Head butting, reconstructed

Posted on December 10, 2018January 21, 2019 by Dannah K. "Dannie" Prather

If you own or manage a business, it’s likely that one of the least-favorite aspects of your job is responding to customer complaints. And, if you are on social media, it’s possible that the headache turns into a migraine if a troll has latched onto you.

Business Unplugged’s Carol Roth compiled a great collection of advice from business and communications pros about how to handle complaints, and trolls, and how to tell the difference. Some tips mentioned often:

Don’t respond in an angry or defensive manner, especially if you are dealing with a troll instead of a legitimate customer. Trolls want conflict. Don’t feed them.

You may feel that a customer’s complaint is unfair or possibly even untrue. It is your job to listen and respond with professionalism. Provide them with a way to communicate with you directly about their complaint. Direct messaging via the platform (Facebook or Twitter, for example), is the best way to start.

When you respond with patience and restraint, your faithful customers and supporters will chime in with their stories of great experiences at your business.

Respond, even if you need to step away from the computer for a while first to cool down. The silence of not responding screams to current and potential customers, “I don’t care if you’re happy or not.”

You have no control over reviews and comments on other sites such as Yelp, but it’s possible for you to block a follower from your own Facebook or Twitter feed. Do this only as a last resort. If you are dealing with someone who simply wants to rant, and if you have made an effort to respond in a reasonable and professional way, you can control who can post on your feeds. Do it too often, however, and you get the same blowback as not responding at all.

Finally, try to keep a sense of humor about everything. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible it will keep your blood pressure in a healthy range. As an aside, it’s OK to approach complaints and haters with humor, too, but make sure you really have a gift for it first. It’s a tricky business to convey sarcasm online. Check out some pros who do it really well, Moon Pie and Wendy’s.

Branding isn’t about logos or livestock

Posted on August 1, 2016May 8, 2017 by Dannah K. "Dannie" Prather

I’ve blogged previously about how some so-called experts are committed to making concepts more difficult to grasp than need be. Most of the time it’s about making the person in the know look and sound smarter than perhaps he/she actually is. This is a pet peeve of mine because not only is it pretentious, it creates unnecessary confusion among those who could really use the information in question.

After all, isn’t life confusing enough all on its own? Who needs self-important pontificators muddying the waters?

A particular mud swirl exists around the marketing term “branding.” Perhaps because of its connection to objects similar to the one at the top of this post, businesses and organizations are misled into thinking branding is about logos and graphic design. Make no mistake, those are part of the equation, but only part.

Dale Partridge posted this great piece on The Daily Positive about what branding is and is not. It is razor sharp, a quick read and well worth sharing, printing and posting (digitally and physically).

The most “revolutionary” insight in the piece may be this: Branding is what your customers/donors/staff say your business or organization is, not what you say it is.

If that statement makes you swallow hard or feel queasy, read on, you’re in good company.

Recently the PBS show American Experience re-ran its documentary on Walt Disney. Without argument, Disney was an innovator and an enormous change maker in U.S. and world entertainment. He also had a big blind spot regarding his staff. The film pointed out that, while Disney paid his top animators very well and gave them some sweet perks, the hundreds of staff who made the magic possible often were paid very low wages without benefits.

When overlooked artists and others went on strike, Disney was blindsided and dumbfounded.

He was Uncle Walt, the guy who never insisted that his staff call him “Mr. Disney.” As far as he was concerned, the company was a family for crying out loud, how could they turn on him like that?

As the empire grew, Walt had become ensconced, as it were, in the highest tower of the Magic Kingdom. He’d lost touch with his staff. So many years had passed since Disney had sat at a drawing table or recorded dialog, he’d forgotten how much time and effort was involved in creating the films. The vast majority of his employees felt as though they didn’t matter. Disney lost several of his mid-level artists to competitors.

The culture Disney thought he’d created was an illusion. It took some time but the negative consequences trickled down to the films themselves. Customers responded in kind and stayed away from the theaters.

Of course, Disney’s is eventually a grand success story, but you can bet the Disney brand is closely guarded by an army taking the pulse of every aspect of the Magic Kingdom every day.

You can discover what your brand really is by asking probing questions of your staff, donors and customers. Facebook and Twitter can be invaluable tools in this process. You could also put together a customer/donor survey using a free or low-cost service such as Survey Monkey.

Another trendy term tossed around marketing circles is “touch point” which Partridge mentions in his column. Simply put, a touch point is every point in the customer/donor/employee process where those individuals interact with the company or organization. For example: Touch points for a small business could be a newspaper/TV/radio or online ad. A catalog, printed or digital, is another touch point. The process of making a donation and receiving an acknowledgement letter are a couple of touch points for non-profits. For your employees, touch points are the interview, hiring, training, performance evaluation, payroll and benefits processes.

No matter how small your business or organization is, it is a system that needs to be analyzed and reviewed frequently. You may find that your advertising and social media presence are effective, but customers are frustrated by the lack of parking near your store, or the online catalog that frequently times out before a sale is completed. Maybe your non-profit does a great job of quickly processing financial gifts, but it takes too long for acknowledgement letters to go out for in-kind donations. For your staff, maybe a failing touch point is in training or performance evaluations.

It’s easy to see that there are dozens of touch points that can impact your business/organization’s brand. As you gather data and feedback from customers/donors and staff, and make improvements, your brand will begin to stand out among your competitors.

If you need some assistance on finding out what your brand really is, give me a call. I’d love to help.

Light bulbs

Posted on October 13, 2015November 11, 2015 by Dannah K. "Dannie" Prather

Marketing Monday came and went without a post yesterday because I’ve been impressed recently by several articles on this mammoth subject and its infinite number of ancillary topics. In short: I couldn’t decide what to write about yesterday.

So I gave it some more thought and decided to share the best of the brightest I’d run across the past few days.

There’s a lot of pontificating (often I refer to this as “balloon juice”) out there intended to make authors/presenters look really smart. Inevitably they end up complicating, and then renaming, things that are essentially fairly simple to understand. One of my favorite examples is the term “signage,” which is now firmly embedded in our lexicon, but let’s face it, folks, “signs,” works just fine too.

But I digress.

In addition to the balloon juice is a great deal of informative, illustrative and no-nonsense articles and observations about marketing, public relations, social media, etc.

Here’s some info and links on the ones that really caught my eye. I ran across the first two on LinkedIn.

Last week I blogged about print not being dead. This week I ran across a post from Yvonne Parkinson that references data to back that up. Yes, as director of a printing firm she has a big dog in the fight, but the figures come from Direct Marketing Association in the UK so I think the figures are pretty solid no matter which side of the pond you are on.

Some might consider the next one as approaching clickbait status (more on that below), but after reading it, I disagree. Yes, it was the mention of the movie, The Breakfast Club (one of my all-time faves), that caught my eye, but this brief observation from Rex Weaver, a mover and shaker in the automotive industry, provides insight on how you can approach your audience with a fresh perspective. He defines three terms of customer “segmentation” that are not in the least snooty-sounding: User Based, Benefit Based and Occasion Based.

The last two come from HootSuite, the platform that enables users to post to multiple social media accounts simultaneously. They offer other stuff too.

HootSuite has just released its 2015 Social Media Glossary, enabling dabblers to figure out what those pretentious pundits are talking about, or perhaps empowering dabblers to sound like pretentious pundits themselves. Seriously, this is good info. Read this and you’ll understand why Rex Weaver’s Breakfast Club post is not in the least clickbait … among other helpful things.

This last one is so insightful for business owners who are on social media. It illustrates why it is impossible for shops large and small (and non-profits, too) to “do” social media halfway. If you have started a Facebook page, Twitter feed or Pinterest board and simply abandoned it, you may be leaving a billboard of customer/donor dissatisfaction on the InterWebz for all the world to see … forever. Don’t let this happen to you.

danniewriter

Tag: customer service