Aug 11, 2011 | Customers, Lean, Sales
Last week I spent over 2 hours on the phone to Optus trying to fix something they had stuffed up, the third try, after speaking to their techies and emailing the bloke who “signed” a form letter to, thanking me for taking on the service they stuffed up. Annoying? no, bloody irritating, being shuffled around their departments, nobody taking any responsibility for the stuff-up, but reciting how important my call was to them.
With the emphasis on speed nowadays, how quick is the connection, how rapidly fulfillment happens, how quickly the email is answered, we are used to “quick” and when it does not happen, we get angry very quickly indeed.
Clearly Optus are cutting costs, employing people in their call centres who have no authority to fix a problem, or even suggest a solution, and anything not on the printed frequent question/appropriate response list gets shuffled elsewhere. They wasted a lot of time, across several departments, and I wasted a couple of hours, and need a new head gasket. No wonder these Telco’s have a lot of customer churn, how easy it would have been for the first person to whom I spoke to be allowed just a little bit of initiative and it would all have gone away in 5 minutes.
It may cost a little bit of money to enable staff to deal effectively with customers, but how much would be saved in time, customer churn reduction, and reducing the advertising and deals necessary to attract the annoyed customers of other Telco’s to come to them to replace those leaving?
This is a challenge for every organisation, as the speed of things increases, the expectation is the effectiveness of the response will increase at the same rate, and it doesn’t, so we get pissed, and everybody wastes time, effort, resources, energy and perhaps most importantly, hard won brand loyalty.
What a waste.
Jun 26, 2011 | Branding, Customers, Innovation, Marketing, Sales, Social Media, Strategy
The future of produce marketing in Australia is fraught with difficulties that many who just buy their produce in the supermarket will never think about.
The dominance of the chain supermarkets, lack of innovation, fragile investment outlook, environmental concerns, regulatory inconsistency and political blather in place of certainty coming from any philosophic foundation, an ageing workforce, trade barriers, the list goes on.
The report below was commissioned in an effort to put some framework around the marketing of produce in Australia, and to take lessons from what was happening elsewhere, and whilst it is a relative scratch at the surface, it highlights the challenges. Download it, and let me know what you think, what have I missed, where it could be improved. Its free to download, but I would appreciate you letting me know by commenting.
Embracing Innovative Marketing & Promotional Methods
Apr 3, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Sales, Small business
I’ve seen lots of customer service initiatives that promise “delivery by ……..” and no matter how quick that may be, there is still uncertainty about when it will be delivered, and customers will be anxious.
By contrast, “we will deliver at 3pm on the 25th” is very specific, and so long as you do deliver at the nominated time, every time, even if it is a few days longer than then quickest possible, customers just love the certainty.
Feb 2, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Management, Marketing, Sales
Opportunity cost is a concept well understood, and often used in a theoretical sense, but not often is it translated into something easily understood.
In a store just before Christmas, I was tossing up between two brands of domestic coffee machine, that appeared pretty similar in all but price, the better known brand being substantially more expensive. The sales assistant sensing my indecision, and perhaps thinking I might do more ‘research” and he would lose a sale solved the dilemma by asking, “would you rather have” X” brand, or “Y” brand and 20kg of coffee beans?”
That turned the theoretical “opportunity cost” although I had not considered it in these terms at the time, into something tangible that had a value relevant to the purchase, and made all the difference…… I took the “Y” brand machine and with the saving, bought some exotic coffee beans.
Jan 6, 2011 | Customers, Marketing, Sales
Word of mouth advertising has always been the best sort, people put great store in recommendations from those they trust. The extension of this recently has been what I call “word of mouse” advertising, enabled by the networking capabilities of the net.
Taking the idea further, the potential to engage your customers via various forms of social media, to the extent that they become advocates of your product is not only possible, but should be a key marketing objective.
Call centers have progressively taken over the function of a sales force, and technology, and India has progressively taken over the call centers. Perhaps there is an opportunity for high end goods to reverse the trend, use technology to facilitate the transactional end of a relationship with a consumer, but invest in call centers to build the engagement of consumers by personal contact.
Jan 4, 2011 | Change, Customers, Personal Rant, Sales, Small business
Australian manufacturing has been decimated over the last few decades, and whilst there is no single reason for this impact, the determination of the major retailers to use the opening of global sourcing options to reduce their costs and compete on price has been a major contributor.
In my patch, the food industry, a whole layer of mid sized Australian owned food manufacturers have simply gone broke, or sold out to multinationals consolidating manufacturing internationally, as FMCG retailers increasingly sourced overseas. The very few that are left are fighting a rear guard action, and will probably lose.
Therefore, when I hear retailers bleating about the competition from international retailers selling into Australia using the same tools the retailers have used on former Australian suppliers, I think “good one” The latest bleating culminating in an advertising campaign, and lots of appearances by Gerry Harvey amongst others, does nothing but encourage me to believe that the short sighted retail sourcing policies which are just about landed price, with no acceptance of the long term benefits of having a vibrant and innovative manufacturing sector are coming back to bite them on the arse.
Retailers have been dishing it out for years, thumbing their noses at any form of regulation of retail, ignoring the potential and growth of e-tail, it is illuminating to see how they are reacting to some of their medicine coming back to them, although the sales loss is currently only very small, and the consumers they want slugged with GST for online purchases are also their customers, unlikely to thank them for the GST led cost increase.
Get over it, and figure out how to compete on other than shelf price, meanwhile, a few of us are enjoying the sight of retailers squirming.
