On customer service, where are we?

After recently spending 30-days in France and Italy, I am wondering about Australian customer service.

Let’s begin with France and let’s begin by putting to bed, once and for all, that old fallacy about the French being rude.

In 2005 I spent a week in Paris and had nothing but positive experiences everywhere I went. I put that down to good luck. I had been indoctrinated to believe that the French were not a welcoming people.

Now the same thing has happened again. Last month I spent a week in Paris and a week driving around the French countryside visiting cities like Dijon, Lyons, Avignon and Nice. Everywhere and on every occasion French traders helped us. They went out of their way to explain, to show and to make things easier.

In Dijon a middle aged woman, noticing my map, ran across the street offering to help. When she realised my French was so abysmal, immediately spoke in broken English and did not go on her way until she was sure we were clear about where we were heading.

But that was not the full story in France. The piece-de-resistance in customer service terms happened on our second day in Paris. At HSBC.

We were about to use an ATM to withdraw money and suddenly got nervous about losing our card. (We’d had a bad experience overseas once before.) We went inside the HSBC branch. The teller was immediately helpful. He explained the steps. Then without hesitation, he offered to come outside and talk us through the process. So there on the streets of central Paris there was an amazing sight: a young male teller, standing with us at an ATM while we completed the transaction.

By contrast, in Australia, before we left, we dutifully informed our bank, Westpac, that we were going to be in France and Italy for a month. They did not bother to tell us that in Europe today, to use a credit card you need a PIN. We found ourselves 15,000 klms from home and not able to use our VISA card. Thanks for nothing Westpac.

In Italy our customer service experience was just as excellent.

In the beautiful ancient northern town of Bergamo, the hotel manager printed train timetables for us, gave us detailed directions and every day had time to share his local knowledge. In big cities like Milan and in smaller towns, traders everywhere went out of their way to answer our questions and help us along the way.

However, it was when we arrived at Prato an authentic Tuscan town near Florence that we experienced a new level of customer service.

We stayed at Ma. Gi. Co., a 200 year old family home that is now a B&B adjacent to the main piazza in this non-tourist walled city.

The owner and manager at Ma. Gi. Co. is a vibrant young mum named Simona Cozzi who makes your stay personal and pleasurable with attention to detail that’s second to none.

When we arrived in Prato we were lost. We parked the car and walked the last kilometre through narrow streets. When Simona heard our story, she immediately walked back to the car with us and guided us in to the town. What a great way to start!

From there, the treatment we received just got better and better.

• The breakfast Simona prepared each day was fit for a king.
• When we were planning a short train trip, Simona immediately phoned for the train times.
• When we chose a restaurant for dinner, Simona went to the restaurant to make the booking and stressed that she expected excellence for her guests. The dinner and the service were superb.
• When we talked about buying a coffee machine to bring back to Australia, Simona found out the freight cost for us.

Every day in countless little ways we were treated like royalty. I have never experienced or heard of such customer service in Australia.

A gold medal to HSBC (www.hsbc.com.au) and platinum to Ma. Gi. Co. Remember this B&B for your next Tuscan adventure (www.bbmagico.it)

Macy’s and the US downturn

The US subprime crisis which so far has only mildly touched our economy, has already been very severe in the US. Doom and gloom is everywhere in retail. But, despite the downturn, one major retailer --Macy's -- is still looking to increase its advertising.

On 13 August, Macy's cut its full-year earnings outlook dramatically, but said it will continue to make investments in marketing.

In Australia, retailers generally, with their emphasis on discounting, seem to know very little about marketing. But it’s a different story in the US. In fact, despite the difficult times, Macy’s looks to be expanding its marketing budget.

The retailer is developing a new relationship with the globally renowned customer focus specialist consultancy, Dunnhumby. Macy’s says that over the next twelve months, its marketing plans will be very visible.

As a consumer-insights firm, Dunnhumby has earned a reputation as an expert at accelerating sales through its work with retailers such as Home Depot. For Macy’s, Dunnhumby will be charged with developing customer segmentation models to be applied across the retailer's business.

The stated aim at Macy's is for the company to continue to build a sustainable competitive advantage by having a more complete understanding of customers. The management at Macy’s wants to mould the Macy offering to satisfy each customer's specific needs.

If you are in financial services or professional services marketing, this may not seem very profound. But in a non-marketing organisation, this type of thinking would represent a major step forward.

Four guidelines for making your writing more succinct

Your writing will be more succinct and you will be more likely to win people over, if you remember the following four guidelines:

• Think about your audience and what you want to achieve. The better you understand them, the more chance you have of communicating successfully.
  
• Delete unnecessary information. Everyone is busy. Your readers do not want to waste time reading stuff from you that they do not need.
  
• Delete unnecessary words. Look at the following sentence and see how many words you can cut. You might improve your writing somewhat if you sometimes try to follow this suggestion.
  
• Replace complex words with simple words. An airline pilot recently referred to the chance of ‘precipitation’. Why would he use that word?

And be sure to avoid things like this:

• 'The consultants recommend integrated asset flexibility.'
• 'Our exploratory research points to global third-generation mobility.'

Do we sound like the Olympic commentators?

Most people who watched the Channel 7 coverage of the Olympics for more than 30 seconds were amused or bemused by the bias of the Australian commentators.

In rowing, in the Final of the men’s eight, the Australian crew appeared to begin falling behind within the first 25 metres. But the commentators did not notice.

By the half way mark in the race, the Australians were well and truly at the back of the field. No doubt they were giving it their best shot but were being outclassed. There’s no disgrace there. After all, they reached the final six teams.

But the commentators continued to talk up Australia as a medal chance when it was obviously not going to happen. If you had listened only, without viewing, you would have been on the edge of your seat. You would have heard that the Australian surge was just about to leave the rest of the competitors for dead.

In fact nothing like this happened. The exhausted Australian team was well beaten.

As marketers, we must wonder, why do the commentators do this?

Equally, as advertisers, we have to ask, ‘do we annoy people?’ Do we lose credibility by the silliness of the things we say in our promotions?

There is no way of knowing the true answer to these questions while you sit at a desk. But you can get a feel for how people are likely to react by using carefully put together focus groups. Or one-to-one interviews.

As things get tougher in the economy, marketers need to be that much more targeted. In a buoyant economy, if 10% of your communication is being wasted, then you probably don’t notice. But in a contracting economy, where you have to make every post a winner, that 10% of wastage could drop you into the red.

For direct marketers, testing is always essential to ensure we learn from every campaign. But in a slowing economy, research, before you go to market, can save you from making statements or claims that don’t connect with people. Checking before you go to market can save you from losing sales.

Channel 7 had a monopoly on Olympics coverage (well almost) and maybe that’s why they did not care how silly the commentators were. But not too many of us are in that sort of market.
We want every promotion that we invest in to build the brand.

To build a brand in a challenging economy, you can’t afford to waste a dollar. Research is an invaluable investment to ensure that you are connecting with your chosen target markets. It can confirm for you that you are giving yourself the best chance of success.