A few months ago, I canceled my DirecTV account. As much as I loved their service — far more than the cable I had before and the cable I have now — it was just too expensive for the amount of TV my family watches. And they wouldn’t budge on price.
That’s unfortunate, but certainly not something that would ever make me think ill of DirecTV. How they’ve handled my cancellation has been anything but OK, and it’s been an object lesson to me as a marketer. My takeaway is this: you can’t market effectively if you’re marketing in a vacuum. That is, culture matters, and if all client-facing departments aren’t in synch, even great marketing is going to face an uphill battle.
For example, I’m sure a bean counter somewhere at DirecTV recognized that holding on to the refund due on a cancelled account for 4 months was good for their bottom line. I am also sure that someone of similar mindset decided that issuing the refund in the form of a gift card was equally smart, since some percentage of those gift cards would be lost or forgotten about and never redeemed.
But I’m not an idiot, and neither are your clients. I know that if you are able to magically charge my credit card at exactly the same time every month to collect payment for your service, you can probably do the same to issue a refund.
Treat Your Clients with Respect
Consumers, whether B2B or B2C, don’t like being made to feel stupid, or unappreciated, or ignored. (So 10 hard-sell sales calls you made to me after I canceled really rankled since I had tried for 3 months to negotiate before pulling the plug.)
My personal rant aside, If you have policies in place that any normal customer would think were devised with the bottom line in mind at the expense of their customer experience, you need to rethink them. In fact, your marketing team should be a part of every conversation that touches on the customer experience, because every customer touchpoint is a marketing opportunity.
You can either delight your prospects and customers every time they interact with you, or you can disappoint them. Either way, they’ll view those interactions as indicative of your true colors, no matter how effusive and flowery your marketing promises.
Make sure your financial team and your sales department are talking to customer service and marketing. No customers ever want to hear “that’s not my department” or “sorry, that’s company policy.”
Leaving your clients feeling that their interactions with you are for your benefit will naturally leave them feeling like they’re an afterthought. That’s not a path to long-term success through high lifetime customer value, repeat business, good will, and strong word-of-mouth.
