Conversational Marketing: Just A Band-Aid For Bad Customer Service?

September 13th, 2007

Technology Here’s an article about some “new” form of marketing / advertising called “conversational marketing.” I’m not as cynical as the author - I do want to have a conversation with many corporations I buy products from - but most of the time, they don’t seem interested in talking to me.

Whenever I walk into a big box store it’s safe bet that few of the employees have any clue about the products sold there or what’s good about them. Most often, the vast majority are teenagers who don’t give a fig about the products they’re selling - and why should they? They probably aren’t paid very well and in lieu of an actual conversation are fed a bunch of lines regarding extra stuff to sell like extended warranties and store credit cards.

Then, say I actually buy something and have a problem with it. Inevitably, the answer is to call some phone number that connects you with a help center overseas. You have to navigate through a maze of “press 1, press 2, press 4, press 9, press 22 to talk to a real person”. That person is reading from a script that asks you, “Is your xxx plugged in?” And none of those employees care about the products or the company they work for either - they probably aren’t paid very well either, and are just given a bunch of extra… never mind.

There was a time when one could walk into a neighborhood store and talk directly to the owner. Some of the employees were long-term and had real, useful information about the products for sale. If you had a problem you could get a cash refund. There was also a time when companies put the customer first and not profit - actually selling things with genuine worth instead of tricking them into buying pointless things they don’t want or of dishonest value.

Still, I’ve had decent customer service with a handful of companies: Apple (dealing with an Apple Genius when my MacBook hard drive died actually turned out to be an excellent experience), OSH, Fidelity and USAA get kudos. But the vast majority of companies are sub-par.

I know all this seemingly has little to do with marketing, but I just suggest that any corporation that wants to get back to having a “conversation” with its customers - should take a step back and look at every point at which an actual human representative comes into contact with a customer and figure out if they’re really engaging in a conversation - not just going down a checklist of how to minimize conversation time or treat them like a liability.

I feel that the move to increase the bottom line - probably the largest factor towards automatic services, outsourcing, and having a high turnover of employees - has done wonders at increasing profits but destroyed good customer service. I still buy many products out of necessity - not because I really like the company behind it.

Essentially, if a company gives “lip service” to having a conversation through advertising while providing terrible customer service to paying customers, I daresay that’s a complete waste of ad dollars. I believe many of your irate customers would say the same thing… if you’d only listen to them instead of forcing them through a phone tree.

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