The Swell of Customer Dissatisfaction


Dissatisfaction with customer service is burgeoning. Not only is this discontent reflected in many nationwide and individual organizational surveys, but now this grumbling is also the talk of the Internet with entire Web sites devoted to attacking different brands.

Even as businesses struggle to improve their customer service and top management aims at a strong brand, we are regaled by many telling us that service is horrible, that service is getting worse, and that service standards have fallen. Some claim that the current generation of people getting ready to enter the job market has learned neither manners nor any of the basic ingredients of service.

And today, with the Internet and twenty-four-hour news television stations, a single negative incident can be multiplied and dispensed rapidly to send a company's stock and brand name plummeting. Perhaps the best example of this was what happened to UK jewelry chain store owner Gerald Ratner. Admittedly, Ratner was known for his "loose lips," but in a 1991 speech to the Institute of Directors, his words sank the ship of his brand. Ratner, certainly in a moment he came to regret, proclaimed that the jewelry sold at H. Samuels and Ernst Jones, owned by the Ratner Group, was "total crap." The Ratner Group's share price slumped 96 percent, and the company fell from huge profitability to massive losses in one short year. The brand Ratner had invested in for so long was destroyed, and he was subsequently forced out of the business. The press damage was so severe that the group later renamed itself Signet and the process of building a new brand started from scratch. [12]

Virus-like, word-of-mouth complaining on the Web can be enormously damaging to brands. A disgruntled Doubletree Hotels customer recently created an engaging PowerPoint presentation that has been circulated widely as an e-mail attachment and is now permanently posted on the Internet. [13] The customer, arriving late at night, was denied a room that had been guaranteed with his credit card— not delivering Doubletree's tagline, "Relax, You're Among Friends." It demonstrates the shuddering impact of brand bashing caused by the behavior of one employee and responded to by one customer.

One major cause of brand slippage is simple, in our estimation, but normally overlooked in the rush to develop a strong brand. Many branding agencies, and the companies for whom these brands are created, are so focused on the physical product and articulation of the product's brand promise that they pay inadequate attention to (or forget about or overlook or choose to ignore or are afraid of addressing) the largest part of the delivery system of a service brand—namely, the interaction service providers have directly with customers.

Paul recently worked with a large company to develop a complaint-handling workshop. After meeting with the marketing department, he suggested building the workshop content around the new brand position that was about to be launched in a nationwide television campaign. The relief expressed by the marketers was almost overwhelming. They knew the organization's service needed to be aligned with the brand and the new advertising campaign, but they simply did not have the time or resources to do anything about it and meet their own deadlines. The need to grab new customers was given greater priority by the executive team than ensuring that new and existing customers would experience what they had been promised.

When products have services attached to them, advertising sets expectations prior to customers' interaction with the organization. Then treatment of customers becomes the key factor in judgments of the brand. The fourteen-year-old daughter of one of TMI's staff behaves as a typical teenager in relationship to branded products. Kelly Fedderson and her friends are enticed by ads in teen magazines. But their product loyalty is primarily based on treatment they receive from store clerks that sell the branded products they think are "cool." In Kelly's words: "MAC was one of the makeup lines we used to love. The people behind the counters look so edgy, so radical. But when we were waiting in line, the clerks looked right past us—like we weren't there! They started to serve other people first just because they were older! We were so embarrassed."

[12]Nigel Cope, "Can Ratner Regain His Old Retail Sparkle?" Independent, July 28, 2003.

[13]The PowerPoint presentation can be obtained by contacting BearX220@hotmail.com.




Branded Customer Service(c) The New Competitive Edge
Branded Customer Service: The New Competitive Edge
ISBN: 1576752984
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 134

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