This Ain't Customer Service!

Today's post was contributed by Michael J. Hatch. He is a sales, marketing and business development consultant with over 20 years' experience working with Fortune 500 companies, associations and government agencies.

Say what you will about Gen X, Y and Z, but one thing is certain: the generation of companies they run and that we all buy from don't understand customer service.

Go to most corporate websites these days and try to find a phone number to call. And if you're lucky enough to find a number, you're most likely to get an automated answering system. Good luck trying to get through that! It literally is not possible.

Tech companies in particular do not want you to talk with them.

They hide the staff and, more often than not, offer no phone numbers for reaching their so-called "customer service" reps. You must communicate through email or—worse—live chat.

Live chat, in fact, seems to be the default communication solution for most companies these days. It really shouldn't be called "live," because it's deadly:

• First, you prompt the chat feature and wait for a reply. You get a friendly "We'll be right with you" reply, but then... nothing... ever... happens...
  

• While you are waiting, if you get up to grab coffee or answer the doorbell, you inevitably miss the reply and are promptly disconnected... and must start all over again.
  
  
• The next time round, you wait at their pleasure for a response, finally get one, and type in a description of your situation. Then you wait... and wait... and wait...
  
  
• Every round is a repeat-sequence of send-and-wait, send-and-wait. Of course, while you are waiting, the rep is servicing two other customers in the background.

This ain't good customer service. It ain't even mediocre customer service. It ain't customer service at all.

God bless the few companies that do actually give you a customer service phone number and a live person to talk with—perhaps even someone who actually knows something about the company's product.

Those are the companies that recognize that, in today's crowded markets, customer service is a strategic differentiator and a crucial piece of the whole customer experience—and those are companies that will win in the battle for high-spending customers.

Collateral Damage

Until the autopsy results come in, we can only guess why Steve the Security Robot drowned this week in Washington, DC.

May he Rust in Peace.

Automation—including marketing automation—is only as good as the weakest link in the process.

The weak link in marketing automation is content.

Marketers go to all lengths to create pretty logos, websites, blogs, banner ads, brochures and tradeshow booths, but allow marketing automation to sully their brands.

They program Mark the Marketing Robot to:

Annoy prospects. They program Mark to assume a form-fill means the prospect welcomes one or two cloying emails every single day for 20 days. Trust me, she doesn't.

Confuse prospects. They program him to send long-winded, self-absorbed emails that spew largely irrelevant product features. They never bother to communicate a core—or convincing—value proposition; only a lot of sales-talk.

Offend prospects. They program Mark to send emails with click-bait Subject lines, unproven or exaggerated claims, typos, grammatical errors, and pointless and presumptive closes.

It's no wonder so many CMOs struggle with marketing automation.

It's the content, stupid.

Digital Damage

Digital ads could be alienating B2B buyers, says Julie Ogilvie, senior research director at Sirius.

Because the ad units are tiny and compete in cluttered environments, B2B marketers are resorting to intrusive techniques that may be damaging their brands.

Ogilvie cites three:

Retargeting. "The idea behind retargeting is solid," she says. "However, in execution it can become annoying if the ads are popping up for months on end or are appearing in inappropriate environments."

Clickbait. Digital ads sporting sensational headlines "almost always disappoint in terms of what is delivered." The disappointment is reinforced when retargeting is used.

Native ads. Digital ads dressed as editorial content can also annoy and disappoint. Although buyers will respond, "many people still end up feeling deceived by messages that appear to be one thing but turn out to be another."

"In all these examples, people have come to feel that they are being tricked or harassed by advertisers," Ogilvie says.

Techniques like retargeting, clickbait and native advertising generate impressive response rates, she admits.

"But response rates do not always equal conversion rates—or revenue. And there is still the question of short-term vs. long-term gain. Brands are about building relationships and trust with our audiences."

You need not worry overmuch you're alienating your whole audience.

While you may be angering Boomer and Gen X buyers, the majority of Millennial buyers have installed ad blockers.

When You're 64

My wife and I frequent a farmers market Sundays in Dupont Circle, and often buy from a local pickler named Number 1 Sons.

The pickler's stand is run by 20-somethings who inevitably ignore me until I go all geezer on them and crabbily insist on making my purchase.

I'm not alone in taking it personally.

According to a survey by AARP of 61- to 69-year old Americans, 21% say they feel invisible around Millennials, and 10% say they receive slower service at stores and restaurants.

Fifty years ago, Sir Paul McCartney's lyrics to "When I'm 64" seemed so sweet.

Every Boomer would relish aging, he implied, just as long as "you still need me."

Things aren't quite working out that way.

But there's more than sour grapes in my tale.

There's a business lesson.

The late novelist Pat Conroy once told C-SPAN, "Every industry is going to be affected by the aging population. This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges."

He was right—especially about the opportunities.

The GI Generation didn't put up with crap service. Why would Boomers? We ended an unjust war; elevated women, blacks and gays; invented heavy metal and punk rock; and created the Internet.

Hey, Sonny: If you want to disrupt, try disrupting discourtesy.

NOTE: July 19th marks my 64th birthday.

The Hidden Presuaders

Vance Packard's 1957 best-seller The Hidden Persuaders convinced Americans that midcentury admen were gobbling up CIA-sponsored research studies and using the results to prey on consumers' frail and listless minds.

The title's "hidden persuaders" referred to subliminal messages, which Packard insisted made midcentury ads irresistible.

Cynical admen were embedding lurid words and racy images in ads for things like laundry detergents, cars, whiskies and cigarettes, in order to trigger customers' Freudian desires for pleasure, he claimed.

Ad agencies, Congress and the FCC scoffed at the idea, but the reading public embraced it.

Everybody loves a conspiracy, as Freud would say.

Flash forward 70 years and Robert Cialdini's best-seller Pre-Suasion provides a new generation of marketers the ammo they need to prey on customers.

Pre-suasion is a technique for gaining agreement with a message before it’s sent. 

Drawing on hundreds of social science studies, Cialdini makes two principal arguments:

1. To persuade a customer to make a certain choice, the marketer must first trigger a mental association that implies "change is good;" and


2. The factor most likely to determine the customer's choice is the one a marketer elevates in attention moments before the decision.

According to Cialdini:

• To get a customer to like you, first hand her a warm drink.


• To get a customer to help you, first ask her if she considers herself a helpful person.


• To get a customer to try your untested product, first ask if she loves adventure.


• To get a customer to buy a popular product, first show her a scary movie.


• To get a customer to buy an expensive product, first ask her to write down a number higher than the product's price.


• To get a customer to think about your proposal, first show her a photo of Rodin's The Thinker.


• To get a customer to buy French wine, play French music as she enters the store.

"The key moment is the one that allows a communicator to create a state of mind in recipients that is consistent with the forthcoming message," Cialdini says. It’s the moment in which we can arrange for others to be attuned to our message before they encounter it."

DO YOU KNOW? Movie-goers were traumatized when The Exorcist premiered in 1973. Many fainted, vomited, and fled from theaters in the middle of the picture. That's because William Friedkin laced the film with horrific subliminal images.