I have a pen that explodes. The spring is stronger than the plastic threads meant to keep it in one piece. When the tip touches paper, it is as likely to fly apart as record my thoughts. I keep it because it was sent to me as a free sample when I first started my business and I thought it was pretty cool to have my logo on a pen. Three or four others showed up over those first several months, but this one was special. It’s the only one that explodes! In branding, memorable is good, right? Your brand should attract attention and lodge itself in the memories of your customers. Exploding pens are memorable! Why didn’t I buy hundreds of them?
When I answered the door, the FedEx driver was hanging back, hoping I would appear. She had already put my package between the two doors. I opened the storm door to thank her. “I noticed that UPS left a package by the garage.” I thanked her and let her know I really appreciate her taking the time to bring packages to the door. “I’d hate to see them get wet or blow away,” she said, looking up at our gutters. I thanked her again. By then I was holding the package she brought in my hand. “Look at that! By your thumb! It says we promised a Wednesday delivery. Today is only Tuesday. I’m early! Pretty good, eh?” Hard not to smile. What a great ambassador for FedEx. In a few friendly, casual words she pointed out everything great about FedEx while helping me notice and overcome UPS’ short-comings. For that, I give The Clarity Award to FedEx. This woman knows that her deliveries and behavior are important. She knows that relationships matter. Last, but not least, she knows UPS is the competition to beat. I wish I had asked her name because she is still making me smile! Wish your priorities were this clear to your employees? Give me a call at 800-527-0087.
The transition to my new website was not pain free, not by a long shot. One piece of that transition involved my email, which involved Google. Someone named Jonnathan was my knight in shining armor. It wasn’t easy getting to the right support person, but I have got to tell you, he was as good as gold once I found him. He was knowledgable, responsive, thorough, right, and patient. He helped me via both email and telephone. He deserves a raise! Now if only Google as a whole were so valuable! The entire Google experience reeks of complexity. I have multiple accounts, each with different capabilities and permissions. I have no idea how things got so complex or why. I would love to have only one account, but I don’t know how to make the change. Depending on how I log in, I get a wide variety of dash boards and options. I also get warnings saying I am not authorized to do whatever I am trying to do. When I seek support, I get the opportunity to read volume upon volume of information that doesn’t exactly address my problem. On top of that, they send me ridiculously long emails explaining their services and changes. I don’t have a life to devote to learning how to be a good Google customer! I can’t possibly keep up with all their changes. I’d love to think they really had my best interests at heart, but I don’t believe it.
I recently re-upped for a service I had temporarily suspended. As a good paying customer, I expected a quick email to be sufficient. Nope! The response I received put the work back on me to sign up all over again. So guess what? I am not signed up yet! And I may not be signed up tomorrow either. Make it easy for your customers to buy from you. If you make it hard, they might not bother!
My website upgrade is perched high and dry on a rock. I contacted a new, highly recommended, incredibly successful developer, at least according to his website, to see if he could ease it off the rock without undue damage and send it once again into the swift current of progress. This developer made and broke three successive promises before I even received a proposal. Web developers are notorious for being late. Breaking your own deadlines so early in the game is a deadly mistake. The proposal contained nothing but standard, mostly irrelevant content except for two introductory paragraphs indicating that the content was mostly standard and a slight reduction from their standard flat fee. This proposal, which added
The email was a mistake no matter how you look at it. Sender: Dayne-gerous – A clever way to avoid my spam filter? Subject: Just left you a message … – No one had. It looked like spam. Yet the company and address below the name looked legitimate. Furthermore, it arrived while I was on the phone with another person at the same company. So I forwarded the email to my contact. Dayne got back to me with this:
I never signed up for auto-rewal, at least not intentionally. Were I one of those people who barely glances at a credit card statement, I still wouldn’t realize I was on the auto-renewal plan. At some point, I might wonder why this magazine keeps landing in my mailbox. Or not. Life is pretty busy. My habit of checking my credit card statement rewards me with the opportunity to dig up a phone number, make the call, navigate menu options, and then sit on hold. Of course, I am so annoyed by this waste of time that I multi-task, fail to hear the menu option that is relevant, and have to listen again. When I finally manage to cancel the subscription, I am promised a refund in 6-8 weeks.
“I am sure we can do that. We are here to help.” “Let me look into that. Our only goal is to serve you.” Can you give me 5 more variations on that theme? I can, because I heard them all today. The young man was totally helpful. But he never looked me in the eye, nor smiled. Not once! Since he was so helpful, I can’t really complain. However, imagine how much more enjoyable my experience would have been if his face had been in synch with his message! I am not suggesting he laugh at my jokes. I would never blame anyone for letting those go! And he needn’t feel obligated to engage in conversation, even though my efforts to do so were meant to do nothing more than express my appreciation for his above-the-call-of-duty service. But a little smile? Is that too much to ask? And actually, now that I think about it, a simple smile or two would have accomplished far more than all his statements about how dedicated he was to serving me well! Smile when you talk to customers! Even when you are on the phone. I absolutely guarantee it will help both of you! Now check out your employees. Are they smiling?
It takes a lot to get smoke pouring from my ears but a senior executive at my father’s bank pulled it off last week by confusing compliance with stupidity, er, I mean, an inability to serve. My mission was simple: get money into my father’s account before the IRS withdraws money for taxes. As we all know, death and grief are no excuse for missing IRS deadlines. Had the bank’s mission been to ensure compliance with privacy policies and good service, this executive would have told me that while he was unable to tell me anything about my father’s account, he could easily have acknowledged that yes, my money had arrived at his bank on time. That would have taken about 30 seconds and wasted none of my little gray cells.
If you’ve ever switched credit cards, you probably know how easy it is to neglect one auto-charge, which I did. WARNING! WARNING! The emails flew in. My service will be discontinued if I don’t immediately provide a valid credit card number. So I log in to provide a valid credit card number. WARNING! WARNING! We are experiencing difficulties. Try again later. Once again, a service provider leaves the monkey on my shoulder. I don’t approve of making customers work so hard to hand over their money. I also don’t approve of threats of service loss, especially for $4.16. Do you improve your customer’s condition or add to their stress and workload? Not sure? I’d be glad to help you answer that question! Call me at 800-527-0087.