Tag Archives: marketing

Feb 12 2010

Customer service: The human element

Wistia is a pretty cool paid video hosting service that I discovered awhile back.  I decided to do a free trial with them tonight, and got this message about 30 minutes after signing up:

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.

Dec 6 2009

“Feed me!”

“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.

Apr 16 2009

Quote of the day

From Erik Hesseldahl:

“PC makers in the Windows camp have done everything possible to make their products progressively worse by cutting corners to save pennies per unit and boost sales volume.  There’s good reason Apple is seeing healthy profits while grabbing market share.  It refuses to budge on quality and so charges a higher price. Rather than running ads that seem clever at first but really aren’t, the Windows guys ought to take the hint and just build better computers.”

The best companies — the ones who retain their brand equity while consistently increasing their bottomline — all think relentlessly long-term.  They know that marketing means absolutely nothing if you have a bad product.  So start allocating all of your ad money into the R&D department.  You can get a lot farther on free word-of-mouth than with a multi-million dollar TV campaign.

Quality first, marketing later.

Apr 14 2009

Yelp marketing

This is brilliant.  If your company’s brand is edgy, don’t ignore your critics.  Embrace them.  How deflating is it for the critic to know that their negative review has been made into a company t-shirt?  Having a sense of humor put this restaurant back into the position of power, and effectively neutralized all of the over-the-top critics.

Thanks to Andy for the tip.

Apr 4 2009

Palahniuk marketing

I’ve always loved the story of how Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club.

He went around in bars, talking to groups of people about their fears and regrets.  He’d also ask them about what their life was like (their job, their living situation, etc.)  Then he would sit at the bar and write, letting the most common or unique answers shape characters and parts of the story.  Those answers were things like: being a grown man who’d never been in a fight, wanting to quit a worthless 9-5 job, self-loathing for getting caught up in a materialistic society, lacking a father figure, and being a caterer and pissing into the rich customers’ food.

Notice what Palahniuk didn’t do.  He didn’t go around to bookstores and libraries, asking people what they liked or didn’t like about his previous books.  He didn’t ask what kind of story people wanted to hear.  Instead, he tried to understand what makes people tick.  He tried to understand what all of us have in common, and how we can relate: through our fears, regrets, and stories.  He also brilliantly did his research in the most candid environment (pubs) rather than in a well-lit, controlled market research firm.

This is why his story resonated with such a large group of people – he had an abundance of empathy.

Don’t ask people what they want, or how they think you could improve your product.  People are idiots, and they all have their own selfish agenda.  They don’t care about your vision; they care about themselves.

Instead, try to understand the environment they live in.  It may seem trite, but you have to put yourself into your customer’s shoes and find out where they’re coming from.  What are the things that bother them on a daily basis?  What do these people have in common with each other?  What stories do they have to tell?  What do they hate about the current way things are done?  And why have they grown accustomed to it?

The answers to those questions will give you real insight, not focus group insight.

——

And all marketing talk aside, if you haven’t seen and read Fight Club, shame on you.  Both the movie and the book are incredible.  How often does that happen?