Customer centric
Customer focus Customer advocate Customer champion But where did you start first? Received an email from StarHub this morning.
The title reads "StarHub Exclusive: Here's a $300 gift voucher for you". Out of curiosity, I opened the email and scrolled down to find this advertisement by a third party, a hair care salon. First mistake, StarHub has just made me wasted time opening their email. No doubt their headline has been successful in getting me to open the email. And I'm sure they have some tracking device to measure the open rate for all the emails sent out. But they've also reinforced my confirmation that this is a company that only treat you shit as their customer. The header of the email said "Exclusively for StarHub customers!" and then went on to say "You're the privileged recipient of $300 hair treatment voucher". Do you think I'm one of the few privileged recipient or one of the names in their mass email list? In the body, it said "Guess what? We have a surprise gift exclusively for you". The gift is a surprise indeed. How the hell StarHub thinks I have hair problem? Did they based it on their customer profiling tool and assume that people in my age group will have hair problem? Or do they just spam all their subscribers and see how many will respond? The email continued with some information on hair problems and solutions which were all irrelevant to me. And see how lavishly they used the word exclusively. And for anyone who are a little more observant and in the know, this hair care company is always advertising and giving away free voucher to entice prospects. In fact, the whole industry is using the same tactic. So how exclusive do you think this is? Perhaps the marketing department wanted to provide additional benefits to its subscribers. Perhaps it's a co-marketing efforts where both scratch each other back. Sending a marketing email and using flowery words to make people read what you have to offer is not only useless, but plain stupid. Your job is to build trust and not make your work easy. If you have nothing better to send, don't send it. There was a news about a big corporation retrenching thousands of staff in this difficult economic situation.
During the AGM, a shareholder asked the Chairman how the downsizing was carried out and how badly it will reflect on the company if one day an ex-staff has to beg for food on the street. The Chairman went on to explain that the retrenchment, or rather downsizing or right sizing is a continuous process. Some of the staff who were let go were those who have reached retirement age and their contracts were not extended. They also try to redeploy staff to other work areas where there are growth and also try to cut operating costs to be more efficient and effective. The company also ensured that staff who were retrenched were given fair compensation. Actually, this is nothing new. Retrenchment is not uncommon nowadays. There's really no more iron rice bowl except for some government agencies. Imagine you are one of the staff in the company and there's a retrenchment going on, how will you feel? You will be so worried if you are going to be the one to be called into your manager's office and handed the envelope. Even the manager himself is not sure if he will be the next to go. You could probably start working harder and longer and hope your manager recognise your efforts in a bid to secure your job. You start praying that you won't be the one to go. And when the list is finally out, you can't help breathing a sigh of relief while feeling sad your good colleagues have to go. And for the next few months, you won't complain a bit even if you have to do three persons work while drawing the same salary. And depending on the state of economy, you'll fell jittery if the situation continues to be bad. Any rumour can sends fear across the whole company. Of course, no one is going to resign unless they got a job offer. And even with that, they will think twice about jumping ship. But how will the remaining staff view the company? Will they remain as loyal knowing that they can be asked to go anytime? How does the top management going to rah-rah everyone to work together to ride through this storm? What if the board of directors starts by taking a 30% pay cut? I attended an AGM (Annual General Meeting) of a public listed company as a proxy recently.
If you've attended such sessions before, you'll know that there are usually only two speakers throughout the whole AGM - the Chairman and CEO. The rest of the directors only speak when directed by these two top persons. During the question and answer session, a shareholder made an interesting comment. He said he attended an AGM of another company a day ago. When the session ended, many shareholders were eagerly waiting below the stage to speak with the directors, perhaps to ask them more questions.. Instead of mingling with the shareholders, the directors were talking among themselves. And they even have a different exit to go off. Were the directors afraid of being asked questions which they may not be able to answer? Is it part of the protocol in AGM? Did the directors think that it's a waste of time talking to these shareholders? Here's a perfect opportunity for the directors to find out how its shareholders are perceiving the company. What's preventing the directors from interacting with these shareholders that usually happens only once a year? How are they going to address shareholders' concerns, if any? How are they going to build trust? Invent.
Arrange. Imagine. Place. Design. Create. Apply. Define. Form. Mix. Make. Shape. Use. Mt home broadband service contract expired last month. Just two months back, my cable tv subscription was also up for renewal. In the month leading up to my cable tv contract expiry date, I've received renewal offer from the telco company. After a few exchanges of email, they finally got my simple message to renew my cable tv plan for another 2 years first. Sometimes, you just wonder why these customer service staff didn't bother to read properly before replying. I've not decided whether to renew my broadband because my existing plan has been phased out. According to the company, the new plan will offers me faster speed with the new technology. And with this upgrade, the subscription price also increased. Another reason is a new telco company is coming up and I would like to see what new or better offer will this company has. Now that's where it gets interesting. From the day my broadband subscription expired to today (11 days in total), I've received an email offering me a bundle service, a letter in my mailbox with the same content as the email and a phone call from their telemarketer urging me to take up the offer. I've never been given so much attention by my telco company in the two years I've been with them since I last renewed. Every time when your contract is up for renewal, these companies will suddenly get chummy with you, telling you how much they value and appreciate you as a customer. Granted that these are standard operating procedures they use for subscribers who's contracts are up for renewal. It provides you multiple channels of reaching a customer and your staff know exactly what to do and what have been done. It's a check list to make sure that all have been done. But how much mileage and loyalty can you get from doing all these to retain your customers? The only thing they can do is emphasise on the savings I can get for renewing with them. And I totally do not understand what the hell are the differences between what I'm getting now and what they are offering. A big corporation is in the midst of replacing it's IT system.
They formed a core team to be in charge of this plan. Staff from various departments involved in this project were nominated. Contest on project name and logo design were held. Brainstorming sessions were held gel to gather inputs on their requirement. Ice breaking and team building activities were organised to get staff from different departments to know each other better and foster team spirit. Courses on relevant topics were conducted to impart knowledge to the staff. Staff who have completed the courses were even given a badge to wear and act as ambassadors to answer queries from staff not involved. Updates on the progress of the project are sent out in a monthly newsletter to everyone. But where's the buy in? I attended a watch event last week.
At the event, there was a buffet spread, a live risotto station, a live carving station, a live parma ham station and hard liquor counter. The wait staff were going around offering glasses of champagne, angel hair pasta with REAL truffle (not truffle-flavoured oil) and madeleine (a kind of France cake). The staff told me that there will be many events coming up in the next few months, perhaps the whole year. I wonder if it has to do with the current weak economic situation. As they say, when times are bad, you have to spend more while others are cutting back. But what happens when the rest are doing the same? Do you spend more than them? Anyway, when times are good, why spend when people are already buying. Imagine you've just collected your new BMW car and your wife and kids are all excited about going for a spin.
You got on the car with your wife in the front seats while your two kids rushed in to the back. Before you could fasten your seat belt, your kids were already jumping up and down on the seats. "You two stop jumping and sit down properly," your wife shouted. The kids continued jumping and before your wife open her mouth again, you heard a sound. Your elder kid, Shawn, stopped, looked down and turned quiet. The young one continued jumping but stopped after he noticed his brother's weird behaviour. Both you and your wife looked down at where Shawn is looking. A seven centimetre tear on the leather seat. Both of you turned and looked at Shawn as he braced himself for what is to come. This reminds me of a lecture I watched (click here). The speaker just bought a new convertible and showed up at his sister's house to bring her daughter and son for a monthly outing. His sister was telling her kids, "That's uncle's new car. You cannot get it dirty. You cannot this. You cannot that.…." The kids just cracked up laughing cos their uncle was opening up a can of coke and emptying it on the back seat as their mom was ranting. At the end of the day, his nephew threw up all over in his car because of a flu. |
AuthorOutrageous Marketing Archives
May 2020
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