Tag Archives: customer service

It’s time to truthfully rename BIG DATA to what it is: “just lots more data – mostly useless”…

24 Monday May 2021

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Or maybe; “I know 90% of the data I capture is useless, I just don’t know which 90%”

On January 28, this year, Tim Cook, CEO, Apple delivered a presentation at a Data Privacy Day event.

Here is some of his most insightful words about the use of data:

“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement, the longer the better. And all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible.

“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”

As I’ve been saying for more than a decade, “Most companies aren’t correctly managing their small data, let alone getting BIG DATA right.” And it’s costing them dearly. Small data such as a customer’s name, address, phone number, email address or previous purchase are regularly incorrect, or not even stored. Marketers appear to be focusing on the least valuable data.

For all the investment in BIG DATA this century (and marketing automation software that functions from that data) there has been almost no significant change in marketing results or performance of campaigns. The majority of sales in every category occur without any help from big data.

Ask any senior marketing executive “how has the investment in bigger data helped their sales?” If they’re like those I talk with, they’ll say “I have no idea” or “it hasn’t“. But hey, they do know how many people bounced off page three of their website and who liked a Tweet.


The 90/10 Rule applies to data
90% of the value from using data comes from 10% of the data. Yet most marketers are playing at the margins where the incremental value of lots more data doesn’t cover the cost of investing in gathering it.

I declare my hand here – I am a firm believer in the power of relevant data. I also understand the delusion of productivity created by capturing lots of data for no other reason than it can be done. In 1988 I opened Australia’s first data consultancy and database management service while running Ogilvy & Mather Direct – called Ogilvy DataConsult. Three years later I opened my own data marketing service as part of my agency – MAD. And have worked with data ever since, even publishing a magazine called Database Marketing.

It may come as a surprise to some, but marketing data wasn’t invented yesterday – there is just lots more data now, most of it useless.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
Just because we can track every digital contact doesn’t mean we should. It’s the equivalent of recording the fact a shopper walks into a grocer, looks at the bananas, walks towards them, maybe even picks up a hand, then puts them down before deciding not to buy – possibly because they remembered they had some in the fruit bowl at home? What is the value in tracking this action? So why do we chase non-qualified consumers around the web with irrelevant messages just because they visited our website?


Stop trying to sell me breast pumps
This happened to a friend of mine who was in her early sixties at the time, as well as me when I tested her experience. After searching for baby gifts online, the insanely stupid marketers started following us around the internet trying to flog us breast pumps. Each time we visited a site, up popped breast pump advertisements.

Even worse are the B2B marketers – particularly those flogging marketing automation software – who follow you around after you’ve visited their site. When browsing a website for personal relaxation, that has nothing to do with business, I get ads asking me to trial their marketing automation software. Or they promote an offer to download a “definitive guide” which at best is nowhere near definitive, rather it’s a sales pitch for the software the marketer is flogging. Here is why most definitive guides aren’t – definitive that is. All this does is damage their credibility.

How ignoring small data resulted in abuse of senior citizens
My 80-year old neighbour shared his story with me last month, he was shaking as he told it. His bank mailed him a letter telling him the email address on his account was incorrect and he needed to fix it. Obviously this was a data-driven message as no human in their right mind would have sent the letter. He logged into his account and checked his email – it was correct. It’s the only email address he has ever owned.

He then received another letter threatening to charge him fees if he didn’t fix the email address. So he rang the bank. They told him he had to go to his branch – which has been closed – so they gave him a new branch to attend. When he arrived he didn’t have the 100 points needed to prove his identity, despite having his bank cards. He had to drive home and then drive back to the bank.

Upon returning, the clerk checked the account and realised the email address was being used in my neighbour’s joint account with his wife. So the clerk demanded to speak to my neighbour’s wife. He told her she was in a dementia hospital. The clerk asked to speak to her there. My neighbour explained it was impossible, as she cannot converse and he was her legal guardian. The clerk then demanded proof.

So my neighbour had to go home and contact his lawyer to get legal documentation to prove his status as legal guardian of his wife who is living in a dementia hospital, because the bank’s data-driven systems believed his email address was incorrect. He ended up driving to the bank branch three times to accommodate their requests.

The clerk finally admitted that the email address was correct and the whole saga was a complete data-driven waste of time. You can imagine how my 80-year old neighbour felt? This bank makes $Billions in profit every year and spends $Millions on BIG DATA capture.

My (even older) father is a lifetime customer of one of the other ‘Big 4 Banks’ in Australia. He used a travel card in 2004 and cancelled it in 2005 after using all the funds. Every year since, he gets a data-driven bank statement telling him he has no funds on his travel card. He has spoken to the bank more than a dozen times and rung them more times than he cares to remember to advise them he no longer has the travel card account. They finally admitted they have no idea where his account is in the database, nor do they have any idea how to stop the statements being issued. This bank also makes $Billions in profit every year and spends $Millions on BIG DATA capture.

My father is also a customer of the largest telco in Australia. He was asked to provide an emergency email address in his account in case of, well, an emergency. With my permission he used my email address. Immediately I started to get his monthly statements emailed to me, while he didn’t get any statements. Over a period of six months he wrote numerous letters and emails to the telco requesting the mistake be corrected, and also rang the offshore customer support a few times. I forwarded the email to some customer service address to try to sort it out, but just got a useless auto-reply. Hours of my father’s and my time were wasted because the telco’s data-driven systems.

And not only that, the statements incorrectly spelt my name. I’ve given up asking the telco to fix it. The data-driven system automatically combines my first and middle names into a single word. Go figure?

Forget BIG DATA

Rather than waste money on gathering terabytes of useless data just because you can, and then relying on computer software to do your customer service, my advice is to invest your marketing funds in human beings who can talk personally to your customers. They’ll have far more success than any automated data-driven programs and ensure the relevant small data is correct. You’ll make more money and have happier customers. You’ll also inject more money into the economy by employing humans.

Only then, once your small data is correct, should you consider an investment in BIG DATA. And then, only if there is proof the marginal returns are worth the financial investment and effort – not to mention improve, not reduce, your customer service and bottom line.

Gotta go now – I have my monthly three-step data verification to complete, so I can get permission to access my own email account. Where is my passport for proof of identity…

Is it time to bring offshore call-centres back home?

25 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in Customer Service, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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Before I start this post dear reader, I declare I only speak one language – Australian. I respect anyone who can speak multiple languages. But because someone can speak a language doesn’t mean they can communicate in the language they speak.

I assume my international colleagues experience similar frustrations as we Aussies do, when you call a local company’s “customer service centre” that is located in a country where English isn’t the first language. This outsourcing of alleged service has been one of the great cons of modern capitalism.

Firstly, the service is worse, it’s never better. Secondly, the income earned by the call-centre staff doesn’t benefit our local economy. Thirdly, the poor service really pisses-off customers, the people who pay the salaries of the call-centre staff.

One of the worst experiences is when the call-centre representative gets into a circular loop reading from a script, usually because they don’t understand the language or its nuances, and are unable to solve the problem at hand. The conversation ends up as “I understand your situation…” Of course they have no idea or understanding of the situation. But some call-centre psychiatrist, or human capital expert, has convinced management that this phrase helps diffuse the customer’s frustration, when in reality it makes matters worse.

“I have no idea how to solve your problem, but it says here I should say…”

So, given the COVID-Crisis and the massive unemployment it is creating, isn’t it time we returned call-centres to Australia?

Qantas is an example. Today it announced it is sacking around 6,000 staff in order to survive. Why not relocate the Qantas call-centres to Australia and employ some of those staff, where the income will benefit the local economy? It will also improve the customer service.

Telstra is another one. I’ve yet to speak with a customer service person without “I beg you pardon” being the most common phrase I use. Even worse is the Voice Recognition software that doesn’t work. Here’s a typical day in the life of a customer. You call the Telstra hotline. A computer answers and asks you to state why you’re calling. After stating your reason to the computer, it replies with something such as “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you, please repeat the reason for your call.”

This goes on until the computer forwards you to a human in another country. You go on hold until an English-as-a-second-language representative starts talking to you, usually to advise you’ve been put through to the wrong department, so “please hold while I transfer you“. Then the line goes dead, or if you’re lucky you get through to a queue to wait to speak to another representative, blah, blah.

“What do you mean, how do I spell Kim?”

It may be naive, but I believe we should use this opportunity to create jobs in our local economy – we have the talent pool. It’s the largest since the Great Depression. Let’s bring our call-centres home!

Gotta go, I’m having internet problems and have to call Telstra – aaaggghhhh!!!

A simple phone call goes a long way in good and bad times…

14 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Customer Service, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, small data

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As most of you readers already know, in tough times the marketing rule of thumb is to keep investing in your marketing. Though it’s easier said than done if your business is closed and your customers don’t have jobs.

But that being said – there has never been a better time for real contact, as against digital contact. As I’ve shared previously, there is a heap of COVID-CRAP in our inboxes, most of it is a complete waste of effort and completely ignored.

So I ask you folks, “How many of you have rung your customers recently to have a real conversation?” Just put in a call to check in and see how your customers are and if you can help them – with anything?

If not, may I suggest you consider a phone or video call – sooner rather than later. The reason is simple: if you’re not, your competitors are probably doing so. If you are claiming as you read “I cannot afford to call my customers” – you may want to revise your business model. If you can’t afford to call or mail a letter to your customers, you will lose quite a substantial amount of business – in good and bad times.

Why didn’t you call?

Most SaaS companies lose huge volumes of clients because they never call them – they rely on marketing technology (martech for the buzzword lovers) to deliver their personal communications, immediately de-personalising the experience for their customers.

LinkedIn is guilty as charged. I tried the “Premium” service and after a year of not enjoying any premium service, I didn’t renew. All I got from LinkedIn was email to remind me to pay my renewal. Now, because LinkedIn is not very good at its “small data” I keep getting offers to trial the Premium service.

How hard is it for LinkedIn to pick up the phone and ask why I left them, or to block advertising a service I cancelled, so as not to irritate me? But hey – maybe they don’t understand lifetime value?

Here’s a simple example of the value of talking to your customers:
My elderly father is a member at his local licensed sports club – he no longer competes, but visits for dinner or lunch regularly. He isn’t known, he’s just one of thousands of members. Last week his phone rang – it’s a landline. The club’s welfare officer was checking in to see how my father was doing and if he needed anything. They were checking on all members aged over 70 – a  simple use of small data that made a big impact.

Nobody from the club has ever rung my father in his life. But he thought it was wonderful that the club would consider calling him – he’s told everyone and can’t wait for it to reopen so he can enjoy a meal with a glass or three of wine.

Can’t wait to get back to the club to splurge on a Schnitty…

Imagine what your customers might say if you called them?
Here’s another example – I’ve written about this previously. A major office supplies company in Australia was keen to migrate its customers to online ordering to reduce the call centre workload – and cut some costs. They company mails annual catalogues to customers and research shows the catalogue stays on file until the next edition is mailed. Customers usually order with the catalogue on their desk.

It didn’t take them long to discover a problem with sales. The customers who moved to online ordering were ordering less per order than those who rang the call centre. They weren’t shopping more frequently either. So sales dropped as business moved online.

They company launched a new strategy – before they shipped the online orders, they called the customers (by phone) and advised the order was about to be dispatched, asking if the customer wanted to add anything to the order. Inevitably, using historical order data, the customer service representative up-sold the customer and increased the order value. The company has increased its call centre to accommodate both types of online ordering – telephone and data lines.

And by how much can I increase your order today?

So, if you’re considering migrating your business to online-only because of the pandemic, consider accompanying the service with real people on the telephone if you really want to succeed.

Receptionist is marketing genius
Another former client of mine takes orders by email and website. Each time an order arrives the company receptionist calls the customer to confirm the order. She started doing this because she thought it was good manners – you know, the right thing to do.

I suggested that during the call she agree a delivery date that was later than the earliest her company could deliver. The company now delivers each order before the agreed delivery date. The clients love the service as it exceeds their expectations and there is rarely any dispute over paying on time.

Thank you for your order it will be delivered on…

How $2 helped make $millions
Speaking of paying on time, a very successful cousin of mine sold his business for a premium, partly due to his excellent cash flow and a simple phone call. Geoff (his real name) would ring the accounts payable department of each of his debtors and confirm who was responsible for the processing of his invoices – most were small to medium size companies.

Each month he would mail his invoice in a personally addressed envelope to the accounts payable clerk – complete with a $2 scratch lottery ticket attached. His debtors loved getting his mail – and they paid his invoices ahead, or on time, every month. His cash position added enormous value to his business when he sold it.

Thank you for paying my invoice on time…

So, regardless of whether you are able to sell anything or not to your customers, due to lock-down or delivery issues, make and keep real contact with them. They’ll appreciate your effort and the investment will pay off – either immediately or in the “new-normal”.

It also allows you to gain some knowledge about each customer. Because the old adage still applies:

One thing you know about your customer is worth more than anything you know about your product or service.

That ‘one thing’, gives you a reason for a conversation – and that conversation can turn into business for you.

The other reason you should keep talking with your customers is also very simple:

If your customers don’t make you rich…who will?

Gotta go – the phone’s ringing, I wonder who it is…

Cut COVID-Capers, focus fully on the fundamentals you must…

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Sales

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I’m no die-hard Star Wars fan, but was just told that International Star Wars Day is next week, so thought I’d say what Yoda would probably say in this crazy marketing world we are living in.

I’ve been asked to republish a popular article I wrote last year, mainly due to the embarrassing plethora of fake COVID marketing experts pushing their ‘expertise”  since the pandemic started. So many people are complaining about these bandwagon-jumpers.

Ever since we were placed in lock down we’ve been inundated with COVID-CRAP by ‘experts’ espousing the miracles required for marketing in a Corona virus world. In some cases in markets where people have no income and the retails stores are closed and do not provide online services, so commercial activity has stopped.

Yes, the world has temporarily changed, but if you stick to the fundamentals of marketing and do them well – which many marketers don’t do in the good times – you’ll get through this difficult time.

You might have to reconsider how you deliver or configure your product or service, or even create new products – as I explained last week. Even better, why not review all your marketing activity and start to plan for the inevitable reopening of society.

Regardless, just remember these simple rules of thumb and you’ll do OK:

The three goals of your marketing communications – and there are only three…

  • Acquire new customers
  • Get customers to spend more money with you more often
  • Get customers to keep spending with you for as long as possible.

If your marketing communications are not helping you achieve one or more of these goals, you’re probably wasting your money, regardless of the media channels or vanity metrics you use.

The two ways of marketing – and there are only two…

  • Mass marketing
  • Direct marketing

Mass Marketing – you communicate with as many consumers* as possible for the lowest media cost, to position your brand in the mind of the consumer, so they consider it when they are in the market to buy – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, print, outdoor and some online channels. Messages are aimed at generating either a think, feel or do response.

Direct Marketing – any marketing communication delivered directly to individual consumers* or to which they respond directly to you. All responses are measured and there is always an exchange of either data or dollars – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, mail, email, telephone, print, events, social, search, mobile and online channels. For example, give me your email address (data) and I’ll give you a newsletter, or give me your credit card details (dollars) and I’ll sell you some wine.

*Consumers is generic for both prospects and customers

The two reasons people use the internet – and there are only two…

  • To save time
  • To waste time

That’s it. You need to design your website, landing page, email, social channels, apps etc to make it easy for your customers and prospects to either save time, or to waste time, depending upon their reason for visiting.

Saving or wasting time?

There’s no such thing as a customer journey – just two contact strategies…

People don’t go on customer journeys. This is a marketing buzzword designed to make the user sound sophisticated – it’s complete bollocks. There are only two contact strategies to use, and they’re linked to the most relevant touch-points. After all, a prospect isn’t a customer until they buy something:

  • Prospect contact strategy – to generate new customers
  • Customer contact strategy – to keep profitable customers and generate referrals

Marketers determine the most appropriate touch-points to reach prospects and customers, then communicate as necessary in the most effective channels for those touch-points. These touch-points can be mapped for easier visual interpretation. This mapping is why folks mistakenly call it a journey. Map-journey, get it?

For example, a prospect may identify themselves by responding to an advertisement by telephone, downloading a white paper from a website, or at a trade show. This is the beginning of the prospect contact strategy designed to get them to either request a presentation (if required), to trial the product/service, or to buy. This can involve lots of channels, some of which can be automated.

Once the prospect becomes a customer, they join the customer contact strategy. This involves communicating with personal messages designed to create a positive customer experience, encourage loyalty, obtain referrals and generate further sales.

The customer contact strategy can also be divided into two separate executions. One execution is linked to the date the product or service is bought and includes messaging around warranty, service, renewal, upgrade and the like.

The other execution is linked to time of year and includes messaging such as monthly newsletter, seasonal offers, event invitations and more.

Obviously, the customer contact strategy uses more personal media channels including; face-to-face meetings, mail, telephone, email and social channels. And all the while, there is the 24/7 continual flow of marketing content on blogs, websites and social channels, as well as advertising.

People DON’T go on customer journeys…

The numbers that matter when budgeting…

There are a few key numbers to understand when budgeting your marketing activity:

  • Lifetime value – how much revenue you customer is worth over their lifetime of buying from you
  • Cost per lead – how much you can afford to spend to generate a qualified lead
  • Cost per sale – how much you can afford to spend to generate a sale
  • The advertising allowable – what you can afford to spend to generate a sale at either break-even or a pre-determined profit percentage

When you know how much a customer is worth, you can determine how much to spend to generate a qualified lead and therefore how much you can afford to spend to get a sale – based on conversion rates. This helps you determine the most appropriate media channels to use, as they are defined by your advertising allowable.

Remember:

Marketing creates the need, while sales fulfills the need…

Your marketing activity helps to create the need for your brand by building desire for it and reinforcing your decision after you’ve bought. Your sales people use selling techniques to fulfill the need and complete the sale.

Your direct marketing activity can both create and fulfill your prospect’s needs in a single execution. It also integrates your marketing and sales teams to ensure they both work together successfully.

So now you know, what you need to know, about you know, that thing that everyone thinks they know – marketing…even in a pandemic…

A marketer’s love of their own brand can cost them sales…

06 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Marketing

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In most western countries the mattress and bedding industry is highly competitive. The tactics usually involve retailers creating loads of different brands and price points, so it’s confusing and not easy for consumers to compare apples with apples, so to speak.

If you’re interested in just how weird and corrupt the industry can be, check out this story from Fast Company about the online mattress industry in the US. But I digress.

Recently I tweeted (a rare thing for me to do) about a cheeky outdoor poster by a company called Koala.com.

Here’s the poster:

It is located on a main road a few hundred metres before an Ikea store. The copy on the poster is:

NOFNIDEA?
no tools, no worries, koala.com

There is an accompanying image of an Alan Key and screws, like those you use when assembling Ikea furniture.

On the face of it, it’s quite a clever execution.

In marketing parlance; my unaided recall of the brand koala.com was zero. So I naturally assumed koala.com was a company that provided a service to assemble Ikea furniture.

I decided to check it out – only to discover Koala.com supplies mail-order mattresses. They are very good at it too – very similar brand personality to the Dollar Shaver Club.

So I tweeted the following:

“I suspect this cheeky outdoor poster from Koala only works if you know that Koala is a mattress brand. Otherwise, you probably assume Koala is service to put together Ikea flat packs. Marketers think everyone knows their brand as well as they do

The response from Koala was interesting to say the least:

“have you been living under a rock? if you’d like check us out here Ps. Koalas are terrible at building Ikea furniture”

The response is a dead giveaway that the Koala marketers are in love with their brand way more than the general public. They live their brand every day – it’s their job. They have been very successful, so assume that success translates to every (non-living under a rock) potential mattress-buyer, knowing all about them.

And while I can appreciate the enthusiasm of successful youthful marketers, it’s no excuse for poor manners.

woohoo we’re a success…

I responded to Koala explaining that because I was in marketing I was aware of their brand. But it turns out I was wrong. Again in marketing parlance; my aided recall kicked in, and I remembered an advertisement I’d seen with Serena Williams flogging mattresses and thought it was a Koala ad. Turns out my recall ain’t what it used to be, as Serena flogs a competitor.

The reason I’m writing about this is simple. In the last 12 months I’ve bought four mattresses – a king-size and three queen-size. I suspect that’s a reasonable sale, even for a company as successful as Koala appears to be.

I cannot tell you what brand they are and I was obviously living under a rock that had no Koala advertising, because I never considered buying a Koala. The Koala brand wasn’t on my radar and unlike most consumers, I actively watch advertising.

I just checked the mattress brands. The King is similar in style to the brand Serena is flogging, while the queens are a different brand again. In case you’re interested, my bride and I negotiated a bulk deal with a pleasing discount, after a bit of shopping around – we like the social aspect of shopping and discussing our requirements with salespeople.

Marketers must remember that customers don’t really care much about brands, except when they are in the market to buy, or when something goes wrong with the product or service they’ve bought. That’s why marketers need to advertise consistently and reach as many people as often as possible, as they cannot predict when people will buy. They must also not assume that their own attitude for their brand represents the typical consumer atttitude – the respective attitudes are usually vastly different.

Though I have been keeping an eye out for Koala advertising online and on TV, but alas nothing sighted yet. I suppose I’d better take that insightful advice from Koala and get out from the rock under which I’m living – I might get lucky and see a Koala advertisement and really live a fulfilling life…

Gotta go now, am off to have an afternoon snoozzzze…

Dodgy digital dopes depend on “dinosaur dailies” to disclose diabolical do dos…

29 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Media

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What can you say dear reader…

Both Facecrook and Floptus use full page press advertising to try to rebuild credibility.

Who do you trust – certainly not the digital channels that’s for sure…

Optus, now known as Floptus, apologises…

Facecrook’s recent press ad apologising to the world…

Amazing automated marketing message wows customers…

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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I’ve recently returned from a trip to the USA, where among other things, my family and I rafted and hiked in the Grand Canyon for a week.

I first did the trip 30 years ago and I have to admit, the 10 mile hike to get up and out of the Canyon, was a tad more brutal this time round.

Brutal

A tad tougher hike this time…

Within a couple of days of returning I received an email survey from OARS, the company with which we rafted – I highly recommend them by the way. I dutifully completed the survey and thought nothing more of it.

But yesterday, I received this automated marketing message.

OARS 2

It’s a hand-written thank-you card, personally signed by all the OARS crew who looked after us on our rafting adventure. It is automatically sent by the crew to each customer, after they complete their trip.

OARS 1

My kids thought it was wonderful to hear from them and read every word on the card. It immediately brought back some fabulous memories and we all started talking about the different characters on the trip. The kids also asked if they could send cards back to each of the crew too.

The card now sits in a prominent place in our kitchen, for all to see.

It reminded me of a local hairdresser in my suburb. She is a very smart businesswoman who regularly wins small business awards and drives a very flash Mercedes sports car.

Twice a year she gets each of her staff to send hand-written cards to their clients. Each card includes a personal comment based on what the staff knows about their client. The owner calls these cards “wow” cards, because when the clients get them, the first thing they say is “wow“. And the clients always talk about the cards when they return to the salon.

How many of your clients go “wow” when they receive your automated marketing messages? I suspect very few.

So if you’re wasting money on expensive marketing automation software to try and fake authenticity, maybe you should spend less on computers and more on your customers and staff?

Why not send genuine messages of thanks to the people who pay your salary? Cause I seriously doubt your customers ever get as excited by fake personalised computer-generated emails sent from a team, as they do to real messages.

Who’d have thought hey – old-fashioned automated mail, packs more “wow” than customised automated content delivered as pixels?

Gotta go now – am off to the newsagent to buy some postcards for the kids to send…

raft

How Parcel Force fails its customers in the digital world…

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in BIG DATA, Branding, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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Here’s a very good lesson in how not to treat a customer…

The following email was sent to me by a colleague, who was waiting on an urgent 48-hour air shipment from Parcel Force.

Just a heads-up folks – if the first words a customer reads on your email are “Do not reply to this email” you are in fact saying “we don’t give a stuff about you”!!

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.

Thank you for contacting Parcelforce Worldwide.

Our Customer service email team will aim to reply within 4 working days. The email team working hours are – Mon-Fri: 8am to 6:00pm

Here is a bit of information with regards to deliveries that you may find useful:

  • Deliveries are usually made between 7am to 6:00pm Monday to Friday.
  • Deliveries on a Saturday are only made where the sender has chosen and paid for a Saturday delivery service. These deliveries are usually made between 7am to 1pm.
  • For Customer alerts, tracking enquiries, to price a delivery and how to pay a customs charges please refer to our website at: www.parcelforce.com

If you need to speak with someone due to the urgency of your enquiry, please contact our Customer Service Team on 03448 004466 and they will be able to assist.

Thanks
Parcelforce Worldwide Customer Services

The lessons from this abomination are:

  1. Never start your email with “Please do not reply to his message…” unless part of the sentence says “Please do not reply directly to this message, but contact us as follows, blah, blah…”
  2. Never aim to reply in 4 working days to a customer request? WTF are you thinking? Imagine a customer walking into your store with a question and you say, “please wait here for about 4 days, while we don’t give a shit about you”. You don’t aim to reply, you will reply immediately.
  3. Never use a typist to write your copy – use copywriters:

This sentence implies you might find the deliveries to be useful: “Here is a bit of information with regards to deliveries that you may find useful:”

It should read something like:Here is some useful information regarding deliveries:

4. Never sign an email from a team or Customer Service Teams. Teams don’t send emails – individuals do.

5. Never say “Customer service email team” – it just doesn’t make sense. An email team? Are there hordes of junior executives waiting around to send emails 4 days after getting one in an inbox? Sign your emails from an individual and make it easy to reply to the individual.

I suggest the CEO of Parcel Force does some mystery shopping and learn what it’s like to be a customer. Maybe then the company will wake up to itself and provide real customer service. I’m sure if they keep aiming to reply to problems within 4 working days, there won’t be much work left for anyone to do.

We’ll aim to reply if we’re still in business…

Why there’s really no reason to ever use the term “content marketing”…

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Content Marketing, Customer Service, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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Ever since marketing emerged from the dark to the middle ages in the 1980’s, computers and databases have been essential marketing tools. Data’s been driving marketing since the invention of desktop computers, as it became easier for marketers to track the way customers and prospects responded to their messages.

Data-driven marketing is not new…

Any marketer who has worked in the industry since last century, is aware that the process of communicating regularly with your customers and prospects already has a name. It’s been used for at least 40 years and is known as your customer and prospect contact strategy. And it’s supported by a touchpoint analysis to determine the best times and channels for making contact – analogue or digital.

Data and timing are key to success…

For example, if you sell cars, there are two cycles of communication within your strategy. The first cycle is linked to the date of purchase of the vehicle. The messages cover topics such as: service dates, warranty information, possibly insurance if it was part of the sale price, customer satisfaction surveys, product recall (if required) and other “content” related to the purchase date.

The messages are delivered by mail, phone, email and sms. Most of the messages have been automated since the early 1980’s and delivered without too much human involvement, as they are triggered by the purchase date. Who would have thought hey – marketing automation existed in the 1980’s? Listening to the digi-toddlers, you’d think they invented data and automated marketing.

The second cycle of messaging is related to the time of year, not the vehicle purchase date. Message topics include: vehicle accessory offers, service offers, trade-in deals, new vehicle launches, sponsorship announcements, charity events, merchandise offers, brand news (or in today’s vernacular) brand stories.

The “content” is delivered in all sorts of formats through different channels – mail, phone, sms, email, websites, apps, social, as DVDs, USBs, PDFs, booklets or books, printed and digital newsletters, videos, customised invitations, branded merchandise and more. Some messages are even delivered automatically, as their content is based on the prevailing time of year – a seasonal newsletter for example.

Welcome to Subaru ownership…

Customer data has always driven (excuse the pun) automotive communications. For example, when we launched Lexus our research indicated owners liked the opera. So we arranged a sponsorship of the parking station at the Sydney Opera House. Lexus owners had free reserved parking near the entrance inside the parking station. Mercedes, BMW and other owners had to find a park in the bowels of the parking station, after first driving past the Lexus branded car park spots. The idea traveled internationally.

Lexus owners get parking privileges

We learned the average time Lexus owners spent going to or from work, was less than 30 minutes each way. So when the annual Federal Budget was brought down, we recorded overnight, a report on the Budget. It was 40 minutes long and we published it on a cassette tape – 20 minutes each side. The tapes were sent to owners the morning the Budget was brought down, so the owners could listen to the report as they drove to and from work. Now a link is emailed and posted on social media and the marketing team tracks who listens to the report.

And the way we determined the best stations on which to run radio advertising, was simple. Whenever a Lexus was brought in for a service, the customer service person would note the radio station the owner was listening to and recorded this data on the customer database. Gotta luv the data scientists working in car servicing.

Data scientists tracked Lexus owner’s radio station habits

If you’ve worked on automotive brands you’ll also know the best time to make a trade-in offer to a luxury vehicle owner is triggered by one data point only – the finance lease expiry date. You can make the best offer on the planet, but if the lease is not due to expire, the owner will not go through the hassle of breaking their lease to get the new car. You are wasting your money throwing content at them to try and convince them otherwise.

It’s why we had dozens of different mail packs, each designed around data linked to where the prospect was in their ownership lifecycle. These were mailed automatically using relevant triggers to activate the mailing.

Aaah data-driven marketing 1980’s and 1990’s style. What’s old is new again, again.

So to repeat myself, the term for this ongoing contact with your customers (and prospects) has always been called a customer and prospect contact strategy. It doesn’t need a new label, so there is no need to call it content marketing.

And there is absolutely no reason to change the name for this way of communicating with prospects and customers. Just because there are a couple of new digital channels to deliver messages and communicate with (or should that be engage with) customers/prospects, as well as some extra tracking and distribution tools, doesn’t mean we rename a decades-old marketing process.

Delivering relevant data-driven messages to customers and prospects in different channels is not new!

Publishing and sharing “content” is as old as the hills – it’s how marketers have communicated with customers and prospects for decades. The only difference today is that allegedly, the more content you publish, the better the chance you’ll be found online. Of course, if you have a strong brand and the punters search for your brand, rather than using a generic search term, your investment in “content” is usually a waste of money.

Some may argue you need content to build your brand. Well duh. That’s exactly what brands have been doing successfully for decades. And there is no empirical evidence to support the false claims that we have to tell brand stories as part of content marketing to engage customers. You cannot fake sincerity using jargon.

I’ve yet to find any consumer who craves a brand story, let alone more marketing content. At best, they just want useful information to help them make a buying decision, like they’ve always done. Although, as any marketer knows, the vast majority of buying decisions are unconsidered, so why are we pummeling already infobesity-ridden consumers, with all the extra content?

So I ask you to please stop using the term “content marketing”. It is superfluous, has no meaning, causes confusion, and it offers absolutely nothing new to the existing communication process, let alone the marketing lexicon.

Worse still, the marketers and agency types who have drunk the content marketing kool-aid, just get angry when you challenge their belief. Some turn into trolls and attack you for daring to be different and not follow the FOMO pack. Sad really.

So for the good health of these poor naive sods, please stop saying “content marketing” and then we can all just get on with marketing – sans buzzwords.

Grocery shopping goes back to the future, despite Amazon’s arrival…

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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Unlike many of the marketers in the packaged goods industry, I’ve some hands-on experience in the grocery category.

Back in ancient times, the early 1980’s, my family bought a suburban supermarket in Sydney. Every day we’d arrive early to collect the milk and dairy products outside the store before the sun hit them. And every night we’d shut up shop and head home, somewhere around dinner time.

It was the first time I knew the meaning of “putting your feet up”. That’s because if you’ve been on your feet for 12 hours, up and down ladders, carrying and unpacking boxes and taking bags of groceries out to customer’s cars, all you want to do when you get home is put your feet up and enjoy a cold beer – which we did each night.

An actor portrays me helping a customer…

In those prehistoric times we provided a home delivery service. (my mother also used a similar service when I as a wee lad) Here’s how it worked.

Customers would write their shopping list on a piece of paper and drop it into the store. Or they’d call us on the phone and we’d take the order. Some customers had standing orders each week and only called us to change the order. They’d pay us in cash, or even a cheque, to settle the account.

So our customers would send us their shopping list, we’d pick n pack it, then deliver the groceries to their home. It was amazingly old-fashioned dear reader. We also delivered goods from other stores on our shopping strip, like the butcher or baker, as part of the service.

Another actor portrays me delivering groceries…

But jump forward to 2017. Amazon is coming! The sky is falling. Online sales are growing – mainly because that’s what happens from a standing start, sales grow.

More importantly though folks, thanks to amazing digital disruption, customers can order their groceries on a website or app. They just enter their order on a keyboard, use their credit card to pay for the goods and the grocer delivers the groceries to their home.

Unbloodybelievable. How far have we come thanks to digital disruption? Whereas customers once used a pen and paper to write their order and the grocer delivered the goods, now customers use a keyboard to enter the order and the grocer delivers the goods.

This is such disruptive behaviour, it’s obviously a reflection of something going on in society. It seems some of our old habits have a long tail. Students of marketing will be well aware of the consumer behaviour of the 19th century – ordering goods remotely through mail-order catalogues and then having the goods delivered to your home.

It appears this same behaviour is catching on again. Amazon used to rely on this, but now they’ve bought retail stores too, so customers can go shopping in the stores, not just get home delivery.

So roughly 160 years since the early mail-order catalogues and thirty-something years since my family did home delivery, people’s behaviour is, well, it’s the same as the 19th century. Very little has changed. Surely there has to be a digital buzzword for this phenomenon of things remaining the same?

Gotta go now. Have to do the grocery shopping…where’s my shopping list?

 

Disruptively connect to me https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/