When was the last time you got angry? Can you remember why? For me it was this week. I’d been messed around by a communications company over a period of around a year, and they sent one more email that pushed me over the edge.
If you know me, you’ll know it takes a lot to do that. Most of the time I’m fairly rational (which means I tend to do more thinking than stressing).
This is because I’ve had my fair share of stressing and realised I needed to change or die of the consequences (a 50% corrosion of my oesaphagus due to a sliding hiatus hernia brought on by stress – so often the catalyst for permanent change).
But back to my anger with the comms company. I sent an email threatening court action. As soon as I hit the send button I felt remorse (why get angry with something you can’t control?).
A day later I got a reply back from my ‘angry’ email saying they acknowledged my reply, understood why I felt like I felt, said they’d resolve the issue, and then told me it wasn’t their fault.
I wrote back with compassion. I told them there would be no court action and that if they changed their customer communication system, I was quite sure they wouldn’t lose any more long term customers like myself.
Now I felt good about the whole thing (whether they did or not is their concern).
Companies like this are crying out for our help but they don’t know it. They have no idea how to communicate with customers (a good sales system doesn’t just start with the sales copy, it’s the follow up, on-boarding, and customer retention process).
They start with a bad set of beliefs including the worst of all: “customers are not to be trusted”. It’s systemic and works from the top down.
Despite the fact they desperately need us, these are NOT our customers. Their beliefs are set in stone and will only change with new management (as Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay reveals every week).
You need a desperate market to make copy zing, but that market must also be aware of its desperation.