Thought Bubble - The Customer is Angry!

VIDEO: 6:34
AUTHOR: Robert Craven

I wrote the book 'Customer is King!' but in this case, customer is not King, customer is angry! Listen to this five minute thought bubble and sort your customer services out.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:00 

A bit of a rant today, so everyone always talks about customer is king, customer is king, we kind of have this sense that the customer is king, while the customer is not King. Yeah, we've got it pretty damn wrong. Customer is angry customers bloody angry customer, to be honest, is furious furious with you, and you don't seem to pick it up as an agency.  

Robert Craven  00:29 

Let me explain why this is what the, this is what the customer sees. Hi, I'm a digital agency, I'm really cool. I'm wearing my digital agency cap, maybe it should be on this way. Maybe it should be on that way. I'm wearing my digital agency cap. And if you look at our website, you'll see just like everyone else's websites, people climbing up mountains, holding hands, climbing up trees, pulling together. And on the website, it'll point out that we are award winning, we've won hundreds of awards, and look at all the affiliations of all the different platforms and big names you've heard of, and look at the list of clients we've worked with, because that's what we are, we're really, really cool. And there are pictures of our offices, which are really cool, because it's got a ping pong table, it's got, you know, little comfy chairs you can sit in and people have headphones on all the time, and look at the age of our people and look at the diversity of our people, it's really, really great. And if you come with us, you'll be guaranteed because it's digital, we guarantee there's absolutely guaranteed that you'll get like a flyer or the to put a bit of money in, it'll create adverts create more profits, or you can give us more money again, and it'll just go all in on it is so great. And we'll use a couple of phrases he may not understand that don't worry, your SEO, PPC content, all these kinds of words that will explain to you, but it's really, but it's very, very difficult to understand. That's why we have really young people doing it because it's so complicated. So so but we're very strategic, you've noticed we've got some grey hair.  

Robert Craven  01:52 

Now, the reason they're so hacked off, because as okay, I don't I kind of don't mind that stuff. But you fail to understand what it feels like to be a customer. So okay, I'm the customer. Maybe that's not right for the customer. But the point the point is, is Hello, the customer, you know, you maybe only promises and firstly you don't deliver on them. You said it would happen in two months, it still hasn't happened in six months. You said you're gonna give me clear numbers that I'd understand you don't you blind me with science is never your fault. It's always black tried. It's always Christmas, it's always Google and changed, change this change that being of changes of change that you know, you're meant to be the experts, you told me you the experts and clearly, you're not in control, you're not delivering you're not making stuff happen.  

Robert Craven  02:41 

But there are some more fundamental issues that I have with you as a customer. Okay, one you don't understand me, you don't understand me as a marketing director, as the owner of business, you understand what my needs wants hurt. So you do what I want, which is really simple, which is all I want to do is grow the business all who wants more customers? No, I don't wake up in the morning thinking I want PPC or SEO. I wake up in the morning think I want more better customers? Do I really care how you get it? Do I really care about the platform that you're using and the clever algorithms you'll use it? I don't care if you phone people up if you put stickers on car windows, if you get me customers.  

Robert Craven  03:18 

So you don't understand me? You don't understand business? Can someone in your agency have been to some kind of a business school or a business, understand how pricing works, understand how thing hours or understand how Christmas works? I understand, you know, the that this way of business, understand my industry all you got to do Google it to understand how the industry works. The information is all there. Understand my business? Yeah, my products, how my business and my products work. I mean, you just need again, just Google, you could just, you know, we're not all selling widgets. It's not all the same.  

Robert Craven  03:56 

So you don't understand all that stuff. And then on top of that, you know, you think you're so bloody good. Yeah. We did a research piece of research a couple of years ago, we asked, I think it's 500 our businesses. What they thought the customer experience was like was the question was, Do you believe? Do you believe get above average customer experience? So we asked the businesses, the suppliers that question businesses, do you believe you give an above average customer experience? And roughly 90% of them said yes. Oh, yes. Let me get my oh yeah, we give up on average customer experience. People are so delighted with what we do. They just love what we do now. So we we are such great people. And then we went to their customers and said, Do you believe that your suppliers give you an above average customer experience? And I'm afraid to say look, this is all getting bit tangled up? 

Robert Craven  05:00 

I'd say the customers 10% of them said, yeah, they give it above average customer experience. That's my point. There is a massive gap. I mean, there's there's gaps everywhere. There's gaps between your perception of what customers want, and what they want the gaps in communication between you and the customer. There's gaps between your people and the customer. There's gaps between your promise and what you give customers. But there's a gap between what you deliver and what the customer receives, what you think you deliver and what the customer receives. And this is a brilliant opportunity for agencies to resolve you know, some agencies will get there that gap or they need to sort out some agencies will get the if they think things through from the point of view of the customer, what it feels like to be the customer, what it feels like to be at the receiving end of all these three letter acronyms and so on and so forth. What it feels like to be at the end of the excuses for why things haven't happened.  

Robert Craven  06:11 

Then you'll be able to design and put together an agency which gives a way, way, way better customer experience and more importantly, performance in your p&l on your balance sheet. Thanks a lot for listening.