We all com­plain about pub­lic trans­porta­tion. It’s slow. It’s crowded. It’s delayed. It’s bor­ing. Pub­lic trans­porta­tion can be mis­er­able, but for me it’s not any­more. It’s not because San Fran­cisco MUNI and BART got any cleaner or faster, but because they pro­vided me with some infor­ma­tion. They told me when the next bus is coming.

Using the NextMUNI or the Transit.511.org ser­vice, I can find infor­ma­tion about when to expect the next bus. While it may be very costly or impos­si­ble to make trains and buses move faster, by let­ting me know where they are and then cal­cu­lat­ing an esti­mated wait time, it pro­vides me with infor­ma­tion to plan accord­ingly. I could take another bus line or grab a cof­fee and wait some­where a lit­tle more com­fort­able than a bus stop. I actu­ally enjoy tak­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion because it gives me a chance to lis­ten and watch pod­casts on my iPod.

Restau­rants do this as well when you put in a reser­va­tion. If they say 10 min­utes before you’re seated, you’ll wait. If they say an hour, you’ll move on to another restau­rant. By pro­vid­ing that lit­tle bit of infor­ma­tion, restau­rants are deliv­er­ing great cus­tomer ser­vice. They’re empow­er­ing the cus­tomer with infor­ma­tion to make an informed deci­sion. They’re not leav­ing them in the dark.

If you can’t deliver ser­vice quickly, you have to let them know when you’re going to deliver it

I recently had a tech­ni­cal issue with my HP com­puter. I con­tacted HP, paid $59 for tier 2 level ser­vice, and then pro­ceeded to wait a total of TWO HOURS for a tech­ni­cian. I was never informed as to when I would be con­nected to a tech­ni­cian. I sim­ply lis­tened to the same record­ing repeat itself over and over for TWO HOURS.

Dur­ing that time I called in on a sec­ond line try­ing to con­nect with some­one on the rout­ing sys­tem to give me some infor­ma­tion. Nobody knew. I des­per­ately asked them to con­nect me with a man­ager. They said they would, but didn’t. Every­one just con­nected me to the same line that I sat on for two hours. The bat­tery on my phone was drain­ing. I didn’t know if I’d have enough for my tech call once it finally con­nected. I went to the web­site and tried to con­nect with some­one in online chat, but their chat sys­tem was com­pletely broken.

Over that two hours I had built up an anger toward HP that I don’t think I’ve ever built up toward a brand in my life. If there was a way to stick my hand through the phone and punch some­one, I would have. I was that angry.

I’ve been on phone sys­tems before that inform you of your wait time the sec­ond they put you in queue. It’s very valu­able. It allows me to make a deci­sion as to what I’d like to do. I can stay on the line or hang up. With­out tim­ing infor­ma­tion, you’re plac­ing the cus­tomer in the dark. It’s like not know­ing when the next bus is coming.

When I was finally con­nected the tech sup­port per­son, he solved my issue. The ser­vice was great. But the two-hour wait irrev­o­ca­bly tar­nished the great service.

Over­book­ing and can­cel­ing appointments

I’ve had sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences with Sears refrig­er­a­tor repair, which con­sis­tently can­celed appoint­ments because they were over­book­ing their tech­ni­cians. Three times I booked appoint­ments that were can­celed at the last minute. I waited for some­one to show up who never showed up. Once the tech­ni­cian did show up, he was pro­fes­sional and did excel­lent work.

Sears doesn’t seem to con­sider the book­ing of tech­ni­cians as part of their cus­tomer ser­vice as evi­denced by their follow-up sur­vey email, which didn’t ask a sin­gle ques­tion regard­ing the time­li­ness of the tech­ni­cian. They did ask me ques­tions about his appear­ance, though.

Put transpon­ders on your service

If San Fran­cisco can make me love pub­lic trans­porta­tion sim­ply by putting transpon­ders on their vehi­cles, how hard is it for you to place some type of bea­con on your cus­tomer ser­vice sys­tem to just inform cus­tomers as to when they’ll receive ser­vice?David Spark helps busi­nesses grow by devel­op­ing thought lead­er­ship through sto­ry­telling and cov­er­ing live events at Spark Media Solu­tions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen reg­u­larly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvo­rak, and KQED in San Fran­cisco. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact David, or leave a com­ment below.

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