Customer Service Expectations - The "Whatever it takes / Spare No Expense" option

The problem with customer service is not a new one. It's about balancing between serving a lot of people a little, or dropping everything to serve a few people a lot.

Getting a lot of benefit for a lot of people for not so much money isn't particularly difficult. In the chart on the left, for example, (a) represents the cost of good signage at the airport, or clearly written directions on the prescription bottle or a bit of training for your staff. It pays off. Pay a little bit and you help a lot of people to avoid hassles. The utility per person isn't huge, but you can help a lot of people at once.

(b) is the higher cost of a bit of direct intervention. This is the cost of a call center or a toll free number or an information desk. You're paying more, you're helping fewer people, but you're helping them a lot.

(c) is where it gets nuts. (c) is where we are expected to spare no expense, where the CEO has to get involved because it's a journalist who's upset, or where we're busy airlifting a new unit out to a super angry customer. The cost is very high, the systems fall apart and only one person benefits.

Of course, if you're that one person, you think it's not only fair, but appropriate and right.

This "spare no expense" mantra is extremely difficult to avoid, because in any given situation, when the resources are available, your inclination is to say, "make the problem go away, spend the money!"

It's certainly possible to build a brand without going to (c) (witness the way Google almost never gets embroiled in special cases or even answers the phone--I know that they're certainly not eager to fix my imap problems), but once you've trained your customers that (c) is an option, it's awfully hard to scale back.

The reason we get trapped by (c) is that, "I'm doing the best I can" is always much easier than, "we need to be disciplined and help more people, even if that means that some special cases will fall through the cracks. The internet makes this even more difficult because people who fall through the cracks are able to amplify their complaints ever louder.

The way around it, I think, is to set expectations early and often. If you're going to give me your phone number, you better answer it. If you're going to offer a warranty, you better honor it. If you position yourself as a company with real people eager to make every single person happy--you better deliver.

No matter what, you should decide. In advance. How much do you want to spend on ad hoc emergencies, how much do you want to reserve on design and helping the masses improve their experience?

Link

Used / Pre-owned / Experienced Automobiles?

So - the used car business looks appealing. There seems to be so many ways to be "better" than the next guy. Your instincts for retailing are good. You can sell. You know how to manage the environment. Stop!

You've got half the picture in view - perhaps less than half. The most difficult part of this business is buying inventory. Oh yea - it is. Don't kid yourself. This is not for the amateur. You'll be eaten and swallowed quickly. If you're an independent (no franchise) and even if your new car franchise does light volume, you really can't trade your way to good inventory. You have to find it to buy it. You have to compete with others.

The talent for selling is important but buying is where you make money. Buying is at least half the battle. The strategies, the skills, the rigor and talent needed to be a pro are rarer and more valuable than you might think. Some may argue that this isn't the case but they would be wrong.

So - if you want to "do used", be or get a professional buyer.

Ya - scalable thoughts perhaps? Think about it

Lessons from very tiny businesses

1. Go where your customers are.

Jacquelyne runs a tiny juice company called Chakwave. I met her in Los Angeles, standing next to an organic lunch truck. Like the little birds that clean the teeth of the hippo, there's synergy here. The kind of person that visits the truck for lunch is the sort of person that would happily pay for something as wonderfully weird as her juice. And the truck owners benefit from the rolling festival farmer's market feel that comes from having a synergistic partner set up on a bridge table right next door.

2. Be micro-focused and the search engines will find you.

My friend Patti Jo is an extraordinary teacher and tutor. Her new business, The Scarsdale Tutor doesn't need many clients in order to be successful. This permits her to focus obsessively and that gets rewarded with front page results on Google. Not because she's tried to manipulate the seo (she hasn't) but because this is exactly the page you'd hope to find if you typed "scarsdale tutor" into a search engine. Could she do this nationwide? Of course not. But she doesn't want to or need to. Living on the long tail can be profitable.

3. Outlast the competition.

I was amazed at all the empty storefronts I saw in LA on my last visit. On one particular block, three or four of the ten lunch places were shut down. And the others? Doing great. That's because the remaining office workers who used to eat lunch at the shuttered places had to eat somewhere, and so the survivors watched their business grow. A war of attrition is never pretty, but if you're smart about overhead and scale, you'll win it.

4. Leverage.

Rick Toone runs a tiny guitar-making operation. His lack of scale makes it easy for him to share. When others start using his designs, he doesn't suffer (he can't make any more guitars than he already is) he benefits, because as the originator of the design, his originals become more coveted, not less valuable. He leverages his insight and shares it as a free marketing device.

5. Respond.

This is the single biggest advantage you have over the big guys. Not only are you in charge, you also answer the phone and read your email and man the desk and set the prices.

Fielding Special Requests

The bike shop is busy in June. If you bring your bike in for a tune up, it will cost $39 and take a week.

A week!

What if someone says, "I have a bike trip coming up in three days, can you do it by then?"

At most bike shops, the answer is a shrug, followed by, "I'm sorry, we're swamped."

The problem with telling people to go away is that they go away. And the problem with treating all customers the same is that customers aren't the same. They're different and they demand to be treated (and are often willing to pay) differently.

So, why not smile and say, "Oh, wow, that's a rush. We can do it, but it's expensive. It'll cost you $90. I know that's a lot, but there you go."

Outcome: Maybe they'll still leave. But maybe they'll happily pay you for the privilege of doing business with you. Why should this be your choice, not theirs?

If you do tax accounting for mid-size businesses, why not offer a special last-minute service? A service in which you process shoeboxes filled with unsorted papers? A service that costs less but happens during your slow season?

There are two really good reasons to turn down special requests:

1. because you're marketing yourself as extremely busy and perfectly willing to turn down good work.

2. because you want to market yourself as someone who is a rigid artist, a stick in the mud or a crotchety perfectionist. This works great for pizza places.


Link

Group behavior

Guy #1 appears to be on his own - a guy dancing isn't all that special.
Guy #2 joins - but still not a special thing.
Guy #3 joins and very quickly (at about the one minute mark) they get attention, interest and then...
No - it's not amazing dancing. Consider the group (the rest of the crowd) and adoption behaviors. What was the point where it caught hold? It has been suggested that guy #3 is the key.

Pangea 3000

Coffee rules

When you're getting coffee from a store:

• Put the cover on so the drink hole is opposite the seem in the cup (paper cup)
• Don't use the extra sleeve

These rules will reduce dribble / splash / spill potential by greater than 70%; saving dry cleaning bills, stress, stupid stains that you wear all day and more.

I know what you're thinking - "No say". I respond with, "Say".

Also:

Put the cream in first - save a stick

Congressman's Kid won't cut it out - Onion

Congressman's Son Won't Shut The Hell Up During Hearing

Thumbprint find - Interesting

Rotten nasty crud - Even just a little...

Toxicodendron radicans (syn. Rhus toxicodendron, Rhus radicans); Poison ivy is a plant in the family Anacardiaceae. The name is sometimes spelled "Poison-ivy" in an attempt to indicate that the plant is not a true Ivy (Hedera). It is a woody vine that is well known for its ability to produce urushiol, a skin irritant that causes an itching rash for most people, technically known as urushiol-induced contact dermatitis.

Don't touch, rip out with your hands and then scratch your "howdoyodo. Don't mess. Spray Roundup or maybe sell your house and move away.

There you go.
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Augusta

The Masters happens this week. The venue (Augusta National) is beautiful on television, but in person it is shockingly gorgeous - shocking I say. It has more elevation changes than you can see on TV. The greens appear to be impossible top putt. The grounds are manicured to perfection. That much detailed grooming on a scale that large seems impossible. It must be fake - but no - it's just crazy perfect.

The top 125 - say what?

Peterson Dealerships made the Automotive News list of the top 125 Dealer Groups (#125). They sold 1,105 new vehicles and 1,110 used. They also sold 1,266 fleet units. Revenue was just over one hundred million.

The new / used ratio is a healthy 1-1. Well done. The fleet sales must have a story attached to make it interesting. Fleet is a thin-margin pain in the ass business - unless you have something clever going on. I'm sure the Petersons are good operators and since they made this list, they deserve to be pleased. Again - well done.

However...

2,200 retail units and 100m in revenue might seem like a lot, it just isn't - not for one of the top 125 "groups". These are strong single point numbers, but for one of the top 125 groups, I'm not so sure. How can these numbers earn a spot on the list?

A.) The list is hurting for submissions to be included

B.) Boch is missing, Prime is missing... Other than the tippity top, the list is irrelevant

C.) Things are really bad


The seasonally adjusted retail rate is below ten million new units. So maybe the Peterson's adjusted back to an eighteen million selling rate would throw up 2,000 new units. Still... I don't get it.

Nissan ad spoof

John McPherson cartoon in today's paper

Probably unfair, but still funny

General Electric - Go figure

The downgrade of General Electric from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor's was accompanied by a 13% share price bounce. This doesn't seem like a call for happiness, but wait...

Apparently, the good news is that the cut wasn't deeper. It appears that GE's new rating is still well above AA-, a level below which GE faces large cash calls.

SNL annoys Hawaii

Apparently, this was a problem for those promoting tourism in Hawaii. Let's see how long the video stays up.

Publicity, PR & Story

Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego. But it's not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It's the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna was great at PR. Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink. A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest you don't bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first. And you probably won't accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don't even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.

The difference between PR and publicity

Rainy Days and Confidence

Actually, most people could use a bit of a confidence boost these days. It's seems pretty easy to dismiss most moves as a bad idea. Not much works on paper - especially if you crank in low economic expectations.

We used to say, "Hey there, how are you?"

We would get, "Good... you?"

Now we we say, "Hey there, how are you?"

We get, "Hang'n in there", or maybe "Okay".

"Hang'n in there" is the new "Good".

This could be the classic definition of a "Rainy Day".

I Doth Protesteth

I've been a nice man thus far. Sure I've done a little complaining, but ultimately I've demonstrated my patience and level headed thinking by staying in the market. Hey - if you run away, you lose. Odds are that in few years, patience should be rewarded. If I was on the sidelines, I would surely be motivated to buy right now. It's gotta be true.

The S&P 500 dipped below 700 today. Are you kidding me? Who would toss in the towel now? Only a silly person. I said that 300 S&P points ago.

I make my official plea, and I do it in a LOUD BARKING FASHION (as if I were an angry animal of significant size) - you get it.

"ENOUGH ALREADY. GrrrRRR!"

There... That should do it.

Thanks