Successful relationships are surely the key to life – whether they are family; friends; business or social they are, essentially, what can separate us from the animal kingdom… Our ability to communicate across multi channel media with any of ‘our circle’ enables us to engage appropriately at any time.
We recognise and differentiate the channels depending on the message and the recipient – whether we are texting our kids; phoning our parents; writing to the bank; or emailing a friend; we often subconsciously select the right channel for the best and most certain response… But, do we do the same in business or does cost and ‘efficiency’ override our inherent knowledge that what’s right and appropriate for one recipient is inappropriate for another?
Surely we cannot dispense with years of learning to jump onto the next comm’s bandwagon? As I write today – social networking is the fad. I am old enough to remember direct mail, and then the telephone, before email became all the rage. At each stage of communication evolution we leapt fully into the new world and dispensed with the old. What happened? In the main – very little! Lots of money was invested in making calls and sending emails to attract new business – sometimes with calculable evidence of a required ROI; however, rarely was the leaky bucket of customer attrition addressed and so real growth was not achieved.
Understanding customers, developing relationships and building loyalty will; surely remain the key to successful business and growth. Partnering with the right specialists can help reduce investment, and - will most certainly add value - as you benefit from a range of experience and not just your own.
So before embarking on Twitter and Facebook; before you purchase another batch of data to fire off some more emails; why not stop and take stock…?
• What can your current customer data tell you?
• How can it help inform your future strategy?
• Where does your profit come from rather than just your revenue?
• Which customers are more likely to lapse and which should you endeavour to keep?
• How and why do they like to be communicated with?
In summary - the right partner can help with these questions and make your business grow healthily and less expensively because they use the knowledge locked within your data to expose the communication opportunities of the future. Sometimes the answers are right under your nose!
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Thursday, 3 June 2010
What are the factors behind a good client/agency relationship?
What are the main elements that go to making a good, long term client/agency relationship? Tough question isn’t it? Cultural match, ROI, outstanding creativity, awards even perhaps… all have their place but sometimes it can be a little more intangible than that.
I was presenting to a prospective new client recently and was asked how long on average our clients had been with us. In our case it’s around 5 or 6 years which I think is pretty darn good for a CRM agency such as ourselves (we currently have clients that have been with us for as long as 15 years). But the question got me thinking, why do our clients remain so loyal to us and why have we been successful in developing their accounts? Well I’m not about to reveal our secrets or bore you to death with a diatribe on our approach to Account Management. What I will do though, is tell you what factors I believe make a good client/agency relationship and some of the things to look for if you are searching for a new partner.
Trust – The foundation upon which any good relationship is built and by far the most important factor in forming a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership. If there is no trust between a client and their marketing agency every project, idea, suggestion or piece of work will be second guessed or viewed with suspicion. A client has to believe and trust that their agency has their best interests (and those of their brand) at heart in order to produce the best results.
Cultural Match – Without exception, every business has a distinct identity, a culture and a work ethic. If the relationship is to be successful it’s important that the business finds an agency whose culture mirrors or complements their own. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be differences as often the best work or campaign can be produced when ideas and the established status quo are challenged by both parties.
Personalities – Never underestimate the importance of matching account management staff with the client, if the two get on both on a professional and personal level then the relationship will undoubtedly flourish. Get it wrong and the exact opposite will happen, trust won’t be established and creativity will be stifled.
Honesty – We all get things wrong from time to time but if your agency is honest enough to own up to mistakes and they go the extra mile to put them right, then that can only be a good thing. Honesty is also important when it comes to communication and feedback which leads me to my next point…
Communication – Open and honest communication, particularly feedback is essential in the client/agency relationship. As a CRM agency, feedback whether positive or constructive (no one likes negative!) is invaluable if we are to continue to innovate and drive the client’s communication strategy forward. We do our upmost to ensure that the key stakeholders on any project are talking all the time and that any little ripples are ironed out along the way.
Value for Money – A topic that can be highly subjective to say the least! An agency and their client may well disagree on what constitutes value for money but what can’t be disputed is the more accurate measurement of Return on Investment (ROI). As an agency, ROI is all important and if we’re to retain our clients then we must be able to accurately measure and demonstrate ROI. That is why each programme we implement has metrics built in whether it’s establishing control groups to measure the impact of an eCRM campaign or KPIs for contact centre performance.
And finally…
Shared Objectives – We’re all in business to make money (well most of us are anyway). If we’re honest about this and don’t try to screw every little last piece of discount or margin from each and every deal then the trust and relationship that we worked so hard to establish won’t be affected. By all means challenge your agency to justify their charges (and hopefully they’ll be honest about them) but don’t be surprised if the quality of work begins to slide if you’ve beaten them down to a rock-bottom price. Likewise from an agency perspective, if a client gets even the slightest whiff that they’re being taken for a ride, they won’t be a client for much longer.
In Summary
So there we have it, what I believe to be seven important elements that go together in making the foundation of a solid client agency relationship. Clearly the list is not exhaustive and there are many other less fundamental factors which cumulatively can have a dramatic effect. But what do you think - are there any other major factors I have missed, would you like to challenge any of the statements I have made? All feedback (well most!) will be gratefully received.
I was presenting to a prospective new client recently and was asked how long on average our clients had been with us. In our case it’s around 5 or 6 years which I think is pretty darn good for a CRM agency such as ourselves (we currently have clients that have been with us for as long as 15 years). But the question got me thinking, why do our clients remain so loyal to us and why have we been successful in developing their accounts? Well I’m not about to reveal our secrets or bore you to death with a diatribe on our approach to Account Management. What I will do though, is tell you what factors I believe make a good client/agency relationship and some of the things to look for if you are searching for a new partner.
Trust – The foundation upon which any good relationship is built and by far the most important factor in forming a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership. If there is no trust between a client and their marketing agency every project, idea, suggestion or piece of work will be second guessed or viewed with suspicion. A client has to believe and trust that their agency has their best interests (and those of their brand) at heart in order to produce the best results.
Cultural Match – Without exception, every business has a distinct identity, a culture and a work ethic. If the relationship is to be successful it’s important that the business finds an agency whose culture mirrors or complements their own. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be differences as often the best work or campaign can be produced when ideas and the established status quo are challenged by both parties.
Personalities – Never underestimate the importance of matching account management staff with the client, if the two get on both on a professional and personal level then the relationship will undoubtedly flourish. Get it wrong and the exact opposite will happen, trust won’t be established and creativity will be stifled.
Honesty – We all get things wrong from time to time but if your agency is honest enough to own up to mistakes and they go the extra mile to put them right, then that can only be a good thing. Honesty is also important when it comes to communication and feedback which leads me to my next point…
Communication – Open and honest communication, particularly feedback is essential in the client/agency relationship. As a CRM agency, feedback whether positive or constructive (no one likes negative!) is invaluable if we are to continue to innovate and drive the client’s communication strategy forward. We do our upmost to ensure that the key stakeholders on any project are talking all the time and that any little ripples are ironed out along the way.
Value for Money – A topic that can be highly subjective to say the least! An agency and their client may well disagree on what constitutes value for money but what can’t be disputed is the more accurate measurement of Return on Investment (ROI). As an agency, ROI is all important and if we’re to retain our clients then we must be able to accurately measure and demonstrate ROI. That is why each programme we implement has metrics built in whether it’s establishing control groups to measure the impact of an eCRM campaign or KPIs for contact centre performance.
And finally…
Shared Objectives – We’re all in business to make money (well most of us are anyway). If we’re honest about this and don’t try to screw every little last piece of discount or margin from each and every deal then the trust and relationship that we worked so hard to establish won’t be affected. By all means challenge your agency to justify their charges (and hopefully they’ll be honest about them) but don’t be surprised if the quality of work begins to slide if you’ve beaten them down to a rock-bottom price. Likewise from an agency perspective, if a client gets even the slightest whiff that they’re being taken for a ride, they won’t be a client for much longer.
In Summary
So there we have it, what I believe to be seven important elements that go together in making the foundation of a solid client agency relationship. Clearly the list is not exhaustive and there are many other less fundamental factors which cumulatively can have a dramatic effect. But what do you think - are there any other major factors I have missed, would you like to challenge any of the statements I have made? All feedback (well most!) will be gratefully received.
Friday, 26 March 2010
Contact Centre vs Communication Centre vs Call Centre – But Which One is Right?
Think of these 3 phrases:
• Contact Centre
• Communication Centre
• Call Centre
What images do they conjure up? Rooms full of people in small cubicles chattering away on headsets? 2,000 seat off-shore facilities filled with people reading from call scripts? Or small teams of dedicated individuals dealing with enquiries received across a variety of channels?
Well to be fair you’d be right in all of these cases as fundamentally they mean the same thing - or rather they are variances on a theme. The main differences would be in the type of work and projects they undertake.
The contact management industry includes a vast array of operations of all shapes and sizes serving just about every sector and marketplace you can think of. Some businesses operate in-house contact centre departments whilst others prefer to outsource to experienced professionals.
When outsourcing any contact management operation the question is how do you find the right partner – do you need a call centre, a contact centre or a communication centre?
Well this comes down to a number of factors some of which may include:
•Through which channels do your customers want to talk with you?
It’s important to think of it in these terms rather than through which channels do I want to allow my customers to talk to me. If you’re not engaging with them on their terms you risk alienating a significant portion.
•How many calls/contacts/enquiries do you receive and how long does it take to deal with each of them?
•What experience do you want your customers to have?
For example, a high volume, quick and easy, churn through calls may not be what you want to expose your customers to…
•What level of knowledge and expertise do the enquiry handlers need – about product; service; sales; etc.
All customer contact operations can be successfully outsourced, but your selection of the right partner is crucial. Get it wrong and you may not have too many customers to worry about anyway!
• Contact Centre
• Communication Centre
• Call Centre
What images do they conjure up? Rooms full of people in small cubicles chattering away on headsets? 2,000 seat off-shore facilities filled with people reading from call scripts? Or small teams of dedicated individuals dealing with enquiries received across a variety of channels?
Well to be fair you’d be right in all of these cases as fundamentally they mean the same thing - or rather they are variances on a theme. The main differences would be in the type of work and projects they undertake.
The contact management industry includes a vast array of operations of all shapes and sizes serving just about every sector and marketplace you can think of. Some businesses operate in-house contact centre departments whilst others prefer to outsource to experienced professionals.
When outsourcing any contact management operation the question is how do you find the right partner – do you need a call centre, a contact centre or a communication centre?
Well this comes down to a number of factors some of which may include:
•Through which channels do your customers want to talk with you?
It’s important to think of it in these terms rather than through which channels do I want to allow my customers to talk to me. If you’re not engaging with them on their terms you risk alienating a significant portion.
•How many calls/contacts/enquiries do you receive and how long does it take to deal with each of them?
•What experience do you want your customers to have?
For example, a high volume, quick and easy, churn through calls may not be what you want to expose your customers to…
•What level of knowledge and expertise do the enquiry handlers need – about product; service; sales; etc.
All customer contact operations can be successfully outsourced, but your selection of the right partner is crucial. Get it wrong and you may not have too many customers to worry about anyway!
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
More channels than ever, but have we forgotten how to talk to our customers?
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that technology is taking over my life.
Until recently I was just another happy go lucky guy, ignorant to the likes of Twitter, iPhones, Kindle’s, streaming media, HD TV and all the other multitude of “must have” gadgets (a phrase which I despise by the way… the “must have” part somehow insinuates that our lives are not complete without these things!).
Then I turned the corner and life hasn’t been the same since.
I’ve had a Facebook account for sometime but I decided to see what all the fuss was about with Twitter. All of a sudden I’m immersed in a world of tweets, access to a whole new universe of exciting information, a new way of communicating with like minded people – people I’ve never met with interesting ideas and comments on the industry I work in as well as life in general.
Next came the iPhone. And oh my God the apps… the wonderful, life enhancing, “must have” apps (they really are in this case). This opened up a new way to stay up to date with my email, my Twitter account, Facebook, text messages, world news, sporting events, to measure my exercise, to find my way, etc. etc. etc…
This then led to streaming media and content to my TV. Normal TV is boring. Sky+ has allowed me to watch the programmes I like when I want to watch them but that’s not enough; I want online content as well. A spot of online shopping and a few pounds later (don’t tell the girlfriend) and now I can get my favourite extreme sports’ videos streamed to my TV, not just on my PC.
There are of course a number of consequences to all of this media buzzing around my life. I suddenly have accounts all over the place, things I need to check just in case I’ve been sent a message or someone has posted a life changing piece of information, a tweet that I need to share with the rest of my followers, an event being organised on Facebook by an old acquaintance. And this takes time, but time well spent I reassure myself. After all, the direct message sent to me on Twitter could be from a prospect I’ve been following with a question about our services.
And that’s what I mean by technology taking over my life. Back in the good old days, if you wanted to talk to someone or share an idea, you called them or sent an email. Now we have a plethora of channels through which to share our ideas, suggestions, offers and to promote our services. An ever-growing cornucopia of ways in which to connect to the world and absorb information.
This presents a challenge for marketeers like me and businesses in general. Through which medium and what channel do you communicate with your customers and prospects? An integrated campaign now needs to be truly integrated and that goes for the response channels as well.
There are ways to identify the channel preference of your customers – simply asking them is always a good place to start. But your data will tell a story too, different customer profiles will interact with your business in different ways, they’ll respond to different campaigns and calls to action and if you can analyse this, you’ll begin to build a picture of what your customers’ preferences are.
We use one word to describe this concept: Relevance. Put simply, every campaign should take into consideration relevance of channel, relevance of timing and relevance of content to the recipient. You know so much about your customers from the data you hold; when they buy, what they buy (and have bought previously) how they pay for it, and to what communications they respond - so why not use it?
Bringing this information and the three ‘relevancies’ into a communication programme, whether it’s an outbound campaign or an inbound response channel will have a dramatic effect and improve relationships with your customers.
So what are you waiting for… stop Tweeting, step away from the iPhone and discover how your customers really want to talk to you.
Until recently I was just another happy go lucky guy, ignorant to the likes of Twitter, iPhones, Kindle’s, streaming media, HD TV and all the other multitude of “must have” gadgets (a phrase which I despise by the way… the “must have” part somehow insinuates that our lives are not complete without these things!).
Then I turned the corner and life hasn’t been the same since.
I’ve had a Facebook account for sometime but I decided to see what all the fuss was about with Twitter. All of a sudden I’m immersed in a world of tweets, access to a whole new universe of exciting information, a new way of communicating with like minded people – people I’ve never met with interesting ideas and comments on the industry I work in as well as life in general.
Next came the iPhone. And oh my God the apps… the wonderful, life enhancing, “must have” apps (they really are in this case). This opened up a new way to stay up to date with my email, my Twitter account, Facebook, text messages, world news, sporting events, to measure my exercise, to find my way, etc. etc. etc…
This then led to streaming media and content to my TV. Normal TV is boring. Sky+ has allowed me to watch the programmes I like when I want to watch them but that’s not enough; I want online content as well. A spot of online shopping and a few pounds later (don’t tell the girlfriend) and now I can get my favourite extreme sports’ videos streamed to my TV, not just on my PC.
There are of course a number of consequences to all of this media buzzing around my life. I suddenly have accounts all over the place, things I need to check just in case I’ve been sent a message or someone has posted a life changing piece of information, a tweet that I need to share with the rest of my followers, an event being organised on Facebook by an old acquaintance. And this takes time, but time well spent I reassure myself. After all, the direct message sent to me on Twitter could be from a prospect I’ve been following with a question about our services.
And that’s what I mean by technology taking over my life. Back in the good old days, if you wanted to talk to someone or share an idea, you called them or sent an email. Now we have a plethora of channels through which to share our ideas, suggestions, offers and to promote our services. An ever-growing cornucopia of ways in which to connect to the world and absorb information.
This presents a challenge for marketeers like me and businesses in general. Through which medium and what channel do you communicate with your customers and prospects? An integrated campaign now needs to be truly integrated and that goes for the response channels as well.
There are ways to identify the channel preference of your customers – simply asking them is always a good place to start. But your data will tell a story too, different customer profiles will interact with your business in different ways, they’ll respond to different campaigns and calls to action and if you can analyse this, you’ll begin to build a picture of what your customers’ preferences are.
We use one word to describe this concept: Relevance. Put simply, every campaign should take into consideration relevance of channel, relevance of timing and relevance of content to the recipient. You know so much about your customers from the data you hold; when they buy, what they buy (and have bought previously) how they pay for it, and to what communications they respond - so why not use it?
Bringing this information and the three ‘relevancies’ into a communication programme, whether it’s an outbound campaign or an inbound response channel will have a dramatic effect and improve relationships with your customers.
So what are you waiting for… stop Tweeting, step away from the iPhone and discover how your customers really want to talk to you.
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Product Direction in Action
Being a tentative member of the Digital Generation (I’ve got a Facebook account and I own an iPod so I just about qualify) I thought it was time I got round to loading my CD collection onto my PC and using Apple’s iTunes application for more than just loading the odd song to my iPod.
Having spent almost every evening for a fortnight loading all my CDs into iTunes I discovered a great new feature called Genius. Basically it allows you to play a song, click the Genius button and iTunes then creates a playlist of other songs from your library that go well together. It also recommends new music, films and TV shows that it thinks you’ll like based on your current library and you can preview and buy the recommended items with a single click from iTunes.
Being a bit of a sucker for a gadget I spent quite a while playing with the Genius feature, creating playlists covering all different sorts of music (I have an eclectic music collection) and each time the selection Genius came back with was more or less what I would have chosen myself and in some cases it was probably better.
The recommend new music feature also led to my first paid for music download. Up until recently I have been firmly in the buying CDs camp meaning I’ve often bought them on the strength or one or two singles from a band or a friend’s recommendation. The thought of downloading music and not really ‘owning’ a physical copy hadn’t really appealed… until now. I’ve only downloaded a couple of singles and podcasts so far but I’m beginning to see the attraction, why buy a whole album only to find out you only like half of the tracks on it when you can just buy the ones you like?
It has to be said that I’m a Marketing Managers dream when it comes to features like this which is ironic considering what I do for a living but I love functionality that adds real benefit to the user and is not just a cynical sales or marketing tool. The iTunes Genius feature is one of the best examples of product direction I have seen recently and is up there with Amazon’s ‘customers that bought X also bought Y’ functionality. Both work in a similar fashion and use product or service association to recommend items that the user is statistically likely to find appealing and let’s face it who hasn’t spent more with Amazon than they intended as a result!?
It’s a relatively simple concept; analyse the purchase patterns or online behaviour of previous customers to build product associations and understand which combinations of products customers are most likely to buy. These associations can be used to drive cross-sell and up-sell opportunities by marketing and promoting the associated products together. This is particularly relevant and successful in the ecommerce sector but can be used in offline marketing as well as Digital Marketing.
So congratulations to Apple on another innovative product introduction...now it’s got me thinking which of our clients could use a similar product direction tool?
Having spent almost every evening for a fortnight loading all my CDs into iTunes I discovered a great new feature called Genius. Basically it allows you to play a song, click the Genius button and iTunes then creates a playlist of other songs from your library that go well together. It also recommends new music, films and TV shows that it thinks you’ll like based on your current library and you can preview and buy the recommended items with a single click from iTunes.
Being a bit of a sucker for a gadget I spent quite a while playing with the Genius feature, creating playlists covering all different sorts of music (I have an eclectic music collection) and each time the selection Genius came back with was more or less what I would have chosen myself and in some cases it was probably better.
The recommend new music feature also led to my first paid for music download. Up until recently I have been firmly in the buying CDs camp meaning I’ve often bought them on the strength or one or two singles from a band or a friend’s recommendation. The thought of downloading music and not really ‘owning’ a physical copy hadn’t really appealed… until now. I’ve only downloaded a couple of singles and podcasts so far but I’m beginning to see the attraction, why buy a whole album only to find out you only like half of the tracks on it when you can just buy the ones you like?
It has to be said that I’m a Marketing Managers dream when it comes to features like this which is ironic considering what I do for a living but I love functionality that adds real benefit to the user and is not just a cynical sales or marketing tool. The iTunes Genius feature is one of the best examples of product direction I have seen recently and is up there with Amazon’s ‘customers that bought X also bought Y’ functionality. Both work in a similar fashion and use product or service association to recommend items that the user is statistically likely to find appealing and let’s face it who hasn’t spent more with Amazon than they intended as a result!?
It’s a relatively simple concept; analyse the purchase patterns or online behaviour of previous customers to build product associations and understand which combinations of products customers are most likely to buy. These associations can be used to drive cross-sell and up-sell opportunities by marketing and promoting the associated products together. This is particularly relevant and successful in the ecommerce sector but can be used in offline marketing as well as Digital Marketing.
So congratulations to Apple on another innovative product introduction...now it’s got me thinking which of our clients could use a similar product direction tool?
Friday, 14 August 2009
Buying Online is Painless Right?
I’d like to talk about a recent experience I had while shopping for my husband’s birthday present. I wanted to buy him some clothes but didn’t have enough spare time in my busy schedule time to go to the shops. The perfect place for me was obviously online; shopping at whichever shops I wanted all under one roof, no rain, no fighting for car spaces and most importantly, no hordes of people.
After some virtual ‘window shopping’ I finally found the perfect gifts all on one well known site for less than I had hoped to spend. My total basket came to £150 and I was very satisfied with my shopping experience, all I needed to do was pay but this was where my nightmare began!
I only had 10 minutes left before work but for some reason my account wouldn’t accept my password so I followed the instructions and my correct password was emailed to me instantly. Although it was the same as the one I had previously entered, I was impressed by the speed of the response. However, when I tried to log in again, an error message flashed saying I had tried to log in too many times and had now been logged out for half an hour! My happy online shopping experience was slowly fading away.
An hour later (just to be on the safe side) I tried once again to log in but still nothing. After a further two hours of receiving the same message I was more than a little annoyed and started trying to find a help line I could call. Surprise surprise, there was no customer service number listed, only an email address. I Googled the company and found a number for their head office.
Whilst the lady I spoke to was very polite the only help she could offer was “I’ll email customer services and they’ll get back to you within the hour”. I informed her I had done this 3 times already over 3 hours ago and hadn’t received a response. “Well that’s the best I can do for you I’m afraid, but I will mark it as urgent”. Great, this was not going well at all and I was beginning to lose the will to live.
I tried to forget about my little shopping drama and move on, feeling very frustrated. I wanted to shop but no one would let me, my husband does that enough I thought, I don’t want my favorite online stores to stop me as well!
At around 4pm that day I received a call from the Customer Care team but they weren’t particularly interested in hearing my vent. They just wanted to tell me I could back log in but all I wanted to do is tell them about what had happened, after all, feedback is important right? I asked the Customer Care agent to stay on the phone while I logged in which she agreed to with a very loud huff, making me feel like I was keeping her from something infinitely more important.
At last, I managed to log in and tried to pay for my items realising though that I couldn’t as the contents of my basket hadn’t been saved. Marvelous, all I want to do is spend some money with them! So back I went and started to look half heartedly for my items. I found the first which was a jumper but it’s sold out in the size I wanted… argh!! I shut down my browser and threw a bit of a tantrum in the style of my 3 year old son, much to the amusement of my work colleagues which left me feeling a bit silly.
After work that night I drove to my local shopping centre and found all I needed within half an hour (a new personal record). Any questions I had while shopping, the staff in the shop concerned solved immediately. I got home exhausted but happy and feeling good for getting my shopping fix… I also gave in and treated myself while I was out (well you would, wouldn’t you!)
Looking back on the whole experience, I honestly think that if I could have picked the phone up and spoken to a real person the second my password stopped working I would have placed my order by 8.30am and been a very happy girl. Instead they lost my order and any future purchases as I really do not have the time (or indeed inclination) to deal with these kinds of issues again. I was a very loyal customer spending on average £100 a month, £1200 a year, maybe £2000 if you included shopping for Christmas last year but the whole debacle put me off using the store again. It’s a shame but like so many people when things go wrong you just want to talk to someone.
I’d be interested to hear about your online shopping experiences, have you had the same frustrations and are e-retailers missing a trick by directing us to only deal with them via email?
After some virtual ‘window shopping’ I finally found the perfect gifts all on one well known site for less than I had hoped to spend. My total basket came to £150 and I was very satisfied with my shopping experience, all I needed to do was pay but this was where my nightmare began!
I only had 10 minutes left before work but for some reason my account wouldn’t accept my password so I followed the instructions and my correct password was emailed to me instantly. Although it was the same as the one I had previously entered, I was impressed by the speed of the response. However, when I tried to log in again, an error message flashed saying I had tried to log in too many times and had now been logged out for half an hour! My happy online shopping experience was slowly fading away.
An hour later (just to be on the safe side) I tried once again to log in but still nothing. After a further two hours of receiving the same message I was more than a little annoyed and started trying to find a help line I could call. Surprise surprise, there was no customer service number listed, only an email address. I Googled the company and found a number for their head office.
Whilst the lady I spoke to was very polite the only help she could offer was “I’ll email customer services and they’ll get back to you within the hour”. I informed her I had done this 3 times already over 3 hours ago and hadn’t received a response. “Well that’s the best I can do for you I’m afraid, but I will mark it as urgent”. Great, this was not going well at all and I was beginning to lose the will to live.
I tried to forget about my little shopping drama and move on, feeling very frustrated. I wanted to shop but no one would let me, my husband does that enough I thought, I don’t want my favorite online stores to stop me as well!
At around 4pm that day I received a call from the Customer Care team but they weren’t particularly interested in hearing my vent. They just wanted to tell me I could back log in but all I wanted to do is tell them about what had happened, after all, feedback is important right? I asked the Customer Care agent to stay on the phone while I logged in which she agreed to with a very loud huff, making me feel like I was keeping her from something infinitely more important.
At last, I managed to log in and tried to pay for my items realising though that I couldn’t as the contents of my basket hadn’t been saved. Marvelous, all I want to do is spend some money with them! So back I went and started to look half heartedly for my items. I found the first which was a jumper but it’s sold out in the size I wanted… argh!! I shut down my browser and threw a bit of a tantrum in the style of my 3 year old son, much to the amusement of my work colleagues which left me feeling a bit silly.
After work that night I drove to my local shopping centre and found all I needed within half an hour (a new personal record). Any questions I had while shopping, the staff in the shop concerned solved immediately. I got home exhausted but happy and feeling good for getting my shopping fix… I also gave in and treated myself while I was out (well you would, wouldn’t you!)
Looking back on the whole experience, I honestly think that if I could have picked the phone up and spoken to a real person the second my password stopped working I would have placed my order by 8.30am and been a very happy girl. Instead they lost my order and any future purchases as I really do not have the time (or indeed inclination) to deal with these kinds of issues again. I was a very loyal customer spending on average £100 a month, £1200 a year, maybe £2000 if you included shopping for Christmas last year but the whole debacle put me off using the store again. It’s a shame but like so many people when things go wrong you just want to talk to someone.
I’d be interested to hear about your online shopping experiences, have you had the same frustrations and are e-retailers missing a trick by directing us to only deal with them via email?
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Why it’s Important to do your Homework
It’s Thursday afternoon and I’ve just had a second cold call in as many days from a telemarketing agency trying to sell their services to me. Whilst I can’t complain about their enthusiasm or technique (the last lady who called was particularly polite), if they had done their homework beforehand they’d have realised that we’d be competition for them. Looking at this in isolation you might think it’s not a huge issue, it’s just some poor telemarketer being forced to grind out 20 calls an hour working from an excel spreadsheet and from that perspective you’d be right. However, look a bit more closely and you’ll see that that kind of untargeted, scattergun approach is the worst kind of marketing faux pas you can make and here are the reasons why:
As a new business person myself I spend a great deal of my time either pitching to prospective new clients or researching businesses that I can approach with our service offering i.e. businesses that appear to have a genuine need for what we do. Clearly there is an investment in terms of time to conduct this research but what it does mean is that it increases the chances of each approach I make being successful – or to put it another way, it removes a great deal of wasted time trying to talk to businesses that will never have a need for what we do.
And that’s really the point of my long-winded rant, taking the time to research prospects before you contact them, be that via email, DM or telephone can make a huge difference to your success rate and position you as a thoughtful, professional organisation.
There are number of ways to ensure you get your targeting right. If your new business team has the luxury in terms of time and can Google each prospect before they call them then great, if not a fairly simple customer profiling exercise should be undertaken before you purchase new data. That way you can identify the profile of your most profitable customers and purchase data which matches that profile. Or to be even more targeted, you could bring predictive models in to play which use multiple variables to statistically predict which businesses are most likely to purchase your products or services, giving you a pool of prospects that are genuinely likely to be interested in what you have to say.
Anyway, enough said, that’s my rant over; I’ll get back to praying to the cricket Gods for an England win next week and avoiding cold calls!
- It’s a waste of their time and yours. If the telemarketer has targets (and lets face it, who doesn’t?), that’s one less genuine call they could have made.
- Brand damage. For a company that pitches itself as a ‘targeted B2B telemarketing agency’ making untargeted calls surely goes against their ethos?
- Cost. The agency had probably bought the data list that our company is on, paid the IT person that loaded it into their database and paid the telemarketer at least a basic salary (that’s without taking into account any kind of overheads) – so what’s the true monetary cost of that call?
- Annoyance factor. I’m a fairly level headed kind of guy and not prone to writing complaints or ‘disgruntled of Guildford’ letters (except maybe for this blog) but it is extremely annoying to receive calls from agencies that clearly have no idea about what we do.
As a new business person myself I spend a great deal of my time either pitching to prospective new clients or researching businesses that I can approach with our service offering i.e. businesses that appear to have a genuine need for what we do. Clearly there is an investment in terms of time to conduct this research but what it does mean is that it increases the chances of each approach I make being successful – or to put it another way, it removes a great deal of wasted time trying to talk to businesses that will never have a need for what we do.
And that’s really the point of my long-winded rant, taking the time to research prospects before you contact them, be that via email, DM or telephone can make a huge difference to your success rate and position you as a thoughtful, professional organisation.
There are number of ways to ensure you get your targeting right. If your new business team has the luxury in terms of time and can Google each prospect before they call them then great, if not a fairly simple customer profiling exercise should be undertaken before you purchase new data. That way you can identify the profile of your most profitable customers and purchase data which matches that profile. Or to be even more targeted, you could bring predictive models in to play which use multiple variables to statistically predict which businesses are most likely to purchase your products or services, giving you a pool of prospects that are genuinely likely to be interested in what you have to say.
Anyway, enough said, that’s my rant over; I’ll get back to praying to the cricket Gods for an England win next week and avoiding cold calls!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)