I recently filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I didn’t want to but we paid for repair and waterproofing of our chimney, and the waterproofing still has not been done. The company refuses to return our phone calls, apologize or complete the job. As a consumer, it’s a very frustrating, very helpless place to be.
The worst part is, my chimney vendor is knowingly providing bad customer service, in spite of claiming on their web site and in their marketing materials to be a company that’s “hard working,” “reputable” and “honest.”
Read on for more about the importance of synching your marketing messages with your service offerings from my guest blogger Jennifer Hodroge.
Service. What does it mean to you?
We recently received a cleverly written letter offering us 15% off services, or an even better 25% off service for advance payment. Sounds like a great deal, right? But how we got that letter is the real story.
We had a nasty lawn. The more our service provider came, the worse it looked. Then an expert arrived late in the summer to conduct a survey about the company and their service.
We asked, “Why is our lawn so bad?” We couldn’t figure it out. The expert dug up our grass and gave the dreaded news, “You have grubs.” He dug into a small area in our lawn and found more than 50 squirmy grubs in a small area. That’s what had been eating the lawn (roots, actually) and the reason why grass wouldn’t grow no matter how much we watered.
Until then we didn’t really think of bugs as the culprit. Honestly, we didn’t give grass much thought at all. We just wanted it to be there, alive. I did my duty. I watered during the hot summer months. We had a service come and spread fertilizer and weed killer. But even though we did those basic things, our grass was the worst in the neighborhood.
So, great, we found the reason behind our lack of green grass, right? Wrong. Once the expert came and shared his wisdom, we paid an additional fee for a grub treatment (it’s August). Then after some research, found out we should have done this treatment back in April, possibly saving our grass. Unfortunately, our service provider never suggested a grub treatment. We only found out after the fact. So, not only did we have to reseed our lawn among other things, we were going to be charged by that same company an additional fee to perform services to re-grow grass that we should have never needed in the first place.
So we got our grub treatment, a couple of weeks later, and then canceled the service from that provider. Why? Because I felt they should have prevented the situation in the first place.
Now we get letters weekly and phone calls almost daily offering discounted services from this provider. But we’ve learned our lesson. Now we take care of the lawn ourselves. We do this because even though we paid for service, they didn’t serve. They didn’t address issues ahead of time. They didn’t forewarn of potential problems. They didn’t step in when there was a problem and address it immediately, taking responsibility. No matter how much you discount the service it’s not worthwhile.
Before you develop your next sales pitch or ‘we want you back’ letter, take a moment to make sure the service or product you are providing meets some basic expectations. Be sure that you can live up to the claims you make. Otherwise even the best written materials will not improve your company’s sales and could actually backfire.
And, you’ll be happy to know, we have one of the best lawns in the neighborhood now!
Jennifer HodrogeFreelance Writer, Columbus Ohio
http://www.jhcomm.net/
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