Extreme CRM

Donno where to start. Too many things to blog about, amongst them a few audio blogs which cannot be done till I recover my stolen card reader from this serial concert bunker. Two stories about amazing Customer Relationship management, which needs to be told right away before I forget.

So the system was that you had to shell out moolah to subscribe for a television channel, where every second cost you. This was before the world of cable TV, where every second costs you nonetheless, but you can afford channel surfing, and you don't require a license either. Jawaharlal Nehru, speaks, and continues to speak for an excess of two minutes. BBC let's him go on, does not cut the broadcast short...

...and then goes ahead and compensates for EVERY SINGLE one of its subscribers for the extra two minutes.

Such an admirable display of responsibility towards its customers. BBC worked back then, and the reputation continues because it was a simple choice to make - a choice that could be trusted in to deliver quality. A brand is nothing more than a promise of quality that simplifies the selection process, and the marketing project is done with, so I will not get Kotlerish.

Save for another great story of CRM.

My grandfather, was this lawyer dude who went ahead and found it fit to afford the priciest parker around, and this was some forty years ago. So he is clever enough to make sufficient money as to afford the costliest pen around, and then goes ahead and lets it drop from his pocket while bending over to pick something up. The crystal coated ink tip point bends because of the drop. Being a lawyer, and an eminent one at that, he goes ahead and couriers the pen to the Parket HQ, with a letter noting a "manufacturing defect" in the pen.
Around a month later, he gets a reply. Someday I will scan the original reply, but here is the essence. The letter writes:

After sending the pen for testing at a lab, it has been found that the pen has no manufacturing defect, and has been dropped from a height of three feet. Nonetheless, as a gesture of goodwill, here is a replacement.

The (fixed) original pen, along with a brand new one were in the courier.

Parker made their (ink-tip) point crystal clear, and I have made mine.