The idea of customer experience has slowly become more widely recognized as an essential part of the marketing funnel in recent years. Indeed, many Chief Marketing Officers are now Chief Experience Officers as customer experience is, well, just about everything. You endeavor to have customers have remarkable experiences with your brand over and over.

This brings me to a recent experience I had when I purchased a home with a gas fireplace. The person from whom we purchased the home is truly a standup human being, and he offered to have the fireplace looked at before we took ownership because we couldn’t quite figure out how to turn it on.

The local company that installed it came out and serviced it for $300, but it was paid for by the previous owner of the house. The previous owner was also kind enough to take a video of the technician, turning it on and operating it, just so we’d know how it worked.

Flash forward three weeks later, when I watched the video and then tried to turn on our new fireplace, which the technician said should be as simple as pressing a button on a remote control. However, it did not work. So it goes. Machines fail from time to time. Thus, I called the company after trying to turn it on my own for about 20 minutes doing exactly as the technician in the video had done.

It was late afternoon/early evening on a Saturday, and I was fortunate to catch the sales manager. She attempted to instruct me as to how to try to get the fireplace to work, but we simply couldn’t do it. She was kind and did her best. I was frustrated, but not with her. I just wanted to turn on the fireplace as it was going to freeze that night. We left it with her promising to have someone call me on Monday.

Experience pretty good.

Tuesday morning, the service coordinator called me. She said someone could come out, but they’d charge another $300 in spite of the previous $300 service charge just three weeks prior. I protested and told her I was rather upset. After some back-and-forth that lasted about 10 minutes, she asked me to hold, and five minutes later, came back saying she’d knock it down to $60 plus whatever parts were needed. I told her I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I could accept that, and she scheduled me for the nearest appointment they had—some three weeks later. But I was very transparent that I planned to leave a negative review of the experience.

Experience worsening.

I did as I said I would, leaving a review. Then, someone on their team who most-certainly should not have the keys to Facebook or Google or any platform, decided to respond to my review on both platforms. Their response was combative and contradicted the conversations I had with other service members, using a second-hand account as fact to cover the inaccuracies of their viewpoint and justify upcharges. Then, they blocked me on Facebook, and their owner sent me a letter cutting off future services.

Experience kinda ruined.

This experience felt like a manual for what not to do in customer service and community management. While managers and owners should certainly stick up for employees—and I do it frequently—criticism is part of running any business. How we handle that publicly can define current and future public perceptions. It’s one thing to stand your ground, but it’s another to be combative and defiant.

At Elasticity, we are not immune to criticism. I probably get an email or call every six months, which never thrills me. But  each time we get constructive feedback, I do something novel: I listen. Then we try to learn from the experience and improve the situation instead of just cutting bait. The road to success is always under construction, and our goal is to continually evolve the customer experience, improve our processes, relationships, and how we handle situations to diffuse situations like these more effectively.

The silver lining? This customer experience can now become a great teaching experience to better our client relationships now and in the future.