As a companion piece to my last blog (Time to Address the Relationship Disconnect), I’ve written a handy ‘how not to do customer service’ checklist. Poor customer service is now so commonplace in the UK that comedians build entire routines out of it; the curse of the unexpected item in the bagging area, the endless ‘your call is important to us’ messages while they leave you sat on hold and the never-ending IVR menus. (“Press [...]
So here we are again. Time for the annual ‘retailers post disappointing Xmas trading results’ headlines. This year, I’m not looking at the correlation between their results and their ad campaigns, I’m having a think about the relationship between their results and the in-store experience. With retail sales overall up 5.3%, and some brands delivering up to 20-30% growth online, it shows just how badly the poor performers have done. Over at M&S (down 2.1%), [...]
If brands were honest... Marketing magazine recently carried an interesting piece entitled ‘Face it, your consumers hate you’ which talked about rising consumer distrust of advertising and marketing. It quoted a survey by the brand agency Promise, which found “consumers are ready to assume the worst about brands, and have fallen out of love with them.” I’m not surprised. Back in February, I posted a blog arguing the case for a return to [...]
Much has been written about the incredible success of Groupon; named by Forbes magazine as “the fastest growing company, ever”, and valued at $13bn with 83m subscribers in 43 countries. Eye-watering numbers achieved in just 3 years, for sure – although not without acres of accompanying column inches bemoaning the shoddy way Groupon treats some of its suppliers, and the shoddy way some suppliers treat their customers (without any recourse from Groupon). But putting all [...]