I’ve been a longtime Verizon Wireless customer, and I am very excited to hear the iPhone news because I will almost certainly upgrade when I have the opportunity. I got my first Verizon cell phone back in 1994 or 1995 when I was a sophomore in high school.

Over the years, I’ve had small issues with various phones and plans, but they were generally worked out in store or over the phone. In July of 2002, I had an issue with a LG flip phone. The store wasn’t very helpful, nor was the customer service phone line. It would have cost roughly around the same amount of money to cancel my contract than to buy a new phone, and I was ready to switch carriers out of frustration.

It was late at night, and I was home from grad school for the summer break. I figured I would try and find a senior executive marketing contact at Verizon and hope for the best. I figured a marketer could relate to a marketing student and possible take pity. I did a bunch of email guessing and sent an email to the then Chief Marketing Officer, John Stratton at half past midnight:

“Dear Mr. Stratton,
I am terribly sorry to bother you, and I know this does not pertain to your field, but I am at my witts end with VZ and I need some help. Because I am attending graduate school for marketing, I felt that you might best be able to relate to my current situation.”

…….etc….. situation explained….. etc.

“I am terribly sorry to have bothered you with this issue that has nothing to do with marketing, but as I have said I am completely exasperated with the lack of support that I have received. Please inform me of what I should do, as I would like to remain a loyal customer of VZ.“

By 7:30 the next morning, I had this email in my inbox from Mr. Stratton, which resulted in my receiving a new mobile phone later that day:

“Thanks for taking the time to write me re: your frustrations with your phone. Let me assure you that your lack of satisfaction is my business, whether it’s a marketing issue or not. Your allowing us the chance to make it right is fully appreciated.

I’ve copied Rich Meigh, our VP of Wireless Devices, on this message. I’ve asked have someone contact you directly to resolve this problem as soon as possible. You’ll hear from us within 24 hours.

Thanks again for your message. I hope we can rapidly restore your confidence in Verizon Wireless.”

As mentioned earlier, it is now around 8.5 years after this email exchange. This is approximately 102 months, and if you figure I’ve paid in the vicinity of $70/month for that period of time, that email has generated somewhere north of $7,000 in revenue for Verizon Wireless, not including the cost of devices and that my wife also switched to VZW a few years ago from AT&T.

This really has nothing to do with domain names or domain investing, but it’s a testiment to the value of great customer service and going above and beyond a job description. Mr. Stratton could have easily not responded or simply apologized, but he didn’t, and his company has benefited from my continued loyalty.

Today, it is no surprise that Mr. Stratton is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Verizon Wireless, and I am a happy Verizon Wireless customer.

As news spreads of a presumed iPhone announcement from Verizon Wireless tomorrow, commentators have been discussing some related domain names that are now owned by Verizon. For instance, iPhoneForVerizon.com now appears to be owned by Verizon. The company fiercely defends it’s trademarks, so this is no surprise to me.

Perhaps the best iPhone / Verizon domain name would be VerizoniPhone.com, which does not appear to be owned by either Apple or Verizon Wireless. Instead, it appears to be registered to a California resident and registered with Go Daddy.

According to a historical snapshot available on DomainTools, the domain name appears to have previously had a standard Godaddy landing page, which generally contains pay per click links.

However, the landing page seems to have suffered the same fate as that of the WikiLeaks.com domain name. Instead of a PPC-filed lander, there is a graphic that says, “Sorry! This site is not currently available.” I don’t know if there is a way to tell if Go Daddy intentionally isn’t monetizing it or if the customer changed the landing page, but it seems to be a smart move to avoid litigation for monetizing this domain name.

A big question I have though is if Go Daddy is responsible for removing the PPC landing page on this domain name, does it put the company at risk with other potential trademark names that are being monetized by them on their coming soon pages?

Could other trademark holders argue that if Go Daddy is willing and able to change the landing page for a name like VerizoniPhone.com, they should be doing it for all trademark names?  I have no legal expertise but think it’s interesting.

Oh… and I am very eager to hear the news… You can be sure my Blackberry will become a relic once the iPhone is available on the Verizon network.

This is one of my favorite stories I like to share with friends, and there are two takeaways from it. I’ve been a Verizon Wireless customer since 1994 or 1995. For years, I would never say I was a happy customer, but I was always fairly satisfied with the customer support and phone service I received.  I had phone issues from time to time, and I hated waiting on line for tech support in-store, but there was nothing really major.

Sometime around 2002, I had major issues with a new LG phone, and I knew a couple of friends who had similar issues. For whatever reason, the local stores wouldn’t take it back, and I was going to have to buy a new phone, in the middle of my contract, meaning I would have to pay full price. I was irritated and angry. I couldn’t understand why Verizon wouldn’t take care of a long-time customer, and I was frustrated that I would have to pay a few hundred dollars for a new phone (a lot of money for a grad student), or pay to cancel my contract and switch providers.

Using my search engine skills, I spent a few hours late one night trying to find the email contact information for any Marketing Executive at VZW who would could commiserate with my troubles. I found the name of an Executive, and I wrote a long email describing the troubles I was having. I apologized that I was contacting him since it wasn’t  a marketing issue, but I told him that as a student of Marketing, I knew it ultimately was hurting his brand if the customer service lacked.

This email was going to be my last resort, and if it failed to work or didn’t illicit a response, I was going to have to decide whether or not to sever my 7 year relationship with Verizon. Not knowing the Executive’s email address, I sent it to as many variations @verizonwireless.com as I could create. First Name.Last Name, Last Name, First initial.Last Name, FirstNameLastName…etc – probably 10-15+ emails. Nearly all bounced except one – success at 12:34 am! I went to bed feeling like I had given this a good effort.

At 7:40 the next morning, an hour or so before I woke up, an email arrived in my NYU inbox:

“Thanks for taking the time to write me re: your frustrations with your phone. Let me assure you that your lack of satisfaction is my business, whether it’s a marketing issue or not. Your allowing us the chance to make it right is fully appreciated.

I’ve copied [Name Redacted] our VP of Wireless Devices, on this message. I’ve asked have someone contact you directly to resolve this problem as soon as possible. You’ll hear from us within 24 hours.

Thanks again for your message. I hope we can rapidly restore your confidence in Verizon Wireless.”

Within just a few hours, I was in touch with the VP of Wireless Devices, who had already reached out to the local store, where I had been previously turned down. By mid-afternoon, I had a brand new phone and I was a very happy customer.

It’s been seven years since this incident, and I am a very happy customer of Verizon Wireless. Not only have I upgraded to a Blackberry with unlimited data and 900 minutes (up from a phone with 400+/- minutes), but my account has three other phones on it as well, and I am enrolled in the VIP program. On my phone alone, I’ve spent over $5,000 with Verizon. I was not surprised to hear that this Marketing Executive is now the Chief Marketing Officer of the entire company.

I think there are two lessons that can be learned here:

1) If you feel that you are not being treated as well as you should by a company, as a last resort, contact company executives and calmly explain the problem you are having. Don’t expect an answer, but hope for the best. If you don’t know the proper email address, do what you can to find it, and you are bound to be successful.

2) If you are a company executive, no matter how good your marketing strategy is, your customer service is equally important. If the sales process is great but a customer has a problem with even one customer service representative, your marketing dollars are wasted. You need to look at every company representative as a marketer. Every customer touchpoint should provide an equally good experience. Sometimes people who aren’t marketers need to think like marketers. It can take years to cultivate a good customer/brand relationship, but it can take just seconds to destroy it.

My relationship with Verizon probably would have ended seven years ago if it was not for great customer care from the top of the organization.