Category: Customer Service

When People Walk Into Your Store

I spent part of this afternoon at an auto dealership. One of my radio stations had an appearance there (station van, tent, prizes).

I arrived about 15 minutes before the appearance was scheduled to start. Couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to be, so I parked the car and walked, slowly, all the way around the building, looking for someone to ask.

As near as anyone there could tell, I was a potential customer. But nobody approached me.

Finally I walked inside. Nobody even looked at me. So I  stuck my head in an office, and the person there came out and sent me in the right direction.

About an hour later I was at the station tent when a man walked up and asked what we were doing there. We explained that it was an appearance to try to draw some more customers to the store, and he told us that he’d come by to take a test drive.

“I can’t find anyone to help me”, he said, “so I’m going home.”

Our Marketing Director, Melissa Ives, told him to wait. She then marched up to the building, fetched a salesman, brought him to the station tent, and introduced him to the customer. If that customer bought anything today, Melissa will not receive a commission — but she should.

I write this in the middle of an unprecedented downturn in the auto business. The  dealers we work with have been moaning for months about a lack of traffic and low sales.

Meanwhile, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, a group of auto dealership employees paid no attention to at least two potential customers who walked onto their lot. I’m guessing that we weren’t the only ones who were ignored.

On Monday, the General Manager will look at his weekend sales figures and complain that the advertising isn’t working.

What happens when customers walk into your store? Are you sure?

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Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

FedEx Wins Some Christmas Day Word-of-Mouth

In my office, our main overnight delivery service until recently was DHL. It was cheaper than FedEx, and reasonably reliable. But the word around the office was always that if you were serious about getting a package to someone overnight, you should spring for FedEx.

DHL is gone now.  On Christmas Day FedEx took a big step in reinforcing its reputation in the consumer’s mind as the most reliable choice overnight delivery. While UPS gave all of its employees the day off, FedEx announced that it would keep all 665 of its Express Centers open on Christmas morning.

A huge portion of the country has experienced really rough weather in the week before Christmas. Heavy snow and ice created havoc in air, rail, and ground transportation. Here in the Pacific Northwest, many roads are still iced over. Some packages — including many holiday presents — just couldn’t be delivered on time.

FedEx understood the disappointment that would cause, and decided to give parents one more chance to put the presents under the tree. This undoubtedly cost them a considerable amount of money, and created inconvenience and hardship for some of their employees. They did it anyway.

So if you were expecting a Christmas present via FedEx, you may be able to get it today. If it’s coming UPS? Sorry, you’ll have to wait until they get back on Friday.

Customers of both companies will remember what happened, and how each company responded to the challenge. So will all the people they talk to, and millions more who hear about it in media reports.

Which company will they choose when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight?

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

LPGA Backs Off English-Only Rule — Fixing a Bad Fix

When I worked in marketing for the New York Mets, one of my responsibilities was to get our players to interact with our sponsors. This was tougher than it sounds — although one might think that the players would realize that sponsor revenue was in part responsible for the exhorbitant salaries they receive, the fact was that most of the players just wanted to play baseball, play cards (this was in the pre-video game era) and chase women. Anything that interrupted their pursuit of these objectives was unwelcome.

Sometimes they would show up and make it clear that they would rather be anywhere else. Sometimes they wouldn’t show up at all. And there wasn’t much we could do about it — the contract language was vague, the team was winning, and Dwight Gooden had more leverage in these matters than Phil Bernstein.

So when the LPGA announced that beginning in 2009, all of their players would have to either learn English or find another way to make a living, I understood their reasoning, and sympathized — even as I knew that the policy would never stick.

A significant component of the LPGA’s marketing is pro-am events, in which golfers pay large sums to play a round with the professionals. The association makes a lot of money from the fees, and also hopes to gain positive word-of-mouth.

Part of the deal is establishing an atmosphere in which it all feels like a regular foursome. If the “ams” and the “pros” don’t speak the same language, they can’t interact much. Apparently the LPGA had been receiving some heat from amateurs who’d written large checks and then felt ignored on the course.

So the LPGA decided to force everyone to learn English. Which is kind of like burning down the house because there are ants in the kitchen. Kills the ants and creates all sorts of new problems.

The new policy angered many of the golfers, 121 of whom come from outside the United States. It created some bad feelings among major sponsors, many of whom have significant non-Anglo customer bases. And it got the attention of several governmental agencies, and probably would have wound up in court quickly.

So, inevitably, the LPGA announced yesterday that it was reversing course and revoking the rule.

Which means that they’re back to their original problem — pro-am events in which the pros can’t, or won’t, talk to the ams. It’s a problem they can’t just ignore. But if the players won’t learn to speak English, and the amateurs won’t learn to speak Korean, what’s the answer?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. In particular, I’d love to hear from the hundreds of new readers I’ve obtained by writing about Sarah Palin — even those who call her Sara Pailin.

Comments and suggestions from all are welcome — leave ’em in the Comments field below.

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Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Does This Customer Survey Have Value?

Customer surveys can be a terrific way to check on your sales and customer service efforts — not everyone will fill them out (and those who do may not tell you everything you need to know), but in some cases you’ll have the opportunity to correct problems you didn’t know you had.

This only works if you act on what you learn.

A survey we recently received in the mail has the potential to be teaching tool, or a complete waste of postage. Updates will follow. The history:

In June, we needed a new backyard fence. This post has more details. The short version is that my wife called three well-known companies. One never returned a phone message, although they did send a postcard promising that someone would call. A second company sent a salesman who took measurements, promised to return with a bid, and was never heard from again. Only the third company followed up with a quote, and that company got our business.

[Roland Young of Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking deserves credit for his follow-up, and for doing a fine job on the fence. A radio campaign would be an excellent way for Rick’s to tell the world about what they do, and I invite them to call me at 503-323-6553. But I digress.]

The company who never returned our call just sent us a survey. The cover letter is signed by the president of the company. It says, in part:

Our business is based on referrals from the clients who contact [us], and we want that experience to be positive. So that we can ensure that we’re doing a good job for clients, we ask for feedback to see how we are doing. It would help us a great deal if you would complete the questions on the back and return this form at your earliest convenience in the enclosed self-adressed envelope.

Our initial reaction upon opening the envelope was amusement. After having completely dropped the ball, how could they, with a straight face, ask us how they did? But I now think this was a smart move. They don’t what happened, because we never told them — all we did was spend our money with someone else and move on. The survey represents a system they’ve set up to make sure they find out about things like this.

So we’re going to fill it out and send it back. We will be candid about our experience. Our answers may help them plug a hole in their sales funnel, and improve the results of their advertising — but only if someone reads it and acts on what they learn.

Stay tuned for updates.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Holes in Your Sales Funnel = Wasted Advertising Dollars

If your advertising isn’t getting you the results you want, there are a couple of possibilities to consider:

1. There’s something wrong with the advertising, or

2. The advertising’s fine, and something’s wrong at your business. prospects are entering your sales funnel, but you’re letting them slip away before they become customers.

The story below illustrates the second possibility. I’ll preface it by saying that if you’re in the home improvement business, my wife and I are great customers:

  • Our house is old, so things break all the time
  • We have no mechanical skills whatsoever, so we’ll pay to have someone else do the work
  • My wife takes care of the details, and hates to negotiate, so most jobs are quite profitable for the contractor.

We needed a new backyard fence. My wife called Company #1, a semi-regular advertiser with my company. A salesman came out, took some measurements, and promised to call with an estimate. We never heard from him again.

So she called Company #2, who has also advertised with my company. The receptionist took her name and number. Nobody ever called back.

Company #3 doesn’t do any radio — just newspaper. But we needed a fence. A call to Company #3 brought a salesman to our house. He took the measurements, went through all of our options with us on the spot, got the order, scheduled the job, and walked away with our deposit check. He’ll get the rest of the money on Thursday when his crew installs the fence.

Companies 1 and 2 may decide that the economy sucks, radio doesn’t work, or both. But either of them could have had our money if they’d practiced the most basic follow-up strategy. How many other jobs did they lose because they weren’t paying attention?

How many jobs are YOU losing?

If you’ve got a sales funnel story — a hole you found and plugged in your own system, or a problem you had with a vendor who didn’t seem to want your money — I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment below.

 

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.