My friend was typing this anyway. Now she simply copies their
question, hits reply, pastes the question inside the ” ?”.  Now she
is off and running.

Expanding your signature file may seem like a small thing that only
saves you a few seconds. That is true. But those few seconds spread
over all the email you reply to day after day add up.

I am constantly fascinated by the lack of thought given to customer service. Tonight I went to the local Sonic Drive-In to pick up hamburgers for our dinner. The order was 12 hamburgers with everything on them.

The order arrived and I requested ketchup to go with the hamburgers – she handed me four packets, for 12 hamburgers. After asking for a bit more ketchup and was told “I can only give you so much.” I explained I had 12 hamburgers and was told “I’ll see what I can do.” She brought back a small handful of ketchup packets.

Sonic includes peppermints with your order. My order of 12 hamburgers included five peppermints. Keep in mind I was driving a 15 passenger van with eight passengers. There was quite the commotion over the five mints!

Enough fussing. My point is simple. Why come across as stingy toward your customers? I realize a few extra ketchup packets included with each order add up. You should train employees to be reasonable when handing items like this out. You should also train them to be aware of their customer and their specific needs. That is all I ask.

Someone asked why I find myself fascinated with situations like this and not frustrated. On the one hand it is an opportunity to observe service in action. On the other hand it gives me an opportunity to practice certain communication skills.

Always look for ways to turn frustration into fascination.

An article in the dated 31 January, 2006 in the Financial Times titled: Search engines challenged on ‘theft’ set me to thinking.

It reminds me of the arguments made a few years ago when Ticketmaster didn’t want people “deep linking” into their website. They wanted everybody to start at the top of the site and work their way down. In otherwords they wanted to control the flow of the information they were putting forth.

In both the Ticketmaster the Google vs. Newspapers situations technical solutions exist. There are standards in place, observed by Google, to prevent Google from spidering any given site. You don’t have to contact Google all you need to do is put a simple text file at the top of you site. That all. And Google will not spider your site until you give the ok.

But the newspapers aren’t interested in that. They want Google to spider their site. Otherwise how will they show up in search engines? The problem is that Google and the news aggregators do a better job of presenting the news in a way that consumers want to receive it.

Rather than complain about how others utilize the existing medium the newspapers should come up with a better aggregate. They have the resources. They have the news. Build a better solution.

Where to start? How about you ask the very people that visit your web site. Put more content at your site so people have to click through. Get creative. Bottom line – ask your customers what they want. Then give it to them. Then ask again. Then give it to them. Then ask again. Keep doing this until you have a better solution.

I wrote about how businesses can do this simply here:

Learn Why Your Customers Buy and Why That is Useful To You.

All products and services have many features and more importantly,
benefits. You spend time discovering these and crafting a sales
letter or presentation for selling the product. How do you know
which features and benefits are really pulling the sales in? Simple
- ask your customer.

I know answers like that seem obvious but you would be surprised
how many people don’t do it. In fact this lesson took me a long
time to learn. See I would find a product I liked then write up the
features that appealed to me. Turned out people often found feature
I overlooked more interesting.

At the most basic level you simply ask your customer why they
bought your product. Then keep asking people the questions until
you start to see some trends.

I recommend you pick up the phone and call a few of your customers
just after they order. Tell them who you are then ask them why they
bought your product today. Note their answer then ask them what
about your product they found particularly interesting. For each
answer they give you ask them if that influenced their decision to
buy. Finally ask them what information they would have liked to
know but weren’t able to find.

You are asking question from general to specific:

* Why did you buy?
* What specifically did you like about the product?
* Was there anything else that you liked? (repeat as necessary)
* Was there anything you wanted to know but didn’t learn?
* Thank you!

Easy and it won’t take you more than just a few minutes for each
call.

Another effective question to ask is “If you were the owner of my
business what would you do differently?”. You will get amazing
answers to this question. This question is powerful – but – you
have to ask it after you’ve asked the other questions. If you try
to start with this question they will answer “nothing” or “I don’t
know”. So ask the other questions first. Then try this magical
question.

As you take your little survey certain features and benefits will
come up more frequently. Make a note of these trends then review
your presentations and sales letters. You want to make sure that
your top features and benefits are covered enough. Rewrite the
letter if necessary. Of course you want to test any changes against
your previous results.

For Internet, mail order, or phone purchases you will want to do
your survey before your customer receives the actual product. I
know this isn’t always possible. Since they don’t have the actual
product yet their answers will really be referring to your sales
letter. After they have the product you won’t be sure.

The first time you try this I think you’ll be very pleased. The
person on the other end of the line will be pleasantly surprised
that you called. The fact that you are actually interested in their
opinion will surprise them even more. To really seal the deal send
them a nice handwritten thank you note for their time.

I urge you to give this survey technique a try you will be very
pleased with the results.

(c) 2005 Dan Butler
Originally published in the DButler Update 27 May 2005

I used to be an avid iced tea drinker. There is a specific brand of
tea that I like best. There was only one problem. The store I used
quit selling it. I just can’t bring myself to drive to another town
just to buy some bags of tea. So I called the company to see where
I might find their tea locally.

First let me say the representative was very pleasant on the phone.
The only problem was the help wasn’t so helpful. After I explained
the problem she asked for my postal zip code to help locate a store
that sells their tea. I gave her the code then she informed me I
could pick the tea up at a certain store in San Antonio, TX. I
informed her that San Antonio was an five hour drive for me. Then
she offered Lubbock, TX. I told her that was only a six hour drive.
Surely there was something closer. Next she offered Houston, TX. It
is only a four hour drive assuming you don’t hit traffic. And that
is a bad assumption.

So I asked if I could just order some of tea over the phone. I
could. But there is a $13 minimum order. Thirteen dollars would net
me around 240 quarts of tea. That’s more than I wanted to store. So
I thanked her and started to hang up. She asked if they could send
me a discount coupon. I said sure and gave her the mailing
information. A few days later I received the coupon. Good for .25
cents off any box of tea. The envelope had a .37 cent stamp on it!

I did use the coupon next time I was at a store that stocked the
tea. Later I cut *way* back on caffeine. And now we have a store in
town that sells the tea.

Why do I bring this example up? Think about your own customer
service and all the interactions you have with you visitors,
customers, clients, friends, family, etc. In this case they were
very friendly, very helpful. The help they offered wasn’t useful to
me. It didn’t solve the problems I had.

As you think about your communications are you helping people with
the problems they actually have? Or are you helping them with the
problems you *think* they have? It’s a crucial difference. How do
you know if you are helping? I prefer to do this by phone or email
and not use a simple web form. You’ve seen them – the little
buttons on a page that say, “Did this article help you?” or
something similar.

Don’t be like that. Talk to your customers. Ask them “Is what I do
helping you?” Ask them what you could do to help them more. Often
the answers are surprisingly simple to implement. And often they
are things you wouldn’t think of on your own.

Some of you know that I’ve run a successful Internet newsletter for
nearly eight years. Any of you who have emailed me know that I
almost always ask a question or two in return. I’m always trying to
find out what information you are looking for. Even a simple
question like “what do you do for a living?” can tell you a lot.

So:

- Ask your customers what they want.
- Ask your customers how you can help them.
- Make sure you know what a customer is asking before you answer.

This last point is a topic in itself. We’ll talk about it more later.

Next issue I will tell you the easy technique I learned from a
famous mail order marketer for learning why your customers buy.

Copyright 2005 Dan Butler