Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

My blogging buddy Susan Getgood recently did a riff on “customer service is the new marketing” and made excellent points. However, I’d submit that customer care has always been the right kind of “marketing.”

Service: Keep that line going! Transaction, transaction, transaction, transaction - out the door. Whew! NEXT!

Care: Genuine concern and commitment to giving customers what they want: efficient service, effective communications…and respect. That means:

1. You put a lot of thought into production and operations to make it as easy as possible to do business with you.

2. You make sure you have something real to talk about - not blow money with a newly anointed “Word-of-Mouth” expert (Old-line creative agencies who are desperately trying to retrofit the “new marketing” into their hoary screamin’ yellin’ control and command model.)

3. When things go wrong - and they will - you don’t treat the customer like the enemy.

4. When a customer has a problem and is asking for help, you step up. You don’t say, for example, “We’re just a credit card company” as an Am Ex rep did when I was at wit’s end about an issue with American Airlines. (Note: I escalated to Am Ex CEO office and they finanly issued a “good customer relation” credit, but only because I didn’t give up and after they explained “our hands are tied legally.”)

5. You always allow escalation. Sure, some customers are bad to the bone, but most of us aren’t born bad. We degenerate into screamin’ hostile maniacs after being ignored, bounced and dissed. Then when we do finally reach a “live” person (”live” being debatable), the person should never ever say, “There is nobody higher than me.” or “It won’t do you any good to talk to anybody else” or “We’re not allowed to give out that information” when asked for the CEO’s name and contact info. (Those CEOs are only a Google search away in any event, and are often on the company’s web site.)

Quick “Service Vs. Care” Sanity Check for You:

Have you called your own company lately? What happens? How long does it take for somebody to answer? How long do you stay on hold if you call customer service?

Have you read the fine print in your contracts lately? Would you sign them? Or, would you feel insulted and belittled?

What about those “special offers?” If you were the customer, would you think they were special…or a sleazy con?

Keep yourself honest! Are you focused more on the person’s wallet (service) than the person (care)?

Read More: Steve Yastrow, Ask yourself this questions: Did our relationship improve?

Related Posts:
Marketing Predators: I’d Rather Do Business With Tony Soprano
Smash and Grab Marketing
The Never-Ending Rebate Wars
Shaming Companies Into Good Service
Customers - Service Versus Processing (Yep, even the way you process your invoices is marketing.)
Do You Have A Director of First Impressions?

Want to browse through all my posts? Go to The Idea Pool. Everything I’ve written since I started blogging.

Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, small business marketing, customer service, American Airlines Problems