GrowthANSWERS » 2008

October 26, 2008

AT&T’s Lack of Customer Service

Filed under: branding/differentiation, marketing strategy —

BY STEVEN WINOKUR – www.tpstrategies.com

So I decided to make the change from Comcast to AT&T new cable offering, U-Verse. I sign up on the website and pick an installation date. I receive a confirmation email with some additional instructions and a reminder of the time and date. The email includes this statement.

As a reminder, you are responsible for disconnecting services that you may be replacing. You can prevent interruption of your TV/Internet service if you wait to contact your previous provider until after we install your AT&T U-verse service.

Makes sense to me - don’t cancel what works until you know the new service will work. A perfectly reasonable and safe statement.

Earlier in the week of the installation date, I receive an automated call reminding me of the time and date. Great, I can’t wait. The day of the installation arrives. They’re supposed to be here between 8 and 10. I arranged to be home for the 4-6 hours they say is the average installation time. Nothing ever goes smoothly with AT&T so I should have seen this coming.

A little before 8:00, AT&T calls. They asked if I had disconnected my old DSL service. I informed them that I had not, both because of the email and the fact that I can’t be down for any period of time so I wasn’t going to risk canceling what I had before the new service worked. Even though my current DSL provider is AT&T (used to be Bellsouth), I need to cancel the service beforehand. Since that needs to happen in advance, no installation that day. We rescheduled for early next month.

The story gets better from here - at 8:30 I get a call from a technician who is out in the field about the installation. He’s ready to do the outside wiring. I explained to him that the appointment got cancelled and why. He tells me that’s not how it’s supposed to work and I shouldn’t have to cancel my old service. GRRRR - I call AT&T back and they explain that indeed, you need to cancel your old service. At 9:30, I get a call from the inside technician ready to install the service inside my house. What?!?! Does no one talk to each other? I explained to him the same story.

At no point did anyone apologize for the lack of communication, for the delay and for the annoyance of me having taken the day off to stay at home. Not a good brand experience by any stretch.

And to make matter worse, over the past few days, I’ve gotten a few more automated calls asking me to call back in to re-schedule my missed appointment. My missed appointment? Holy smokes - doesn’t anyone speak to anyone over there?

Needless to say, I am really ticked off with them right now. The problem is, there aren’t a whole lot of other solutions so they don’t have to worry as much about poor service. Where I am going to go? Comcast - they’re not exactly at the top of their game either.

Don’t make the same mistake - most of us compete in environments with many competitors and low switching costs. A minor miss-step is service can easily drive a prospect or customer to a competitor. Make sure the experience your customer has with you is impeccable so they don’t walk away shaking their head wondering why they ever did business with you in the first place.

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October 19, 2008

“Would You Like Fries With That?” How this simple phrase – coupled with your Direct Response Marketing program – can power your sales!

BY TODD SCHNICK – www.intrepid-llc.com

Do you know how many times I have pulled up to a drive-thru window with the sole intention of buying a single burger? My intentions are sincere. Honest. Fries are high in carbs. Salty. Lots of reasons to avoid them. I think to myself, this time I will avoid that bad, bad food.

But then that pesky sales person in the first window says those magic words that get me every time. You’ve heard them – uttering that phrase sprinkled with mystical pixie dust that turns me into soft goo every time…

“Would you like fries with that?”

“Yes,” Todd says quickly and matter of factly, as if it was his intention all along.

Seems ridiculously simple, doesn’t it? But this little sales technique is so powerful, so common sense, that every business utilizes it, right?

Wrong. You’d be surprised how many businesses – both large and small – don’t ask the equivalent of “would you like fries with that” for their products or services.

Can you apply a similar technique to your business? Yes you can. Can you engage your direct response marketing program to execute it for you? Again, yes you can.

How?

Remember, the advantage of direct response marketing is that it is direct. It can be targeted with precision – unlike mass media. If you have an existing database of customers – you know precisely what they have bought from you – and why. (And if you don’t – you’d better…)

The teenager sitting in the drive-thru window at the burger joint knows you just bought a burger. They also know there isn’t anything better with a burger than fries. And even if you don’t think you want fries, it’s hard to resist. Even harder when someone asks. You need to apply the same principle to your business.

Utilizing this database, you can build your business by cross-selling. What is cross-selling? Cross-selling is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “that of selling an additional product or service to an existing customer”.

The teenage kid asking you if you wanted fries was engaging you in the most basic form of cross-selling. Another classic example is selling vacuum cleaners. If you are selling new vacuum cleaners, you are a fool not to sell your customer an additional supply of vacuum bags.

The beauty of cross-selling is that you are actually providing your customer better support and service, since the products or services you are cross-selling are helping that customer better fulfill their needs – or solve their problem. Sometimes, you are merely asking them to consider something they haven’t thought about before, or didn’t know was an option.

Now, how can you retool your direct response marketing program to do this? Well, what direct marketing tactics are you employing? Direct mail? One-to-one marketing? Telemarketing? Email marketing? All of the above?

You sell widgets. You have a database of the customers who have purchased widgets from you. You also sell whatzits – which nicely compliment widgets and make them much more efficient and effective.

Your customer base would benefit from adding the whatzits to their widgets. Send them direct mail (or a coordinated one-to-one campaign, or an e-zine article, or call them thru your telemarketing program) and explain how whatzits improve the efficiency of their widgets and will help them further grow their business.

Make the call to action simple and easy – just as easy as ordering fries – and not only will you better serve your customer – you will make additional sales and grow your own business.