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CRM @ Bratislava

I PROMISED to elaborate on my experience in Bratislava. If you want to know what good CRM looks like, read on.

First, a personal note. We denizens of Prague tend to consider anything to the east of the city limits to be part of Western Asia. Not fair, not particularly funny, a fact nonetheless. Given how small our country is, it’s outright ridiculous. And it holds.

Imagine how delighted and surprised I was in December when I found out Bratislava is not only beautiful, it’s way ahead of Prague in customer service.

This is strictly personal experience. Others may disagree and I won’t blame them. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. But consider this:

– Lodging. I have been staying at Venturska Residence. It’s a small and agile operation; they’ve got several downtown apartments available for a short-term stay. I’ve got a superb experience: this one time, a water pipe broke and the guy came in 15 minutes with a rag, sent me to a good restaurant, and cleaned the place in under an hour. That was 9 pm, folks! Another time, my internet connection broke, I called the guy, he called the customer service and reported back in a short while, while another guy drove God-knows-how-many-kilometers to give me a back-up EDGE card so that I could carry on with my personal business. That was about 10pm, folks…

- Food. You who are lucky enough to live in North America won’t appreciate this, but waiters and other staff here on the Continent are much less eager to please than you’d guess. I am used to a pretty much poor service, and I get excited when the waiter remembers me after having my, um, 300th coffee in their joint. Anyways, I went for a Gyros one day, then came back a week later, and the waiter remembered exactly what I’d had the last time. And suggested I spice up my Gyros in a way he’d expected I’d enjoy. And enjoy I did!

- Other: I’ve had countless encounters in businesses small and big, and most of them were enjoyable. A hairdresser who would spend more than 3 minutes with my balding head, carefully touching it, paying attention to details, washing it afterwards… a colleague at the company I’ve been staffed to who’d send me a birthday e-card… A shop owner who would suggest a different jacket because she knew what would fit me best…

I do not confuse customer service with CRM. Yet good customer service is part of good CRM. And if CRM is basically about making the day-to-day business interactions more human, more enjoyable, then any and every company should be like this: personal, engaged, caring. If it isn’t, than the 400 million dollars spent on Siebel 7.7 will have been wasted.

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March 8, 2007 | Filed Under CRM 

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