The Curmudgeons Rant – What Dell and Amtrak Taught Me About Doing my Job Better

I cut my teeth in a bookstore, if you know me or read this post, you already know that. I used to tell my team in at the bookstore St. Paul that service was our trump card – it was all that we had ( we could be beaten on prices, selection and convenience, but not service and knowing our customers). Well I need to air a few issues on service (in other words out comes the curmudgeon).

I bought a camera from Dell for Christmas. After I bought it I leaned the ship date would not be until January. That won’t work. I found no way to cancel my order. No worries, I’ll deal with it later. When I did get to dealing with it, I find I have to ask for permission (they review returns case by case) to return something. Then I learn I’m 8 days past my “permissible return window” – no exceptions. I used to own a few small businesses, so in the course of the last decade I’ve probably purchased 10 Dell computers, 3 or 4 Dell printers, a Dell flat screen tv, and countless proprietary ink cartridges all from Dell. They lost a dedicated lifetime customer over 8 days and a $125 digital camera.

I was in Boston this weekend for business and took the train. Somehow the Editor-in-Chief and I lost our return tickets. No problem, right? This is Amtrak, people, how could I be so foolish! Amtrak has no way to replace tickets; you just have to repurchase them so down the tubes goes $110. This year the airline industry officially scrapped the last remnants of a paper ticket program, in the airline world, print really is dead, yet Amtrak hasn’t event started. From Gatwick airport I can buy a ticket on my blackberry and simply give the conductor my name and he can look up my tickets and check me in on site while I’m halfway to central London.

So I learned more form these experiences than just to complain more in my blog, really. I run events with 35,000, 15,000 and perhaps 70,000 people attending them respectively. Too often around the office we allow ourselves to fall into the lazy thinking of taking the customer for granted; “Well what do you expect, it’s a lot of people, of course there are going to be lines” or “Well not everyone can be a special case, there’s just too many people.” But the reality is that the rail industry once thought that way, and how are they doing? The reality is that a convention or a con is not always easy or enjoyable it can be tedious, tiring, frustrating exhausting. People too often feel that it’s something they must endure, because there is some value. But once the grind outweighs the reward, I’m out of a job. My job is to make the show fun, easy, valuable, whether you are a fan, a bookseller, the CEO of Harper Collins or a 12 year old cos player.

And now I’ve got to accomplish those goals without the use of an Amtrak train or any Dell products – they just made the shit list where the grind outweighs the reward.

I was reminded about this because I got a “Ask the Show Manger” question from the NY ComicCon site last night from a fan basically offering to run a contest at the con for us. He has a great idea and then offered to do all the work. So making these shows fun is not always about telling people what they want its about listening to what they want and then getting out of the way…..

-L