Providing Customer Solutions = Profit

June 18, 2008

One of the biggest issues I get “push back” on from clients is encouraging them to focus on the problems their customers are facing when creating their marketing messages. When you can provide customer solutions to problems, profits will follow almost automatically.

This is why I hammer pretty hard on “focus on your customers as individuals so you can provide solutions” in my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results.

See, if you know what PROBLEMS your prospective customers are facing, you can then create marketing messages which focus upon the CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS your business provides.

The beauty of targeting your market as individuals instead of “groups” is that groups don’t have “problems”… individuals do.

When you define your target market as individuals, it’s easier to address the specific individual’s unique goals, desires and problems. When you define your target audience as individuals, it prepares you to create effective marketing messages… ones that enter into the conversation that is already taking place within your customer minds.

Posted by Kathy | Filed Under Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategies, Customer Service, Marketing & Customer Service | 2 Comments 

Customer Service in the World of Web 2.0

May 12, 2008

Many businesses tend to focus on acquiring NEW customers and lose sight of focusing upon EXISTING customers. The long term value of a customer is far greater than their initial purchase. Existing customers are the FOUNDATION of the holy grail of advertising…

word of mouth advertising.

One of the most frustrating parts about working with clients on their marketing is the frustrating fact of how intertwined customer service is with marketing.  Many small business owners say they WANT to leverage the power of word of mouth advertising without recognizing that exceptional customer service is the KEY to tapping into that elusive marketing goal.

Any business that expects to stay afloat by merely using advertising to draw in a never ending supply of new customers is doomed to failure. The cost of acquiring new customers is always much, much higher than the cost to sell to existing customers.

Successful marketing means establishing a solid customer base, then servicing that customer base as you add to it via your marketing and advertising.

Erwin Steneker at the Learn Good Customer Service blog writes:

This is a wake-up call for anyone thinking that customer service is something handled by a customer service department, provided by customer service reps diligently typing at their help desk applications…

Stop chasing that ghost! You’re beating a dead horse!

The time has long gone, where your customer service was the only place unhappy customers could go. The Internet is a common place to talk about just about anything that’s on your mind. Forums, social sites like MySpace and Facebook, Youtube for videos, blogs, customer complaint web sites, the list goes on and on.

These days, it’s much more likely that your mistakes are plastered all over the Information Superhighway instead of coming to you. It’s only human to get mad, and get even.

You need much more than ‘just’ a customer service department to make and keep happy customers.

Every time a customer comes into contact with your business, you either add or take away from that relationship:

A hearty AMEN to that!!!

If you think your customers are happy because they’re not complaining… WAKE UP!  Poor customer service has become such a staple these days that it takes a hugely egregious act to prompt a formal complaint from most consumers.

The first symptom that your customer service may need work is not an avalanche of complaints, but rather a lack of “word of mouth” advertising.  Current customers aren’t referring new customers to your business anymore.  However, instead of looking inside, many small business owners look OUTSIDE and call upon the marketing gods to come to the rescue.

Before you begin any marketing or advertising campaign, take an internal check first of your customer satisfaction amongst CURRENT customers.  Remember, satisfied customers will tell 3 or 4 people about your business… dissatisfied ones will tell, on average, 16.

Posted by Kathy | Filed Under Advertising 2.0, Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategies, Marketing & Customer Service | Leave a Comment 

Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers

March 30, 2008

How do you show your appreciation for your best customers? If you’re book selling giant Amazon.com, you show your “love” by doing your best impression of the Godfather and apply pressure to your suppliers who are also your customers to use your services or suffer the consequences.

Angela Hoy decided to speak out about the bullying on Writer’s Weekly with the article Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers - Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else…

Here’s the situation in a nutshell.

POD stands for Print On Demand. Thanks to advanced in “technology” a publisher no longer has to print 5,000 copies of a book and then wait for those copies to be sold. Instead, the books can be produced as they are needed… thus the term, “Print on Demand”.

Many publishers offer POD services and Amazon has their own POD service called Book Surge. Amazon has decided to increase Book Surge’s market share and is putting pressure on POD publishers by issuing the ultimatum: Use our service or we’ll turn off the buy links on Amazon.

Web 2.0 means this story is multiplying like… well, like a virus. That’s why they call it “viral” marketing except in this case, it’s more like anti-marketing because instead of building new business, this story is going to hurt the retail giant. When Angela blew the whistle, she set forth a series of events in which Amazon loses all around.

  • Amazon loses customers… authors who are boycotting the retailer.
  • Amazon loses links… links to their site by authors whose books MAY be remove.
  • Amazon loses the relationship with thousands of authors… who are not only their customers, but also suppliers of product.

It’s obvious that the long term consequences of this action have yet to dawn on the executives at Amazon. Angela reports that Amazon is avoiding putting these “threats” in writing… but the lack of a paper trail won’t save them from their own actions.

I’d like to do my part by listing the 60+ references to this story. Feel free to grab the list below and add it to your own blog. If you want to add your post to the “cause”… the post a comment to this post. If you’ve got your own blog, copy this list and post it on your blog as well. The more links to these posts… the more “traction” this cause will get.

Posted by Kathy | Filed Under Marketing & Customer Service | 7 Comments 

Are you frustrating your customers with a lack of follow through?

March 5, 2008

Last week, I picked up a magazine which featured an article on the “latest fashion trend”… in this case identified as items that are pink. My daughter is TOTALLY pink obsessed and naturally, I directed her attention to the article, which was really a 2 page spread featuring hot products offered in pink.

She absolutely SQUEALED when I showed her the spread and began an obsessive quest to obtain a majority of the items offered.


Her quest began with a pair of pink shoes….which were offered on the web site. Search, point and click… VIOLA! A few more clicks and the shoes are purchased and on their way. She’s one happy camper.

The next item on the page to capture her attention is an adorable pink blouse with yet another web address listed as the source. Like a woman on a mission, she visits the web site… only to be presented with a web site which seems to only offer prom dresses and bridesmaid dresses. There is no pink wispy blouse anywhere to be found on the site.

She’s annoyed but still buoyed by her shoe success, she continues to the next object of her affection… a hot pink jacket with classic lines. she has plans for that jacket… she plans on wearing it with a pair of grey slacks she already owns. It will make a perfect companion piece for the fabulous pink shoes, whose arrival we await with baited breath. There’s no web address given, yet the source is listed and as a result, we make a trip to Old Navy at 7:00 PM on a weekday evening in pursuit of the perfect pink jacket.

She was annoyed to be thwarted in her quest for the perfect pink blouse…. but to drive to the mall and not find the perfect pink jacket was too much. I’m sure it was a similar display which inspired William Congreve to coin the truism “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

About 15 companies sought introduction to a new audience and provided product to the magazine for inclusion in the spread.  It was a brilliant move from a marketing standpoint!!!   The display of products sent my 20 year old daughter on a shopping SPREE… one where her credit card was in hand and she was ready to buy, buy buy!

The only thing stopping her from fulfilling her quest… FOLLOW THROUGH!

Two of the3 companies she tried to patronize (out of the 15 companies who featured product)  failed to have the “advertised” product in stock.  I get the 6 month lead times that are inherent in magazine publishing.  I also doubt that had that been a paid ad if the stores would have featured product not available.

The only company that won the night we went on our obsessive quest to Old Navy was the oil company that provided the gasoline.  My daughter and I wandered the store, getting more angry as we moved through the racks of clothing.  Not only did they not have the desired jacket, the selection offered was NOTHING like the jacket featured in the spread.  My daughter’s parting words as we left the store… “Old Navy sucks!”

What could have been the successful introduction of newly minted customer instead ends in an experience that is going to be associated with the name “Old Navy” for quite a while.

Naomi Dunford had a similar experience with paint which she chronicles in What Tiger Woods Can Teach You About Marketing.
Her quest was very similar.  Just as my daughter and I were seeking the perfect pink jacket… Naomi was seeking cozy paint.  She was inspired by a magazine spread, got in her car and DROVE to acquire the object of her desire, in this case the perfect paint. Isn’t that the point of marketing and advertising?

In both cases, people were MOVED to action only to come home empty handed.

Make sure that doesn’t happen to YOUR customers!

Posted by Kathy | Filed Under Advertising 2.0, Marketing & Customer Service | Leave a Comment 

Customers can’t measure quality….

February 22, 2008

Those words jumped out from the screen as if they were written in neon.

CUSTOMERS CAN NOT MEASURE QUALITY

The man who wrote those words is is Mike Wagner in his post Customer Service: Lessons from the heart

Customers don’t understand quality. Most customers have no way to measure the quality of the goods/services you provide - all they know is the experience that surrounds the sale.

To this day I can’t judge the quality of my heart operation. It would take a trained heart surgeon to look at the repair to deem it a “quality” job. I know how I was treated, I know the conditions I experienced in the hospital, and like most people I allow my experience to form my opinion about quality.

Insisting your goods/services are the best doesn’t mean anything without a great experience - without great customer service.

The reason those words literally JUMPED off the page to me is it’s a realization I’ve been wrestling with recently.

In my work with individual clients…. I spend what they may think of as an inordinate amount of time working on their communication skills.  "Hey, this is supposed to be about marketing, not public speaking!"   Ah, but there’s the rub.  The great communicator will beat out the skilled craftsman most of the time.

Quality is an illusion… perception is EVERYTHING!  Heck, perception is the ONLY thing!!!

Whether you’re a web developer, an attorney, a heart surgeon or a dentist…. your patients/clients/customers don’t have any way to guage the "quality" of your work outside of the experience of doing business with you. 

Long ago and far away, as an adult I had to have my tonsils removed.  The surgeon was a likeable fellow who was "a bit too fond of the drink", a fact I wasn’t aware of at the time.  About four days after the procedure, I returned to work only to find myself hemmoraging from my throat.  My affable surgeon wasn’t on call, but his associate was.  Looking back, I can see why he was so gruff with me at the time.  Here he was, a very competent surgeon called into "clean up" the shoddy work of his associate who was too drunk to cover his call.    However, as he literally saved my life, I was thinking, "What a JERK!" His behavior towards me, the nursing staff and the ER doctor were simply unexcusable.

As I said, it was only when the second surgeon left the area to set up practice in another state that I got the FULL details of the real situation from a friend in the know.  The second doctor, the one with the HORRID bed side manner, was actually a highly skilled surgeon who was extremely frustrated by constantly bailing out his bumbling yet affable partner.  

I couldn’t measure the quality of my surgery… and chances are your customers can’t judget the quality of your goods and services either.  The only thing they CAN judge is their experience.  If it’s pleasant… then their perception of quality will be high.  If it’s negative, then their perception of quality will be low. 

Posted by Kathy | Filed Under Marketing & Customer Service | 4 Comments 

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