Customer Service - it means didley squat to most businesses

Here's a customer service industry norm, in response to an enquiry I made about a purchased product.

Thanks for contacting Tower

We’ve received your message safely and cannot wait to get back to you. We always try our best to respond to each email within 48 hours, but please allow up 3 business days for our team to get back to you - there’s no need to send any duplicate messages to us during this time.  

Where's the flaw?

It's here in plain sight.

We’ve received your message safely and cannot wait to get back to you.

And then this...

please allow up 3 business days for our team to get back to you

Hmm...

Not very customer focused. 

Cannot wait to get back to someone probably means (for the recipient reading) somewhere in the region of...  

ALMOST RIGHT AWAY!

But no.

It was the lead up tease that has one think, oh goody, a business who cares about their customers and their concerns. 

And then...

The pull away. 

We won't speak to you for possibly 3 days.

Nothing alarming really.

Because alas, that's how most businesses operate.

And that's exactly why there's more room than ever for a business to wow and astonish their customers with a simple, alarmingly effective plan.

And here be that plan:

Solve your customers problems and issues, faster, more cleaner and in a kind and courteous way they've rarely experienced anywhere else, if ever.  

And look, it doesn't take much to do that and clean up in your market place.

No multi-page manifesto or any kind of advanced education needed to make the changes. 

Declare what your customer mission is, and deliver on it. Keep your word and deliver on it. 

"Oh, but I can't do that... there's too much going on.. I can't find the right people... it costs too much money." 

That kind of thinking will produce nothing but a system of non deliverance, of breaking promises, of being talked about in the wrong way. 

That's not a very dignified way to create relationships with the people who pay you. 

Yet, that seems to be the normal standard across the board in how things are done.

2025 can be a gamechanger year for you.

But only if you decide to take the simple actions that'll help turn your business into a service and customer oriented, machine. 

 

Want to become the talk of the town with how you astonish your customers in your communications?
Then find out how to do that, here: 

A few of your absurdly diabolical staff and customer service reps ARE your marketing

There's a swooning gaggle of owners and copywriters who are insane.

Why?

Because whilst they're all desperately seeking the lighthouse beacon glamour headline and the flowing dancing copy to support it all...

...what goes on in their underground business bunkers goes almost un-noticed. 

Things like...

• Rude as hell, snarling customer (dis) service reps
• Poor communication timeliness from the business in solving customer related problems
• Zero empathy or sincere interest from the robotic automatons, reading as if magnetised to an insincere script.
• Little to zero follow up from the business to find out if the large purchase the customer made, was indeed a good and happy one for them.
• Consistently dolling out poor excuses for late delivery of physical products. 

Now this is extremely important: 

You can invest in the best marketing ideas and strategies in the world. 

You can pay top money for the most expensive, in-demand writers, marketing consultants and strategists out there.  

You can have the most appealing, irresistible offer backed up by a world class guarantee.

And yet...

If everything else in your business fails to keep to the benchmark standards you've set for it, then it's all a complete waste of money, time, and energy.

Doesn't mater if your ads and marketing pieces are dripping with more than a touch of Ogilvy, Hopkins, Kennedy, Halbert, Schwartz, Bencivenga.

Whatever customer sales stampede your ads, campaigns and promotional pieces might create, will get quickly uprooted, unknowingly, by your own internal saboteurs, the few absurdly diabolical staff and customer service reps who simply do not care about you, themselves, or about your customers and prospects.

Want to fix the rotten and couldn't-be-bothered, fraternity? 

Then go on an A to Z tour of your business and look at it from the perspective of your customers and prospects. 

And, do it surgically and microscopically. 

So when you do come across something that needs yanking out and replacing, then do it. 

Immediately and instantly. 

Because that's the only way to stop problems from festering and spreading.   

And that's the only way for you to really get your business to sparkle, profit and thrive.  

So please, remember, this forever more:

Everything in your business, EVERYTHING... IS your marketing. 

And so ask yourself the following question about any and all facets of your business -- every week, daily, if you like:

Here's the question --

Is THIS supporting our marketing efforts, or diminishing it?  

Do that several times each day and you'll quickly be running a business venture having little to no kinks, leaks or aberrations that'll get in the way of you making seriously good profits. 

"Please Stay on The Line... You Are NOT IMPORTANT to us..."

Marketing ISN'T just about the written communications. It isn't just about a website. It isn't about a television advert.

Marketing is embedded into EVERYTHING a business or company is and does. 

I wanted to speak to phone company Talk Talk, to their customer services, though didn't have a number to hand. I went online and found a number. A pop up window gave a freephone number to call. I called it. The first automated message received was "this is a chargeable number."

Huh?

Freephone? Chargeable?

And so, when speaking to the customer services operative, I posed the question to them WHY there was in-congruency in the twp pieces of information. It transpired that if using a mobile, the number does not become a freephone number.

So why not say that CLEARLY on the pop up window? BAD communications and directions.

What could the operative done in this case?

How about noting down what I said and then let me know that he'll pass it on to the team dealing with the website. 

Most customers will GIVE a business clues to the holes in their business. Now whether the business is smart and agile enough to want to choose to do something about it, is a completely different matter. 

I was then put through to another department for my particular query.

For around 15 minutes, I was listening to this message;

"...please stay on the line, your call is important to us..."

And also...

"...we are experiencing high call volumes, you may want to try later or stay on the line..."

Here's the REAL interpretation of those messages;

"You are NOT important to us because if you were, we would be attending to you much quicker than we do... we want you to hang on because we are clocking up money whilst you are on the phone, waiting... management here don't have the common sense to employ more staff or have many on stand by when we see that there is a long waiting delay...we don't really care about your time or what's going on in your life because if we did, we'd treat you and your request like it was the most important thing to us at the time, and NOT give you the stupid idiotic line saying other customers are more important to us at this time that YOU are..."

And when I eventually did get connected to speak to the right person, I was told to call again tomorrow as the systems were DOWN! To which I replied for THEM to call me back at a precise time and day as I'd now WASTED enough time getting to this point and I had no intention to repeat the same diabolical experience.

(The irony wasn't lost on me; a hi-tech telecommunications company with... LOW-tech telecommunication problems!)

So what would happen to a customer's perception of a business if they were given an option to be... CALLED BACK within x minutes, to save the long wait, what if that option was given? And what if there was a service level agreement in place where, if a customer experiences call waiting of X minutes or more, there would be a reward of some kind, rather than the boringly stupid... sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.   

MOST BUSINESSES have that deep level of mediocrity working for them. It takes extraordinary level thinking to become EXTRAORDINARY. 

And...

The bigger the business or company, the more dumber, inflexible and mystified they become in truly SERVING the customer, even though they profess to invest substantially in customer service!

The above was Talk Talk's marketing to to me, an existing customer. Who will now be an eX customer for my mobile services. 

Frankly, most people do have infuriating experiences with the simple. Most businesses and companies do little to fix it all, little knowing that the lifetime value (and residual and referral value) of just ONE customer, adds and compounds to the profits. 

Do NOT copy, emulate or embed most big dumb company approaches to marketing and serving the customer, theirs are examples of what NOT to do if you want to truly be customer obsessed.

UPDATE:

Talk Talk failed in their promise, their commitment to call me at 10.00am this morning to help resolve my issue. It's now 4.39pm UK time. Another COMMUNICATION & MARKETING BLUNDER by them.

(If you want sincere marketing help and advice, goto: www.IReallyWantMarketingHelp.com )