Thank you for calling the "Personalized Service" Call Center, please hold.
Fifty years ago, the mantra of advertising and marketing was that you needed a catchy jingle; some sort of ear-worm tune that would help your customers remember your brand, and make them think of you when they were in the market for your whatever-it-is-that-you’re-selling. If you didn’t have a catchy tune, you didn’t stand a chance in your fiercely-competitive landscape. Then, of course, the idea spread to the point where absolutely everyone had some silly jingle, and nobody could remember any of them anymore.
I was in a meeting yesterday discussing our client relationship management (CRM) software, and listening with barely-restrained enthusiasm as he told me about the huge competitive advantage it would give us. Meanwhile, during that meeting, I got no less than twelve emails from other companies’ CRM systems, telling me what a valuable customer I was, and how grateful they were for my continued loyalty. I deleted all of them without reading them. It was, then, decidedly difficult to have a great deal of faith in the representative’s assurances that his software would give us a leg-up on the competition. If we didn’t “touch” these customers regularly and frequently, we would have no chance at building loyalty, and guaranteeing ourselves their repeat business. I held my tongue, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether giving them excellent service, a fair price, and a pleasant overall experience might go further towards earning their loyalty than regular emails and phone calls to remind them how much we appreciate them. Now that absolutely every business uses it, could CRM have become another worn-out gimmick?
And, if so, what’s going to be the next great technique for businesses to keep their hands firmly clamped around our wallets?
What system do you guys use? Our service dept is set up with dealermine and well I know from a former employee that alot of customers complained about the constant and increased contact that we were making with them.
As for the next big thing I have no idea what it will be but I can guarantee one thing, it'll be sure to annoy the shit out of you.
[youtube -4LtYMNl4yw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4LtYMNl4yw youtube]
I'm not sure how new it is (I'm a digital caveman) but the automated year-on-year billing that's often hidden in microscopic print is pretty damn evil. The more grabby businesses get, the more I'm inclined to move into a dadjiban parked on a mountain logging road.
[youtube Cy6iwP9Ux3A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy6iwP9Ux3A youtube]
The horrible combination of CRM and "Social Media"…
What helps a business to endear itself to me is practical freebies thrown in with my orders without fanfare. For instance, the outfit that I buy pen blanks from always throws in 4 or 5 extra blanks of other types of woods and materials for me to check out. It's good advertising, it's not intrusive, and it's actually useful. The only emails I ever get from them are the invoices from my orders. I just love those guys.
Free stuff that you can actually use (and won't go in the trash like all the worthless pens, jar openers, keychains, etc) would earn my business quickly. If I choose to buy local from a non-chain store, and pay the higher price vs. Amazon, a little "here you go, on the house" once in a while would be nice.
I agree. Most customers love our heavy duty tape measures that we give away along with some USB sticks. Our most popular give away that customers were actually asking for was our in car usb chargers. We had to stop giving them out however when one melted the dash of our tech manager. A copy from \brazil of a copy from Taiwan does not usually end up with good results.
Check out this post from The Oatmeal, it covers call centers, loyal customers and whatnot and i got a good laugh out of it. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/customer_service
Slightly off-topic but I spent the afternoon in a meeting with a globally-recognized consulting firm to set up a relatively small project. I had to interrupt at one point to state that I'd noticed there were at least five project managers named on the statement of work. I asked who was going to do the actual work and they said, "oh, our off-shore team." I nearly laughed out loud as I imagined their project managers as tribbles…
Relevent XKCD.
<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/crowdsourcing.png">
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