Lost/Missed Customers? Maybe You’re Scaring Them!
I’m working with a tech start-up in crafting their marketing. Thus, I’m doing some highly unscientific sanity check surveys of friends and colleagues (all in the target “small and medium business” sector.) Among other questions, I ask, “What do you think of when you hear ‘disaster recovery?’ or ‘lost data?’” Response: “Oh NO! I don’t even want to think about it!” So, if they don’t even want to think about something, how are you going to sell a solution to that “something?” Not easily.
Then, there are all those on-line help pages, FAQs and search capablities. The vendor is (usually) well-intentioned, thinking, “We’ve put all the information a customer or user could ever possibly need, right on the web site!” They’ll love it!” Um, maybe not. Many of these slam-bang things are at best confusing, at worst downright intimidating. Nothing looks familiar or quickly addresses the customer’s or reader’s problem or need. Remember, most people to whom you sell aren’t super techie and, even if they are, they’re not intimately familiar with your product design (and shouldn’t have to be in order to get real help fom the “help” menu.) They also didn’t sit in your web site meetings, so how are they supposed to know that “way cool” floating 3-D box is a navigation element? (duh-oh!)
Dan Russell (Creating Passionate Users blog) does a terrific job of illustrating this user problem with his post, “Still Listening.”
Related Post: Fear is A Lousy Marketing Strategy
Tags: customer service, marketing, marketing troubleshooting, web design
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November 27th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Your people skills will fail you long before your technical skills.
That is what I have been telling clients for a long time now.
What we have here is a failure to empathize!
With you 100%.
Keep creating,
Mike
November 27th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Mary - Good reminder that, when it comes to tech-talk, nobody is born knowing this stuff. I remember when graphical user interfaces came out, and we started throwing around the term GUI (pronounced “goo-ey”). At one customer training session, I watched the faces in our semi-technical audience as we tossed around GUI, objects, controls, radio buttons, combo-boxes…. Half the people didn’t have a clue what we were talking about, but felt too intimidated to raise their hands and ask us to put it in English. So we introduced a bit of “GUI 101″ up front - explaining all the new words we were introducing, and why it was useful to know what they were.
November 27th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Maureen,
Yes, GUI is a classic example of “huh?”
And, to make it even more confusing for everyone - an acronym can mean different things, depending on the context, industry. Simple example: AMA.
So, we all need to remember to be courteous to our readers, audience, customers (me included - I forget that not “everybody” knows what some of the stuff.)
November 29th, 2006 at 9:22 am
On the issue of selling disaster recovery, think Life Insurance. It’s the one product no one buys, they must be sold.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Exactly! And, many people (including some very large companies) gamble that the boxes will never break, the flood will never hit, and no employees will ever go virtually postal.
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:31 am
[…] Or, one person’s acronym is another’s “Huh?” It gets even more fun (confusing, maddening, and nonsensical) when you consider the same letters can mean very different things, depending on the industry, group, business, or location. (Tip of the blog bowler to Maureen for her comment re GUI (Graphical User Interface) on a previous post of mine – jogged my synapses re this problem.) […]
January 9th, 2007 at 10:10 am
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