"If my call is important to you why am I on endless hold listening to a person tell me that my call is important to you?"
08/16/09 07:35 AM Filed in: Customer
Service
I have been a Direct TV subscriber for over 12 years and recently they sent me a card in the mail informing me that because I have been such a good customer they are going to give me a free three month subscription to Showtime and The Movie Channel. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised and that Direct TV exceeded my expectations as a customer. AT&T, which some people really hate, is now my Internet service provider and last month they upgraded the speed on my Internet for free. Again they exceeded my expectations. Just what in the wild world of sports is a goin’ on here ??
I love being an Apple customer. Whenever I call them with a problem I get to speak to a live person within a few minutes and I have no problem understanding them on the phone. Direct TV, when I call, always thanks me for being a loyal customer and goes out of their way to ensure that I am happy with their service by sending me eMails to ensure that they exceeded my wishes. Welcome to the age of great customer service = great brand experience. But why then are there so many companies that don’t get it?
I like to pick on Vonage because never have I have seen so many people on websites who say that Vonage’s customer service sucks. Even with all this Vonage acts like nothing is wrong and continues with their mindless TV ads even though they are losing subscribers faster than cockroaches running out of a room when the light comes on. Rather than take the time to really focus on improving customer service and thinking like a customer they are doing too much at once thus the defections continue.
The most important new rule in marketing is that consumers have taken the power away from marketers because of the interconnected hypercommunative world via a keyboard. Still way too many marketers plan for the days when consumers are going to mindlessly whip out their credit cards to buy things they don’t need but want. They still piss us off with dump car insurance commercials featuring bad groomed Cavemen (like that is going to make us want to switch). In other words either they are brain dead or the term marketing to them means bore the hell out of the audience and spend money to do things that don’t mean shit to the brand.
Reality 101: You have one chance to make a first impression. If you screw up chances are that you’ll lose a customer or prospect forever. Consumers have no patience to be put on endless phone trees and listen to a recording telling them that “your call is important to us” because if it were that important you wouldn’t have laid off the people who could have answered my call !!!