No automated “Welcome to Wistia!” emails for me to instantly delete.  Just a quick message from a real person.  And the kind gesture of giving out his cell phone number in case I have any problems seals the deal.  I’m not going to call that number (why would I?), but the fact that he gave it to me establishes a greater sense of trust in the service itself.  And yes, I know he copies and pastes that to everyone who signs up.  I don’t care.  It still works because it’s unique.

Of course, this is a very mild example of injecting the human element into customer service.  Video hosting is not exactly something where people need constant reassurance that support is readily available.  But there are great opportunities for other industries where this concept, taken to a higher level, would be much more effective.

For instance, let’s say you’re uninsured and need open heart surgery.  You can’t afford the procedure in the U.S., so you’re thinking about getting treatment overseas.  This is extremely scary for you and feels incredibly risky, even after you do extensive research on the best doctors and hospitals in various countries.  But then one of your potential overseas doctors emails you, proposing a video conference call (instead of a phone call) to discuss the procedure and go over any questions you might have.  You decide to do the video call, and get to talk with your doctor face-to-face.  You hear his voice, see his smile, and you grow to trust him.  He’s no longer a set of credentials on a website — he’s a real person who’s going to take good care of you.  Done deal.

Any customer that feels a large degree of uncertainty wants to be convinced that, if things go wrong, they’ll be in good hands.  They want to know that real people care about them, not just some hired worker who’s being paid $7/hour to read a script.  So erase their doubts and show them your face.

“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” – Joshua Reynolds

When a baby bird gets hungry, it stares up at its mom expectantly, beak opened wide, and begins chirping incessantly until it has been fed.  The baby is either unable or unwilling to go out and retrieve food for itself.  Why do all the hard work when someone else can do it for you?

When customers are faced with a challenge — a gap in their knowledge, a website that’s not intuitive to navigate, a set up process that’s too complex to get through, etc. — they quickly resort to the state of a baby bird.  Suddenly, they’ve been made to feel inadequate.  They get frustrated and become unwilling / unable to move on.

“Why isn’t this easier?”

“Can’t someone just do this for me?”

“Ah, forget it!”

You have two options when this happens:

1. Screw ‘em. Also known as “The Microsoft Approach.”  You’ve got them locked into your business, right?  They bought your stuff, and you got what you wanted.  If they can’t fill in the gaps, they must just be stupid.
2. Spoon-feed ‘em. Accept that whatever they’re complaining about is probably your fault, and go out of your way to fix the problem.

The duty of your company is to make it painless for your “baby birds” to eat.  More often than not, that requires you to spoon-feed them.  It may take more effort on your part, but it keeps your customers happy.

An interesting example of a company that spoon-feeds their customers is Ted’s Montana Grill.  At any other restaurant, the bill would come at the end of the meal, with the sum total of everyone’s meals, and the entire group would struggle to calculate how much each of them owed.  Cash is exchanged, tip calculators are whipped out, and there’s always that one jerk (me) who only has a credit card.  Figuring out how to split the bill is an ordeal.  At Ted’s, it isn’t.

Click the image to enlarge.

A $75 bill, nicely divided into four sections showing what each person ordered and how much it cost.  You know exactly how much you owe without having to think about it or argue with your friends.  As Larry David said, no one wants to do math after eating a meal.  Ted took that to heart.

It might seem fairly trivial to do something like this.  There’s no impact on the bottom line.  But it’s an unexpected surprise, and it leaves your customers feeling happy.  Spoon-feeding them this kind of information might be a bit harder on you, but it’s better for your company to take on some pain than to pass it on to the people who buy from you.

Never underestimate how much people desire to be spoon-fed.

Listen here.

It’s about 20-minutes long, but you will be amazed the entire time.

What Verizon doesn’t yet understand (as well as many other huge companies) is that you can’t treat people like idiots anymore.  Everyone has a voice, and you never know when you’re talking to someone who will tell others about how you’ve treated them.  Some will tell their friends how great you are, while some will blog about how terrible your service is to their audience of 1,000+.

It’s so much easier to just say, “You’re right, we screwed up.  We’ll eat the bill this time, and we’re extremely sorry for all the confusion.”  Instead, they argue with this poor guy over something so simple (while never admitting they’re wrong), and piss him off to the point where he records the call and posts it online.  The damage to their brand from people who complain is far greater than the money they’ll gain from ripping one person off.

To all small business owners reading this: Swallow your pride and appease your pissed off customers.  It doesn’t matter who’s right.  Treat them with respect, and restrain your condescension.

The fact that marketers repeatedly have to write about this issue is absurd.  It’s so basic and fundamental, yet so many businesses still manage to screw it up.

How disarming would it be to see a friendly young girl talking to you face-to-face (technically) and helping you with the problem you’re having?  It’d be very difficult to stay mad at the company because their customer service reps can see you.  You’d actually be in a better mood and start to love the company for treating you with respect and truly listening.  That’s what happens when companies humanize the interactions with their customers.

Some of you might think this idea is silly or impractical, but that’s what makes it remarkable.  Every type of computer will have a camera built-in eventually, so differentiate your company by being the first in the industry to do video calls.

I live in Colorado and have no familiarity with SF.  Therefore, my primary resource was Google.  I typed in “San Francisco movie theaters” and looked through the first 20 results.  The problem was that there were only one or two reviews for each theater, and no real indication of whether it was an independent or adult film theater (seriously – I accidentally ended up calling the latter simply because there wasn’t enough information).

But the most infuriating part of this process BY FAR was when I called Cinearts at Empire.  Their phone number is 415-661-2539, and I’d encourage you to call it if you want to lose your mind.  Brace yourself for four minutes of an automated message with no option to talk to a human at the end.

I was under a time constraint while researching these theaters, so I wanted to speak to a manager as quickly as possible while making these calls.  Cinearts’ message consists of their show times, their location, etc.  Which is fine, but they gave me absolutely no choice, at any point, to speak with someone.  They have no other listed phone numbers (I even called 411 to double check), so this was the only way to “get in touch” with them.

The equivalent of this situation is walking into the doctor’s office with a terrible cold, sitting in the main waiting room for an hour, then when you finally think your name’s going to be called, they punch you in the face and throw you out.

Customers just want to be treated with respect – that’s all. If the price of automation makes your customers feel insulted, then spend a little more money and have a human at the other end of the line.

I recently read Neil Strauss’ “Don’t Try This At Home,” a book about Dave Navarro (I’ll write a short review on this later).  In one of the chapters, Navarro says how Carmen Electra always left half-full soda cans around the house and they had a tendency to get knocked over.  When I read this, I stopped and was in disbelief that I’d never really noticed how cans, unlike bottles, don’t have a way to reseal.  After all those beer cans my roommates had spilled in college… there has to be a better way!  With a quick Google search, I found the invention that solved this problem (see pic), but wondered why it hasn’t been implemented.

Then today, I opened up a sealed pouch of roast beef.  The packaging keeps it air-tight, so it’s fresh.  The problem is that you have to transfer it to a Ziploc bag if you don’t use all the meat because the pouch it comes in doesn’t reseal.  Why the hell would they do this?  I can understand the freshness aspect, but you have to throw away the plastic pouch immediately after it’s been opened.  Is it because it’s easier for packagers to do things this way?  What’s the point of making things harder on your customers?

There is no point, I suppose.  Not many people care enough to correct these trivial little problems because we’ve all grown accustomed to them.  But if you opened up a bottle of soda and lost the screw-on cap, you’d be a little freaked out.  If you opened up a package of turkey slices, you’d be ticked if the company didn’t offer you a way to reseal the package it came in.

Redefine your customers’ expectations.  Make things better for them, not just your company.

I went into the Verizon store to get it fixed after receiving multiple text messages hours after they’d been sent. The worst was one that came in 15 hours late (see picture). I made sure to save all of the messages as proof, and I showed them to the guy working there. His response: “We have to be able to prove that the texts are coming in late while you’re in the store.” No joke.

So he sent my phone a message, and it went through right away. This didn’t surprise me. We’re in a Verizon store. I highly doubt the service is going to be poor in the store that’s promoting it. Just like you’re not going to see a lot of broken computers in an Apple store. But the problem with my phone isn’t that texts come in late every time. The problem is that the service is ridiculously inconsistent, and that’s what I told him.

“There’s not much we can do.” Actually, there is. I view cell phones as a necessary evil. Verizon is reinforcing that belief by having shoddy service and treating me like a liar. You need to recreate the problem in the store? Why? I didn’t make this complaint up. It’s very real and I have proof. I’m not trying to scam them into giving me a better phone. I just want mine to work.

I know nearly everyone has a cell phone these days. I know people upgrade to new phones fairly often. But no one has to stay with the same service for too long. Verizon’s service sucks, but the rep who patronized me is the reason I’ll switch. Every interaction with a customer has an impact. Treat consumers like people (not con artists) and they’ll stick with you. I’m not married to Verizon, and if I was, I’d file for divorce.