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Tag: engagement

  • Under-promise and Over-deliver – Good Customer Service is Tougher Than it Sounds

    Under-promise and Over-deliver – Good Customer Service is Tougher Than it Sounds

    Had a good customer service experience that I thought tied into my theme of customer service as marketing device. I’ve written several articles on the value of good customer service as a marketing tool, so when I run across an instance in real life that proves the theory, I like to recognize their efforts.

    I drive a gas guzzling, over-huge SUV – since I don’t commute regularly, my annual mileage is about 8,000 a year, about 1/3 of the national average. Unfortunately it has the same maintenance needs as if I drove it 20k a year – except for the frequency of things like tires, brakes, and other wearable parts, that still wear out on schedule just my elongated version.

    In 2006, on vehicles that size, now on virtually all of them, the manufacturer installed special valve stems that have the ability to measure the tire pressure on each tire, and a sender to tell you what the pressure is on a continual basis. As you might expect, these little marvels of modern technology are a bit costly, especially compared to the $.49 cent stems they replace. At $125 a whack and you need 5 of them with a full-size spare, that adds a bit to the bottom line when you buy it, and a lot to your tire bill when you replace them. They are also rather fragile, and if you put anything on them to cover them up, it must be made of plastic – metal covers apparently react with the metal in the stem and corrode them away in rapid fashion, causing them to leak and need replacement. I found this out the hard way and had to replace all four at a cost of nearly $600, something I’ll not repeat for quite a while with any luck.

    Thanks to these sensors, I noticed that one of the tires was losing air consistently, so since I just had the stems replaced, I took it back to where the work was done, thinking one of them might have been defective. I walk in the door to a Mr. Tire location near my house, tell them my saga, and they promise to take a look at it, but that there were a couple of people ahead of me – indeed for mid-week in late August, the waiting room was remarkably full, and some folks looked like they’d dug in for the long haul.

    I waited only 45 minutes before I saw the car come around the front and a ticket with my keys and lug lock land on the front desk. I didn’t even finish watching the day’s episode of “The View” before they were writing me up – they had rebuilt the pesky little sensor valve, replacing a seal and the core, and remounting the valve, replaced the tire and buttoned it all up. They had under promised the waiting time by being vague, and had over-delivered by not just replacing the expensive part but by saving me lots of money by rebuilding the existing one.

    What do my tires have to do with marketing? I’m now an evangelist, an auxiliary marketer for Mr. Tire – I’ll recommend them to friends, I’ll tell people about my experience (blog about it), use it as a landmark when giving directions, etc. Think what would happen to your business if all of your customers behaved this way about your product or service. The growth rate would be incalculable, your popularity unchallenged, your brand ubiquitous, your pockets forever full.

    If you’re a marketer, get out from behind your desk right now, take a stroll down to the customer service department and say a hearty “Thank You” to the folks that REALLY provide your reputation for you to customers. They are the real heroes, who do the job every day and don’t get to have the creative fun that you do. They deserve a tip of your cap!

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  • Sometimes you want to go . . . where everybody knows your name

    Sometimes you want to go . . . where everybody knows your name

    Everybody wants to be wanted, or at least recognized. I have a few places where they know me on sight when I walk in the door, but that kind of permanence and stability has been rare, especially since I grew up outside the Nation’s Capitol, where there are very few “natives” and the population is extremely transient. Too, I went to a very large university in Boston, where much of the student population was composed of commuters, so the typical school experience was very different, more focused on studying and less on social life, especially after dark, when a majority of the student body left for their own homes in the suburbs.

    Business relationships are often like that, too: you meet, you greet, you follow up, maybe even work on a project or several, and then drift apart. Relationships like anything else have to be nurtured and tended to in order to survive and thrive. The relationship with your customers is just that way. It takes effort to nurture them and to keep customers aware of you and to keep your business top of mind.

    Marketing can do that for you, but it must be sincere, and it must at least appear as much as possible to be PERSONAL. Your customers are humans, whether it’s B-to-B or consumer market, and they deserve to be treated as such. Good marketing, especially direct mail copy, should appear to be written specifically to YOU. That DOESN’T mean you just use the word “you” a lot in the copy – there’s an art to it, and if you’re not feelin’ the art, have a pro write your copy for you – its worth it.

    Customer service is often as simple as answering a question quickly and accurately. It can go as far as going above and beyond and addressing a long-standing problem and turning that complaining customer into an evangelist.

    I was the recipient of some tremendous customer service last night, at a business networking mixer, at the Intercontinental Hotel here in Baltimore. There is one place where they know me when I walk in the door, and this is it. Before I had gotten through the lobby into the bar proper, the top notch bartender, Elizabeth, had my “usual” beverage prepared for me, ready to go without me asking or even looking in her direction.

    Now in reality, I have only been a guest there about 6 times in the last year, but it’s always for the same event, the same time of day and the same day of the week, and our schedules collided on a regular basis – but she took the time and energy to remember after just a few small interactions who I was, what I looked like (winter and summer mind you, no identifying scarf or coat to help) what I liked to drink, and how I liked to get the evening started.

    Terrific! Kudos to Elizabeth for taking the initiative and providing outstanding service – and kudos to Arpad and the staff at the Intercontinental for realizing that sometimes employees need to be empowered to go above and beyond to REALLY please customers, and for allowing them the latitude to do it. I’m sure preparing a drink before the customer asks isn’t in the InterContinental’s policy book, but Elizabeth knew that I would be pleased and she was right. Thank you.

    Write about your good customer experiences here, be glad to pass them along . . .

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