I have declared this month Joyful July–a month when we will focus on bringing humanity back. We have robots, programmed GPTs to think a certain way, AI cloning, automated emails, forms, calendar apps, and many other efficient ways to get our jobs done. But, where’s the humanity?
It’s great to be more efficient in the backend, but people working with people in a 100% hands-off delivery system is not good for relationships.
The system without the service is only half right.
This morning I was making reservations for a trip we are planning in November. This services used to be easy. You could find what you’re looking for on their website and mostly navigate the whole process yourself. If you hit a glitch there was a phone number basically on every page. This morning it was not working. No phone number present. Chat bot didn’t work. I emailed through their ‘contact us’ service that required you to indicate your issues from their pull-down menus that had nothing to do with my problem. I explained the issue and submitted the form. The response to me was that someone would get back to me in two days. I watched every video they had in their resource area. I watched YouTube videos about the product as well.
Mind you, this is global company, this is not a bed and breakfast in Vermont with two people running the whole operation. I clicked through to a few more pages and found a chat that was working. I answered all of its automated questions then asked for an agent since none of the questions they were asking had anything to do with the information I needed. A live person said hello and asked my issue. Upon hearing the problem, she said it was my browser. She explained the site is not compatible with Safari. I suggested they put that on their home page.
Chrome it is! I circled through the web on the Google browser and had the same exact problem.
It is not a browser issue.
I pulled out my signed paper contract with this company and started calling the service numbers I could find. The first number was voicemail. I left a message and requested someone call me back today. They never called.
I called another number. I spoke to a condescending jerk who could not understand what I was seeing on my computer and kept telling me to do things that I’ve already accomplished. I asked for an email so I could send him a screen shot, or he could transfer me to a supervisor or someone more knowledgeable. He said the system didn’t allow him to do that. Really?
I hung up and called a third number. A person answered and was sympathetic. She said she couldn’t help but would send me to someone who could.
She did.
Finally, I was talking to a person who went through everything with me, answered my questions, and identified where I had misunderstood an important element of the contract. She apologized that it hadn’t been explained very well to begin with, and listened intently as I enumerated my attempts to reach someone and thanked her for her graciousness.
Shouldn’t my first attempt gotten me to someone like her?
Of course it should!
How can we each do better with our customers?
received an email letter last week that used the phrase “each of my clients.”
This phrase tells each reader that each of us matters. That we can expect personalized, care, and as one of her many clients, I feel that way. Here’s what she does that we can do also:
- She asks for feedback and when you respond with an email, she sends you an email back. Maybe not her, but if it’s an assistant, it says so. The responses are usually more than just a ‘Thanks,’ too. A few short sentences of appreciation keeps me wanting to stay on her list, and it’s all list-building after all. Please email me! I’d love to get to email you back.
- Her messaging is so spot-on, I really feel like she’s talking to me. I am going to anticipate that soon she will ask me if I’ve ever had an experience making a travel reservation just like the one above. Have you? Choosing universal themes to tell a story that demonstrates your point connects with your audience and show them you are relatable. They feel closer to you.
- Speaking of relatable, she’s vulnerable with what she shares. That authenticity speaks volumes. I don’t feel like she’s trying to bamboozle me. She’s sincere and friendly, and you can be that way too.
- She’s kind. Her messages are full of empathy and encouragement. She’ll share a story from her early years of creating her business and recall some challenge that she had that perhaps everyone has in their first year of anything new. She’ll say, “Maybe you’ve felt that way too, spending hours on a simple task because the people you thought were there to help you didn’t help at all. Let me assure you I wouldn’t change a single thing about days like that. I learned to be determined and keep asking until I found someone to help, and I learned how much I could actually figure out on my own.”
Getting the hang of it?
These are easy ways to put people first and forge a relationship with them so they will continue to use you and refer you.
Stay tuned for more Joyful July tips like this in the email. Follow me on Instagram for more posts there too.
If you are feeling confused and overwhelmed by the constant barrage of new ways to promote yourself, enjoy my no-nonsense approach you can learn more about in this free 30-minute webinar, ESCAPE MARKETING MANIA right now.
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