How to really annoy your customers and get less sales…(Part 2 – The experience)
Many companies now use the expression “Customer Experience”, but how many of them have really taken onboard what this means? What is the experience of doing business with you?
Back in the early ‘90s, a major international bank undertook a huge analysis of their customer service. Amongst other things, they interviewed hundreds of staff that were not in front-line jobs to ask them about “the customer”. Notably, one member of the IT staff was quoted as saying “I’m in the IT department, I don’t have customers”.
The bank went on to create a new tagline to reinforce their new efforts to satisfy customers. “Customers are at the centre of everything we do.”
Well from first hand experience, customers may have been at the centre, but they continued to be treated more like “piggy-in-the-middle than the VIP guest, which I don’t think was supposed to be the point of the tag.
If we think of companies in the ‘service’ industries, we see examples of the very best in service. Or do we? Apart from Singapore Airlines, how often have you heard someone remark on the amazing service they received from an airline, from booking, to check-in, to the flight itself?
What experience do your customers or clients go through when working with you? Here is a checklist of ways to “really annoy your customers and get less sales”. If you hadn’t noticed, I am reversing the normal approach of offering positive advice by commenting on what you should NOT do, for a bit of fun.
1 Inconsistent Style. Make sure your website and advertising materials do not accurately reflect your style. If you are a laid-back, relaxed type or the majority of your company are, then why not have a bold and brash, loud website?
If on the other hand, your company sells a wide range of disparate items at relatively low cost, why not, instead of having a busy, link-filled website, why not have a simple flash-based, site based on a blue skies and white cloud template? It will relax your customers to take a moment to move from one part of your site to another, take their time finding prices and be inspired by the gentle, orchestral background music.
Don’t allow little things like Corporate colours to cloud your creativity, use whatever colour combinations and treatment of your logo etc. you choose at the time.
Use varying terms for your products and services. In one place you might describe your typical consulting engagement, later refer to it as an intervention and price per session, might be a nice way of making sure the reader is not quite sure what they are buying. In fact it will assist in ensuring they do not take the option any further.
But more importantly, be careful that any promises you make or imply in your marketing literature are ignored as soon as a sales situation arises. Which brings us on to the next point.
2 Over promise, under deliver. As you know, sales people are allowed to say anything they want in order to secure a sale. Just because you cannot do custom paint jobs on your product, doesn’t mean that, in a sales presentation, the customer should not be promised your product in their company livery.
Delivery dates are an easy target here. If it takes 3 weeks to process an order, when 4 might be quite acceptable to your customer, try to make sure your sales people promise 2 weeks. It makes the service sound so much more compelling to promise to deliver quicker than the competition. I wonder why they always say it takes 3 weeks to deliver that particular product.
If you are offering an estimate for work to be carried out, remember it is only an estimate. The customer is not going to hold you to that price. Once you start the job, it will become clear you didn’t think through all that it would entail, that is why you only gave an estimate. But a word of warning here, of course you have to be careful not to mention the over-spend until the work is complete, in case the customer decides not to continue.
That brings us on to another aspect of under delivering. When is a job complete? That is entirely down to you. If you consider you have done all you can, perhaps hit a couple of snags you couldn’t overcome, but it is as good as it gets, call it “done”. After all, you know the customer is duty-bound to pay on completion. If you are working onsite, it might be a good idea to complete the work when the customer is not around. That way you can leave the bill without the embarrassment of all the compliments and thanks. They can just send the check on.
3 Don’t let them know, what they don’t want to hear. The bane of any good company’s operation is over-communication. It slows down internal processes and of course may prove to be right. So if you are not indeed going to make the impossible 2 week delivery schedule, why say anything? Surely the customer will realize you are not going to deliver this week when he or she is sitting down to their Sunday lunch.
You are waiting with a couple of hundred other people in the departure lounge of an airport. The departure time is just 15 minutes away and you foolishly look out of the window to see no aircraft at the end of the air-bridge. The airline has known for at least 30 minutes that they are not going to meet their departure slot because an aircraft turnaround is at least 45 minutes. But airlines know that the best way to annoy their passengers is not to announce a delay until after the departure time has come and gone. Seriously, why do they do this?
A flight is over-booked or an aircraft is taken out of service for technical reasons and a smaller one is the only available replacement, a far more acceptable reason, either way - too many passengers…too few seats. The best way to handle this is to board until all the seats are full and then announce to the remaining passengers queuing at the gate that they cannot get on the flight, not!
In Honolulu airport, awaiting a Hawaiian Airlines’ flight, passengers were recently greeted by a shame-faced rep who took the microphone. “I have two free tickets on Hawaiian Airlines here for anybody who doesn’t really want to be on today’s flight.” He announced in his most upbeat voice. He went on to explain that they had overbooked by 2 and there wasn’t enough room for everyone. The queue that formed was testament to an outrageously bad way to handle the situation. How dare he admit the problem and invite the passengers to provide a solution?
These are just some ways you can ensure annoyed customers.
If on the other hand you would prefer to have satisfied customers, ask them how you did at anytime and at any stage. Ask them, survey them. Don’t make this tedious and overkill, but if you really are doing a good job, they will be happy to tell you. And if you are not, they will probably be happy to tell you this as well.
A word of caution though. Surveying customers is becoming such a big thing. Almost any online business nowadays, hits their customers with a “how did we do” almost by return. In fact quite often, help desks ask this question before an incident is even complete. So think before you survey. As is true in the tongue-in-cheek tips above, once aware of the pitfalls, stop and think how you would like the experience. Whether it is the purchase process, the delivery of the goods or services or the follow-up survey, just make sure you conduct business the way you would like to be served.
Much more on surveying customers in another article to come.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 at 02:52PM
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