My love for Southwest Airlines was reaffirmed last night. 

I fly Southwest whenever I can. I love their easy ticketing, check in app, and seating policies. I love their amazing customer service. And I love their easy Rapid Rewards program for earning free tickets.

Last week, I flew to Chicago to have some meetings, celebrate the release of the Love is an Orientation DVD, and see some family. While I was visiting my dad in Mishawaka he brought out this amazing gift for Jackson, our 10 month old.

It’s a late 1950′s Farmall Pedal Tractor. Any self-respecting boy would love this thing… and I can see why grandpa thought Jackson needed it. When he gave it to me he said, “You can carry that on the airplane, right?” I laughed. “Um, no. I’m allowed one personal item and a carry-on but that’s way to big. Maybe I can check it?”

Like father, like son, right? Neither of us are known for thinking things through. All he knew is it would be awesome and we could figure it out. Well, in this case he must have known I’d figure it out!

I knew it was too big and too oddly shaped to go on a plane. My plan was to put it in my rental car and take it to a UPS Store in Chicago to mail it. And if that was too expensive I’d find a friend with a child who would love it or even donate it to charity.

But there was no way that thing would fly. It was too big.

On Saturday I took it to a UPS Store in Wrigleyville. I waited in line, getting oohhs and ahhhs from city dwellers dreaming of their country upbringing. When I got to the front the clerk was up for the challenge. He carefully measured and found a box for it. Then he did  the estimate for UPS: +/- $250.

Yikes! That would never work. I left it there for a couple hours, asking him to pack it in a box and look for other options. When I came back it was expertly packed in a massive wardrobe box but it was now officially too large to ship. (USPS doesn’t take boxes that big. And I don’t have the credit to ship it FedEx!)

I took it and put it back in the car. Literally, it took up half of my rental SUV. This box was HUGE! And I was stressing out a bit about what to do with this tractor. Kristen even suggested that I get on it and ride it to San Diego.

Yesterday, I took it to my cousin Maria’s house. Maria can fix anything. Literally, McGuiver calls her when he’s in a bind because she is that good. So we took it out of the box and roared with laughter. The UPS Store had bubble wrapped it, bedded it in millions of packing peanuts, and sealed it in this amazingly large box which was 11 inches too big for Southwest’s oversized baggage policy.

“Let’s just trust Southwest. They’ll figure it out.” I said that not really thinking they would. Even without the packaging it was slightly too long to fit into their policy. At the same time, I have heard and read in Spirit for years how accommodating Southwest can be. (Remember, they even had a reality show all about that!)

So here I am, walking through Midway with this big, heavy die cast red tractor. Standing in line to check it there were little kids (and their dads) all over wanting to look at it even though it was fully bubble wrapped.

When it was my turn to check in I put the tractor on the scale and swiped my credit card at the kiosk to print my boarding pass. When the agent came over to grab my bag she started to laugh. “What is this?” So I told her the story about my dad giving this to my son and how I’d tried to ship it and I was just trying to get it home for Christmas.

She didn’t bat an eye. “He’s going to love it. Just sign this damage waiver and we’re good to go. We’ll get it there.” That was it. No more questions. And no charge. Yes, bags fly free. But this was too big to be considered oversized. No charge, just a smile.

A few hours later, after an uneventful flight to San Diego, I waited in baggage claim to see how it turned out. I expected it to come out in the oversized bag area, where the golf clubs come out, and would not have too surprised to see parts.

Then I heard the snickers and giggles. There it was! In all it’s red tractor awesomeness, making its way around the carousel– in perfect condition!

Thanks Southwest. Your commercials say, “Bags fly free.” But I’d like to point out that Tractors Fly Free, too. 

When it comes to customer service, it matters. It is one of those things that I have always been quick to notice… and lately I’ve come across some amazing examples of it.

In the past 30 days I’ve received remarkable, incredible, stellar…. unbelievable service from several companies I have new relationships with. Stunning!

Observation: Start-ups have better customer service because they have to. They see the connection between a happy customer and their bottom line. They know that a happy customer will tell their friends about a fantastic experience. Conversely, they know that a bad customer experience will spread like wildfire. Incredible customer service is a cheap marketing strategy!

But start-ups aren’t the only ones with great customer service. That’s what makes AT&T and Apple such a crazy combination for the iPhone! AT&T has has had horrible customer service for decades and they are so big they don’t care one ounce. They know for every 10 customers they lose to bad customer service there are 10 more who will create a new account. And Apple has created a culture of stellar customer service to the point where people will spend an extra 1000 for a laptop just because they know if they ever have a problem they can take it back to the store.

Southwest Airlines is another long-standing company with stellar customer service. I’ve purchased tickets with them before, not read the rules, and had to call to ask a refund… even though I didn’t deserve one. Not only have they given it to me, they’ve always done it happily even though it was my mistake!

Why does stellar customer service matter? In today’s marketplace a purchase is all about the experience. If you go the extra mile your customers will love you forever. They will wear your t-shirts and brag to their friends that they are your client.

Customer experience is the next great wave of marketing.

In the last 30 days I lead a big change in how we send emails at work. We ditched our old email delivery service for MailChimp. One small part of the decision was that MailChimp offered a better price. That was important– but the selling point for me was stellar customer service.

There have been a couple of times recently when they lived up to that expectation. Last week I was trying to do something and couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So I dialed up their live chat and explained what I needed. The person told me that their system couldn’t do what I needed it to do, but it should. So, while I waited, they created a solution for me. Yeah, that’s unheard of!

So I wasn’t surprised to see that MailChimp had earned a 5-star rating for customer service from their customers. My question for them was, “How do you keep it up?” Check out the comment that Ben, one of the head chimps had to say:

I can tell you that my co-founder, Dan Kurzius, is in charge of customer service here, and he does not handle customer service the traditional way.

His philosophy is, “Don’t just answer. Explain.”

Explain what’s happening, so the customer learns something. People like to learn, so you just made them happy. The bonus, when you explain, is they won’t do it again.

So everything we do is based on “explaining things.”

All departments are focused on the customer experience. Here are some of the strategical things we’re doing in each department.

Design:
- Build the product so it “explains” while you use it. That’s ongoing and never ending. Help text, hints, intuitive interfaces, usability tests with customers. We’re hooked on clicktale, crazy egg, google analytics, yslow.

Hiring:
- Only hire people who are smart and who like to explain. No call center drones.

Marketing:
- This, IMHO, is the biggest one. Do our best to only attract customers who like learning, who have a good sense of humor, and who like to tinker. We call them “power users.” Scare away customers who need too much hand-holding (either because they’re too new to email marketing, or they think they know everything, but ironically, demand account executives to help them with everything). Big giant monkeys on our home page, and saying stuff like “reports that’ll make you poop your pants” tends to do the trick. If you attract the wrong people with the wrong expectations, they will never, ever be satisfied.

Webinars:
Weekly webinars that go over all the basics. Right now, Dan does them. Soon, every member of the customer service team will do them. Terror and stage fright keeps things fun.

MailChimp Academy:
- Videos teach people how MailChimp works so they can learn on their own time. They’re on mailchimpacademy.blip.tv, but also peppered throughout the product.

There are a million other things the customer service team is experimenting with, but that’s sort of a high level view of our strategy.

The question is… how does this philosophy work in the world you work in?

The other day our youngest son had his mom’s iPod Touch with him as he headed to the bathroom. Resting the device near the sink seemed safe. That is, until he started washing his hands. Moments later he came back out and handed a soaking wet iPod to his mom.

Fearing the worst we fired it up and were happy to see that it was still working. But on further inspection it was clear that there was some moisture under the screen.

Never fear, we have a fix for that! Actually, this works for iPods, cell phones, and pretty much any small electronic advice that’s a little bit wet. Put this tip in your arsenal.

Step One: Power off the device as soon as possible. For an iPod that just means shutting it down. But if it has a battery or is connected to a power supply… turn it off quickly!

Step Two: Dry it off as well as possible with what is visible to you. Don’t take anything apart. Don’t shake it. Just get it dry as possible with a towel.

Step Three: Wrap it in a paper towel and place it a ziplock bag. Don’t seal the ziplock bag! That’ll just make things worse.

Step Four: Place the bag in a window sill or on the dashboard of your car.

Step Five: Give it some time. A day usually seems to do the trick.

Step Six: Take it out of the bag and fire it up.

Typically, this process will remove moisture from circuitry. If it doesn’t fire up it’s safe to say that you have cooked a board or something like that. You can try the process again but if it doesn’t turn on at all it’s not looking good. For us, this process has fixed several phones and, we’re happy to report, removed moisture from mommy’s iPod screen.

What if this doesn’t work? If there is a major problem and this didn’t work I’d suggest talking to my friends at The Pod Drop. Seriously, these guys are better than Apple repair. Typically, Apple will just give you a new one and if isn’t under warranty they will tell you to buy a new one. I’ve seen it myself, the folks at The Pod Drop can bring back almost any DOA iPod. Even better, if they look at it and it can’t be repaired they will likely buy it from you for parts and apply that towards the purchase of a new one.

As I posted a few days ago our family got a new HDTV for Christmas. Since this was our first forray into HDTV, I didn’t have many of the cables I’d need to fully enjoy the full quality. Specifically, it left me with 3 problems I wanted to fix. First, I want to play Nintendo Wii in widescreen so I needed a non-standard cable. Second, I wanted the audio from the cable box to our audio system to have the optical audio cable. In truth, I’ve wanted this cable for more than 6 years but didn’t want to pay $50 for it. Third, I wanted an HDMI cable to connect the TV to the cable box to get the best possible signal.

So Paul and I headed to Target. Those cables were going to cost me more than $100 total! So, then we went to Radio Shack. They had a 6 foot HDMI cable for over $100 by itself. Out of frustration I posted a couple comments about it on Twitter.

That’s when Peggy suggested Monoprice.com. Let me tell you… I am glad she did. Instead of paying $100-150 retail for those three cables I paid $22, including tax and shipping.

Long story short. Don’t get ripped off at Target or Radio Shack with their cable or HDTV accessories. Go straight to a supplier and pay wholesale.

UPDATE: I got the cables a couple of days later. They were AMAZING quality. That’s right, I got better and longer cables for about 10% of the price of retail. What’s not to love?

Last night Kristen and I discovered a fun little place in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego called Picasso Tapas. Walking around the neighborhood we settled there purely because it was busy when nothing else was. (Little travelers tip right there.) After wiggling our way past the door we found a nice seat and settled in to enjoy this cozy hole in the wall.

If you’ve never done tapas you need to know this is a place to skip the entrees… tapas is all about ordering several “little plate” appetizers. The owner suggested we get 2 each and share, we were hungry and so we ordered 5. Also, tapas places typically have a European approach to a meal. So if you want something fast and have high expectations for minute attention to detail you’ll be disappointed. Since Kristen and I came with the idea that we’d be there a while so relaxed and enjoyed their famous sangria. Originally, we were going to grab a bite to eat then head to a movie but we ended up staying so long that dinner was plenty for one night.

A couple of the things we ordered were good. Tasty but not special. But two items really stuck out and are worth the hassle of parking down on 4th & University. First, the turkey meat balls were about the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Full of flavor and tender, not dry, we actually had to cut the 5th one in half and contemplated another order. Second, the almond shrimp was stellar. I’ve had my fair share of shrimp in my life and I’ve never bit into a shrimp to taste almond. It was a great flavor and this order came with an abundance of very large shrimp. Both items were recommendations and I kind of wish we had just asked for more instead of taking chances on some of their other 37 tapas to chose from. One negative, like was mentioned in a few reviews elsewhere, we never got all of our 5th dish. I’d tell you about the mushroom tapas but it never arrived. That didn’t disuade us though as we just ordered a dessert, flan, and were quite pleased.

The service was quaint and added to the cozy factor. I think midway through our meal we graduated from the owner, a man from southern Spain, to a “real server.” I can’t lie in saying that I preferred the owner talking about his wife (the chef from northern Spain) better than a boring server. All-in-all though the service was very typical of something I expect on the Continent.

The price was right. We ordered a lot and I was stunned that the bill was so little. If you arrive before 7 PM there are some great deals to be had from the $5 menu. I actually suggest coming early as this small place fills up with locals and gets louder as the evening progresses. Also, if you have a party larger than 4 it may be hard to get a table.

Overall, I highly recommend this place. No website and none needed. Check out some other reviews on Google and you’ll get the idea. Locals love it and critics don’t. My kind of place.

It seems like every day I either have great customer service or horrible. Here are the last few that I’ve encountered.

• #1 Delta Airlines. To say that our flight from San Diego to Atlanta on Monday was a disaster is an understatement. We’re a family of four traveling together. Do you think you’d seat children with their parents? It would seem logical that a parent would be seated next to a 4 year old, wouldn’t it? But not on Delta. They seated Megan and Paul together and Kristen in the same row, just other side. Then they stuck me way in the back. Long story short, I had an empty seat next to me. I asked if the flight attendant could go to Megan’s seat and get her for me so that I could sit by her and then Kristen could move to sit by Paul. He said… “No problem. Actually, there is a way to all sit together if you move up to their row.” So I got up… and as soon as I got up he moved a lady/child into my seat and then told me he couldn’t really get us together. He tricked me out my seat to solve his problem. Thus putting me in a worse situation! I went from a window seat with an extra next to me to a middle seat surrounded by other adults. I said to the flight attendant, “You know you just totally screwed me right? I trusted that you were telling me the truth.” He went on to try to say that the other lady wouldn’t sit apart from her child and that it was the only way the flight could take off. When I, rather bluntly, told him that what he did was lie to me to prioritize that family over my own and that he was wrong… he tried to be empathetic with me and offered us “free videos” on the flight. Of course, being Delta even that didn’t work. So Kristen and I were roughly near the kids but not next to them. It gets worse… so we were scrunched next to people and the kids were alone. Of course, our seat mates promptly fell asleep so that no one could easily go to the bathroom. Then to make matters worse, the flight attendants spent 4 hours peddling food and credit cards to us! I can’t believe that in order to fly I have to listen to a credit card offer and buy $6 snacks. Give me a break Delta. Kristen got off the plane and aptly described the flight as “the worse flight of my life.” So if you fly Delta, look out for flight attendants who lie and peddle stuff to you the whole time. Totally annoying.
• #2 Semco Energy. This is our local natural gas vendor. Their billing system is totally jacked up. I never get bills from them anymore. I don’t even get late notices. Their phone system calls my cell phone all the time but doesn’t say anything… literally just blank air. The only time I hear from them is when they drop off a disconnect notice! The crazy thing is that I typically pay via their online payment system. Well, starting in May they started rejecting my online payments. I have no idea why. They keep telling me that my routing numbers are off… but they aren’t. (Pay almost all my bills online!) Then about 3 days after I try to pay I get this really ugly letter from them. Then I get a hand delivered disconnect notice. Calling their customer service line is nearly as much fun as calling AT&T. After 40 prompts and entering my account number 2-3 times, giving them my SSN a few times, and verifying my billing address at least twice. I get told the same thing over and over again. “Our system is fine.” The best part about our latest disconnect notice is that it’s for so little money AND our bill isn’t even late! So my bill is due 7/28 but they are going to disconnect our gas today. Brilliant customer service. Morons.

Sometimes we think that computers can solve all of our problems. Obviously, in this case the sign got printed because a person trusted that a computer had translated their business name into english correctly.

There will never be a time when human touch isn’t needed to fact check the computers. Communication and commerce are simply too important in our world to blindly trust websites.

You do have to wonder though, was this anywhere near a place called “500 Server Error?” link

If you are like me you didn’t notice the tiny asterisk in this image. But there is one. Do you see it?

This morning I intended on lining up at the Partridge Creek Apple Store to upgrade both of my AT&T phones to the smoking hot iPhone 3G. 

Since I’ve been a loyal AT&T customer since 1998 I knew I needed to call their customer service and make sure there weren’t any surprises. And boy am I glad I did.

Not pictured here with Steve is the asterisk. You have to be a new customer or have an expired contract with AT&T to get this price. In the dozens of articles and videos I’d watched about the new iPhone I somehow missed this little detail. Stupid Adam, fooled again.

So, people like me who have been loyal to their wireless company are getting hosed. No love for us on the iPhone. The loyal customer price is $399. Even on the Apple site I can’t find $399 mentioned as the price, but that’s how AT&T has always treated loyal customers… horribly. 

So, I talked to customer service. If you are like me and are looking to get an iPhone 3G for the advertised $199 instead of the loyal customer price of $399, here are a few tricks the customer service agent told me to try. 

#1 Cancel your existing account. Yes, she told me that! After 10 years as a customer, I was told the best service I could get with AT&T was to cancel my account. 

#2 Add lines, suspend lines. To get the $199 I could add 2 lines to my family plan for $10 per month and suspend my current 2 lines for free. Eh? She even told me I should just give away my other 2 lines “to anyone.” 

#3 Keep calling AT&T until you get someone to agree to give you the upgrade price before your current contract expires. (Mine is in September)

#4 Open a new account under a new name. If you are like me and have a family plan, just close your account under one name and start a new account under the other. 

Of course I am not going to do any of these. Next month we are moving across the country and I know from experience with AT&T that they’ll offer me a new two year contract than. This may also be our time to try a new company, like Verizon. 

AT&T has always had the worst customer service in the mobile phone industry. I’ve long held that AT&T is a great company as long as you never call the 800 number and that is re-confirmed every time I talk to “customer care.” 

Here I am, a customer of 10 years that would like to re-up his contract for 2 more years at a rate nearly double what he currently pays and I’m told I can do one of 4 “tricks?” 

Kristen and I are in need of a car. We haven’t completely decided on the model, but we are fairly certain our new car in San Diego will either be a compact car that gets good gas mileage or a hybrid. 

Since we’ve not bought a car in over 10 years I was expecting that the car buying industry was a little different. 

It isn’t. Not a thing has changed. You can find limited information online. You certainly aren’t invited to do most of the transaction online. And overall I think car dealers websites stink. It’s as if car dealerships have no idea that people regularly buy things over the internet simply to avoid the unpleasant “Fast Eddie” experience.

In my ideal world I would test drive the 5-6 cars we are interested in a single location, then negotiate and purchase my car online. The only time I’d have to walk into a showroom filled with stale coffee, ugly ties, and worn out office furniture would be to pick up my keys, sign some stuff, and tell them to take that license plate cover off.

But I live in a fantasy world. There is no way I’m going to be able to buy my new car without hearing “I need to talk to my manager” followed by “Can I get you a coke?“ 

Hey Fast Eddie. You’re fired homie.