Are You Training Customers or Is It My Imagination?
Marketers, account managers, and brands all have something in common. They want to achieve more sales, build the brand, and make the most of their high value customers. Are you training customers? Do you realize what you are teaching them?
Our professional business interactions are driven largely by emotion. As people we act and react to joy, pain, and adversity. Many business people will suggest that everyone should remove the emotion, but the act of trying removing emotion is driven by emotion.
Businesses and organizations everywhere are conditioning their clients and customers for future interactions. As people of emotion and habit, we learn to adapt to situations. What we learn leads us to make decisions and choices that our connected with our past experiences.
Training Customers
Our restaurant is closed on Monday. Later the restaurant wonders why business is off. Monday is a business day and people want lunch. The people don’t remember what day, they just know that they are not always open.
Every weekend we have a sale. Why go there on Tuesday, just wait to see what happens on the weekend. Otherwise, you’ll pay too much.
We will email you sixteen times before the sale ends. No need to act now. I will be notified repeatedly. Maybe something else comes along and I don’t act at all. I also don’t trust or understand the deadline.
When I call, I can get a better rate. (Hotels) Don’t use the online registration system, they charge more there. Continue calling a staff that is untrained and unavailable since the hotel strategy is to move reservations to the online system.
You: I want to cancel my subscription. Vendor: Wait, I can give you a better deal. Punish the auto-renew or higher lifetime value customers. Who cares, they are not planning to cancel.
Punishment
Do you believe your business or organization has a customer centric focus? Do you have a culture of service? How are you training customers?
Are you training them the right way or punishing them to fit your agenda?
– DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
