Customer Service is Marketing
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Oct 27, 2008
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.
Why Should Customers Do Business With You?
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Oct 16, 2008
A while back I read the interesting assertion that our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. What a simple statement. Perhaps dangerously simple, because the tendency (as is the case with most profound truths) is to briefly consider and then move on without the full impact of the statement really penetrating.
But, consider for a moment, really consider, the idea that your life’s successes or failures are the direct result of your conversations. We tend to think that we are having conversations in our relationships or about our relationships, but really - our conversations are our relationships.
This is true for all of life -including the part of life that has to do with our businesses. Our businesses are currently trotting along (or speeding along) towards success or failure on a path that is made up of the conversations that surround it. Stated more pointedly (and accurately), our conversations are not about our business. Our conversations are our business.
To clarify - by conversation, I speak very, very broadly to mean every point of contact your business has with the outside world. Further… at the center of every meaningful conversation, there is a core message that resonates somehow with those engaged in the conversation. From the standpoint of your business, that core message should communicate exactly why your business deserves to exist.
Um, not to offend, but do you know why your business deserves to exist? Not why you want it to exist, or why you think you deserve to have it exist, or why it’s important in any way to you that it continue to exist, but why the market should allow you to continue to take up space in the marketplace. This is harsh, I know, but…
if you don’t know exactly why, in the eyes of your market, your business should continue to exist (and thrive), why should your prospects and customers?
At YML we are business owners too, and currently (always) wrestling out the answer to that pestering, yet all important question, “Precisely WHY should anyone do business with us?” I mean, aren’t you clutching your wallet a bit tighter these days? Aren’t you more selective about laying down your money and thereby placing your vote for which businesses deserve to continue to exist and which one’s don’t?
At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, as a business owner or entrepreneur, going into business automatically places you in a harsh, non-forgiving, all-out competition, in which many, many businesses fall by the wayside and are forever left behind. It’s a fact that you are competing with a sea of businesses in a world that needs little else that it doesn’t already have. I mean, really, did you go into business because there was literally no one else out there offering your product or service? We are surrounded by an overabundance of choices for an overabundance of products and services.
Ah, but this doesn’t at all mean that anyone is free of problems, does it? In fact, ironically, while we are surrounded by excess (I mean, who really needs a Big Foot Garden Sculpture anyway?), we seem to have more discontent, unhappiness, stress and anxiety than ever before. We also seem to have more needs, wants and desires than ever before.
Within the motivating forces that push all of us to search for that which holds the promise of alleviating our unhappiness and fear, or filling our deepest needs, wants and desires, is your opportunity.
The market will not allow you to exist out of sympathy. The market will allow you to exist because many, many people lay down their money, thereby placing their vote for you to continue to exist. They do this because you provide something for them that they are deeply motivated to have. They don’t even need to be conscious of that motivating force. But you do. Because, your job, no matter what business you are in, is to market to them. And you do that by clearly communicating a core message that hits at the heart of whatever they are motivated to put down money to solve or have.
This is (or should be) the core message of your business. This is the meaningful part of the conversations that make up your business. This is the heart of marketing. This message should be at the heart of your marketing.
Want to know exactly how to create this all-important core message? Sign up for our FREE email course about how to answer this question better than your competition: “Why should customers do business with you?”
In this course, we will show you how to uncover the motivating factors that drive your ideal customers to buy, and then break down the process for creating a core message that will drive them to buy from you. Subscribe to this free course now.
Your small business blog’s organization and design
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Sep 29, 2008
Attention small business owners! Here are two great reads when considering your blog’s design and organization:
“One of the biggest challenges of Web design is making sure that a new customer immediately grasps that she’s in the right place. You offer what she’s looking for. You solve problems she has. Your customers look like her. And all of this is instantly communicated by your graphics. Which probably means your site looks more like Google and less like MSN, because only robots can assimilate that much information at a glance and glean anything useful from it.” Keep reading… (YML ProStaffer Sonia Simone, of Remarkable communication)
In The Elements of Business Writing, Gary Blake and Robert Bly cover principles of organizational order:
- Location: Use geography to create an order. For example, in a post on a travel blog, begin with where a country is on the globe, then cover the country’s geography, then focus on major cities, and finally, focus on one city.
- Alphabetically: Great way to do a list without appearing to give preference to any single item.
- Chronologically: When telling a story, tell the events in chronological order. Never assume your readers know times and dates, always tell them.
- Problem/Solution: This is a basis for much sales-oriented writing, and with good reason. It’s highly logical and effective.
- Inverted Pyramid: Journalistic style where the lead sentence explains all pertinent points. Each sentence after explains more and more detail about these points. Who, what, when, where, and how are explained.
- Deductive order: Start with a general statement and work into specifics that support the conclusion of the general statement.
- Inductive order: Start with specific statements and build them into a general conclusion.
- List: What this post is you’re reading now. Usually headlines for these posts use a number, such as 5, 7, or 10.
- Priority sequence: Rank recommendations, problems, or other items from most important to least important.
Also - it is important to define what the objective(s) of your blog is and know how to measure whether or not it’s meeting that objective. For example, is the ultimate point of your blog to increase sales in your business? Make sure you’ve clearly defined that and are organizing your blog around that objective.
Not sure what the point of your blog is or should be? Buzzgain.com has done much of the work for you by listing out 20 blogging objecitves and how to measure the results. If you’re unsure what the main point of your blog is, it will likely read like you are usure what the point is and certainly won’t accomplish much. Not to mention that it will be dificult to measure it’s effectiveness, an extremily important component to creating a successful business.
Blogging in small business
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Sep 29, 2008
If you are in business today, any business really, but especially a small business, we hope you realize the importance of blogging. If not, perhaps these two articles will convince you.
From Produce Marketing Offers Sophisticated SEO Techniques for Small Businesses:
A blog can be a very useful tool because it serves as a vehicle for consumers to put forth their opinions as well as a means for the website to boost its content and keyword density. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo crave new and fresh content and therefore love blogs because of the constant addition of trendy information, since blog entries are typically related to the latest buzz.
From How to Blog Your Way to Small-Business Success - US News and World Report:
Only about 41 percent (of small business owners) have their own interactive websites…..
a blog gives a small-business owner the ability to show up much higher in the Google rankings than any kind of static website,” says John Jantsch, a blogger since 2002 and author of the Duct Tape Marketing Blog.
Getting Google hits can be a marketing plan in and of itself, simply because so many potential customers turn to Google before anything else when looking for a service. “Small businesses are starting to understand that people don’t come to your main Web page. They ask Google,” says Chris Brogan, who has blogged since 1999. His blog, about social media and business, is in blog tracker’s Technorati top 200 on the Web.
Four tips when creating your blog:
1) Be a reader of blogs.
2) Don’t stress about it too much.
3) Don’t do adspeak.
4) Tell a story without ranting.
In fact, blogging might be one of the best things you can do when starting a small business, or when determining effective marketing strategies in your small business.
Not sure what to write about? Reac Chris Brogan’s excellent post titled:
50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies
If your small business is experiencing a dip, direct attention to your marketing
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Sep 29, 2008
Jassen Bowman, in his article, The Fundamental Role of Marketing In Business, writes that, “More often than not, marketing is a back seat, tertiary thought that comes after their product/service and daily operations, if it’s even that high of a priority.” He goes on to say that, “….marketing encompasses all the activities that seek to identify what consumers want and how to promote and deliver those goods and services.”
Let me restate that: Here’s what marketing in business does - it identifies what consumers want and then acts as the conduit for which they find what they want and purchase it, equallaing sales in your business and ultimatly the acheivement of a successful business.
If that’s not all important when things are slow or difficult, or when you are just starting a small business, I don’t know what is.
If you are to survive your Dip, you must work to acquire good marketing skills. In fact, when business is slow, working on improving your marketing is the absolute best thing to do. Marty Foley identifies being skilled at marketing as as one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have. In fact, when it comes to the success of your business, marketing is everything.
As Marty Foley writes, “The world can not and will not beat a path to your door to buy your “better mouse trap” if the world doesn’t know about it. Regardless of what business you’re in, marketing is the tool used to present the solutions that your products and services offer to the rest of the world.”
Well said.
I have found that many small business owners have a hard time making the time to work on increasing their marketing skills. There is too much “work” to do.
Our best small business advice is this: Acquiring knowledge about how to reach your customers is the most important work you can do if you don’t have enough buying customers!
Make a commitment to expanding your marketing ability. Read, test, try, join a mastermind group, find a mentor, whatever. But learn and act, and learn some more. Your successful business depends on it.
Being committed, consistent and patient marketing your small business
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Sep 29, 2008
Marketing Guru Seth Godin wrote in his blog the other day about the importance of being “irrationally committed” to your business as an entrepreneur. I can’t think of better words to describe the level of persistence needed to get through the inevitable discouragement, overwhelm, bad decisions and sheer frustration that can come with starting, marketing and growing a successful business.
Entrepreneurs, being the big idea people that we are, are attracted (perhaps addicted) to the rush and the thrill and the risk of starting a small business. We have lots of great ideas, and often vast amounts of energy to throw behind turning those ideas into action. However, no matter how great the idea is, it’s the level of persistence (commitment, consistency and patience) that will determine whether or not we end up with a successful business.
In Seth Godin’s book, The Dip, he describes that inevitable point that every business owner comes to, where the business you began with great gusto and excitement becomes really, really hard.
I have often described starting a small business and marketing a small business as pushing a boulder up hill. You know that once you get to the top you will be just fine. It’s getting to the top without getting squashed that’s the problem. If you’re nodding your head in agreement right now because that’s exactly how you feel, Seth would say (and does say in his book) that it’s decision time. You must decide not whether you can push your boulder to the top of the mountain, but whether or not there is a top of the mountain.
The difficulty of the present moment is either:
1. A necessary step that will push you to learn, refine, and sharpen so that when you get to the top of the mountain you are highly competitive, competent and strong, and highly likely to have and maintain a successful business.
2. A never ending, exhausting journey in which you will eventually wear out and be crushed.
Which do you think describes your present moment?
If you’re unsure, you need to read Seth’s book. If your answer is #2, get out now. Guiltlessly. You need a new business plan. That is the wise and very, very smart choice. If your answer is #1, the most important asset you have is your level of irrational commitment (persistence) that will set you apart from everyone else and ensure your long term small business success. Right now, your ability to stay focused and motivated is all important.
