Annual Chill Out Day

I have just made a call to a company today during the normal calling that I do every day. Here is the message on the phone.

“No one is available to take your call as today is our annual chill out day, please call us back on Monday”

What a bold and courageous move. Imagine the brownie points you would get from your staff. And how big an impact would it have on your customers? I am sure if you gave them notice, they would be fine or in fact be quite impressed.

This is the first time I have come across such a great idea implemented in action. In these challenging times, it does good to be creative.

Prospects are valuable – Don’t phone spam them

One of our service partners has a very interesting approach to managing their prospect pool. I have recently been promoting their services to my prospects and have come across some interesting responses.

Some of these comments include:
- Oh them yes I have had 3 phone calls this week alone from those guys.
- I have 3 different people that just wont stop calling me from that company.
- Those $%#*&# people, they just don’t get the fact that I am not interested.

I was somewhat surprised to hear their name pop up negatively as often as it did, always with a similar comment to the ones above. They are relatively new to New Zealand and driving hard to get a customer base here.

I believe that we need to treat our prospects with care. If we approach them the way our new partner does, we will just become Spam to them. And as we know … no one likes spam. What makes it worse is that their reputation, and mine through affiliation is damaged in the eyes of our prospects.

Prospects will become our future customers, all care must be taken to protect this most valuable asset.

When one click becomes two – in the name of branding

One of our suppliers recently updated their brand image. The design of the brand is nice, much nicer than it was before. They have a better look and feel and appear much bigger than maybe they are. From a branding perspective they have done well … almost.

As we use this supplier often, I have subscribed to their email newsletter outlining their special deals and product discounts etc. I have to admit I don’t spend a lot of time looking at the emails. But it has been useful to keep aware of their specials and take advantage of them from time to time.

That was up until they rebranded. Unfortunately the last week of new branding has one frustrating component. Now instead of one click to view the email, information and pricing, now I must open the email and then click on a link if I am interested in any information.

This has immediately stopped the effectiveness of the emails to me, and no doubt countless other customers they email too.

I have stopped paying attention to their emails.

Will this small design change impact business? I would guess it probably will. It may not drive customers away, however it may lose them sales that they may otherwise have received through their advertising efforts. I will now for example only go to them when I need something, rather than seeing a good deal and taking advantage of it.

Customer Service extremes

In the last two days, I have contacted two companies customer service lines. Both were regarding over charging and mis-representation of pricing.

Let’s discuss the good Customer Service experience first.
We were quoted $30 – $50 for a job to be done. The job took about a week and they notified me that it was going to be $75 dollars. Surprised at the cost, I called and explained that we were quoted $30 – $50 dollars for the job.

The outcome: Not a problem, the person obviously hadn’t recorded the quote down properly, we agreed to pay $50 dollars and it was sorted. In fact they were going to only charge $40 but because of the great service, I insisted that we would happily pay $50.

That to me is great customer service. Without any argument being willing (and able) to make a change to keep a customer happy. We were only a small customer, but if we ever need that service again, guess where I am going.

The bad customer service example.
My wife purchased a free trial of some health products over the internet. Not only did they not have ANY contact details on the site, they also had some fine print that is not published clearly on the website either. The fine print, taking this trial meant that you were now subscribing to the product unless you notify us within 15 days (took 20 days for the product to arrive).

When I call them the women on the other end is very abrasive and unforgiving of their lack of clear information. What’s more there was a tough luck attitude, and the product was way overpriced (NZ $5.60 per pill).

I finally managed to cancel my wife’s subscription for the two products that she ordered. This is the part that interested me the most. In the space it took her to cancel two separate subscriptions (about 2 minutes) the cancellation number had risen from ####0353 to ####0452 . That’s 99 cancelations in the space of 2 minutes, incredible.

The Outcome: Well it isn’t hard to find other dis-satisfied users, and I will add my sentiments to the discord as well.

Dis-satisfied customer 1
Dis-satisfied customer 2
Dis-satisfied customer 3
Me – Dis-satisfied customer 4

Sue Bradford has gone — THANK GOODNESS —

Anyone in New Zealand will well be aware of who Sue Bradford is and the damage she has caused to our country. See here for the wonderful news. I do not know anyone at all that has liked her being in the New Zealand parliament.

I for one are very, very, very pleased to here she is going. Unfortunately she will take with her a tax payer’s government pension, but I can live with that because at least she is gone. She can now focus her attention on some other poor group of people where she can wield her control freak mindset.

I cannot remember in the last 20 years there has been any other parliament member that I have disliked as much as her. Maybe it is her manner and the way she presents herself. It could be the way she comes across as a “mightier than thou” person. Or maybe it is the (in my opinion) the very obvious arrogance that she displays when considering any other option other than her own.

Anyway she’s gone, New Zealand can breathe a sigh of relief at least for now.

Dropping price to win business

It looks like the Auckland Health Boards have been had by the good old dropping the price to get the business syndrome. See here
It was a classic (and very obvious) case of a competitor dropping their pants to get the business. Why the DHB boards didn’t get that message when they made the decision I don’t know. Now they and their customers are living the nightmare results.

Price is an interesting tool to use when selling. It has a tendency to cloud the minds of many decision makers. You could almost always claim that a lower price does equate to a lower level of service. Lower service may not be a problem to an organisation, but when decision makers expect the same level of service for a much lower price, big red lights need to be going off somewhere.

I had an experience this year of a competitor price dropping to get the business. Clouded by the 30% saving on our price, they didn’t read the contract properly. Six months down the track, they are spending more money on them than what we quoted it would be.

You have to wonder about suppliers that use the price dropping practice, whether they are ethically challenged, or incompetent.

Speaking to the right person is vital

I have again been reminded how important it is to be talking to the right person in an organisation. Not that you can always get to that person of course. How was I reminded? Here is the scenario …

I called company abc 1 month ago. I get to talk to the manager that runs the day to day IT services. He informs me at the time that the company is bleeding losses month after month, he isn’t looking at any new services at present. I hang up and diary a call for today.

Today I call, the guy no longer exists, he was made redundant within the space of a month. I speak to the Financial Controller to introduce myself. He explained that he has just signed an outsource agreement and that the IT guy has been let go.

The IT guy had no idea what was happening to his role. He was the right guy to speak to for well nothing.

It isn’t always possible to talk to the right person within the organisation. Often they will try to push you to the person that they think is the right person for you to speak to. When I am getting pushed down the chain of command, I often pull out the following statement.

” I am more than happy to talk with the IT guy or PA etc, but can he make decisions on whether to hire or fire himself?

What I find is it does only work with people that are a bit less stiff than others, but it does give them insight into the fact that you want to speak with decision makers.

It is always nice to be reminded of the basics from time to time.

Its official, unsolicited emails are a waste of time!

We recently sent an invite to a seminar we are holding to a group of my customer base. Against my better judgment it was decided that it would be a great way to publish the event. We do have permission to send newsletters to them each month, but not unsolicited emails on seminars.

The results

1 x Confirmed person to the seminar
2 x Please don’t email me this kind of stuff, remove me from your list please
598 x No response

I will let the results speak for themselves.

This is a radio ad, but not for you

I have been listening to the radio on the way home from work the last few days. Each day at the same time this advert comes on promoting a seminar. The most obvious part of the advert is when it says, this seminar is not for everyone … then lists a very small group of people that it is for.

This is exactly why traditional broadcast marketing is so ineffective. You pay to reach mass audience, then have to spend some of that paid for time, narrowing down the focus so that you hopefully then have the attention of a few.

This advert has been running for a couple of weeks now and probably costs many thousands of dollars. Wouldn’t a better idea be to actually try to interact directly with those you are interested in talking to. Maybe hire some direct marketers or sales people to call these people directly and get some communication going with them.

The other problem with the radio advert approach in this case is that even though they try to qualify who should be coming, you are straight away assuming others won’t be interested. For Example, you may wish to be talking to IT managers, however it may actually be the Managing Director that loves all things IT and would want to come along.

However in the first 15 seconds if you say, “Calling all IT Managers” you have excluded him from your list straight away.

There is a place for radio advertising. It is however a broadcast medium to the masses. Make sure your offering is going to be interesting to the masses, rather than an exclusive offering. If it is exclusive, go direct to your market.

My new worst customer service experience

It used to be Telecom NZ (I think they have impoved a wee bit with competition). Telecom has been officially knocked off first place by Land Transport NZ.

Why, well just wait till you have to deal with their customer services team. I will say that the people sound like nice guys trying to do their job. However it is the job that is the problem. The only things it seems they are able to do are

1) Collect money
2) Suggest how to pay money
3) Tell you all they can do is collect money

Any questions, concerns, queries, or disputes fall on deaf ears. Maybe at Land Transport NZ’s employee induction program, they use hypnosis to eliminate all other responses.

You may ask what is wrong with only doing your job. In many cases, collecting money is the only job that is needed. In others such as our case, they needed a pathway to help me get answers or decisions. At the end of the day if the final answer is, you pay then so be it.

Here’s the thing. They are an organisation that we don’t have a choice to belong to, you want a car, it has to be registered. So with such a monopoly on the market (100%) surely some flexibility needs to be documented into the process.

It seems that the greater the market share an organisation has the worse the customer service seem to be. Just like Telecom of old, they were terrible. Now Telecom has competition, they are no longer terrible, they are just bad.