Natural Marketing in Business

John Jantsch of Duct Tape marketing wrote on his blog the today, “Happy, educated, results oriented customers are the greatest sales force you can employ.”

I agree. In fact, I bookmarked and saved the article. For contrast, let me share an experience today that illustrates what not to do when it comes to customer service.

I signed up for an eFax account back in July. They offer 30 days to try out their service before they begin charging you a monthly fee. I didn’t use the service, so I emailed a request to have the service cancelled before the 30 days was up, and promptly forgot about it.

In looking over the last few month’s bank statements this weekend, I realized that they had been charging me for this monthly fax service for the last 3 months. I called customer service to resolve the matter, and was played a recording that instructed me to deal with this matter via live chat. I hung up the phone, logged into the eFax web site and began chatting with a customer service representative. I explained that I had sent in a request to cancel my service back in August, but was still being charged. Would he please be so kind as to cancel my account and refund the money taken from my account over the last 3 months. He replied that “refunds were not allowed.”

He then asked if I would like to keep my service for the next 2 months free of charge in order to recoup my losses.

What the @%#*????

I kindly explain that I haven’t used the service, didn’t use it during the free trial, didn’t want to keep it and don’t want it now, so why would I want to keep it another 2 months so that I could, uh, continue to not use it. Further, how would that make me feel like I had recouped my losses?

He suggested I call a customer service representative. I agreed. Before closing the chat, he asks me to clarify for him one more time that I would in fact like to cancel my service. Um, yes. Perhaps I am not being clear.

I call the number he gives me. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I spoke with a woman who repeats the “refunds are not allowed” mantra. I am insistent, so she places me on hold to speak with ???. She comes back and says that she can offer me a one time courtesy (refunding money for a service I didn’t want is a courtesy?) of refunding the charge in September, but I would have to call back tomorrow and talk to someone about refunding the charge in October. As for refunding August - that was out of the question. Couldn’t be done. I was still insistent. So, she said when I called back tomorrow I could ask to speak to the “higher ups.” Indeed.

Now… eFax is owned and operated by jConnect. jConnect has a lot of other useful services besides e-faxing. They offer conference calling services (we do TONS of conference calling at YML) and services that will deliver voicemail to your email and email to you phone. Any of those might have been great services to tell me about. I, in fact, didn’t even know they offered these services until I had to go searching for a customer service number this morning so that I could call and ask for October’s money back.

Unfortunately, in discovering these other services, I am not in the mood to buy.

I find the number and explain the whole incident to a new customer service rep.  He again tells me that he is very sorry for the inconvenience but “refunds are not allowed”. Again, I am insistant. So, he places me on hold to talk to ??? and returns to tell me that as a one time courtesy they will refund October. As a favor.

I take a deep breath and the most polite voice I can muster, say, “I want you to refund August as well.” He says that is not allowed. I ask to speak to his manager. He says that his manager will tell me the same thing. He says he has talked with his manager and his manager cannot do a thing and so there is no point in talking with him. I say, “That’s alright. I want to talk with your manager.” He refuses to let me. This goes on a while. He never lets me talk to his manager.

Now, this is a very long story that illustrates a very simple point: Customer service is marketing.

EVERYTHING IN YOUR BUSINESS IS MARKETING.

Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with the outside world. EVERY BIT.

And back to John’s point about how happy customers are the best sales force you can employ. This also works in the reverse. If you want more customers, (hell, forget about new ones - if you simply want to keep the customers you have) train your customer service reps - train everyone who works for you or speaks for you - to be good marketers.

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