Customer, First And Always
Customer service seems to be a struggling art. From AI chatbots to abysmal service in shops it is a scene of cost cutting and as a subsequence, a horizon of horrendous experiences for customers. Take two examples, one personal and another I discovered talking to an acquaintance.
One (of many, but this one stands out) key memory of poor customer service I have. Was trying to cancel a subscription to the telegraph. I had taken a student subscription out while writing my MSc dissertation (due to being heavily themed on current events, with no journal articles to lean on a broadsheet was the best way to get dated sources). Having taken up the offer online in a simple setup, I imagined that the cancelation process would be as simple (as it should be). I discovered to my horror that it could only be cancelled over the phone. After a significant wait for the person on the other end to pick up, I had to justify to the customer service person on the other end why I wanted to cancel. The idea that someone might wasn't to cancel to save money and they had no further need of the service seemed like an alien concept. The phone call took in total the best part of an hour.
As a result, I realised writing the first draft of the last paragraph, I cannot recall using their site or reading their papers since (I made what I deem to be a sensible decision and now read the Times).
The second example, the one I heard about. Was from an associate who was trying in bewilderment to understand a really illogical setup at their company, that simplified the product managers job but did not in any way help the customer (in fact it made it more confusing).
The head of the product area (that oddly enough cannot explain what their product area is and quite what it does) tried to opitimise how they reported to their boss and finance how their department worked (fair enough). Small work that was lower in price is done by inhouse staff (who cost less) and more expensive services are done by contractors/freelancers. However, no work had gone into trying to make the product easier to sell, none to provide staff with the right information to sell or market the product (it was in actual fact a tailored product but for years it was explained to other staff like the services were items in a shop to put in a basket and sell). As a result, both the lead generation and then sales of the services suffered. As no one could explain to customers quite what they were selling to them and when they got through to the product area, it was not as simple to just pay and have the service delivered.
Each of these examples are in their own way deliberate acts of lowering the customer experience. One to deliberately avoid cancelations, that put previously paying customers off the brand in the long run. The other deliberately sacrificing customer experience to make internal reporting easier for management.
To say that trying to provide a positive customer experience benefits companies is an understatement. Yet despite how much it is spoken about, like a religious hypocrite, its proclaimed loudly but the behaviour touted is not followed missing. This needs to change. At the end of your next meeting, think about how what you discussed benifited the customer. How does this improve the way that customers, or prospects interact with the business. Did the word “customer” or “prospect” even get mentioned? If is has not benefited the customer and the answer to that question is no, something clearly is wrong.
As marketers we should be the natural advocate of the customer in discussions within our organisations, providing feedback we get directly and relaying information we find that others have posted/said that reflects both positively and negatively about the organisation so that success stories can be championed and problems fixed. If the customer is not mentioned, or improvements are not happening for them, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask, is this really the best we could be doing?
