Who has time to sit around on hold listening to the same soft rock songs over and over again? Or worse, listening to silence, not sure if you’re still connected or stuck in some Hold oblivion. And don’t even talk about the frustration that voice-activated customer service can cause.

The idea of the FastCustomer app for iPhone and Android, cofounder Aaron Dragushan tells the New York Times, is for your phone to call a customer-service line and call you back when a human being is on the line to deal with your question.

The app contains the numbers of more than 2,500 companies, the Times reports; the consumer chooses which to call and then the app navigates the system until a human picks up the phone, thinking that it has a human on the other end. Instead, the Times reports, an automated voice tells the customer-service rep, “Please press one for your next customer.” When the CSR taps one, the consumer’s phone calls them back so the two human voices can connect. Continue reading...

Little is known about the photo at right, other than the fact that it was uploaded to i.imgur.com and then publicized by Buzzfeed.com. So we cover this with the proviso that it could be a hoax, but it's out there — and it's impacting the Starbucks brand.

It comes as mainstream media outlets (we're looking at you, TIME) are making hay this week with a Tumblr site that collects (and doesn't verify) user photos of their Starbucks order with misspelled (or just plain mangled) versions of customer names scrawled on the cup.

If this particular maligned Starbucks cup scrawl is real, it's a sign that Starbucks' internal brand engagement and employee training needs some work — and just the latest incident in a long line of poorly thought out moves by employees. Poorly thought out moves that cause loads of grief for the brands involved.Continue reading...

Military financial services company USAA (short for United Services Automobile Association) is the #1 brand for customer experience in America, according to the just-released 2011 survey ranking the top 100 brands, as selected by US consumers polled by Nunwood.

Based in San Antonio, Texas, USAA ranked first with a 8.34 CEM rating for consistently delivering on its brand promise: “For those who stood tall for this country and for their families, we stand ready to return the favor.”Continue reading...

These days, consumers can hardly make a purchase without being exposed to some kind of loyalty rewards or frequent buyer program.

They get cards punched when buying a cup of coffee or a bagel. They get "member discounts" at supermarkets. They get credits on merchandise from retailers. They accumulate points good towards free flights and hotel stays from airlines, hotels, and credit card companies.

So why aren't customers redeeming them?Continue reading...

Gary Tucker, SVP of global services and emerging industries at J.D. Power and Associates, discusses the just-released 2011 Customer Service Champions report.

After looking at more than 1,000 different companies, JDP identifies 40 brands for outstanding customer service, including Jaguar, JetBlue and Zappos.  

How do customers feel about their experiences interacting with leading brands? Forrester, a leading independent research firm, analyzed responses from over 7,700 U.S. consumers, age 18 and older, who were asked three essential questions about 154 North American brands in 13 industries:

1. How enjoyable were they to do business with?

2. How easy were they to do business with?

3. How well did they meet your needs?

The answers were fascinating — and somewhat bracing.Continue reading...

AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone in the U.S. has proven to be something of a mixed blessing. It has delivered new customers and lined its corporate coffers, but it has simultaneously strained the very fiber of the AT&T network.

Faced with new but unhappy customers and a flailing brand image, AT&T is turning to social media for a quick fix. In keeping with its "Rethink Possible" campaign, it's taking its customer care service to the social Web. Corporate spokesperson Susan Bean tells Ad Age: "We started using social media as a PR tool. With marketing, we discovered that for social media to be successful we really needed there to be customer care. Otherwise all anyone would want to talk about is: 'solve my problem.'"

Therein lies the rub. Social media has made your average user sophisticated enough to know the difference between "customer care" and PR. Corporations that try to confuse the two could confuse customers, and potentially suffer even more in the long run.Continue reading...

Digital signatures are becoming big business even though e-signatures are not legally required on a Web document, where ticking a check-box is legally acceptable, according to TechCrunch.

Still, many brands find their customers don’t trust online box-checking, which creates an opportunity for companies like RightSignature. The Santa Barbara, CA-based company just closed a deal with Farmers Insurance, which – according to RightSignature CEO Daryl Bernstein – is the “biggest SaaS e-signature deployment ever.”

Farmers will roll out the service to 15 million customers, while RightSignature also announced that the American Bar Association will start making it available to its 400,000 members.

RightSignature has also developed a popular iPhone and BlackBerry app, and will "thrive" as the iPad takes off, Bernstein wrote on the company's blog. The app even lets users "draw out" their signatures.Continue reading...