There’s no denying that we are in a digital age.  Right now, it’s pretty advanced already – and we have digital experts and respected futurists making statements that in just 5 years time tangible media will no longer exist.

So please tell me what’s going to happen to banks?  In my experience of banking with banks, both personal and business accounts – and in working with banks in partnership arrangements – there seems to be a common challenge.   And that challenge is, they’re too slow!

As typical with any enormous organisation – there are just too many hoops to jump through – too many processes, too many lines of management and therefore, everything takes too long.

For example – I recently made a complaint to my bank (I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I’ve had any reason to complain to them).  I made my complaint via email (which was never allowed to happen in the past – ooh progress).  24 hours later I received an email from the relevant team (it was looking promising) advising that my complaint was being looked into – attached was a lengthy PDF – and I was referred to the customer complaint process, informed to read said lengthy PDF, and advised that I’d receive a written response, together with a hard copy of the lengthy complaints process brochure within 14 days.  (It couldn’t be emailed in case someone intercepted the email).

I then queried why it was going to take 14 days to respond – to be advised that it was procedure and if I read page 14 of the Customer Complaint Process brochure, it was clearly documented – blah, blah, blah.

Now as a small business – highly responsive to clients, I can’t for one minute imagine asking a client to wait 14 days for anything – let alone to address a service recovery procedure.  It just a) wouldn’t  and b) couldn’t happen.

As a small business, we don’t have a Customer Response Team (probably a team of a minimum of 20 perhaps, even 80+?).  Instead, we have a small team that does everything they can to deliver services and service to our clients.   And let me tell you, there’s no ‘we’ll get back to you in 14 days’ amongst our vocabulary.

So in an age where everyone expects high levels of responsiveness and service (after all technology has enabled it – right! and so we do out best to keep up) we just sit back and accept the prehistoric practices of banks.

It must be hugely frustrating to work in a bank and want to make a difference – red tape, bureaucracy, 5000 meetings and procedures to work through, 150 different types of line management decision makers – yet no real empowerment to actually DO anything.  By the time a decision is made, the opportunity is probably lost.

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about ‘keeping things simple’ and for those businesses that do so – they’ll have cracked it.

What I’m hoping for is a bank to perform as if it was a nimble and responsive small business.  Quick decisions, minimising red tape, form filling and bureaucracy.  I saw on the tube the other day, an advertisement for www.wonga.com – ok the maximum lending is £400 – but everything is done online – and they’ve even made a mobile app for it, so you can order from your phone.

The large high street banks certainly have considerable budgets to create the right vehicle – so why don’t they take a look at offering a truly online, responsive, non bureaucratic, decision making off-shoot – small, nimble, responsive, immediate decisions – online, convenient. (A small business within a big business without all the red tape).  Instead of ploughing their money into ‘candid’ and expensive advertising campaigns that push dated information and ideas down out throats.

I’m sure there are nimble divisions such as I desire within banking groups – but are they truly independent – or still dogged by the shadow of the ‘brand’ – and all the stifling controls that come with it.

There have been some success stories – First Direct service was the first to really look at servicing clients in a different way.  And more recently, I notice that Santander are really pushing responsiveness – opening business accounts via the telephone within hours and online loan applications – immediate decisions and money in your account within 4 days!

In my opinion banks should get real and close to what is really important to the majority of their customers (and let’s face it, we’re not all big commercial companies hindered by the same prehistoric processes) – look at the true business demographics.

“What’s important to busy people and small businesses” are simple questions that banks may spend fortunes on market research to understand but certainly don’t gear themselves up to servicing very well.  To put it simply, we’re looking for services that help rather than hinder.

I’m waiting for a new solution to banking – a solution such as the one I saw on the tube – but with a broader range of services, a banking solution that really does understand what’s important to people and small businesses in this day and age. Wake up – its 2010 not 1910.

Times have changed – and all businesses have to appreciate that and get on board with the what’s happening right now in order to succeed in this digital future.  I’ve said it before – small businesses, well leveraged and savvy are agile and responsive to change.  Large lumbering dinosaurs – just can’t get there as quickly.

Hope I won’t be disappointed and that a nimble and savvy online banking solution will appear in the not too distant future – and of course, the main focus – to keep things simple!

For more marketing news, views, advice and tips (oh and rants too) – why not subscribe to my blog http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/blog .  And follow me on Twitter too.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

For those of you that follow me on Twitter, then you may have been alerted to the fact that I was not too happy with the service levels at Symantec last week.

To provide a bit of context – I had a very simple query.  I received a notification advising me that I needed to renew my Norton 360 license with them – simple – and I did that no problem.

However, the license I have is for 3 machines, and I wanted to switch one of the licenses and see whether Linux platforms were supported in that license.  A quick call – or live chat query, or even email support would have sufficed.  The query could have been resolved in, say, 2 minutes.

I searched on their website for answers to my queries – but nothing was evident, and so I hunted down a number to call and eventually found an office in Reading.  I called them and having completed at least 4 rounds of call selection – I was then put into a queue.

It was interesting, because in the queue, I wasn’t notified that it was going to take me an hour and a half to get through – instead, I was repeatedly advised to hold on the phone, as if I hung up, I would lose my place in the queue and have to start again.

I waited, and waited – after 40 minutes, I started to get really fed up – but the, by now, terrifying mantra came at me again – hang up and I’ll lose my place!

Of course, I wasn’t just sitting there winding myself up during the long wait – oh no, I tried to be as productive as possible.  I visited their site again, hunted down the FAQs, hunted down a search facility, inserted the keywords relating to my query etc etc.

Pages upon pages of results returned – totally off the mark – and now I’m getting more and more frustrated.

After 90 minutes on hold – I was now uber twitchy – of course, my Twitter app was open, so I posted; ‘Can’t believe I’ve been waiting on hold at Symantec for an hour and a half, disgusting.’

Fortunately, or unfortunately for the poor chap I did eventually get put through to, they answered the call shortly after, (1 hour and 38 minutes on hold.  That’s got to be a record!)  Flabbergasted, I wanted an explanation, why, what… however, the very nice chap I was now through to in the Philippines had no answers.  Sorry – we’re busy, that’s all I can say.  He answered my query and worked through what I needed to do – and all was fixed.  However, I was still finding the whole waiting on hold for that amount of time, incredulous.

Interestingly, just 10 minutes after I’d posted on Twitter – I received a message on Twitter from NortonOnline asking how they could help me.  Had my problem been resolved – sorry to hear I wasn’t happy?

I’d also received a few Direct Messages from others advising me that they too thought Symantec were terrible.  Poor service levels – not responsive.  One chap had been trying to cancel a standing order with them for months!

I tried to Direct Message NortonOnline, but because they weren’t following me, had to post to all, advising that yes it had been fixed – but did they really think that 90 mins on hold was acceptable?

I also queried, the point as to why they hadn’t they promoted their Twitter support on their website?  Had I seen that, then I’d have been on them like a shot.  And why no live chat – particularly as they clearly don’t have the mechanisms to handle calls responsively?

They thanked me for my suggestions and my great feedback!  Hmmmm.

What’s clear, however, is that Twitter and no doubt Facebook, are being closely watched by the corps.   Brand reputation is clearly being managed very closely online – with the remit to capture any negativity before it spirals out of control – and turns into a Dell Hell.

Let’s hope that more and more businesses start to utilise Twitter as a means of responding to customer queries – but actually adding real value.  I’d much rather be dealing with a 10 minute response than a 90 minute one.  That would speak volumes for a brand – the fact that they are actually servicing customers, rather than simply looking at preserving their brand reputation – the two are interlinked.  The fact that NortonOnline came back to me quickly online via Twitter, didn’t temper the negative vibes that had manifested whilst waiting on hold for 90 minutes.

Being responsive in the social media arena can’t just be about apologies – it’s got to be about servicing the consumer.   So take heed all you corps that are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  Don’t just pay lip service and make your presence all about managing your brand reputation, but get real service running via Twitter and really make your presence count!

For more marketing news, views, rants, tips and advice – why not subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter.

Best wishes

Michelle Carvill

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

Ok – I’m pretty IT savvy, and yet why is it that I still end up tearing my hair out when it comes to undertaking what should be a really ‘simple’ task.

I simply want to transfer the photos from my Blackberry to my laptop.  Now that shouldn’t be difficult at all should it? Surely the current Blackberry Desktop Manager has a simple resource for doing this – surely, it’s just a simple case of syncing my device and voila!  Er – no.  Not that simple.

Ok – I won’t be defeated, rather than email each photo to my outlook account (tedious) – I’ll send via Bluetooth.  Simple!

So, I open the Bluetooth access on my laptop – my laptop and Blackberry run into the arms of one another – very painlessly – and connect.  Great – so now it’s just a simple case of sending my photos via Bluetooth.   Er – no.  Not that simple.

The software is not compatible.   Bit of a pain – but shouldn’t be insurmountable – I will simply visit the Blackberry.com site and get the relevant update.

By now I’ve spent the best part of 2 and a half hours trying to complete what should be a really, really, simple task.

So, I open up my Desktop manager – and request updates – again should be simple – and it pretty much is.  I access the relevant updates, upload – message that it may take 30 minutes for everything to configure.  Oh, oh – there’s now no way to stop this progress, as if I do I’m warned I disrupt the data and so I am now left wondering what exactly it’s up too – and keeping everything crossed that it hasn’t reconfigured my email accounts (as it did last time)!

What should I be doing now – well actually, enjoying the snow with my children at the ‘community built’ ski and sledge runs at Punt Hill.   A task that I thought would have taken me minutes – has taken hours!

How much longer…

The statement ‘why is nothing ever simple’ – isn’t just my continual mantra.  I hear it all the time from friends, peers, family – even my children.  And hence why those businesses that have a sole purpose to ‘make things simple’ – and really deliver on that – are destined for big success.

Oh – have to pause this post – got to restart my ‘systems’ to implement the changes.   Back soon.

Pleased to report that I eventually managed to get my Blackberry photos uploaded onto my laptop.  In fact, having battled with the Bluetooth access – it transpired that the lated Blackberry desktop manager had indeed included a Media Sync function in their latest release.  So there it was…

Customer service has nothing to do with simplicity

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the Blackberry service – indeed their customer service has always been responsive and excellent.  This isn’t what I’m talking about – it’s more to do with the fundamental way things are designed.  Create products and services that are so intuitive – and customer support becomes almost unnecessary.

There’s a business model right there – make or provide access to a product or service, which is as simple as possible, and you’ll thrive.

For example, The Made Simple Group have a number of online services for the start up and small business communities – which each site offers something different, the one similar key factor – making simple.  It’s no wonder that their www.companiesmadesimple.com site is one of the leading online company formation sites in the UK.  They’ve made the process of forming a company (I’ve done this a few times now on other sites and with my accountant and have to say never, ever, found it a simple process previously) – but with Companies Made Simple, it really is a very simple process.

Another service I came across, www.enterprisemadesimple.co.uk – focus on getting access to all the grants and funding available for businesses – simple.  There’s so much red tape involved, that it becomes such a time consuming exercise for businesses, that I’m sure there’s always surplus funding left over at the end of each day.

Businesses that focus on making things simple – designing products and services, and websites – that are so intuitive, are totally on to a winner.  In an age where time is our most limited resource – those services that make things truly simple will win through.

One of our own sites – Logotastic, an online logo design service, was created just for this purpose too – the brand identity and logo design process can often be a very lengthy, time consuming and expensive process.  Logotastic focuses on getting the user to put their brief online in a succinct way – and then they work through the design iterations with a professional designer online – cutting out the often unnecessary, design by committee and meeting after meeting elements.  The ethos – to simplify and make professional design affordable to all.

There’s a great book I recommend, The Design of Everyday Things, which is a bible for anyone interested in usability – not just online usability – but service design and product design.

I do find myself always saying – why is nothing ever simple! As things never seem to be as clear cut as they should be.

In fact, this morning, (now a day after the Blackberry case) I had to wait at my house before going to the office for an Engineer to drive all the way from Kent to deliver a new knob for my cooker (using up fuel and increasing carbon footprint)!  I had told them the model number, serial no etc – in advance and explained that the two spares I had been given on delivery of the cooker some 18 months ago, had been used up – one other knob had cracked (design fault with the original design I suspect) – and could I have a few more in case of further incidents.  However, rather than simply packaging up the knobs and posting them to me – I had to take time out of my working day, the engineer had to drive from Kent to Berkshire – for what was a ridiculous ‘call out’.  He was here no more than 5 minutes – he opened a DHL bag (which had been posted to his office) containing the knobs – took one out and put it on the cooker!  No skill required whatsoever.  So why all the hassle – why not simply send the knobs directly to me!  Bonkers.

My mantra for 2010 is to ‘keep things simple’ – and to look for the most ‘plug and play’ products, and simple services I can.  They save me time and keep my stress levels in check.  I’m not prepared to battle any longer.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about dumbing down – as often it takes a whole lot of complex thinking and backend structures to make a process as simple as possible (think Apple and you know what I’m talking about).  Hence why many cut corners – and we’re left with unnecessary customer support calls (which again, tend to take hours to rectify – particularly when related to IT).

So come on you corps out there – make things more simple… a bit more effort at the design and service delivery conceptualisation stage will reap huge rewards.   Those businesses that are already doing it – are doing well.

It’s not rocket science – so I’ll end this post with a KISS… (keep it simple stupid)!

For more marketing views, ideas, news, tips and tactics – why not visit my blog – you can subscribe and get regular posts delivered to you via email.  Also – follow me on Twitter – always sharing useful resources on there too!

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

I read a great article yesterday – came across it via my TweetBeep alerts – which often throw up some gems I would never have naturally found had I not set these useful alerts.

Anyway – that aside, the article (which is here is you’d like to take a peek) focused on the power of social media and Twitter (viral word of mouth – or rant of mouth!) and how organisations should be considering this powerful platform when delivering their customer service.  

Even typing the words – delivering customer service – doesn’t feel right to me.  Surely all businesses consider the customer when creating products and services?  (Not a trick question – but certainly seems tricky for many businesses to comprehend!).

The same article reflects about businesses seeing their team/staff as an expense and making them feel grateful they have a job (fear and repressing) rather than encouraging them and thanking them for hanging in , keeping their spirits up and giving their all through these difficult times – ’should be seeing them as their greatest arsenal’ – is the message in the article.

After all – service isn’t something that is disconnected and broken down into sections or departments – it doesn’t have a beginning or an end – surely it’s the entire ‘customer experience’ – the thread running through a business which connects owners, management and team (all stakeholders) not to mention the people who buy, return and talk positively to others about your business – the customers.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best website and ecommerce platforms in the world – if a customer gets stuck and makes a call and gets met with indifference – negativity (poor service delivered by demotivated employees) then believe me the customer is going to remember the attitude of the brand not the technology!

Before I started my own business, I used to work for a consultancy which was headed up by a very inspirational Australian (@PaulDunn) a CEO who firmly secured service excellence and WOW service to the core soul of the organisation.  Every single employee of the consultancy (global US, Aus and UK – so pretty sizable) was inspired, motivated, and trained on the importance of the entire service experience.

KPI’s included not letting a phone ring for more than 2 rings before answering!  Never asking who was calling – if someone was calling to speak to a specific person, then the least one could do was be courteous and put them through (without vigilant and, sometimes hostile, gatekeeping).  If a client had a challenge (not a problem but a challenge!) then all team were empowered to deal with it – right then and there.  No passing through to ’supervisors’, no ‘well get back to you’ – but empowered to listen, respond and recover – whatever it took (each team member was set a budget for recovery – if they thought the customer deserved a bunch of flowers to say sorry, or thank you – then that’s decision was down to the employee.   It was a WOW service culture.  And it thrived, thrived, thrived.

So how come some businesses get this – and others (the majority I hasten to add) don’t!.  I always remember my best friend booking a trip to New York for my 30th birthday.  Unfortunately, a bereavement in my friend’s family meant that we needed to switch dates.  Her husband had called Virgin to explain – yet to no avail. Nothing they could do to switch the dates!  She was distraught, so I said I’d give them a call to see what options were open to us.  After what seemed like hours on the phone – I was passed along (probably for the 6th time)  through to a senior supervisor (it was a while ago now so can’t remember the detail – but the negative memory sticks!).  This woman did have the power to change things – and having heard our story said she would endeavour to see what she could do.  My question to her was this:  ”Why have I had to speak to 6 different people – and why was my friend’s husband told ’sorry, nothing we can do’ – when there are actually people along the ‘hierarchy’ that can make a change!  I also left her with the fact that regardless of the outcome – even if positive and we could change the flight dates – my overall view of the brand had been damaged.  I asked her to consider how I, my friend and her husband would have felt about the brand – had they said that they’d look into seeing what they could do from the outcome – and not only that – but then had sent a bunch of £20 flowers to my friend – wishing her well!  The WOW factor doesn’t cost much eh!

And just this morning – I went to put the milk from the doorstep into our fridge – only to realise that the fridge wasn’t cold anymore…(and having been away last week) we’d just stocked up on a family shop yesterday – so the chicken, sausages and all matter of other delights to feed my ever hungry children – were also rather luke warm!  Great.

Fortunately, the fridgefreezer relatively new, was still under warranty – and so the saga of getting the service recovered commenced.   After pressing 6,000 buttons and queing for 20 mins before actually speaking to a human being – my husband was presented with the fact that Monday 8th June – anytime between 9am and 5 pm was the earliest someone could get to us.  Of course, he relayed that info to me – and me being me, decided to call them to query why it took so long – and what were we to do in the meantime!  The number I called was the service number which they’d given my husband.  When I called them – they advised that coming tomorrow shouldn’t be a problem but they just had to wait until they got the official order through from the Main Office.  Ok – so now keen to secure my slot for tomorrow, I called the main office and eventually got through to a customer representative.  I explained the great news that the local service people have confirmed that they can come out tomorrow – however, they needed the Order on their system before they could book the appointment – and so I was querying when they could process the order.  Surely, in these days of email and websites, or even fax, it wouldn’t take too long.  And this is where the fun began – the customer representative gave me 5001 reasons why he could not do anything, guarantee anything, tell me anything, make any decisions – poor guy actually, how totally soul destroying to be given so little responsibility.  He then passed me on to a supervisor because only she was able to make anything happen.  And then it was resolved.  She confirmed the order was already on their website – the service people download them at 10 am and they will then contact us to confirm an appointment.  They can’t guarantee when this is as it is dependent upon the service team so they say 3 days – but it may happen sooner.

Now – none of that is difficult – so why on earth couldn’t the first chap have told me exactly that.  Why is that first point of contact not trained and empowered to be able to make the customer experience a positive one?

This happens all the time – just two examples above – but believe me, I have enough examples (particularly from my liaisons with Orange) to write an entire 50,000 book on how not to create a positive customer experience.

In my opinion – it really isn’t that difficult.  Empower and train your staff.  It’s good for them and it’s good for you!

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Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

Consumer pyschology both offline and online has always interested me.

If you think of the basics of ‘marketing’ – word of mouth is one of the most powerful mediums (in both positive and negative contexts).  Postive: we tell everyone we meet how great a service / product is – and that ‘greatness’ captures share of mind, so when we’re prompted, we recall.  Negative experience – and we share with at least 13 people as soon as we can – and again, captures negative share of mind, and so when we get the chance to rant again, we do!  Of course, many of these ’stats’ come from the ‘offline’ arena – and so online and power of viral, we can magnify these significantly.

Offline, we may turn to our trusted ‘influencers’; our friends, colleagues and family to offer advice and suggestions when considering a purchase or service. And online the same ‘influencing’ factors exist.

Research has identified that ‘testimonials’ and ‘case studies’ add ‘trust equity‘ to a site. And now more than ever, when online businesses are more SEO savvy than ever – it’s not necessarily the best companies for service quality that are found on page 1 on Google.

Customer reviews (provided they are transparent and provide both the positive and negative comments) are an effective way to draw in customers, build trust and encourage conversions. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’d like to see ’search’ evolve to include such elements into ‘quality scores’ (think Ebay) – so that those that are performing well and providing great customer service are not only reliant upon customers to spread the word – but also search engines promote not just relevant but  ‘quality’ service providers – too…

A big call perhaps but hey… relevancy and quality – now that would be impressive. How would it be measured, how would the quality control be measured?  Not sure.  But Ebay seems to have a pretty democratic and effective way of implementing this, not saying it’s 100% perfect, but it does provide some form of ‘review’ – so nothing’s impossible.

So what say you…?

To keep up to date with my marketing news, views, tips and advice, why not subscribe to http://www.carvillonmarketing.co.uk

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

Everywhere I turn I am inundated with information about how to ’survive’ in an economic downturn.  Many of the authors focus on ‘improving customer service’ to ’stand out from the crowd’ and ‘help sustain customer retention’.  I totally concur with all this advice – however, this is how I believe all businesses should operate anyway – good times or bad.  So – let’s take a little look at consumer behaviour – and get an understanding of why people buy – and what we can do to ensure they keep coming back for more…

It’s rare for businesses to truly understand the customer decision making process.  Indeed, the majority of business owners would suggest that price is the largest contributing factor as to why people buy from one source instead of another.

Whilst the importance of price cannot be underestimated – (and indeed in certain industries price competitiveness is indeed the key determining factor) – there’s usually far more to it than simply price.

What do customers value?

Studies have repeatedly shown that the top 5 issues shoppers buy on are:

1. Convenience (ease of shopping)
2. Relationship with seller
3. Product / Price / Time (specifications, price or availability)
4. Perceived indifference
5. Misc

The real one to watch from the above list is – Perceived Indifference

We can all understand the importance of building relationships with our customers – and indeed we are all probably culprits of convenience shopping.  Yet Perceived Indifference is often ignored by many business owners. 

Given that studies about buying behaviour report consumers as placing as much as 5 times more importance on Perceived Indifference than they do on Price, it’s vital that all business owners focus on this key decision making element. 

To grasp an understanding of Perceived Indifference (from the customer’s perspective), think about how often you feel some of the following, having made a purchase;

1. A feeling that they don’t care about you or your individual needs – it’s a numbers game!
2. They act as if they don’t want your custom (in my experience the telecoms industry smacks of this)
3. They are not prepared to differentiate themselves from the competition – (strangled by process and not empowered to make a difference)
4. The vendor is not prepared to fight for my business, to work just that bit harder to deliver the service I want (again no flexibility)

These feelings unfortunately occur all too frequently when dealing with businesses.  Frequent examples include; a blasé sales assistant who clearly can’t be bothered to put themselves out for you or being held on the phone for 50 minutes to then be cut off!  (Telecoms again…!!!)
 

So before your strategy to boost more business is to ’cut prices’ – think a bit more creatively about delighting your customers in ways that matter….

• Boost sales – most businesses cut their prices (and usually their margins) with a ‘Sale’.  This can generate strong short-term benefits, such as clearing old product and building brand / market strength.  However, problems start to occur when price becomes the key deciding factor – selling on price is a very dangerous thing.  This is because there is almost always someone else willing and able to sell cheaper.  And the consumer will always remember the cut price – so it’s often difficult to reverse the price cut.
• Customers like a good deal – however, research has clearly identified that what customers really want is to feel valued throughout the whole purchasing experience.  The minute they feel that ‘perceived indifference’ is creeping in – and they and their purchase is not valued – they switch off.  And it’s very difficult to switch them back on again!

So – how can you overcome perceived indifference

Clearly, the key to overcoming the problem of perceived indifference is making the customer feel that they are important to you.  If the customer thinks that you want and value their business, they are much more likely to make both initial and repeat purchases – and share positive word of mouth with others.

Think about whether or not you instil measures within your business to ensure that your customers don’t feel the powerful punch of Perceived Indifference – and be sure to implement simple measures that show your customers you are attentive, eager and importantly, that you value their business.

Here’s a quick ‘anti-perceived indifference’ check list:

1. Do you answer the phone on the second ring every time?
2. Do people have an on-hold message to listen to? (And does is provide useful upsell info?)
3. Do you thank your customers or potential customers for calling?
4. Do you thank your customers or potential customers for visiting your business/or website?
5. Do you thank your customers for buying from you?
6. Do you and your team always arrive on time for meetings with customers?
7. Do you deliver products or services when you say you will every time?
8. Do you always let your customers know beforehand if there’s a problem?
9. Do you always return phone calls the same day you get the message?
10. Does each team member take responsibility for helping customers or do they hand around customer problems from one to another or from department to department?
11. Are team members empowered to provide compensation / service recover following a complaint?
12. Do you stay in touch with customers regularly?
13. Do you keep your customers informed about new things happening in your business?
14. Do you thank your customers when they pay on time – every time?
15. Do you have a policity to turn your mobile phone OFF/silent when in meetings with customers or potential customers?  (I have to throw this one is as it’s a particular bug bear of mine which I find totally ‘rude’ and is a strong example of ‘perceived indifference’).

Again, it’s not just in times of economic difficulty that businesses should be focusing on upping their service levels – it should be the ethos behind any well run business.   So stamp out Perceived Indifference – and make an effort to communicate openly and regularly with your customers.  Get your team members involved – and run a brainstorming session to pull together some ideas as to how you can ensure you rid your business of any ‘Perceived Indifference’.

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With many of the clients I have worked with in the past – their key focus from a marketing perspective is always about achieving new customers. 

Whilst it’s important to look ahead at new markets and audiences, it’s also important to continue to nurture the customers that you already have.  After all, they are 6 times more likely to purchase services from you than a ‘cold’ audience.

Ask yourself:

• Are you doing everything you can to nurture your current customer base, creating advocates that spread the word and refer you to others?
• When was the last time your surveyed your customers to find out what they thought about your service / product?
• How valuable are your customers?  Is the value of your customer base varied?  Do some spend more with you?  Are you spending more time on customers that are not very valuable?  How can you make them more valuable?

Here’s a valuation model you might want to consider:

The value of a customer to your business is the annual net profit you make from that customer, multiplied by the number of years that customer is likely to deal with you, plus the value of an average of 10 new customers recommended by your satisfied customer. 

Listening to your customers is key to understanding how your products and services are working in the real world.  And running a customer survey should not be something which creates sheer panic – usually about receiving complaints.

Smart businesses are those that actively encourage and welcome complaints.  Here’s why: 

• The average business never hears from 96% of its unhappy customers.  For every complaint received, the average business has 26 customers with problems, of which 6 are ‘serious’.  So if you gauge the standard of your service by the number of complaints you receive, you’re dealing only with the tip of the iceberg.
•  Complainers are more likely than non-complainers to do business again with you – even though you’ve upset them and even if their complaint isn’t satisfactorily resolved. 
• Of customers who register a complaint, between 54 and 70% will do business again with the organisation if their complaint is resolved.  That figure goes up to a staggering 95% if the customer feels that the complaint was resolved quickly.  So you should be doing everything possible to deal with complaints quickly and thoroughly.
• The average customer who has had a problem with an organisation tells 10 people about it, and 13% recount the incident to more than 20 people.
• Customers who complain to an organisation and have their complaints satisfactorily resolved tell up to 5 people about the positive treatment they received.    

Because of my passion for customer service, I tend to do a lot of complaining – and never before has the power of complaining been more ‘connected’.  There are established blogs and forums out there just waiting for people to add their complaints to and unite with others – and of course, you can always start one if one doesn’t already exist.  Word of mouth when recounting negative incidents – is no longer restricted to 10, there’s now the power of viral to contend with – so, all the more reason for service excellence, listening to customers and welcoming complaints.

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Marketing effectiveness, whether offline or online is ‘simplistically’ based on the following:
“right message, right person, right time”

There are many factors that can determine the success of an email campaign – and indeed there are many ways to define the success of a campaign. 

Jupiter Research undertook some research in 2005 which identified that 73% of immediate purchasers bought because an email message featured a ‘sale price’ (targeted offer) and 67% bought because it featured free or discounted shipping (giving them something for free).   

Further, 60% of buyers said that a key motivator to purchase was the fact that the message contained a product the recipient was already considering. 

This makes sense – and provides a strong case for ‘intelligent’ targeted marketing campaigns – by which I mean following up specific segments behaving in a particular way. 

For example:  A newsletter is deployed and promotes 3 items.  Three follow up emails are then sent to the users – dependent upon which item they explored. 

Whilst there are no ‘hard and fast’ rules as to creating a ‘successful’ email communication – the following considerations should apply when crafting them:

Personalise: Where possible personalise the email by using the intended recipient’s name in the body of the email and where appropriate in the subject line (however, don’t get too carried away with this if it is difficult to do – as this practice has not shown to make a significant difference).

Relevance: If there is a ‘history’ with the intended recipient include reference to previous purchase history, enquiries or preferences you are aware of.  Eg:  ‘We noticed you were interested in our New Organic Bodywash – we have a special 50% discount you can take advantage of, however, it’s only available for the next 48 hours… so act now’.

Multi-part: Research has identified that HTML emails pull a higher response rate than plain or rich text emails.  In the registration process be sure to ask your customers how they want to receive their emails.  However, most online marketers opt for sending both emails simultaneously.  The recipient’s computer will then recognise and display the optimal email format.

Layout: Research shows that a user browses their emails before being drawn to a particular area of interest.   It is advisable not to ‘play around’ too much with the layout of a regular communication – as overtime users become familiar with its layout (how frustrating when supermarkets change their sections just when you’re familiar with all the areas you need).   Newsletters often benefit from a Table of Contents at the top of an email outlining the copy contained within the communication.

Most read: As part of your layout – particularly where there is multiple messages (as in a newsletter style communication) it is widely known that the ‘top two’ messages are the most read.  Therefore, ensure you keep key messages at the top.  

Auto preview: It is worth considering the content of the first paragraph of the plain text version of the body copy which is visible via Auto Preview.  It is generally accepted that the ‘3 second rule’ applies to email marketing messages – and therefore the most compelling copy or image should appear in the first paragraph to encourage the individual to open the email and read on.
Images: Images can play a large part in getting a key message across – whilst image blocking is increasingly prevalent – a way to get around this is to utilise ‘alt tags’ (so that if images are blocked, descriptive text will appear in its place).  

Email size: There are Best Practice guidelines which advise that messages should not exceed 60k in total file size.  Large images can cause emails to get caught by spam filters.
Subject line: The subject line, like any headline, should convey a strong call to action – a compelling subject line will draw the recipient into the email.   If a regular communication – it’s good practice to maintain a ‘consistent’ subject line.  Good practice guidelines advise that the subject line should not exceed more than 70 characters. 

Spam triggers: Be aware of trigger words such as:  free, hot – and other seemingly innocuous words such as ‘tips’, ‘enter’, ‘sample’, ‘private’, ‘reserved’, ‘products’ and ‘introductory’ – these have also been identified as key ‘spam’ triggers.

From box: Similarly as familiarity of layout – people become accustomed to knowing who is sending emails to them – and will determine whether they open them based on who they are from.    

Transparency: The subject line should accurately reflect the subject, purpose and content of the messages. 

Testing:  There’s a practice called ‘split stream testing’ whereby you take a subset of the data and test two different subject lines.  You can then assess after 24 hours and roll out the campaign using the most popular subject line.

Pre testing: It is really important to test emails before they are deployed.  Some email deployment systems have these testing processes in built.  This way you can test how your email will look on different browsers.  Some deployment systems also check that your email template works effectively – and is optimised for deliverability.  

Unsubscribe: An unsubscribe method needs to be apparent on every email communication. 

Timing: It’s worth testing email ‘timing’.  There is some benchmark data (reliability not verified) to suggest that more customers are likely to visit websites and make purchases on weekdays rather than weekends.  And that conversion rates for visitors peak around midday on weekdays – making this an optimal time for reaching consumers. 

For more information about Best Practice Guidelines for Email Marketing visit www.dma.org.uk

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A WOW experience – a rare thing indeed…

This weekend I had the rare treat of escaping my ‘mummy’ duties to visit my best friend in Yorkshire.  I took the direct train to Leeds (4 hours of bliss reading books, listening to music and doing absolutely nothing…).    My WOW experience didn’t happen on the train (there’s a surprise) but that evening, we visited Akbars – a curry house near Bradford.   We arrived by car and across the road from the restaurant was a car park – the team at Akbars manage the car park and a very smiley and polite chap is guiding the masses into available spots.  And where spots were not available – they were taking keys – and advising that they would park the car for you leave your keys with the reception manager!

The front of Akbars is totally glass fronted – two floors, and it must seat about 200 (probably more) people at any one time.  At 7.30 the restaurant looked full – and there was a queue of people outside.  We made our way in – advised of our booking and were led to the bar by the open kitchen – where one could view what looked like masses of chefs busily creating and communicating with waiters.  The vibe within the restaurant was really quite something – ‘relaxed electric’, which, I know, doesn’t make sense.

We were shown to our table by the restaurant manager (as is everyone) and he introduced us to our waiter for the evening, Jimmy.  There were 12 of us in our party – not a small number.  And at no time was any one of us waiting for anything.  Jimmy was uber attentive.   Appetisers were before our fingers before we had a chance to look down from our menus.  Starters order were taken – drinks re-ordered.  And this is how it went all evening.

As someone who is hugely interested in customer service – and rarely sees it managed to such perfection as was before my very eyes at Akbars – I sat back a while to observe.

The waiters – and there were many of them – were relaxed and pleasant at all times.  Attentive, friendly (to just the right degree), and professional, they were well rehearsed and I got the feeling they had been working at Akbars for a number of years.

When mains were brought to the table – the chef that cooked your food (and there are many of them) came to your table to check all is okay.  He explained some of the flavours and spices in some of the more ‘adventurous’ dishes – and seemed genuinely concerned that the people he had cooked for were happy with his creations.  This took about 2 minutes of his time – if that!

The throughput during the evening was incredible.  We remained for about 4 hours – and there was a constant buzz of people coming in, leaving – and each time the waiters dealt with the customers with the same attentive enthusiasm.   I didn’t see any eyeball rolling or impatient behaviour – from customers or waiters.  And yet these guys didn’t stop.  The pace was unbelievable.

The food was excellent, the service was truly phenomenal – and those within my party advised me that Akbars was this busy every night of the week.  ‘It’s always like this’ – doesn’t matter what time you come or what day – weekday or weekend – it’s always this busy’.

As for price – well the restaurant is well designed and laid out with a contemporary look,  I would have expected it to be quite ‘high end’ from a price perspective, but it wasn’t – it was really reasonable.  And as you can expect, we all tipped very well (20% – I don’t believe I’ve ever tipped that well before) – and it still felt like great value.

And it is any wonder?  What a place, and what great management.  They’ve got the service combination just perfect.  They have a happy team who are well trained and do their job brilliantly – they have attention to detail and do things a little bit differently (the chef and the car parking).   And the food (the product) stands up on its own – delicious and amazing value for money.

It was a WOW in my book.  And I’m not easy to please…

http://www.akbars.co.uk/rest_brad_gallery.asp – their website states ‘probably the best Indian Restaurant in the North of England’.    I’d say probably the best in the UK!

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