by Nicky on February 6, 2012
Knowing how your customers will react when things go wrong is important – something the super brand Apple will no doubt know about, given the recent news about working conditions in the manufacturing of their products. But are your customers as loyal as Apple’s customers?
Having a plan in place for when things go wrong is important when running a business. Being in touch with your customers and understanding them will make creating an effective “recovery” plan that much easier.
If you sell products you need to have a course of action in place for when a product isn’t available, if a product develops a fault or if there is a supplier problem. Maintaing regular communication, telling customers what is happening and what they need to do is key – nobody likes to be left in the dark. And make sure you keep up the communication until the problem is finally resolved.
For service based companies there needs to be a robust process for evaluating what went wrong and why. But this needs to be quick – customers don’t want to wait around for weeks whilst you spend time scratching your head inside the business. Again you need to keep in touch with your customers to let them know what is going on, and to ensure you have resolved the problem satisfactorily.
But take heart because if you handle a problem well you can turn a disgruntled customer into a raving fan – and wouldn’t that be good for your business?
by Nicky on February 2, 2012
I have unsubscribed from a few email newsletters recently and become increasingly frustrated at just how difficult some companies make it.
Some don’t have any instructions or links to unsubscribe at all – which is just wrong. If you keep emailing someone and they have to delete your emails, all you are going to do is annoy them.
Some have links which take you to a website where you have to carefully scrutinise a list to make sure you have chosen the right option to unsubscribe. Even worse is when you have to answer questions as to why you want to unsubscribe. Look, I don’t want it anymore OK?
I know some of the marketing people reading this are saying – but we want to know what we’ve done wrong. My argument to that is I think it’s too late at that stage. The reader has got to the point where they don’t want to hear from you anymore, does it really matter why?
But for me the worst option of all is when a link takes you to Outlook and you have to send an email to ask to be taken off the list. Nooooo! Don’t make the reader feel uncomfortable – just let them quietly leave.
In my opinion there should be a small unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email newsletter. Not a big highlighted button – but when you click it you are instantly unsubscribed and that is it!
And when I say that’s it – that’s really what I mean! Don’t send follow up emails, or worse still an automated email telling the reader it might take a few days for the unsubscribe to take effect. What’s that all about? In these days of sophisticated technology a reader should be able to be removed instantly from a mailing list and not hear from you again – after all that is what he is telling you he wants!
Image source: Microsoft/Fotolia partnership
