Why technology makes Service even more important
The future has arrived – in China. I’m fortunate enough to travel to my Shanghai Mystery Shopping office every 3-4 months. Since my last trip I noticed that cash just does not exist. Yes, cash does not exist. We are starting to feel this in the West thanks to Apple Pay and Google Pay, but […]
Marketing is service
Marketing is not often viewed as customer service centric. It’s seen as the funnel filler before Sales takes over. But marketing is more than that and your relationships are not so easily compartmentalised. “Prospects are potential customers and customers are potential sales.” Think of it this way. When someone walks into a shoe store we […]
Customer Service is like a party
It’s easy to know if you hit a sales goal, right? But you know it gets more nuanced and complicated than that. What if a large customer left because they went bankrupt but otherwise you were on track for a record. Is that a failure? If you prefer video, scroll down to the bottom My […]
Don’t make the same 10 mistakes Marriott made
Having a name like Di Pietro, with a space in the name can create problems. I made a hotel booking without a space and my membership account has the space. I tried to remove the space from my profile so they’d match. So I head to the Marriott website, where the problems start. Below is […]
The biggest (and hidden) reason customers leave.
Why do customers really leave? The answer is not as obvious as it seems. Dan Kennedy, the king of direct marketing explained the reason as follows. Customer leave for one of the following reasons: 1% die. There’s not much we can do about this one. 3% move. Offline, this is due to geography; online, it’s […]
Mixing apples and oranges – NPS and Mystery Shopping
We all try to save money wherever we can. The problem is when we just go for the cheapest option and only get part of the story. A dangerous new trend is to sacrifice Mystery Shopping for Net Promoter Scores. They do different things, and like apples and oranges, they are different but must live in […]
The State of Retail Lending in Australia 2018 – Infographic
We’ve put some of the legal and customer facing statistics together in the form of a customer journey for major Australian Banks
How customer service accidentally gets low priority
Everyone goes on about giving “great service”. But it still doesn’t have the profile of other job roles, especially at executive level. Look at these job roles on Linkedin. No mention of Customer Service. Scroll further. Nope — further? Nope — surely it’s in alphabetical order. Must be on the next screen right? Again No. Linkedin and so many […]
Augmented reality is a short step from retail
Facebook (through Instagram) recently introduced face filters to let people add all manner of things on their face, like glasses. The glasses are superimposed on your head and they move with your head, like in the video. Sure there are fun applications for kids, but imaging the application for retailers. You could superimpose different colour […]
Customer loyalty for free
There’s no need to over-complicate customer loyalty. Often companies “expect” loyalty form customers, but don’t give it back in return. Customer loyalty is a two way street. Here’s a great example of how to provide loyalty for free. Even if you think it’s a cliche example, then I’d challenge anyone to tell me how it’s […]
A dumb or cynical question?
When surveying customers, make sure you get the questioning right. Optus Telecom in Australia got it wrong. Check out the question below. How would I answer if I received terrible service? “Has the use of [product] prevented you from…..” If you got bad service, you would expect to answer Yes, […]
The ROI of Mystery Shopping
Although a store may spend $10,000 a month on rent, it seems incredulous that a $100 per month spend on mystery shopping (1% of the rent) needs to be justified with ROI. If salaries and running expenses are taken into account (roughly to equal the monthly rent), then $100 per month equates to 0.5% of […]
