Category Archives: Huh?

July 23, 2014 · 10:19 am

How Do You Like My Tie?

There is an old joke about an egocentric sales guy rambling on and on about his life and success.  He sees the recipient of his boastful rant glazing over and says “But enough about me.  How do you like my tie?”  I was reminded of this as I read about a study conducted by the Online Marketing Institute, who teamed up with Forrester Research and the Business Marketing Association to understand how well B2B marketers gauge their content development skills and maturity.  The headlines aren’t so wonderful:

While 51% of B2B marketing leaders rate their content marketing practices as very mature, an overwhelming 85% fail to connect content activity to business value — and, as a result, fail to retain customers or win their long-term loyalty. In fact, when asked to look back at the past 12 months and rate the effectiveness of content marketing efforts, only 14% of those surveyed gave their content practices high marks for delivering value back to the business.

One wonders sometimes who exactly is in charge at these companies.  If 86% of the executives surveyed think they’re sucking at content marketing, what are they doing about it? 71% of surveyed marketers say their content features case studies or customer stories, but only 3% admit this is a primary focus of their efforts.  Hello?  How is this any different from the sales guy in the joke?

All marketing is about adding value and solving problems.  Hopefully everything you produce does both but it must do one or the other.  Obviously, as the study concludes, B2B marketers have more work to do when it comes to using content to consistently deliver a valuable exchange of information with prospective buyers.  That starts with a mindset to do just that and part of the process is evaluating what you’re producing in that context.  This last bit is the clearest indicator of that.  The study talks about how the content these businesses are producing:

Focuses on closing the deal, not on building relationships. While more than three-quarters of respondents say they frequently communicate to their customer base, only 5% make this a priority, proving that marketers are too focused on acquisition rather than long-term loyalty.

That’s the issue.  What are they (and you!) going to do about it?

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July 22, 2014 · 10:35 am

A Tale Of Two CSR’s

It was the best of experiences, it was the worst of experiences to paraphrase the famous beginning of ” Tale Of Two Cities.”

Customer services

(Photo credit: gordon2208)

The next, little remembered part Dickens’ actual text is “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” With a nod towards that, let me relate two experiences of the last 24 hours and you get a couple of good examples of customer support done at either end of the spectrum.

First, Cablevision. My wife was having issues with the cable TV yesterday. The issue was it wasn’t working. Someone in the house has run her through the troubleshooting protocols any number of times (ahem) so by the time she called customer service she knew that the problem was on the cable end and not something in the house.  The rep informed her there was no trouble in the area nor was anyone working on the lines nearby so she’d have to send out a technician.  She set an appointment for 24 hours later and basically washed her hands of the problem.  My wife then headed out to do errands.  Lo and behold, not one but three Cablevision trucks were on the road working on the lines.  The crew informed her they were doing maintenance and apologized for the brief outage.  By the time she got home, the service was fine and she cancelled the appointment (without speaking to a human, by the way).

Second, AT&T.  Our internet service kept failing yesterday afternoon.  The modem showed the DSL connection was fine but there was no internet.  The rep pinged the modem and said there was definitely an issue but wasn’t seeing any issues except in a town 5 miles away.  She asked me to hold while she escalated the issue to the tech support supervisors.  3 minutes later, she came on the line to explain what was being done and asked me to hang on.  She came back every couple of minutes to update me.  Finally, she said that there did seem to be an outage in the area, gave me a support ticket number and told me when the problem would be solved.   There was a lot more detail about what tests we ran but the important point was that she actively looked for information and kept me informed about what she was doing to solve the problem.  The service is fine today.

Contrast the two.  One rep seemed to want to do nothing but get my wife off the phone as quickly as possible.  She gave little information and what she did give was just dead wrong.  The other one was proactive, communicative, and apologetic.  Why isn’t Cablevision my internet provider too?  Duh.

Customers expect reps to treat them as the VIP’s they are.  While there aren’t a lot of choices about TV or internet providers in any area, there are a few.  I know I can get higher-speed internet from Cablevision.  Think I’m going to make that move?  Would you?  Part of being a good marketer is remembering that any touchpoint the business has with consumers is part of marketing.  It all needs to be executed at the same high level.  If you’re ignoring the customer service reps in your marketing thinking you’re missing the boat, as these examples make clear.  You agree?

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July 14, 2014 · 9:46 am

Woe-Mart

Today’s rant tale of business woe comes to us courtesy of the Wal-Mart folks. While I’m not usually surprised at the silliness that is foisted upon the customer from any business entity, this was a new low, at least in my experience.

This is a selfmade image from the english wiki...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was helping to cook for a party this weekend and part of the menu was fried turkey. I went to my usual source of peanut oil on Tuesday (my preferred frying lipid) and discovered that there was none to be had. I get that – why stock an item that’s not in demand until late November. I checked several outlets online and Wal-Mart had what I wanted at a reasonable price. They could also deliver it by Friday – Saturday was the cooking day. I placed the order and got my confirmation. So far, so good.

Two days later, I get an email from Wal-Mart – “Unfortunately, one or more of the items in your order have been delayed.” Oh oh.  The email won’t allow you to cancel to order electronically (fail #1) but does give you a number to call to do so.  I speak with a very nice rep who assures me the order is cancelled and I should see a credit within 48 hours.  I then spent some time frantically searching various sources in the area (online ordering is now not going to happen – overnight shipping costs for 6 gallons of oil are seriously expensive).  I finally give up and buy several gallon jugs of soybean oil which I lug home.  By the way, good luck finding a whole, fresh turkey in July.  Even frozen ones aren’t readily available.

If this is where the tale ended, you wouldn’t be reading this post.  Stuff happens – maybe their inventory system didn’t update the online store quickly enough – I can handle that.  Late Thursday evening (like 10pm) I get another email from Wal-Mart – your order has shipped!  It will arrive by 10am Friday (which is what I was told Tuesday when I placed the order).  Here’s a tracking number.  Sure enough, Friday morning I have peanut oil and well of 6 gallons of soybean oil I know have to return to the store.

Wal-Mart was trying to do a good thing.  They got out in front of a potential problem by notifying me that I might not receive my order as promised.  I dealt with it.  Obviously, however, the order was neither cancelled nor delayed.  Whatever triggered the “it’s delayed” mail was wrong.  Whoever said the order was cancelled was wrong.  Putting aside the unnecessary concern they caused me and the time it took to find replacement oil (and to return it), do you think there is a chance in hell I will ever order from this three-ring circus again?

We can’t pull the fire alarm on our customers unless we know there is something ablaze, even with the best of intentions.  Wal-Mart has an issue with their inventory management and maybe with customer service too.  The systems problems they have and the short term issues those problems caused me  has resulted in a long-term issue for them – the lack of a customer.  Moreover, this customer is telling all of you.  Thoughts?

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