For many years, car salesmen used tricks to prevent prospects from shopping their competitors after having been quoted a price.  One ploy was to take the customer out of their old car and let them drive the new one home overnight before making a purchase decision.  Prospects liked seeing the new car in their own driveway often enough that they bought it.   Another clever trick was to give the car shopper a free quart of ice cream, which meant they had to go home before it melted instead of going on to another dealer.

Today, reports CNBC.com automotive writer Phil LeBeau, (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101445202 ) people are shopping multiple car dealers less often and are arming themselves with online information before showing up with a price already in mind.  He cites McKinsey & Company figures that today “the average buyer visits just 1.6 auto dealerships … down from 10 years ago when buyers visited an average of five dealerships.” 

Some new car buyers now even look to intermediaries to purchase their car for them – Costco, for example.  Jeff Skeen, general manager of Costco’s auto program, claims that car buyers who use their service save about $1,000 vs. trying to get what LeBeau referred to as the “best deal possible” on their own.

To be sure, some car shoppers prefer to kick the tires themselves and enjoy jousting with car salesmen, but they remain a minority.  For most buyers, the new car dance is a pain in the seat cushions more akin to having a root canal done than a positive purchasing experience. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way.   As I have counseled dealer clients over the years, buying a car or getting it serviced or repaired can be an overwhelmingly positive experience instead of the discouragingly negative one people expect.  Creating (and communicating) that experience, of course, is the dealer’s responsibility. 

Consider this:  each dealer principal “owns” a brand, and the care and feeding of that brand should be Job One.  Rather than invest precious marketing dollars advertising the car brands they sell (with rare exception) and rather than depend for evermore on price/event advertising, the dealer should present their brand to the marketplace in such a compelling (and truthful) way that people want to do business with them.  Dealerships that create belief in their brand, and expect superior performance from the team that breathes life into that brand, can’t help but induce greater trust in the marketplace.  The result is people who are sold on that dealership in advance and for whom the “almighty discount” isn’t the sole measure of car buying success.

TakeAway:  Sell your brand’s marketable truth.  Precondition people to want to do business with you rather than depending on price alone to attract them.

When something you’ve bought breaks and satisfaction is hard to come by, what do you do?  

More often than not, most of us complain – long and loud – about our crummy cable TV provider, airline, computer, big screen TV, car or appliance either until satisfaction blooms or we throw up our hands in disgust.  After that, we begin earnestly warning friends and family to stay away from that particular swamp of customer service horrors.

While researching perspective on a retail appliance chain for a future blog post, I came across a web site that appears to be a collection point for customer disappointment and disgust.   The more moans and groans I read – across a wide variety of business categories, the more it seemed clear that the business of this online enterprise (http://www.consumeraffairs.com )was to gather customer complaints, present the brand with its low customer satisfaction rating (especially if the business is a retailer that depends on manufacturers to service their products) and then sell a mediation service to the businesses in question, thus helping convert unhappy customers to happy ones.   They also presented useful articles on their site about lemon laws, scams and the like – altogether a pretty reasonable information-based product that, at the very least, allows customers to vent their customer service disappointments (and presumably brag about customer service pluses) for all to see.   

But why can’t businesses do this for themselves – like the Kohl’s and Oreck experiences I cited recently in this blog (http://www.brianefaulkner.com/1/post/2014/02/mr-grumpy-gets-his-due.html )?  Why shouldn’t they “own” both the customer service issues and the assets that likely will accrue from resolving them?   Like a client of mine years ago who had a small plane and delighted in flying errant orders to his photographer customers across the state, converting what could have been near anger into something approaching awe.  

A fast-food client once told me that for every customer turned off at retail, six more never show up.   That may be a bit exaggerated, suggests an article aimed at call center CFOs (http://www.netpicker.net/EducatingtheCFOonBasicCusavio.html , which cites the loss of one customer for every five who encounter problems, although their research also found that customers who are “completely satisfied” because their problem got solved sometimes exhibited greater loyalty than customers who experienced no problems at all.  But they also discovered that only 40% of customers with problems eventually are satisfied while 25% remain dissatisfied, and 70% of the dissatisfied ones never return.  

“Fifty-percent of consumers and 25 percent of business customers who have problems never complain to anyone at the company,” they discovered, and worse, “most of those customers who do complain will grumble to the cashier, the gate agent, the delivery person, or the field sales rep.”  They report that “when your product or service has a retail distribution channel (e.g., insurance agents, supermarkets, local copier distributor), less than 15 percent of all the problems and sometimes as little as 1 percent of the complaints” typically get through a formal customer service system.

That leaves a lot of unwashed laundry on the floor!

So where do you stand?   What is your company doing to create loyal customers through business-building customer service intervention?

TakeAway:  One happy customer in hand may mean five more in the bush.

The fuss continues online about the TV spot for the “first ever” Cadillac ELR, which now has run on the Academy Awards telecast as well as during the Sochi Olympics.   The scene begins at poolside.  A stylishly balding dude in his mid 30s and shorts is musing there alone:  “Why do we work so hard?” he wonders.  “For this?  For stuff?”

He goes on to take a quick swipe at the French for strolling home, stopping by the café and taking the whole month of August off while a funky acoustic guitar track adds a cool underlay to the spot.  (see the spot below)

“Why aren’t we like that?” he asks (good question!), and then answers himself by pointing out how hard Americans work, including examples of exceptional citizens like the Wright brothers, Bill Gates, Les Paul and Mohammed Ali, while walking through a contemporary-styled, upscale home where he greets one of his kids with an easy palm slap and his wife gives him a coy smile as they pass by each other in the kitchen.  He then enters the bedroom, only to emerge a blink later dressed in a gray suit and light blue tie, clearly prepared to conquer the world. 

Shortly we see him approach his new charcoal gray Cadillac ELR, pull a plug from its side (Aha!!  It’s electric!) and fire the thing up, its Buck Rogers digital dash glowing in anticipation of a stimulating ride to the office.  This is no boring hybrid, we see, the car’s aggressive styling speaking volumes about the lack of speed limits for a success-saturated man like this!

Before he drives off, our hero seems to pitch the work hard/play hard ethic he equates with an America where “everything is possible.  As for all the stuff,” he concludes, “that’s the upstart of taking only two months off in August!”  Ta-da! you French slugs!

I could easily do without the copywriter’s philosophizing, as in “You work hard, you create your own luck,” but have to admire the craft.  It’s an effective spot, which moves viewers quickly through the story to focus on the car, which for some reason just sits there at the end of the spot while Mr. Wonderful gives us a tacky wink and takes another unnecessary poke at the French.  I'd much rather see him launch himself -- and the Caddy -- out of frame.

Sure, the aspirational nature of the ad bothers some folks – but so what?  Cadillac wasn’t aiming at the sour grapes crowd or people like me who long ago lost the new car lust and can’t afford one anyway.   They’re shooting at a demographic more likely to show up at their nearest Cadillac dealer to check the ELR out: prospects with $200,000 incomes and a "little bit of grit under their fingernails ... people who haven't been given anything (because) every part of success they've achieved has been earned through hard work and hustle." (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-cadillac-irked-viewers-with-its-oscars-ad/)

A point lost in all the values-driven fuss:  the ad demonstrates how far Cadillac has come in both styling and performance since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when GM took the first strategic baby steps away from the big bloated beasts Cadillac had been marketing, automobiles that were about as far from The Standard of the World as one could get. 

Like the ad or hate the ad, that’s progress!

TakeAway:  Tell a compelling story that positions your product squarely with your target market.   And ignore the naysayers. 

Sure, it was self-serving stunt by a comedian collecting footage for a TV show.  But what a great example of brand power: Dumb Starbucks, an ersatz Starbucks that popped up for a few days in a nondescript Los Angeles strip center.  The brand tricksters reproduced the (older) Starbucks logo perfectly, put “DUMB” in front of it, served coffee (said to have been on the bitter side), sold pastries from the Von’s next door and were off to the races.

And what a race! 

The media, eager for a story that wasn’t about ObamaCare or the 2016 presidential race, seized on the opportunity to cover Dumb Starbucks, and soon the real Starbucks started complaining (although not all that angrily) about trademark infringements, etc.  Clearly, they must have recognized that somebody’s idea of a prank wasn’t really going anywhere -- except the front pages of every news web site in the known universe for a few days.

Which ain’t all that bad.

One of the store’s momentary customers said he stood in line to “score” one of those white cups with the Dumb Starbucks logo on it.   Turned out, the real Starbucks scored big, too.   Like a publicity-savvy businessman I once knew used to say:  “Love me or hate me, I really don’t care.   Just make sure you get my name right.”

TakeAway:  Never underestimate the power of a strong brand – even in jest.

Just in case you missed it:  http://www.yelp.com/biz/dumb-starbucks-los-angeles

When it comes to customer service, I don’t expect much.  In fact, I’ve largely convinced myself to expect nearly nothing at all, thanks to years’ worth of encounters with surly clerks and teeth-gnashing automated phone systems where a pre-recorded young woman with a soothing voice keeps saying “I didn’t get that …” before cycling back through a list of options that have nothing to do with my service complaint -- only slightly less annoying than talking to a real young women practicing her English while attempting to address my North Carolina cable reception from somewhere in Bangladesh.

Well, the other day, I got exactly what was coming to me. 

Stop number one on Mr. Grumpy’s Saturday morning round of complaints was Kohl’s, where I had purchased some V-neck Hanes underwear shirts the previous week.  Hanes had been my client for many years, so I fully expected their products to perform as advertised.  This time, they did not.  Despite careful washing before wearing (and scrupulously following laundering instructions), the shirts shrunk at least two sizes, which put the hem just above my navel.  Not a pretty sight – and damned uncomfortable.  

So I entered Kohl’s that morning surrounded by my usual haze of low expectations, expecting to be told there was nothing they could do about it and the next time I should buy my underwear two sizes larger.  However, a young man named Charles at the customer service desk cheerfully acknowledged my problem and sent me to fetch another pack of underwear, one size larger this time just in case.  It wasn’t long before I was out the door a little lighter of spirit – and (at least for the moment) a thoroughly satisfied Kohl’s customer.

But I had one more stop to make, and although most of my grumpy haze had dissipated, a stubborn bit of poor attitude remained for me to deposit at the Oreck store across the street, where I was prepared to take out years of frustration about my poorly-performing vacuum cleaner on whichever clerk was unlucky enough to greet me. 

When I arrived, Clerk #1 was chatting on the phone about some arcane vacuum cleaner technology and ignored me.  Grrrrr!  Clerk #2 was doing a demo for a harried-looking couple with a bored child – and I had to admit, her demo was unusually good and filled with useful product benefits.  After a minute or so, she looked up from the pile of dust she’d just tossed on the carpet for her prospect to vacuum up, caught my eye and walked to the service counter.

“How can I help you today?” she chirped.

“My Oreck isn’t doing a good job. “

“How’s that?”  (gently stated)  

“It picks up practically nothing – just blows air around.  I have to pick stuff up with my fingers.”

“How long has it been doing that?”

“Years.  Almost forever.”

At that, she reached down under the counter and retrieved something, which she held up between two fingers, swinging it tantalizingly back in forth in front of my eyes.  A circular rubber thing, about four inches in diameter.

“I think your belt is broken.”

“I didn’t know I had a belt.”

“If the belt is broken, the beater bar won’t turn and the motor will just suck air.  Like you said.”

Hmmm …

“How much is a belt?”

“Two for ten-bucks.”

“How ‘bout one for five bucks?  I only need one.” (with only the tiniest glimmer of grumpiness).

She placed the belt in my hand as I fumbled for my wallet.

“Put that away.”

“What?”

“No charge.”

“You’re GIVING me this belt?”

“Yes,” she said, eyes darting back to where her prospects had finished cleaning up the demo carpet and were at work convincing their kid that the upright vacuum they had decided to buy was, in fact, a dust robot.

“Why … thanks!” I said (really meaning it).  “You’ve made my day.”

Which was true.

TakeAway:  Employees with the privilege of customer interaction can make a huge and lasting difference.  Choose these goodwill ambassadors wisely – and pay them what they’re worth, because the value they add to your business or brand can be priceless.   

It’s not easy coming up with a new name for a long established family business, even if the name you finally decide on is close as a kissin’ cousin to the one you’re giving up.  Just ask Ron Joyce, president and CEO of Joyce Farms, a North Carolina producer of all-natural chicken, Heritage chicken (haute cuisine French breeds), specialty game birds and – most recently -- grass fed beef, who led his business through a major re-branding initiative in 2012. 

“The idea was to re-position the way we describe our highly differentiated – and great tasting – products,” he said in a recent interview, which included changing their company name (the firm’s overarching brand) as well as the names of two distinct product lines.  “We presented two choices to focus groups of high income consumers who buy natural or organic meat and poultry on a regular basis.  I expected a resounding approval for my favorite, Joyce Family Farms, but instead came away with a good dose of consumer cynicism.  They thought Joyce Family Farms sounded like a big company trying to pretend they were a small family farm!”

Joyce Farms began as Joyce Foods in 1962, a poultry distributor selling to Mom & Pop grocery stores.  Ron joined his father in 1971 and twenty-four years later began the switch to a more natural, more vertically integrated approach to producing poultry, driven by the idea that the chicken on American dinner tables didn’t have to be bland and tasteless.

“We now control the whole process,” Joyce says, “from genetic selection to breeding to placing our birds with small Southern family farmers who embrace the kind of slow growth, environmentally sustainable practices we insist upon.  We never add hormones, antibiotics, animal by-products, preservatives or artificial ingredients anywhere in our process.  The key to our success is total purity, especially the free and easy way in which we raise our birds, even to the point of chasing the chickens down ourselves and processing them in our own plant!  All this extra effort pays huge flavor dividends, more like the chicken I remember from Sunday dinners at my grandmother’s farm – back when chicken actually tasted like chicken, instead of some pale imitation of chicken.  We’ve all but forgotten that here in the 21st century.” 

Joyce claims that the huge majority of today’s birds are industrial, “raised in conditions about as far removed from my grandmother’s farm as a sunny meadow is from a prison yard.  Today, it’s all about price:  how many chickens you can produce as quickly as possible at as low a cost as possible.  In contrast, we allow our Poulet Rouge line of Heritage chickens 80 days to mature.  They stay happy doing natural chicken things for almost twice as long as the stressed and unhappy birds that eventually make their way to your local grocery store.”  Joyce says that investment in time (and feed costs) pays off in flavor and texture, which makes Joyce Farms chicken well worth the high price they command in the marketplace – a fact confirmed by leading chefs “who care enough about their guests’ dining experience to serve the best chicken in the world.”

And then there’s the recurring organic / non-organic question.  “Our products are better than organic,” asserts Joyce, recalling a mother who wouldn’t let her child sample his product because it wasn’t organic.  “Our name stands for something set apart, largely because of our superior raising, feeding and animal welfare standards -- and the great thing is that you can taste the difference.”

That taste difference applies not just to the company’s well-regarded Heritage lines but to their newly re-branded line of Naked Chicken (sold to the culinary and artisanal butcher markets and to consumers through their web site) as well as a more recent addition to the Joyce Farms family, Naked Beef.  Joyce says his grass-fed beef, developed from old prairie stocks and raised on small family farms, not only is more tender and succulent than ordinary grass-fed beef but rivals the best beef on the market for taste.  And, like Joyce Farms chicken, Joyce Farms Naked Beef “never-ever” has artificial ingredients added to speed up the fattening process, cheapen the product and cut the price.

Ron Joyce credits Jamie Oliver, The Food Network’s Naked Chef, with popularizing the “naked” concept, which in the case of Joyce Farms reflects on “all we have not added to our product.”  Even so, he was uncertain whether the focus groups would buy the Naked Chicken idea.  They did – overwhelmingly and enthusiastically, and a new brand was born. 

TakeAway:  Build authentic and compelling brand names on your unique Marketable Truth© and then test them – without spending outrageous sums for naming consultants.    

Marketable Truth © by Brian E. Faulkner.

http://joyce-farms.com/