Tag: customer service

What marketing is not

FabrizioLeave a comment

The inability to listen. The idea that by interrupting and telling your story people will be amazed. The practice of segmenting into hundreds of small niches to feed them whatever they want today. The ideas of optimization, hacking, ranking, fans and followers. The belief that data is better than interactions. The effort to second-guess needs and wants to stay clear of the risk of asking. The easy shortcut of personalised and automated user journey. The unrelentless focus on growth.

Marketing is not ruining the world. The things above are. And at the same time they set expectations, both for marketers and customers, that cannot be met, leading to inevitable dissatisfaction.

Key insights and themes from the research include:

  • Data is a dilemma. But “big data” isn’t marketing’s biggest challenge. It is actually the “small data” – the data used to describe the small, specific attributes delivered directly from the customer through, as an example, the Internet of Things. 36 percent of respondents believe that small data will be the greatest challenge for the organization.
  • We’ve lost the ability to be human, and we can’t blame the machines. Some 41 percent admit that they are overly focused on driving campaigns, forgetting that they are building relationships. Nearly 30 percent admit they think of their customers in terms of targets, records and opportunities – interestingly an equal amount admit that they are also struggling to define and deliver returns from customer experience strategies.
  • Going small could bring our humanity back. Marketers believe small data will help extract better signal from the noise (45 percent), reveal the “why” behind customer actions and behaviors (41 percent), help focus on the people behind the data to deliver more human interactions (35 percent) and aid in filling key gaps across the customer journey (35 percent.)

CMO Council Research

 

Customer disservice

Fabrizio1 Comment

We are all lazy as customers, and somehow we forget this basic fact when we change our dress and become business people.

Hi Generic User

Thank you for contacting Support.

We appreciate your time and effort invested in contacting us.

It is unfortunate that you are facing issue with your product. Need not to worry we will surely try our best to resolve this issue.

Please provide us with the below information so that we could help you more appropriately regarding your issue:

  1. Was there any liquid/physical damage to the product?
  2. Have you ever dropped your product?
  3. Are facing issue from the day 1 of purchasing the product?

We really apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused. Please perform a factory reset on your product, please see below on how to perform it.

Please provide us clear pictures of your product and the video of the issue.

Please feel free to reach out to us if still issue persists.

Best Regards,

I have three problems with this way of making a connection with a customer.

Number 1, you have my name, you can use it. I have purchased from you, I am getting in touch about a specific order, you have all the details about my life as a customer (and perhaps some more). It’s quite pointless that the next time I scroll through my Facebook timeline I will see an offer from you “JUST FOR ME!!!”, if you are not personal when you can be.

Number 2, can I ask how many people tell you they have spilled liquid on their product, damaged it, or dropped it? And if they are honest and they do, what is your answer? Are you telling them that it is their fault the product does not work (and fail their honesty, losing them for good), or are you going to pretend nothing happened and still replace the product (and then why the question in the first place)?

Number 3, please do not make it feel as if by having an issue with your product I am being hired for a second job. Be sure that the tasks you ask me to perform are related to my request (I am not sure how useful taking a video can be for sound not coming from earphones) and are few.

I got this answer after only 14 minutes from my request of assistance. I imagine first response time has been dealt with. What about the rest?

A couple of alternatives.

Hi Fabrizio, thanks for reaching out.

I am sorry you can’t hear music coming from your headphones, when did this start? Also, can I ask you to perform a factory reset on them? We found this is helpful in some cases. To do this, follow the instructions at the end of this message.

If this does not help, we’ll arrange a replacement, as I see it’s been just two months from your purchase. We are proud of the quality of our products, but sometimes things do not go as planned. I apologise for this.

Be in touch soon!

Or

Hi Fabrizio, thanks for being in touch.

I am sorry you can’t hear music coming from your headphones. You bought them two months ago, and this should not happen.

I am not in a position to offer a replacement, unfortunately. We are striving to keep the cost of our products the lowest on the market, and this is why we are able to offer only 40 days of guarantee on earphones. We have found that customers, sometimes, are not as careful as you shared you’ve been, and by increasing the guarantee period, we might actually end up losing money. I am genuinely sorry for that.

What I can do, if you agree, is transfer a €10 credit on your account to use with your next purchase. No strings attached, it is valid forever, use it when you want it, and on whichever product you might be interested into.

I understand this is not the solution you were seeking, and I will appreciate if you would get back to me with an answer, so that I can proceed with crediting the money on your account.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Exceptions and rules

Fabrizio3 Comments

If a customer (or a potential one) shows up with a request that is not in line with your procedures, processes, habits, or even product or service, the generous thing to do is to make an exception.

If that requests gets asked more and more, than you have two options.

Change your procedures, processes, habits, product or service to incorporate the request. You invest time and energy in making a change, as you see that the customers that are asking for it are the ones you want to serve.

Or you say, “thanks, but that’s not what we do.” Not all customers are your customers after all, so it is ok to decide that those asking for that additional feature are not the ones you want to serve.

There’s actually a third option, one you should avoid, the worst one. Not do anything. Keep getting the request, leaving its satisfaction to the moment, juggling about without any clear indication if that’s something that belongs to you or not.

This wastes your time and that of your customers, and time is not something anybody has to spare.