We now have to consider delivering stellar service a selling point that has become just as important as the benefits of buying the latest machine or new technology – especially as people seem grateful for barely adequate customer service.
Most sales and marketing pros focus on generating sales leads. “Just get people to the Website!” or “Just make the phones ring and our sales people can take it from there,” are common demands of marketing teams. Then the advertising and PR hit the magazines, the PPC keyword ad program tops the search results, the companion direct mail – email drops. Did the campaign work?
This company will never know for sure because the free download and contact form on their Web site weren’t working. Just how many hot prospects submitted the form and never heard back they’ll never know. In the zeal to take an aggressive approach to boosting sales, it’s easy to overlook the importance of having the back end setup to handle the response.
Here are five back end items to consider before launching your new lead generation program:
Visitors bureaus and destinations invest huge amounts of money to get visitors to spend their precious little vacation time at their attractions. Yet they often overlook or fail to understand it’s the little interactions with front line employees that make people smile, return, and tell their friends and family to visit, too. Here’s what one employee did for our family at Niagara Falls, New York.
The closer we got to the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski area, the more crowded it looked, and the more tension I could feel building from all sides. When finally directed to turn around and park on the access road without even getting close enough to see the mountain, the uncertainty grew. It could have been a customer service fail but this quick article reveals what the parking lot attendant did to save the day and turn a fail into customer service win that also won one for the marketing team.
Customer service fails infuriate marketing managers and waste precious marketing dollars. On this anniversary dinner in a restaurant overlooking Lake Tahoe, one, surly waitress turned an otherwise perfect evening into an experience worthy of a training course for the hospitality industry.
Ready to sign the advertising contract, I called the sales rep to verify the numbers and get a premium ad position but the rep was out of the office for sales training. How ironic! Unavailable to close the sale to attend training to learn how to sell?
It was the clear, cold, windy prelude to the next day’s blizzard and our firewood pile wasn’t going to last through the storm. I tried to call the guy around the corner with the gigantic firewood pile but could not remember the name of the company. Finally, he showed up, then this customer service lesson happened.
When I was contacted by a New York Times reporter writing an article about whether startups still need to write a business plan, I was happy to offer what I’d learned after writing two business plans for two, different companies that secured two microloans – and helped get them paid in full. Since the numerous conversations by phone and email were cut to two short paragraphs in the actual article, I thought I’d make use of the time spent thinking about why I’d still recommend entrepreneurs sit down and write a formal business plan and sum it all up right here.
We’d agreed to sell our company with the expectation that the parent company would go public within the year. Then the dot com bubble burst. Here’s what happened when the parent company refused to pay our staff.
I’m not sure it’s that everything has gradually become more difficult. I think it’s that everything we’ve been led to believe is easy to use and would make our lives smoother and easier has failed to do so. We’re all angry about it and the Staples Easy Button ad campaign taps our frustration.
