Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

Hold for an Important Message

If there's one thing I find totally annoying, it's picking up the phone to get first silence, then a recording that says "Hold for an important message from...", then I am put on hold again while the system dials someone on the other end who asks me my name, account number and other information and makes it clear that my call is bothering them. Wait a minute--didn't your automated system just call me?

I've been getting calls from one of these systems for about a week now, regarding a supposed unpaid balance on an account I closed over a month ago. First I'd just hang up when I got the recording, but they started coming more and more frequently, like contractions, and they were getting more and more annoying too.

Today I actually called the customer service dept. of this company and got a rep who very rudely told me that I had a balance to pay, and wasn't I aware that I had to give 30 days notice to cancel my contract so that I was responsible for another month's bill. Her mission was obviously to be curt, cold and get me off the phone as quickly as possible. I asked to speak to her supervisor, who started to give me the same spiel until I told her that not only was I not told about any additional fees to terminate my service, but that I had never signed a contract with this company, therefore I could not be held responsible for the terms of such non-existent contract.

She put me on hold and when she came back it was with a whole different attitude. She had taken time to read the notes on the account, saw that the CSR a month ago had noted that the account should be credited and no further payments were due, and she would take care of it. Did I have anything else she could help me with?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact. I'd like to know who made the decision to implement that horrid autodialing system they're using. Did they really think harassing people with ongoing automated phone calls was going to lead to customer satisfaction and retention? Actually, some people may pay their bills just to make the phone calls stop--it's a possibility.) Oh, and by the way, wasn't it possible that they would make more progress with their customers by starting from the premise that the customer on the other end of the phone isn't always wrong and maybe is someone who should be valued and treated that way?

That's what I would have liked to say, but I don't believe it would have done any good. So I thanked her for her help and hung up.

But I'm thinking of setting up an automated dialing system to call the executives of companies like this and leave a message:

Please hold for an important message from one of your valuable customers. If you don't treat us more appropriately, we are going to not only cancel our service and go somewhere else, but we will tell everyone else we know. In fact, some of us may even blog about it on the internet. Oh, and have a nice day.

Stuck in Lodi Again...

...at the Microtel Motel.

Remember the old John Fogerty song where he was "stuck in Lodi again?" Well, we spent the weekend in Lodi for a club soccer tournament.

Turns out that Lodi is not such a bad little town. It has a quaint little downtown, a number of wineries (which we did not stop at) and the requisite shopping center with Target, Starbucks, Quiznos, Pantera, Chilis, etc. In fact there were 4 different Starbucks we found while we were there.

The problem is we were stuck at the Microtel Inn right off of I-5. We came in with reasonably low expectations--this was obviously not going to be the Ritz Carlton. I booked the reservation on the internet, which gave me a choice of rooms, rates (discount for AAA), etc. Very simple.I did pay a little extra for a "suite", which I figured was the type of divided room w/a door you get at Embassy Suites and other similar places. However, it turns out that for the Microtel Lodi, a room becomes a suite by removing one of the double beds, replacing it with a sofabed, adding a small cube fridge and a microwave, and renaming it a suite.

The desk clerk, who was unfailingly polite, first asked me to sign the checkin form before filling in the daily rate. Good think I didn't do this, because he had an incorrect rate. After finding out that their version of the word suite was different than ours, I had another discussion with said clerk. He informed me that that really WAS a suite. And, besides, if we wanted a regular double room, he was out of those and was therefore upgrading all of the other double requests to "suites" for the lower price.

Thisdid not compute, so I asked if he could then give us the lower rate, since what we had was more like a double than a suite anyway. He smiled and said of course, then proceeded to cross out the old price on my credit card receipt and write in the new one. When I told him that wasn't going to work, he obliged to credit the old charge and recharge it. However, he had forgotten that I was booked on the lower AAA rate, so he had to go back and do that again.

In the middle of the night we discovered that the toilet in our "suite" was blocked and didn't flush right. The last thing we wanted to do was have the desk clerk come up in the middle of the night and try to fix this himself, so we waited till morning to tell the clerk about the problem.

A different clerk was on duty. She listened to me describe the problem, then said with a smile, "Well, those things happen. Maybe it needs to be plunged." Then she walked away.

Let me reiterate what did NOT happen in this interchange:

• She didn't apologize for the incident
• She didn't offer to make any amends for not having a working toilet in the room
• She didn't even write down the room number to get the problem solved

In discussing this with another guest, I found that her room had a bathroom that was both dirty and full of bugs. Yuch.

I should say this was my first interaction with the Microtel Inn chain, and it may very likely be my last. My impression is that Microtel hires clerks that are invariably polite, but untrained in basic check-in systems (crossing out a credit card receipt to do a refund?), ignorant of even Customer Service 101 (how about apologizing for a problem to start?), and totally oblivious to health and sanitary concerns.

Maybe I was out of line in expecting a suite in a motel in Lodi to have a door separating one part from the other. But flushing toilets and clean bathrooms are pretty much nonnegotiable.

Next time if we can't find another place in town, we'll drive to another town to stay. Better than being stuck in the Microtel in Lodi again.

Water, water everywhere--but only once a month

Many of you know that I am passionate about how important customer-facing interactions are to an organization's success.

It's important to remember that customer-facing interactions are not just with front-line employees--sometimes they are with "things" such as websites, email systems or IVR phone systems. And sometimes some of the most negative customer experiences are with company-issued policies and procedures.

Here's an example of a non-customer friendly customer-facing process. Last week I got a letter from Arrowhead, my home delivery bottled water company, informing me that they "take great pride in providing you with superior products and services and strive to continually improve our customers (sic) experience."

The letter notes they are about to change my water delivery from every 3 weeks to once a month, which means that the number of bottles they deliver may increase (what a coincidence) "to ensure that you have enough water to accomodate your new delivery schedule." Furthermore, if my account is set up for automatic recurring charges to a bank account or credit card, the monthly recurring payment date may need to be moved as well (why, I'm not sure--if they're already billing once a month, what's the difference?).

Wait a minute--I thought they were looking to improve my experience? I didn't ask for my schedule to be changed. I don't particularly like the fact that I now have to keep more of those big unwieldy 5 gallon water bottles around the house so that I don't run out of water. Why is this change good for me, the customer?

Ah...when I read closer, I find  the real reason for this rigamarole: "The change is being made specifically to improve our operational efficiency." So this isn't really to improve my customer experience. In fact, if they asked me, I'd probably tell them that the best way to improve my experience is not to make me pay in advance and store their inventory long before it's needed, but to have deliveries occur more often so that this is one less thing I have to worry or think about. In fact, I used to get deliveries every 2 weeks, then every 3, now once a month. You can see where this is going--in a couple of years I expect I will get one annual delivery of bottled water (whether I need it or not). 

Why is it that companies push all kinds of changes, policies and procedures through to us, the customer, under the premise that they are doing us a favor? What were they thinking? Did anybody out here ever ask what the customer really wants?

And, if it's really, really necessary to make a change for the company's sake, not mine, please, please, please DON'T pretend that this is a customer-centered change. Tell me what's going on and be upfront about it. Customers will work with you if they know where you're coming from, but work with us,

Glass of water anyone? I've got a few extra bottles floating around....

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! My goal is to create a place for provocative discussion and thought-provoking posts on marketing strategy in general, and how organizations can do a better job of  differentiating themselves to their customers in particular.

This is my first adventure with blogging, so please bear with me as I get up to speed. Although I'm new to the blogosphere, I have been capturing my thoughts about marketing related issues for some time, in my quarerly newsletter Marketing Leverage Times and on my L2M Associates website . I try to highlight every-day interactions that show how the organizations we deal with every day around us are doing a good/bad job of using their marketing dollars to take care of us, their customers.

Feel free to share your comments as well as to nominate candidates for the Marketing Leverage Hall of Shame/Fame. Every quarter we will choose one of the best stories of an organization that goes out of their way to differentiate their customers' experiences, for better or for worse.

Linda