’t my area of expertise. Instead, I referred my contact to someone else I knew would do a great job. But it got me thinking, what do clients want from a freelance writer? Here are some things, beyond of course the ability to write:

1.  To know you are an expert in your field. They don’t want you learning on their project; they want you to ace the job because of your experience and talent.

2.  To know you are committed to your business and will be there when they need you. Even if they aren’t regular clients, people like to know that you will be available to take on the occasional project.

3.  To know they can rely on you to deliver the work you promise. Your expertise (see #1) should allow you to turn in a project that’s close to if not exactly what they need.

4.  To be confident you are working on their projects and moving them forward, even when they don’t hear from you. Better yet, they want to hear from you occasionally in between deadlines with reports on how you’re progressing.

5.  That they can rely on you to meet your deadlines. Even better, that you’ll often or even usually be early. And if, for some reason, you won’t be able to meet the deadline, you’ll warn them early and work out an acceptable Plan B.

6.  That in an emergency, you will pull out all the stops/pull a rabbit out of a hat to turn a project around quickly. Preferably, this isn’t the client’s standard request, or you will certainly be within your rights to charge a higher fee or turn down the work.

A track record at meeting these expectations is what earns repeat business and a solid reputation.

What have I missed?

Customer/employee surveys are important. I know this, and I try to go along with companies who take the time to survey me as a customer. But they need to do a better job of asking questions that are both within the customer’s ability to answer and that they can do something with.

Take my bank, for instance.  It just had a survey company call to ask about my experience as a business account holder. It was a nice gesture, but frankly, it was a waste of my time and theirs.

The questions mostly began, “On a scale of 1 to 9, do you think…”.  They wanted to know whether I thought the bank cared about me as a customer (not particularly; banks in general seem to nickel and dime customers, and they’re quick to charge interest but slow to pay it). They wondered if I felt appreciated (can’t think of anything the bank has done to show appreciation) or had been made to wait too long (more than once). They wondered if I had a relationship with the person managing my account (there’s a person managing it? really?). And they took at least eight minutes to run through it all.

If you’re going to survey someone, one of the first rules is that you only ask a question when you can or plan to do something with the answers. So is the bank going to change anything if the survey people find that 75 per cent of customers don’t feel appreciated, and 85 per cent don’t think the bank cares about us? Can we look forward to hand-written notes of appreciation or an extra 0.5 per cent interest on our accounts? I doubt it.

By all means, survey your customers. But make sure to ask questions that they can actually answer and that will give you information you can and will act on. And if someone repeatedly says, “I can’t answer that” or “I have no idea,” think about changing the question.

Random petty annoyances in the usability world:

• When a web site makes me log in, but has nowhere for me to log out.
• When a site makes me log in more than once (for instance, once to enter a members-only section, and again to comment on a discussion forum).
• When my e-mail program randomly logs me out. Hello, I can see a security reason if I haven’t touched it for hours, but don’t do it when I’ve just used it minutes ago!
• When my client’s Outlook logs me out when I’m in the middle of writing an e-mail. Same thing; I get the security aspect of not being touched for hours, but I’m using it!
• When I send something to print and specify black only, but just because one of the coloured inks is low, I have to push a button on the printer itself that says “print in black only.”
• When the printer manufacturer bugs me to fill out a survey about my printer use, saying how valuable my feedback is. Then the survey only asks things like how many printers are in the house and if I use them for personal or business use, and doesn’t offer an open-ended question where I can actually give some feedback.

But, hey, it’s Friday afternoon and the sun is shining. So I’m getting off the computer now. If you’re still on, what bugs you?

A card arrived yesterday the old fashioned way, in the mail with postage stamp and all. It was from my friends at the local Honda dealership. Since I have just closed the deal on a new car, I thought it might be a “thanks for buying our car” type of card. Silly me! It was a card inviting me to a “Private V.I.P. Customer Sale” with special pricing authorized for current Honda owners and their family members.

You could probably make the case that the card might have been put in the mail the day before I actually bought the car. But that doesn’t excuse the e-mail version that arrived today, four days after the big purchase, inviting me to the same V.I.P. sale. (This, by the way, said “RSVP by April 14″ and it arrived April 16.)

Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!

Today’s lesson, kiddies: Update your customer records as significant events occur. If you can set up your system to trigger a follow-up survey after a car is brought in for servicing, surely you can set it up to cancel messages about car sales to someone who has just bought a car from you.

P.S. I was glad to see that the “special discounts and financing” were the same as those offered in person. Who wants to be offered a sale price after you have already bought at a higher price?

My recent car-hunting experience made me think. Why don’t companies follow up?

It all began when I brought my car in to the dealership for routine servicing. The service advisor called to say the mechanic had suggested some additional work, some of it fairly expensive. “Here’s the thing,” I answered. “I was going to buy a new car this year anyway, so I’m not prepared to spend that much.”

We agreed on the work that needed to be done now for safety reasons, and what could wait, and I went on my merry way.

I expected to hear from the sales department in a day or two, offering to set up a time to talk about what kind of car I wanted. But, as it turned out, the service department did not let the sales department know I  was interested in a new car.

Later, the dealership called to find out if I was satisfied with the work done on the car. I confessed I was waiting for a list I had requested of the mechanic’s recommendations. The caller promised to look into it. Later, when I was in the showroom looking at new cars, I dropped by the service area to ask about the list. More promises. Who knows? I might have had some of the work done, but by the time the list showed up (after I called), I had already bought a new car.

So, here’s what I’m taking away that can apply to my business as well as yours.

1. If someone specifically asks for something you can provide, do it. If you can’t do so right away, make a note of it. Make sure others you work with are aware of the request.
2. If your customer mentions a possible need, follow up. If you don’t have the item/service, can you connect the customer with someone who does? Check back later to see if you can help.
3. If someone hands you a fat lead on a silver plate, jump on it! You don’t have to be pushy about it, but why not call to say, “I hear you’re looking for…” and “Let me know if I can help”?