Customer service lessons from Princess Cruises

Yes, I am on vacation, but it is hard to tell that from all the email I am answering! At least I can’t use my phone since I’m on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska in Yukon Country.

Here’s a great lesson from Princess. They have issued a “Customer Awareness Program” that they print in the welcoming book (about 3 inches thick, filled with just about every answer to every question you might have). Rule #10, the last rule, is quite intriguing: “We never say no. We say “I will be pleased to check.” We suggest alternatives. We call our supervisor or manager if we feel we cannot satisfy our passenger’s needs.”

Lots of companies have similar instructions to employees. But here’s the difference — on Princess, it works!

Here’s the case study.

Monday night was formal night. I brought my tux but forget to bring a shirt. Sure enough, they had a good supply of tuxedo shirts in the gift shop. A clerk came over to ask if she could help. I said, “Do you have a tape measure” so I could figure out the right size. She said she didn’t have one. So I said, “Then I guess you can’t help.” She said, “Well, I could use a strip of plastic to measure, or I could take the shirt to my room.” She mentioned a third way, but I was so amazed that she had two good solutions that I couldn’t keep up with her!

Now that’s customer service! She thought on her feet and she made a sale (and got some good PR for her company as well!)

Today’s chipping point: use the words in the Princess pledge. They are quite empowering for you and your employees and re-frame the entire customer service angle.

In the old days, you had to die to get your face on a U.S. postage stamp.

What fun is that?

I mean, do you ever really know if your face will be on the stamp? You’re dead! No fun at all. Ogden Nash has no idea he’s on a stamp.

Now, stamps.com will put your face on a stamp for a small (well, not so small) service fee.

But you’ll be alive to see it and show it to your grandkids!

Now, lets get serious, fellow marketers.

You can use these stamps for your face if you are a speaker, or your book if you are an author, or your product if you’ve created a game or a widget.

You just can’t be on the UN’s Most Wanted List.

Even stamps.com has its standards!

Special thanks to author and PR LEADER BJ Gallagher for this tip. Stamps go live on May 15, 2005.

Here’s another installment in what is likely to be a long series of Stupid Marketing Tricks.

I received an email the other day from a marketer, a person I’ve known for years through the National Speakers association. The subject line read: Oops, I made a mistake in the link.”

The message apologized for making a mistake by posting an incorrect link to a product she was selling.

Funny thing was, I don’t recall getting the first message with the bad link.

I am 100 percent convinced she thought she could get more people to open her message with an apology than with any other method.

Well, it worked to the point where I opened the message. But she lost her credibility with me forever with this little ploy.

Before you respond and say, “well maybe you didn’t get the first message,” read on.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a message apologizing for a bad link. It seems like some “smart” marketer stumbled on this ploy and now his followers are adopting the bad example.

I don’t know about you, but I test my links before I send out messages — and yes, there are times when all the testing in the world won’t reveal a bad link. But I’m getting almost as many apology messages as I get messages from Pay Pal saying there’s an error on my account.

Frankly, I would be horrified to send a message to my entire list saying I am such a jerk for not testing my links beforehand.

Have direct marketers sunk so low as to have to pretend to be incompetent just to make a sale?

There are better ways to make a living, and better ways to be able to sleep at night.

I sent her a note asking her if it was truly a mistake or a clever marketing tactic.

It has been a week and I haven’t heard back from her.

If am lucky, maybe I never will!

My humble blog has cracked the top 1,000 blogs on Bloglet!

That inspiring note comes from my blogmaster, Ted Demopoulos.

I find it hard to believe, frankly. I’ve been doing this for about three months, and I know the traffic numbers aren’t Amazonian, or Ebayian.

So how did it get to rank so high? Beats me. I can only guess that blogs are NOT being read as much as the media bandwagon is making us believe.

On the other hand, can 38 subscribers be wrong?

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog (see the sign up box near the top of this page) so we can move even higher!

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the measure of a good picture is if it can be understood with not one single word.

Look at the two examples: the new government food “pyramid” and the Cingular cell phone signal strength indicator.

The food pyramid cannot be described or understood without at least 1,000 words. If that’s not enough, you can probably link to a dozen footnotes and references to research reports.

Never has there been a more confusing symbol. It has been described in the media as a cross between a gay rights flag and a health club logo. If people can’t “get it” by looking at it, then 1,000 words won’t help.

The Cingular symbol is four vertical bars, each one longer than the one to the left. Everyone recognizes this immediately as the strength indicator on a cell phone. In their ads, they show four items, each larger than the previous one — people, popcorn boxes, houses, office towers. Each time I see a new commercial, I marvel at their creativity. Sort of a corporate “Where’s Waldo?”

Look at my logos at http://www.prleads.com and http://www.greatteleseminars.com In both cases, the logos give the reader a good idea of what the business does.

A good symbol is like a good joke. If you have to explain it, then it doesn’t work.

Today’s Chipping Point: Does your logo show what you do? Does it do it in a way that is memorable? If it doesn’t send me a note and I’ll put you in touch with my designer.

Fame is relative. And I don’t mean if your relatives are named Kennedy or Bush that you are famous, although that doesn’t hurt.

Every niche has its own superstars. You’ve seen them at conventions. Or you see their names everyone on the web.

But only the people in that niche have any idea of who those chosen personalities are. And sometime, niches are micro niches with their own levels of superstars.

Case in point.

I attended an Internet Marketing conference over weekend. Now, I don’t want to toot my horn, but I did write one of the first books about marketing on the Internet back in 1996 when the Internet was really new. And I taught the first course on Internet Marketing at Berkeley. I am pretty well known, although I don’t make a career of getting known. I have a life.

So imagine my surprise when I attended this conference and the conference promoter didn’t know who I was!

My ego was a bit crushed, I’ll admit, but life goes on in an interesting way.

The conference coordinator told his story. He had produced the first Internet marketing conference a year before my book had been published — and I had never heard of him!

I was known in the corporate marketplace. He was known in the business opportunities marketplace.

Coincidentally, we knew a lot of the same people!

Point of the story: Fame is relative. You could be sitting next to the president of the American Bar Association on your next plane ride and never know it.

Today’s Chipping Point: Treat every new contact as a potential superstar. They just might be.

TV’s Sweeps Month Muddies the Waters

TV is engaged in its “Sweeps Month,” the semi-annual ritual in which they base their ad rates for the coming season. The rates are based on the ratings of their shows. So all the networks pull out all the plugs to put their best material on the air to attract more viewers.

We see season-ending shows, finales to contests, exposes on the news, tear-jerking weddings, tear-jerking deaths, nail-biting cliffhangers and other gimmicks to grab our attention.

This has been going on for quite some time and is the standard for the industry.

Does anyone else see the fallacy here?

The ratings are biased!

The ratings don’t reflect normal viewing patterns or habits.

The ratings don’t reflect normal content on the shows.

After the sweeps month is over, TV goes back to being normal — or worse — as the networks show reruns!

It is sort of like going out on a blind date. Everyone is on their best behavior. It has very little to do with the way they would act in real life!

I can see why the networks have concocted this slight-of-hand trick.

I can’t understand why advertisers have bought into this deception. After all, they are the ones paying unrealistic prices based on a performance record that is rigged.

PrimeTime Live scored a big hit for their sweeps month by airing the alleged dirty laundry of the American Idol TV show.

Put another way, tabloid television has reached a new low point.

Unable to come up with a compelling TV program of its own, PTL decided to trash the highest rated show. I guess the best offense is to be offensive.

In case you’ve been living in a box and haven’t heard the dope, PTL interviewed a former contestant who claimed to have received favors, advice and sex with a judge on Idol. The contestant also is trying to promote his new album – coincidentally.

If it looks like sleeze and smells like sleeze, it just might well be sleeze.

Imagine if the former contestant had called up the show and said, “Do a segment on me and my new album.” They would have hung up the phone on him.

But if he said “I can help you get more viewers. All we have to do is trash somebody’s reputation and I have proof” then the tabloid TV is ready to send a film crew. Of course, they’ll promote the show a week in advance to build an audience as they build suspense. Then they’ll tell a few newspapers about the most serious charges a day before so they can really get an audience.

All at the expense of someone’s reputation. I might add that the person being trashed actually helped him! Imagine if someone did something bad to this guy. Watch out!

Before I go too far, I’m sure some readers will say, “But it is true. It happened. It is news.”

Okay. If it were really news, wouldn’t it be on the news tonight, and not held for a week to be seen on a tabloid show? Is this what investigative reporting has come to? Get a story, hold it for sweeps month and cash in at the ratings game? On the morality scale, that’s just a tad better than gossip.

Now we’re back to the lessons you can learn from this:

1. TV is all about ratings. If you can help them, they’ll tell your story. But be careful you don’t get chewed up by the story. I believe this “singer” will not sell many albums and that he will be shunned by the industry and the audience.

2. Shows like this claim to be journalism, or at least people see it as journalism. And that lowers the standard for shows and newspapers that really try to present news in a serious manner.

Reporters aren’t just interested in what’s new. They also want to see how companies and people are using your products.

Be prepared to give reporters the names and contact info for your clients who are willing to do case studies. If this is a new product, you will want to “seed” the marketplace with a few test sites that you can work with for reporters.

Also, prepare your customers for the kinds of questions reporters are likely to ask, such as:
How do you like this product?
How does it compare to what you tried before?
How hard was it to install or teach?
How much money has it saved?
How much money have you made from this? (If it can be tracked.)
What problem did the product solve?

If you can provide these answers, you’ll get a leg up on your competitors who don’t have this info!

I’ll admit I’ve been a fan of a certain copywriter who sends me email every week about her services. Her twist is that she shares a personal story each week. We learn about her life and get to feel like we know her. Her messages are reminiscent of those long-gone days of the personal letter from a friend who just is writing to catch up.

In this age of cell phones, IM and email, the personal letter is dead.

So, getting messages from this marketer are a nice respite. We read her story, and then look at her pitch. She gets us to open her email. Personal marketing works!

But she crossed the line today.

With a headline reading “Some bad news, dan” (yes, lower case ‘d’) the message went on to recall her car being stolen, no hope for recovery and the loss of thousands of dollars of electronic goodies. Then she followed with the sad tale of her son’s medical problems.

Okay so far.

But apparently, that was just a set up for saying that because of these problems, she hasn’t had time to promote event properly so she is extending the deadline for her seminar, so sign up soon.

Sorry kiddo, you can manipulate me only so far. I’m putting you on my blocked list.

I think the idea of being a personal marketer is a good one. People want to buy from people they like. But I think that when you try to manipulate people like this, you cross the line.

Don’t let it happen to you.