Would You Pay Premium Prices Despite No Customer Service

09.19.2011

Would you pay more for something if it came with a guarantee of good customer service? This was a question asked by one of our Tweeps, Friends, or Connections awhile back (sorry we don’t remember which one), but I know Rich answered it with a resounding YES! If you are not sure why, look no further than his blog about his experience with United Airlines and Thrifty Car Rental a couple years ago. In brief, it involved a chaotic cattle call when boarding the plane, small seats, rude stewardesses, and a rental car company at the airport that did not have any cars (read the full story here).

We should not have to pay more for good customer service, but, as Rich said when he wrote his article on poor customer service, companies know it is easier to keep a current customer than to bring a new one in, and, I would add that there are several types of products and services where poor or no customer service truly is the norm: (1) those that can lock you into a one or two year contract; (2) those that ultimately work for someone other than you; and (3) those that provide a necessity for which there are few alternatives, or a limited window of time in which you need to make your decision to buy or not to buy.

The above is nothing profound or new. We all know this. We all learned this the hard way at some point. And we all have the misfortune of being reminded of it every now and again when we move into a new apartment, experience problems with our smart phone, fly on plane, need to have the cable guy come, need to have our car fixed…the list goes on.  But one area where customer service is generally non-existent is in the realm of social media.

Now, as a social media consultant, I can understand this to some extent.  Mark Zuckerberg cannot get on the phone with every person who becomes confused upon Facebook’s monthly change to its privacy policy. Nor can even a low-level representative from LinkedIn take a call from every middle-aged small businessman who wants to be walked through the setup of their profile until it is at 100%. Nor should the above be expected, especially from a free service. Instead, what you get are links to endless discussion boards, that can be difficult enough to navigate even for the experienced social media user, and the occasional opportunity to post or email a question that someone may or may not respond to in a timely manner with information that may or may not be relevant.

Honestly, I cannot complain about this given that social media consultants such as myself make their money by filling this need. However, my opinion changes once you begin to pay for your service, whether for ads on Facebook, a premium account on LinkedIn, or the expanded services of a social media management tool like Hootsuite.

One company that does customer service right is the email marketing service Constant Contact. If you are having problems with your account, you can get a representative on the phone almost immediately throughout most of the day, Monday through Friday. This even applies to people still using a trial account! But not all paid social media services guarantee this level customer service, although I have heard good things about Google Ads and mixed things about LinkedIn’s customer service for premium members.  But, generally speaking, one need not go any further than the discussion boards of some of these social media and social media management tools to find people saying things along the lines of “I have a premium #&*$^@! account and I can’t even get someone to respond to my emails with an answer that specifically addresses why I can’t even use the basic features.”

The quote is a composite, but it gets the point across, and it is comments like these that make me, as a social media consultant, reluctant to recommend purchasing paid services from many social media and social media management services other than Constant Contact. As Rich once told me during a discussion concerning whether to upgrade one of our social media accounts, “If I’m paying them, I expect to be able to call them and reach a real person.” Another way to put that is, “Let’s not pay more for no customer service.”

So let me ask you, would you pay more for something without some guarantee of customer service? Have you? What was the experience like? Let us know.

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Posted in Customer Service, Daniel Nuccio, RandolphSterling, Social Media |

A Question of Business Ethics

12.20.2010

I was reading a LinkedIn question about business ethics recently and wanted to share with all of you my thoughts on the subject. While the question of ethics in business is not new, I feel that it is an issue that not only will not go away anytime soon. It will play an even larger role in how businesses are run in the next decade as we continue through economic recovery, and as our society seems to come more and more from a position of “entitlement” vs. “work hard, do the right thing, and you will be rewarded by a job well done.”

I believe the measure of a man is what he does when nobody is watching.

I used to work for a company whose definition of business ethics was “If what you did today was the cover story of your hometown newspaper, would you be proud or embarrassed by it?”

Interesting thought, and one that I took very seriously. Sure we all will do dumb things from time to time, but I would think about what my grandmother (who turned 91 this month) would think if she read what I did. Would she know that I, at the very least, tried my best, or would she be thinking that no daughter of hers raised a kid like that? Another friend of mine, Will Webb from Dupree & Webb in Raleigh, stated it this way “When I come home at night, my wife and my little girl will ask me how my day was. I always want to be proud to tell them about my day…every day.”

Unfortunately, posing a question like that is open to a certain amount of interpretation as I learned quickly that different people read different newspapers in the morning. Some read the Chicago Tribune, others the Wall Street Journal. Sadly, still others read the Enquirer.

What are your thoughts on business ethics, and to what level? I was talking to a client yesterday about an issue they were having with a client of theirs who said that they don’t meet with him enough. What he was really saying was that they didn’t take him out to dinner enough. I learned early on that in sales if someone does business with you because you took them to a $50 lunch, someone else will come along and take them to a $100 dinner and take the business from you. However, for some, the business dinner—or at this time of year the holiday gift—is how they develop relationships with their vendors. Where do you draw the line?

I never seemed to do well with the guy who wanted the fancy dinner or to go out to a bar on a Thursday night. Most of my clients are people who, at the end of the day, wanted to go home to their families, so it was pretty easy to find a line to draw. If you interviewed all of the people I have ever done business with, I don’t think you would find one that did business with me because of a fancy dinner I took them out to, although several would probably tell you that it was getting to know each other over lunch that gave them the comfort level to know that I had their best interest at heart.

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Posted in Business Secrets, Client Relations, Customer Service, Rich Burghgraef |

Where Have You Gone, Customer Service? Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You.

09.30.2009

Paraphrasing a famous Simon and Garfunkel tune aside, I really would like to know where good customer service has gone?

We spend so much time trying to find new and innovative ways to find new customers, from coupons to rewards programs to tweeting on Twitter (which still makes me feel like a fell into a cartoon and somehow am going to have a puddy tat chasing me!) to updating websites to yes, even blogs like this one here, but it seems that we are losing the basic fundamentals that show us it is easier to keep a loyal customer than to find a new one. I had a few occurrences of this a recent week’s trip to our Raleigh, NC office.

I am a frequent flier on American Airlines. Not because they have the best customer service in the world (they are OK; personally what I think is wrong with the airline industry is a story among itself) but because they fly to most of the places I do so I can at least rack up enough frequent flier miles to be able to insure my bag makes it on the same plane I do and I have a shot at an exit row seat. On this particular occasion, my travel agent waited too long to book my trip, so they put me on a United flight instead because they could no longer get me the agreed upon price on American. That was strike one.

Strike two came when I started to deal with the wonderful customer service at United. First, it was the cattle call they call boarding the plane. I was in group 3 so I am somewhat patiently waiting as they start to board the flight. They call for first class passengers first followed by group 1. Half of the people at the gate get up and start storming the doorway to get in. Person after person walking past me with big 4’s and 5’s stamped on their tickets, however the gate agent is just checking in one after the other. What happened to following the rules? Wouldn’t a gate agent following the rules have made this a more efficient boarding process?

Next, I actually get on the flight. Because of the tardiness in which my travel agent booked the flight, I have the very enviable middle seat. No really, if you want a really good workout, sit in the middle seat between two people who think it is their right to own the arm rests. It is especially fun when you use this time to write blog articles, I can assure you. I did notice, however, that while we are all packed like sardines back here, there are several seats open in the exit rows and forward. I’m thinking—great, if they are open, I will just move up there and give these rejects from the old Stallone movie “Over The Top” all the room they need. A gentleman sitting behind me who was in the same situation thought the same thing, so he asked the flight attendant if it was OK to move. Her response? “No sir, you may not move there. Those are economy plus seats and are reserved for our customers who are willing to pay more for comfort.”

Are you kidding me? First of all, way to insult us by implying that we are too cheap to fork over an additional $35 to not have the guy in front of us sitting in our lap, but why wouldn’t you want to move someone into that seat? The door was closed so he wouldn’t have been taking anyone else’s seat and maybe he would have enjoyed the additional legroom and would have asked for economy plus in the future. What would it have hurt?

Sadly, however, that was not the most ridiculous part of my trip. That came as I attempted to rent a car. I am a corporate customer and a Blue Chip member with Thrifty Car Rental, however the last three times I have tried to rent from Thrifty they did not have any cars. A rental car company that has no cars? At the airport no less? That is like going to a beach, walking into a seafood restaurant and them telling you that they don’t have any seafood left. Each time this happened I tried to talk to someone in customer service and each time I was simply told there was nothing they could do to help me. Too bad buddy, you are out of luck, we just don’t have cars. I guess you had better walk.

My Raleigh office is not too far from the airport, nor is the Chicago office too far from O’Hare, but not exactly walking distance. Maybe I should take up running. If I get really good, I can run from Chicago to Raleigh and won’t have to deal with the airlines or the car rental guys again.

Please feel free to share your own travel  nightmares below or take our poll on the worst parts of traveling.

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Posted in Customer Service, Motivation, RandolphSterling, Rich Burghgraef, Travel |