Archive for the ‘Customer Care’ Category

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The Cobbler and Upselling

July 28, 2014

The Cobbler

Why didn’t he tell me the shoes needed new soles when I got the heels done?

Its a big pain in the butt to bring your shoes with you in a bag, take them to the cobblers, store your ticket and return a few days later to collect them.

When I took them to him the soles looked ok so I just asked him to do the heels.

Just a week later a hole appears on the sole of my just repaired shoes and we go through the whole routine again..very annoying!

Surely he spotted that the soles were weak and needed to be done? Why didn’t he tell me?

In a world where we are all encouraged to up-sell is he crazy, losing easy business I wonder?

Has this wise cobbler learnt from years of experience that he is better off just doing what the customer has asked for instead of suggesting extra things that may be needed and leaving the customer with the possible view that they are always being ‘sold‘ something and maybe not returning?

I would have liked to have avoided the unnecessary nuisance of returning a second time but I did wonder how I would have felt if he was suggesting some extra work that wasn’t that obvious to me.

– If the customer trusts you they will accept your recommendation

– If the customer hasn’t built up trust with you they may feel like they are being pressurised into spending more money unnecessarily and you may lose the sale

– Until your customer trusts you do your best to point out the hole.

If the hole isn’t that obvious you might be better doing a great job on the heel and they will be back ..

What do you think?

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

 

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Posted in Customer Care, Retailing | 3 Comments »

One complaint …two very different replies

June 28, 2014

Handling complaints

Initially I was reluctant to complain but I felt it was necessary. From what I was told I believed we were really hard done by, we received some really bad treatment and if I just let it go the same would happen again and again.

I was raging and I felt I had to do something to address this situation.

I felt it was really important to address what I felt were serious issues so I wrote a strong complaint email outlining all of my concerns to the person involved.

Reply number 1

The person I wrote to handled the situation perfectly (even if he felt like shooting me !)

He called me, assured me that my complaints were not valid but wanted to hear what I had to say because what I had complained about was very serious and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.  We had a rational conversation, he listened to my grievances and I listened to his replies. By the end of the conversation we hadn’t solved everything, all of the issues hadn’t disappeared but he understood why I felt annoyed and aggrieved and I appreciated that I was listened to.

I was raging when I complained but now I had calmed down because I was listened to.

Reply number 2

Because it was a serious issue my man sent a copy of my complaint email to his boss.

While he was busy trying to contact me to try to sort out this issue his boss was busy with a different approach.

Instead of taking my complaint seriously and wanting to listen his boss sent an angry email responding to me.

Effectively it read “How dare you make any such accusations about us and how we do our business. You are unprofessional to have done such a thing and never dare to complain again”

Hmmm..how did I feel now?

I was raging when I complained but now I was even worse.

His boss had zero interest in what I had to say, denied everything, enquired about none of the circumstances that led to me complaining and instead of treating me with some degree of courtesy and respect and wanting to genuinely listen a choice was made to attack.

This situation was really interesting as we had two different individuals taking quite a different approach to dealing with a complaint.

No one likes to receive complaints but we need to treat them like gifts, listen and learn and then deal with them in a way that diffuses the situation instead of making them even worse.

In my scenario this ‘boss’ needs to take a few lessons from the staff member ..

How you handle complaints is a critical part of maintaining the Reputation of both you and your organisation.

Defuse, don’t inflame

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

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Posted in Customer Care, Handling Complaints, Management, Staff training, Training | Leave a Comment »

Sicily and the Manager of first impressions

May 27, 2014

Sicily

Dee is the absolute best at holiday arrangements – she looks after everything and every year we have the best time when we go away.

I can’t stand picking through brochures and websites but she loves it and locks down every detail including great places to visit, excellent accommodation and this time she even managed discounted advance parking at Dublin airport!

Months in advance she managed to get a great deal on a cabriolet car rental and she double checked this with the car hire company, Atlas Choice a few days before we were about to fly out. Car hire can be a little hit and miss in particular when you can get the car you booked “or similar”, which is a term that is quite open to interpretation.

Dee had booked a Renault Megane cabriolet and the plan was we were to collect it at Catania airport after our evening flight and then drive to our hotel, which was an hour away. All going well we would be sipping on a cocktail before 10pm looking out at the Mediterranean and up the next day spinning around the coast with the top down and the wind in our hair!!

“I am sorry, there is a problem with your car and we will have to give you something else” our lady from OS Car Rental said (these were the local agent for Atlas Choice car rental).

“But we confirmed this with you just two days ago?” we said…what was the point?

“There is nothing I can do except give you a bigger car, a Kia Sportage” was her solution and hopefully they would deliver the replacement car to our hotel in a few days.

Hmm..You just couldn’t trust this crew judging by the girls attitude – at this stage she was really annoyed that we would not just accept what she was giving us and move on and out of her way.

She asked us to sign a contract for the Kia Sportage for the duration of the hire. We weren’t very happy being presented with a ‘contract’ that would technically lock us to this car. “We will sign it if you note on it that you will change the car as promised in a few days“.

At this stage she totally lost it “I sign nothing” complete with hands waving and extravagant gesturing ….”If you want a car tonight you sign the contract and take the Kia“. At one point she tore the contract out of Dee’s hand as she saw that we were going to write a note on it.

I was so amused at this point that I managed to get her to repeat her “I sign nothing” performance but this time I recorded her – if anyone from her company gives a toss about customer survive they will enjoy this!

Hotels booked and paid for and getting nowhere fast with our Sicilian friend and determined that she wasn’t going to muck up the start of our holiday we relented ….20 minutes later we rolled out of the car park in something we wouldn’t have booked in a 1,000 years with 114,000 miles on the clock.

Our first thoughts were that Sicily was a big con job and we were on high alert – what were we to expect next?

Thankfully we got the friendliest welcome from the hotel, which was much better than we could have expected and we had our cocktails a little later than planned! We were too late for dinner but the kitchen managed a club sandwich for us.

My daughter Ellen and her boyfriend arrived to Sicily the following evening and got stung paying a €96 euros charge for ‘outside normal hours‘ collection of their car and were thinking ‘what next‘. They had a frustrating hour trying to argue that people coming off a regular evening flight to collect a pre-booked car was quite normal and should not incur a penalty. Con job?

My son Brendan and his girlfriend arrived to Sicily a few days later and got caught with a €25 taxi bill for a 2 minute ride to their hotel. When they questioned the amount he grabbed their suitcase and threw it in the boot of his car until they coughed up. Rachel’s first thought was ‘I just want to go back home‘.

First Impressions All three of us had a lousy first impression of Sicily, which thankfully was replaced quickly by some fantastic ones.

Should every country, every place and every business have a ‘Manager of first impressions‘ to make sure that your first impression is great because that first impression lasts?

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Customer Care, Destination Branding, Holidays, Hospitality, Travel | 6 Comments »

Ambassador, The Restaurant that became a friend

May 11, 2014

Jimmy and William Wong, Ambassador Restaurant, Cork

“We never ask a customer to leave” William told me.

I was absolutely astounded by this. How could you run a business in this way? What about staff costs?

We were doing some work with the Ambassador Chinese restaurant in Cork a number of years back and William Wong the manager and one of the family owners explained some of the business ethos to me.

He told me a story about how a professor who was visiting UCC had arrived late, had his meal and in the early hours of the morning he was still there, enjoying a few cigars (when this was still allowed) and after dinner drinks. He was the only one left in the restaurant but they waited until he was finished before they started tidying up.

Maybe in a family run business you can do this but this incredible work and customer service ethic explains why this restaurant has done so well since William’s parents opened it in 1987.

For as long as I can remember this luxurious Chinese restaurant has maintained incredibly high standards of food and always excellent, friendly service.

In this time I have eaten there so many times, on family occasions, on dates, on special occasions, entertaining clients and for special treats with our own team and I can’t remember ever being disappointed with the experience. Every time you went there you enjoyed the food, the ambiance but also the special welcome and friendliness.

During our short time working with them we got to know the family and in particular William quite well. Without a shadow of doubt he has been one of the very best clients to deal with, always appreciating what was done for him and an absolute pleasure to deal with.

On one occasion William returned from a trip away and brought us back a scroll with ‘Fuzion‘ written on it and a special oriental teapot, which must have been a pain in the backside for him to be carrying around! We treasure both of these gifts and on the odd occasion that you might come across someone that is really unpleasant these remind us that there are special people out there.

I have my own special, if slightly unusual personal connection with William – I was in the middle of a meeting with him one afternoon when the call came through that my granny had passed away. Other than family and close friends I couldn’t think of a better person to be with when that awful news came through.

Sadly the Ambassador restaurant closed its doors last night for the last time (May 10th, 2014) as the building has been bought by Penneys.

Cork will truly miss not only a great restaurant but one that had become a fantastic friend to so many of us.

After 27 hard working years you might wonder what legacy has been left behind by the Wong family?

It’s huge….

The very best of luck to Linda, Norman, Jimmy, the other members of the Wong family and in particular our special friend William.

Thank you for all of those special moments – We’ll miss you.

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Customer Care, Family, Friendship, Hospitality | 10 Comments »

A Night of Passion

April 13, 2014

Passion

This was going to be a busy night dancing between three events ..

First up Eamon Curtin, Programme Manager of the IGNITE Programme had arranged for an incredible speaker to tell us about his fantastic start-up journeys. Raomal Perera, now a Professor of Entrepreneurship told the group of young entrepreneurs about how he scaled the dizzy heights with two companies, ISOCOR (listed on NASDAQ in 1996), which he sold and Network365, which was ultimately purchased by Intel in 2013.

Raomal PereraThe very passionate and honest Raomal,who has won many entrepreneur awards gave the group precious advice about funding a business and dealing with Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists. He told the group that the first things they look for in a young business they consider investing in, is the Integrity and PASSION of the people involved.

Next up we headed to L’Atitude 51 for the International Wine and Food Society “Best of Local Producers” event where we sampled the best of wine which was carefully selected by the joint owner Beverley Mathews who is as passionate about wine as the guest food producers.

The wine was accompanied by the finest food from some of the best of local food producers. We heard from Frank Hederman who has been smoking salmon for over 30 years, we heard from the owner of On The Pigs Back about the fantastic cheeses and best of all was our butcher from Kanturk.

Jack McCarthy, Butcher KanturkJack McCarthy, 5th generation butcher was both entertaining and no-nonsense as he lit up the room with his passion for spicing beef, black pudding, haggis and tongue – you just wanted to plan an immediate trip to Kanturk and stock up on anything that this passionate man was selling.

Our final event of the evening was the Mark Geary gig at Coughlan’s Bar, which has just been voted IMRO’s best live venue in Ireland. This is an incredible and well deserved accolade for this cosy venue, which is a huge credit to the woman behind all of this, Edel Curtin. Bands all over Ireland and Cork music fans are lucky to have such a passionate person as Edel bringing us great gigs in such an intimate venue on a regular basis.

Mark Geary

After a little wait our buddy Mark Geary and his band of merry men and the fabulous Grainne Hunt came on stage and entertained us in his inimitable style complete with great songs, great story telling and a special sense of humour. This was a great gig with a special solo cover of a Tom Waits song by Grainne ..beautiful!

Mark could have brought a small band with him for this intimate gig but this is a passionate artist who prefers to give his audience everything instead of making a few extra bob and doing just enough.

We had a really great and quite diverse night, but the one thing that was the same and made everything special, whether it was business, wine, food, music or running a venue was Passion.

Raomal was right …Passion is the most important ingredient of all.

Does what you do allow your passion to shine through? 

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

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Posted in Business Start Ups, Customer Care, Entertainment, Events, Motivation, Positivity | 2 Comments »

Time to give up what you’re doing?

March 29, 2014

Flatpack furniture

Edel called me from Dublin to say that the guy who was sent from Viking to assemble the furniture for the new office was grumbling, moaning, huffing – he would be back the next day to start the job!

We finally managed to get the keys for new office and now we had to kit it out. Viking is a great option with their wide range of furniture at reasonable prices but I’ve learnt the hard way that the assembly of the furniture is a big undertaking – even the smallest pieces can be more than awkward.

I had thought that finding someone to do this was going to be difficult but much to my relief it turns out that Viking were now providing this service as part of the package – major phew!

However it looked like Mr Assembly might be hard work ..

I joined Edel in the office the next morning and she gave me a “look” as Mr Assembly and his co-worker could be heard inside the adjoining room grumbling, moaning and huffing about the task ahead.

I made an attempt at cheering up our happy friends by buying them coffee early on but the effect seemed to wear off quickly. It was clear that we would have to tip toe around these boys.

Suggesting our preferred height between shelves was just about digested. They reckoned they didn’t have to assemble the smaller desk units – Dee’s suggestion of a clarification call to Viking seemed to sort out that one and when I asked them if they would be taking away the packing materials it was if I said something really horrible about a close relative!

I had to leave before they finished up so I told them there was a few quid in it for them if they managed to take away the packing materials. I thanked them both for their work and the quieter of the two wished us the best of luck in the new office. That was nice.

Edel called later when the job was done – our happy men took half the packing materials away and once all the units were assembled they refused to push them into position in the office “We assemble things, we don’t move them” – Nice!

Edel who lacked the energy to cajole them took just 5 minutes herself to pull and drag the desks and cupboards from the middle of the room to where she wanted them.

I wondered about our two happy men.

I have no doubt that they were on a tight fee to complete our assembly job but very early on they made a choice about what mood and persona they were going to bring with them to work including a clear decision to do as little as possible.

Were they totally miserable doing this work, was something awful going on in their lives, were they treated really poorly by the last crew they assembled furniture for, were they being treated badly by Viking or by nature are they just grumpy people?

Whatever was going on with them they were miserable and brought this misery with them this day.

If this is how you feel at work is it time to give up what your are doing?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

 

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Posted in Customer Care, Motivation, Positivity | 9 Comments »

Complaints make Great Gifts!

January 20, 2014

Complaints make Great Gifts

“Can I meet you in the morning” was the request.

Oh no.. from the tone I felt a complaint coming – I wondered what was wrong.

This was a really good account and we were just at the early stages of working with this client. The project was quite complex, which involved quite a few members of our team.

There were quite a number of elements to the project including graphic design, web design, social media, event management, internal communications and PR. We pride ourselves on being able to handle all of these in-house, which is a real strength of ours.

Our team had been briefed well and each of us were working diligently on our own part of the project and liaising directly with the client.

Our relationship had started off in a really positive manner so I was really concerned and confused that something could be wrong.

We met and sure enough our client expressed a concern about how things were going with the project.

The client’s problem was really simple – While we were all quite clear about what we were doing he was overwhelmed by the correspondence and interaction from so many people on so many different aspects of the project. Collectively we were able to handle the huge variety of tasks but this was just way too confusing for him.

To alleviate this problem we arranged that all of our correspondence would come through just one person and we organised it in such a way that we were only dealing with one aspect at a time – while this did not seem like the most efficient way of dealing with things for us it was the best way as it worked for him.

This approach has been working out great and the project has been progressing really well since.

While we all hate complaints they are in fact precious gifts.

A customer instead of staying silent and suffering with a scenario that isn’t working for them has taken a huge step and communicated that something is wrong.

Take the complaint, listen attentively to it, understand it, embrace it and deal with it – complaints are precious gifts that can only make you better.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Customer Care | 6 Comments »

Support Beam Advice

January 13, 2014

Support Beam Advice

“I know you don’t like that big beam and you want to remove it but you can’t – It’s a support beam. Take it away and the building falls down“

That’s black and white advice you just wouldn’t ignore and you would have to accept.

When advice like that comes with such a critical consequence you just have to follow it, and in a way it makes it really simple to take on board.

Often we give specific advice to clients, which we believe is critical to the success of their projects or business.

It’s really problematic when the person you are advising just won’t take the advice on board. Because no building is falling down as a consequence sometimes they ignore it because they feel they know better, they have a strong resistance for some reason, someone somewhere told them to do something else, they want to save money or they just have some other reason for digging in and not taking what you say on board. Often a course of action might simply take them out of their comfort zone.

In our case it could be advice around one or more of these elements:

  • A business name change
  • Branding refresh
  • Merchandising and POS
  • A new website
  • Optimisation of the website so you will be found on Google searches
  • Engaging on social media regularly
  • Dealing pro-actively with a  crisis PR situation
  • PR for successful initiatives or good news
  • Commissioning professional photos
  • Creating an event to generate interest
  • Profiling the individuals as well as the business
  • Supporting  campaigns with advertising
  • Allocating sufficient budget to campaigns

I found myself chatting to a new client recently and we were reviewing their proposal.

The client was very reluctant about one really important element in the plan, which I felt was critical to the success of the campaign. For me if we didn’t do this element the plan would definitely not work.

After a long conversation and some unsuccessful persuasion I had to change my approach.

“Imagine I am your engineer and this is your house we are talking about. This element that you don’t want to go with is a support beam. If we take it away your house will fall down. Do you get my point?“

The penny drops …

If your client won’t take your “support beam” advice then maybe you should just walk away – you don’t want to watch a house falling down!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Advertising, Business Planning, Crisis PR, Customer Care, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Giving away the customer

December 19, 2013

Call Centre frustrationWhen I ring the customer service number do I really know who I am talking to?

I listen carefully, does the person at the end of the phone seem to know what they are talking about, are they talking like a robot, are my calls being recorded for internal purposes, can the person I’m talking to really do anything for me?

At this stage we actually expect the worst, we expect to go through a series of button pressing, we expect to be in a queue and we expect very little success from the “service” call.

Am I talking to someone in a call centre who is fielding calls for numerous companies or am I actually talking to someone who works for the company I called and who does care that the call is completed with a satisfied customer at the end of the phone.

When the business started was customer service a priority, is good customer service a good thing, is customer service something that can differentiate you from your competitors …is customer service that simple element that can help you increase business and generate great word of mouth?

Before you sign that contract and outsource your customer service, no matter how financially attractive the deal appears is this something you can afford to really hand over to someone else?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Customer Care | 3 Comments »

Doing the small stuff great

November 18, 2013

Kerrie O'CallaghanSomeone has to answer the phone and someone has to let visitors into the building and greet them as come into the office.

This isn’t rocket science but at the same time it needs to be done right. You would hope that the person with this responsibility would carry out the task in a pleasant and friendly manner – after all, it is often the first impression that anyone would experience of your business.

We’ve been really lucky down through the years in that all of our team are pleasant and friendly and will give a really good impression of Fuzion.

The primary responsibility for answering the phone (we all do it by the way) tends to lie with the ‘junior’, the person who is newest to the team. Initially we find that the newbie is more than happy with this role but after a while they do want to feel that they are progressing and that this task is moved onto someone else.

While everyone who has worked with us has been great at that ‘hello, meet and greet‘ role we had one person who really stood out; Kerrie O’Callaghan.

Day after day we had people on the phone or who had come for a meeting specifically commenting about how special their greeting was.

This wasn’t an isolated incident but an absolute trend – she did this important, junior, simple but yet important task incredibly well.

Not surprisingly the hugely talented Kerrie, who did everything with 150% enthusiasm, progressed quickly and went on to do every task incredibly well but unfortunately for Fuzion she had the emigration bug and is now enjoying huge career success down under.

It’s funny how someone who does the small things great ends up also doing the big things great..

Kerrie, we miss you!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Customer Care, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity, Recruitment, Staff training, Training | 13 Comments »

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