A Helping Hand - For the Competition..
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
I went to test drive a car last month – an experience I’d been looking forward to for some time. Everyone had been telling me the car I had in mind was THE car to get and the write-ups all supported their entreaties.
The marketing guys had certainly done their work as I had already pretty much bought into the dream. It was therefore, quite a surprise when my local dealer didn’t seem to really want to sell me the product. The person who was “selling” to me was so inept at building up a rapport or answering my questions, that I became completely turned off the product and consequently decided on another brand.
I am gob smacked that a prestigious company that spends so much money developing an exclusive brand, can be so nonchalant about matching up to expectation, letting down the people who have actually made an effort to engage with their products. It’s the same situation with call centres when businesses spend millions of pounds on “above the line” marketing but then skimp at the point where they are actually talking to their clients and prospective customers!
It’s worth remembering just how important customer advocacy is. People really do talk to each other about their experiences – just as I am here. Not only did I feedback my experience to the original advocate of the stricken brand but I also re-counted my experience to more than a handful of people. Interestingly, this case in point converted me to a different category of car, as I changed my mind and bought a different brand altogether. It ended up being a case of cheap promotion for the other seller and a customer relations disaster for the company I had eagerly approached.
