During an economic downturn a graceful customer recovery is key to profitable and growing organizations.

Yesterday, I had the experience of bearing witness to two extremes in customer service, and ironically it was with AT&T, which just got voted the worst in customer service.

It all started when AT&T told me I could change a rate plan. So, I called the customer service center and told the representative what I wanted to achieve. She was very nice and said “No problem”; I could hear her typing away, as I thought to myself Wow, she is actually documenting my call.

I was told all was done, so I went on my way to a client meeting. All of a sudden, I noticed I had not received any e-mails since 10:00 am, which was 4 hours ago. During my commute I called AT&T back to explain what I believed had happened, which was that the customer service representative must have made a MISTAKE yes, an error. That is, she had switched off my plan versus downgrading the pricing. Long story short as this still makes me twitch; I spent a total of 70 minutes on the phone trying to get my problem resolved with no such luck.

Later, I spent another hour on the phone with two other customer service representatives trying to fix my dead Blackberry. My experience with these two customer service reps was like rubbing bleach into an open wound. During these calls it was no longer a MISTAKE—it was my phone’s fault—it must have broken down and thus I needed to call technical support. Fat chance I was dialing another AT&T call center to go through triage again for the fourth time—seems that the first customer service representative must have been IM-ing instead of documenting my call. Lucky for AT&T and my blood pressure, I hit one of the white areas on their blue map and lost the call.

That afternoon, I thought I would call again, and got James from their Little Rock, Arkansas call center. After I explained the entire fiasco to him and demanded to speak to a manager, he said “Absolutely” and then kindly put me on hold. I think during the hold time we both must have counted to 100; he then told me that he was awaiting a manager to pick up the call and appreciated my patience. He then said, “Since we both are on hold, tell me again what happened,” in a friendly voice—you know, the kind that says, “I am on your side.” I took a deep breath and off we went down memory lane. He said, “Hold on, let me look at this, OK let me check this and that…” and all of a sudden my lifeline to the technology highway was working. He did what so many customer service professionals, never mind organizations, do not do, and that is care. James took pride in the job he was doing and made me feel that I was the only customer he had today.

James, if you’re reading this, I want to say thank you! Thank you for doing what most organizations don’t or can’t do in the best of times, that is having the ability to pull off a graceful recovery, and save the relationship. I have been an AT&T customer for at least 8 or 9 years, and you and your recovery methods will keep me coming back.

Today, more than ever we must protect our current customer resources. Sure, we will drop the ball now and then and yes customers will be angry, but they will be the happiest when we can recover from our mistakes with grace, and remind them that they are the reason we are in business.

In downturns, customer sometimes feel stuck with a vendor and will tolerate much more than in an up economy—but do not be fooled, they will leave you as soon as economic storm clouds have drifted away.

Companies today have lost sight of their current customers, and this is directly related to the people they hire. Organizations are hiring cheaply, not taking in to consideration the customer impact when hiring employees. Companies use one section of the company for hiring which must meet the needs of another section, and in some cases the two different parts don’t ever meet. Further, a majority of companies today use software to screen would be applicants, however the relationship between your organization and your customers is human and therefore, should be selected by humans. Your associates are not calculating rates of return, or processing batches of transactions, whereby their hard skills need to be validated through experience screening. I don’t know of any software on the market today that can better determine the soft skills of an applicant better than a human.

The answer in my opinion is be innovative and think holistically when hiring, use social media to paint a picture of the applicant, have actual sales/service departments screen via social media as well as resumes, try to find an applicant that matches your sales/service guru, better yet have your guru screen and chat with the applicant, they know what works. It’s a cut-cut world out there, but the companies that take the risks now will reap the rewards later.