Category: Sales

Can a Blog Post Resolve a Service Issue? A SuperBookDeals Experiment

When I was a kid, my mom used to listen to Jack Carney’s show on KMOX Radio in St. Louis. Carney was the biggest personality on the biggest radio station in town, and he did endorsement commercials for a camera shop. My mom went to that store and… I can’t remember the details anymore, but she felt she was treated poorly.

She called the radio station, managed to get Carney on the phone, and told her story. Within 30 minutes of that conversation, the store manager called my mom and offered to do whatever it took to make things right.

In the age of the internet, can a blog post accomplish the same thing? We’re going to give it a try. Here’s the story.

I ordered a book from Amazon.com — actually from one of their “Marketplace Partners”, an outfit called SuperBookDeals. Here’s the book I ordered:

When the envelope from SuperBookDeals arrived, here’s what was inside:

Can we agree that it’s not even close? And that anyone who reviews my Amazon order will confirm that I ordered the Ellington book?

Okay, good. Let’s continue.

I emailed SuperBookDeals and told them of the mistake — their mistake, by the way. I received an email asking for the ISBN number of the book I received. I sent them the proper number. Here’s what I got in reply:

Thank you for contacting us. We are sorry to hear that you received the wrong item. Please return the item(s) to us via USPS Media Mail with delivery confirmation, along with your full name, order number, reason for return, and a copy of the receipt for return postage, and we will reimburse the cost of return shipping. Please send the item(s) to:

SuperBookDeals Returns

Ref: [transaction or order number]

5520 Brick Road

South Bend, IN 46628

Upon receipt, we would be pleased to process a refund or order a replacement from the publisher, which would take approximately 1-2 weeks to be delivered to you. Please let us know whether you would prefer a refund or a replacement copy (if available). We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused, and we appreciate your patience in this matter.

In other words, to correct their mistake, I have to write out a letter with a bunch of information they already have, take the book to the post office, shell out the postage myself, include the receipt with the book (God forbid I try to make an extra fifty cents in the deal), and wait for them to receive it via (extremely slow) Media Mail. Then, and only then, they will send me the book they should have sent me the first time.

I objected — both to them and to Amazon. I’m willing to return the book, but while they’re waiting for the wrong book to come back they should be sending me the right book. Eventually, I received another email from SuperBookDeals:

Thank you for contacting us. We do apologize for the confusion and that you received the wrong item, as we did indicate in our email below, to please return the wrong item via USPS Media Mail with Delivery Confirmaton and we will be happy to reimburse you for that cost. Once you have done that please email us with the delivery confirmation number and we will be happy place a new order to send you the correct item. At that time if you could also email us with us the cost of the return shipping we can start the process to send you a refund check for that amount. Again, we do sincerely apologize incorrect item sent.

Okay, better. Not great, but better. I dutifully wrote the letter, brought the package to the post office, put the receipt in the envelope, mailed the thing, and then sent the delivery confirmation number to SuperBook Deals.

And got this reply:

Thank you for your response. At of yet we have not received your return merchandise. The delivery confirmation number you provide is invalid. Please provide us with the correct delivery confirmation number. Once we have that number or the book we will immediately ship out the correct book. If you have any further questions please contact us. Thank you!

No, no, thank you, SuperBookDeals, for screwing up my order and treating me like I’m trying to pull a scam.

I now have to go back to my office, find the delivery confirmation slip, and see if perhaps I missed a number on the 20-digit delivery confirmation slip. Is it possible I got the number wrong? Sure it is. And by golly, SuperBookDeals isn’t going to fix their mistake until I jump correctly through every single hoop they’ve set up. Rules are rules, after all.

So here’s the experiment:

Now that this rant is up in the blogosphere (and a separate, shorter rant is on Amazon’s Customer Feedback), will it affect SuperBookDeals in any way?

Will a Google search of SuperBookDeals put the post on the front page?

Will SuperBookDeals find the post on their own? Will Amazon? Will either of them care?

I’ll report back.

UPDATE 5/19/08 This morning, I photocopied the delivery confirmation slip, created a pdf, and attached it to an email to SuperBookDeals — my hope was that this way they would have proof that I’d sent the book, and there would be no question as to the confirmation number. Late in the day, I received this message in reply: We are not allowed to open attachments please include the information in the email. Thank you. I have complained bitterly to Amazon.

UPDATE 5/21/09 Amazon took care of business. Details here.

The Line Between Targeted and Creepy

Suzanne Obermire of RRW Consulting has a thoughtful post on the struggle to establish good boundaries in direct marketing. The issue in question is mobile marketing — delivering advertising to cell phones and other mobile devices.

When I take off my direct marketing hat and think about mobile marketing from a consumers’ perspective, it can be a little frightening. Marketers can know where I am at all times. Essentially, they can track me. It does seem like an invasion of my privacy…

Boy, howdy, does it ever. Speaking as a cranky old guy, I can say without equivocation that I don’t want ads on my cell phone. I don’t want personalized ads to show up in my email. I don’t want to be followed around.

But that may be generational — I grew up in an age of mass media, and mass advertising. I don’t mind commercials on the radio (in fact, I create them and sell them), or on television. Newspaper and magazine ads don’t bother me, either. There’s an implicit, decades-old contract at work: you deliver me news/music/entertainment, and I “pay” for it by putting up with your ads.

There are signs that the contract is breaking down on both sides — spam and greatly increased clutter on the advertiser’s side, TIVO on the consumer’s — and it’s not surprising that advertisers are looking for any technological advantage they can get.

To stay on the good side of the “creepy divide”, the key is going to be permission. Offer something of value to the consumer in return for permission to contact them.

My company is now involved in cell phone text-message advertising, but listeners must opt-in to get the messages, and can opt out easily at any time. I’m just finishing up a program with the Oregon Elections Division that starts with a contest: text the word “vote” to 81530 for a chance to win an Ipod Touch. When people enter the contest, they’re invited to sign up for text-message voter reminders on things like registration deadlines and the last day to put a ballot in the mail. You don’t have to get the reminders to enter the contest, and you can stop them at any time. More than three hundred people have chosen to get the reminders.

Asking permission cuts down on the number of people who will get our message. But it keeps us honest, and it forces us to make sure our messages are of value to the consumer. It’s one way to stay away from “creepy”.

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How to Lose Gracefully

A few years ago I managed to pry an advertiser away from another radio station in town. The client represented a significant piece of business, and had been with the other station for quite a while; the switch came as an unwelcome surprise to my competitor.

The client had previously recorded a commercial in his own voice, and asked the other rep to send me the voice track. The rep refused, and we ultimately re-recorded the whole thing.

This response made sense on an emotional level — why help someone who just fired you? But by refusing to send over the voice track, my competitor angered and inconvenienced the client, and ensured that he would never have a chance to get the business back.

The folks at Regence BlueCross BlueShield are a little smarter. In Sunday’s Oregonian, they published a full-page ad with the headline “An Open Letter to School District Employees in Oregon”.

Regence had been providing medical and other benefits to school district employees for nearly forty years. But this year, the Oregon Educators Benefit Board (OEBB) declined to select them as one of the three carriers in the program.

Regence could have claimed that the OEBB had made a mistake. They could have accused their competitors of underhanded tactics. They could have urged employees to call the Board and demand that Regence be reinstated.

Instead, after acknowleging his disappointment, Regence President J. Bart McMullan, Jr. made this promise:

“We will do everything we can to insure that this transition goes well for you, your families, and for OEBB… Our customer service staff will receive special training to help better assist you with questions and transition of care issues. During this transition, those of you receiving special assistance from our nurse case managers will continue to have access to the same people who have been serving your needs.”

McMullan then promised that district employees would also continue to have access to the resources of their members-only web site. He closed by saying “Regence will continue to be there for you in any way we can. Please call on us when you need us.”

Losing a major long-time account hurts during the best of times, and is especially painful during an economic downturn. Regence is undoubtedly already working on strategies to regain the business the next time the OEBB contract is up.

By accepting defeat with grace, and going out of their way to assist the transition, they’ve taken a huge first step.

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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.

An Interesting Place to Put Your Cigarettes

“I’m sitting on the porch of a bungalow on the Yucatan Peninsula with lit cigarettes sticking out of both my ears.”

That’s the opening line of Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston. The narrator has consulted a doctor because his ears were clogged, and the cigarettes were the prescription:

“When my ears become clogged, I must stick a cigarette into each one and light them. The cigarettes, that is…

The cigarettes burn and create a vacuum in my ears, sucking the moisture into the filters. I have a towel draped over each shoulder to catch the hot ash as it falls. I’ve been doing this for a couple of days a week for years and it always works.”

In the pharmaceutical world, this would be called an “off-label use” – using a medicine for something other than it’s officially-approved purpose. And the concept may be a great way for you to get through an economic downturn.

New circumstances create new problems. If you can repurpose your existing product, service or skills, you may be able to create a new revenue stream. For example:

  • Recognizing the public’s increasing fear of germs, Kleenex came out with a line of anti-viral tissues.

  • As mortgage jobs have disappeared in many parts of the country, resilient loan officers have found new demand for their skills as “workout specialists”, helping homeowners avoid foreclosure.

  • Looking for an edge in the competitive aesthetic medicine market, a New York doctor decided to specialize in tattoo removal. Aging hipsters have flocked to his practice.

Take some time to gather your front-line employees, and brainstorm a bit. What’s the most unusual request you ever received from a customer? Were you able to solve the problem?

Other customers might have the same problem – perhaps they’d pay you to fix it.

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Empathy

Lots of marketing books recommend trying to see things from the customer’s point of view. And lots of companies give lip service to the idea. Few go out of their way to put themselves in their customer’s place.

Which makes Nissan’s initiative in Japan all the more remarkable. According to Business Week (subscription may be required to view),

Elderly drivers make up a growing share of Japan’s auto market—and its accident statistics, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK. Now, to help them drive more safely (and comfortably), engineers at Nissan are donning “old” suits that simulate the effects of aging. “It’s not always practical to recruit older motorists for product research,” says design engineer Etsuhiro Watanabe.

The suits include features such as “cataract goggles”, neck restraints, and special gloves to reduce finger dexterity.

What can you do to simulate the ways your clients will actually use your product or service?

 

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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.