infinite42

That’s too many double negatives, I know. Let’s try some examples:

• Your car dealer says she will call you back at the weekend. She doesn’t.
• You promise to get back to a prospect on Tuesday. You leave it til Thursday
• The spam email promises a discount on your favorite drugs but when you open it it’s just garbage
• Your latest blog comment promises useful feedback but it turns out to be just a bunch of link spam

Are you getting wound up? It’s probably because this seems very familiar. Promises get broken every day.

It’s the promises that people keep that you remember. If you break your promises people will forget you. Very quickly. Don’t forget that a promise could be a number of things:

• A Google AdWords Ad for your website
• A Google hit returned for a keyword from one of your pages
• Your book cover
• Your URL
• Your autoresponder delivery schedule

These all promise something to the visitors who clicks on your ad, or opens your book, or types in your URL, etc.

The words in an AdWords ad promise to show something relevant when your visitors arrive at your site. Your URL (include any file/pathnames here) promises some content related to the words that it includes.

If you promise to do something via any of these paths and then don’t do it, you will disappoint your customers and they may not come back.

No one likes a broken promise.

It’s ironic, I know. I was standing in the middle of Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 the other day wondering what to do with the 6 spare hours that I had before my delayed flight. There was at least 15 staff standing around with shirts saying “May I Help You?” I’d asked several of them where I should go and whether I could get on an earlier flight but no one seemed to have a clue what I should do.

One group sent me towards the plane which I’d already missed (don’t get me started on why I had missed it).

I gave my ticket to a guy at the counter and he asked me who I was and which flight I was on. Wasn’t that information on the ticket?

In return for my delay I got a 10 pound voucher which I could use for a “cup of tea”. I asked the guy where I could get a decent one but he didn’t have any idea.

So I headed to Gordon Ramsay’s new T5 restaurant called Plane Food. I could be certain of spending at least 10 pounds there.

I was greeted with a welcome smile and a “hello, how has your day been”.

The staff served me a wonderful meal of pan fried sea bream. They came back and checked on me occasionally, just to make sure I was OK and enjoying the food.

Other staff were moving quickly and efficiently around the restaurant, checking on tables, making sure wine glasses were spotlessly clean.

So which customer service experience left me with the best impression?

Which one matches the customer service that you provide through your online business? Do you show that you care about your customers? Is your contact information easy to find and do you take these enquiries seriously? Do you listen to your customer’s issues and deal with them? Are your staff trained to understand your products and services so that they can help?

If the answer to these is no then you might be leaving a bad taste in your customer’s mouth…