Are You Being Served? Are You Free?

Many of you may recognize the phrases in the title from the hilarious British sitcom about Grace Brothers Department Store in London in the 1970s and 1980s. When a customer came onto the floor needing attention, Captain Peacock would ask the customer, "Are you being served?" If the customer needed attention, he would address one of the staff with "Are you free?"

I have several friends who always ask if I am free when they call. Of course, they are being polite and hoping I can help them. They realize that I will take their call, even if it may not be convenient for me at the moment to do so. I rarely ignore the phone. After all, I am a consultant, always hoping for a client. I am also an engineer/psychologist, hoping for a problem to solve (whether I am paid to solve it or not!).

What is puzzling to me is how many people act like Wally in the Dilbert cartoon above. As a market researcher, I am often calling business people to conduct interviews for my clients. Of course, the business people have been contacted by email or telephone by my client, telling them that I would call, what the reason was and perhaps even offering them an honorarium for completing the interview with me. So, why don't business people answer the telephone?

I realize that they may be busy, on vacation or otherwise unable to talk at the moment. They may not share my anticipation about answering the telephone. But what should I think when they never answer their phone or email? ...even after repeated calls and emails asking for a time and date to speak with them? At times, I ask if someone else may be able to answer my questions, or I ask them to give some basic answers via email. If the sales staff or marketing staff of my client have properly prepared the respondent, what could the issue be? At times I feel like the fellow who is trying to trap Wally in the cartoon above. (I have a couple of friends who have just written Slaying the Email Monster, learn their techniques to never let an email languish without response or action).

The business people often are surprised at how easy it is to complete the call, once we are talking, and how often they find the interview enjoyable, not a pain. They often learn quite a bit by going through the process of being interviewed.

What do you think? Are one-on-one telephone interviews going the way of the dinosaur? Is this type of market research, with the personal connection, out of date in the era of social media?

I don't think so. The research process, as described in Pain Killer Marketing, is actually working quite well with customers, especially when they are well prepared as to what to expect and what the questions may be. The customers want to share their thoughts and feelings about the product or service, not just cold cryptic responses to an online survey. There may be a lot going on behind a rating on a survey. Will this fact change as the generations change? Will Gen X and Gen Y customers be tougher to get to talk on the telephone for 20 minutes?

What is your perception? For how long will the one-on-one interviewing techniques described in Pain Killer Marketing work? How should they be adapted for social media?

My Business Card is a Book?

I know this sounds like an expensive business card idea, but it works. Think of how easy it is to throw away a business card, but people never want to throw away a book. For some reason, we think books are valuable, to be treasured.

The best networker at any meeting is not the one who gives out the most business cards, but the one who collects the most. This lesson is gradually being learned by consultants and business people.

So how does it work to have a book as a business card? In our view, you don't want to give your card, or your book, to everyone. You need to size up each person who asks for your card at a conference or show and see if you can acquire theirs instead. If you begin an email conversation and they really are a prospect, the book is an easy way to document your competence and expertise, as well as a convenient item for them to pass on to others whom they may know. In that way, they become your advocate within their company, sharing your thoughts and ideas with others. The fact that books are so difficult to throw away works for you.

This past weekend was the "Marketing With A Book" seminar in La Jolla with Henry DeVries and friends. It was intimate (20 people) and great fun, as well as a very good experience for those who are learning how to market themselves and their books. We were somewhat surprised that there were seminar attendees who had not seen their book as a potential business card. If giving the book to someone can result in a $25,000 consulting gig, what is the problem with spending $10 on the book? As Henry and Liz Goodgold (one of the speakers) and others have said: the book should be just one piece of your overall marketing and branding strategy, not an end in itself. Making videos (DVDs) and CDs of chapters or ideas in the book is the logical next step. People have relationships with people. Use your book to promote YOU.

As one of my clients said when offering me a job, "When it came down to choosing between you and your competitors, we went with you. Afterall, you wrote the book on the subject!"

Feel free to visit either of our websites: www.stiehlworks.com and www.newclientmarketing.com for more information on us and where we will be appearing. By the way, Mr. DeVries has a new book being released in January Closing America's Job Gap. Watch for his book tour appearances.

Is Survey Data Always Relevant or Good?

Obviously, if you are fielding a customer satisfaction survey, you want to have good questions. However, some companies have stopped fielding surveys. They are flying blind. Why? Management claimed that they were spending a lot of money to find out that the numbers never changed! Of course, they had not executed the necessary improvements to change the numbers. More importantly, they had not used customer data to develop the questions!

If the questions were written by engineers and market researchers without consulting customers, how relevant are they? It could be that the company referenced in the previous paragraph would be getting more information, more actionable information, if they had good questions, relevant questions.

We talked in a previous posting about how many businesses that changed brands on a product, do so because of poor customer service, having nothing to do with the performance of the product. Does your survey ask about non-product performance? Shouldn't it?

As Dilbert says above, how relevant is your data? Are your questions important to customers?

If you need help developing a survey that reflects the Voice of the Customer for your customers, give us a call at StiehlWorks (619-516-2864).

What do you think, is the expense of executing customer satisfaction surveys a good investment? Is the data worth the cost?