Attract More Customers » customer-unfriendly

When marketers act like pushy strangers

Tom McKay — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:03:55 +0000

Imagine a complete stranger walking up and demanding your name, phone number or other contact info. Whether it’s on the sidewalk or at a party, that degree of pushiness, especially by a complete stranger, would be totally unwelcome. And yet marketers do it all the time.

I’m talking about those pop-up windows that ask for your email address in exchange for some information that might be worth your time and might interest you. Then again, it might not. After all, they don’t know you, or anything about you — except that somehow you landed on their website. You probably know little or nothing about them too.

Entry “pop-up sign-ups” are the most annoying. These appear almost immediately after you land on a page – before you’ve had a chance to look around and see what the site is all about. Another appears every time you click anything. If you’re anything like me, you quickly tire of the nonsense and exit the site.

Supposedly, they’re a proven way to increase sign-ups. Maybe. But I wonder how many frustrated visitors (like me) enter a phony or never-checked email address just so they’ll be left alone. If that’s the case, the quantity of sign-ups may increase, but the quality suffers.

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Hourly rates or flat fees?

Tom McKay — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:04:32 +0000

I don’t believe in charging hourly rates for my work. First of all, real value can’t be measured in hours – only in quality and results. Paying hourly rates for creative work is upside-down and counterproductive. Sometimes they’re even a ripoff for the client.

Suppose you needed heart surgery. Would you shop around for the lowest price? Of course not. You’d want the very best quality care available. It’s the same with your marketing. You want the most attractive, persuasive, compelling website (or brochure, sales letter, etc.) you can get. Now honestly, do you believe you’ll get the quality you demand from a less-expensive, less-experienced, less-knowledgeable provider? Are you crossing your fingers and hoping for Nordstrom quality at Wal-Mart prices?

Let’s go back to your heart surgery again. (Don’t worry, I promise you’ll be feeling better soon.) OK, you need a certain surgical procedure. Suppose one of the surgeons at your hospital had performed hundreds of these procedures over her 20+ year career. Because of her experience, she can open you up, fiddle around in there, and zip you closed again in, say, two hours. A less-experienced surgeon at the same hospital might need 12 hours to provide the same quality.

If hourly rates are the metric you use, the journeyman surgeon would be paid six times more than the expert! Am I the only one who thinks that’s just backwards?

Look at it this way: Would you feel cheated if you were forced to pay more because your writer was slow (or, considering writers’ reputations, hung over)? Likewise, should an expert be penalized because he’s focused and fast?

One more thing. Shouldn’t you be able to call up your writer/designer/ webmaster with a question, idea or concern — without running up your bill? When you and your service provider agree on a flat rate for a project, those issues don’t come up. You can call anytime without re-starting the clock.

In other words, look for creative talent who charge like doctors — not lawyers.

photo credit: Robbie-73

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Which is worse: Voice mail? Or human operators?

Tom McKay — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:52:58 +0000

You could practically hear poor Seth Godin’s teeth grinding Sunday when he wrote about a recent agonizing encounter with corporate voice mail. You know the drill: you finally work your way through four or five menus, then end up with a recording, “Sorry, we’re closed.”

No human employee could get away with that kind of behavior. It’s like slapping a customer across the mouth, then slamming the door in their face.

Suppose an employee pulled this kind of stuff every day? asks Seth:

Puts up a sign indicating which of five doors customers should use.

Locks that door.

Randomly unlocks another door.

When someone figures out which door to use, he runs out and kicks them in the groin, then locks the door.”

How long would it take you to fire that clown?

But hiring human beings to answer the phone isn’t always the best answer, unfortunately. A few years ago a company I worked with decided to go “customer-friendly” and finally got rid of their (terrible) voice mail system.

Result: It took 3-5x longer to get through to your party with the human operator than the old VM system.

Like they say, be careful what you wish for…

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