Why travel agents will be no more

Earlier this year I wrote about how my girlfriend had a tough time dealing with Lucky Brand jeans customer service. Fortunately they reached out finally and went above and beyond to rectify the situation. Unfortunately I still hear some shocking stories of customer service from friends, it just can't happen in this day and age. The individual has too much power to hurt your brand.

Recently two close friends of mine were married and wanted to go to Fiji on their honeymoon. They also had their wedding registry with Flight Centre to help pay for their trip. Since this was such a major trip for the two of them, they decided to use an expert to plan and book it. Unfortunately this so called travel expert didn't do his research and relied on outsourcing the accommodations to a Fijian travel firm. This resulted in my friends being placed in a worn down, family hotel on the mainland of Fiji where beaches aren't nearly as good as on the outlying islands. They arrived after traveling from Vancouver ready to relax and were instantly disappointed. They had been overpromised and under-delivered. Images they were sent were those of the hotel's sister property which was much nicer, but was double the price they were told. After two days they determined the hotel just wouldn't do and contacted their "professional" agent to help them switch locations. After he dilly-dallied for a day they went online and booked their own accommodation for the rest of the trip.

They arrived at their new accommodations to find it was cheaper than what their "professional" travel agent had booked them and much more to the specifications they had indicated to him, which he had failed to produce. It was off the mainland, featured pristine beaches, no screaming children, and a very nice private bungalow.

Now, I know there is no way a travel agent will know where to stay in every country in the world, it's impossible to ask that of them. What is possible, is for them to do a little bit of research on locations before recommending something to a new client. If an average joe can go on Trip Advisor and Expedia and read reviews why can't a person who's job it is to book travel for people? Such a simple thing could have avoided the enormous headache that is being created surrounding this entire catastrophe.

Now Flight Centre is holding up a refund for my friends by saying it depends on what the Fijian travel agency THEY outsourced to tell them they will give back. Well, unfortunately it's not my friends problem that YOU outsourced to Fiji. The only mistake my friends made was booking using a Flight Centre travel agent. Now that you have failed on booking travel AND customer service I'm sure they won't make that mistake again.

Oh and now they've told all their friends too, so..... you've got that going for you Flight Centre.

Awful Execution

Is there anything worse than a mass communication piece from a company you have a relationship with that forgets your name? As a marketer and someone with half a brain I realize that they don't send out individual emails, but I also understand that my cell phone company should have a system that allows them to put my first name into the email instead of....

They executed the "Dear" part well but that is about as good as they did on this piece in which they were asking their customers for help in making the company better. I have one suggestion for them, but I'm not sure if this email was meant for me because there isn't any name on it so I guess i'll have to save my thoughts.

When you are sending out a mass email or mass communication check your database, check your system, and for goodness sakes do a test run to make sure everything will go smooth. You are sending this out to YOUR clients, I wouldn't want to embarrass myself like this.

Don't let them leave empty handed

Recently I was in the wedding party for a friends wedding. We had arranged to get suits using a new company named Indochino that has you size yourself, enter the numbers on their website and three weeks later you get a custom suit delivered to your door. Now there were some problems with the initial suits as one could have predicted but the company has addressed this by offering a free remake if a tailor you take it to recommends they remake it. They also offer and alteration credit if only minor tweaks are required. So after getting sized up properly and receiving my new suit I needed to return the original suit to the company.

Indochino happens to have their head office in Vancouver so I decided to just walk down and drop it off. I was greeted at the door by one of their employees who then decided he could not let me leave the office empty handed. He proceeded to give me one of their newly designed "Suit Utility Kits" which included a black tie, cuff links, tie clip, and handkerchief.

I was a little frustrated with the suit process initially but when they gave me this small gift I turned into an advocate. I am now happy with a great looking suit and perfect accessories to go with it. It can be pretty easy to diffuse a customers anger with something this small. Isn't it better to invest the small amount of money instead of losing a potential repeat customer? Well done Indochino.

Keep your customers in a vault

Banks spend an impressive amount of money on television advertising in an attempt to lure people away from their competitors. But is that the best way for them to spend it? Shouldn't they spend more money on holding onto their current customers. The majority of my bank accounts and various investments accounts are with a specific bank, why aren't they working harder to maintain my relationship with them? Instead I see other banks offering me pretty good incentives to move to them. All I receive from my bank are statements and untargetted offers to use their rewards shop.

The other banks are offering me the simplest things to win me over, such as no fees for pulling cash out of ATMs that aren't theirs. I do that a couple of times a month probably amounting to costs of $3-5. My bank could offer me the same thing and keep a heavily invested client happy.

For a cost of $3-5 a month, that sounds like a no-brainer. How can a business full of financial minds say no to retaining a client for $60 a year? They will easily make that back off fees within the first month.

For an industry that is entrusted with peoples life savings you'd think they would have a higher emphasis on client retention, but they seem to be more interested in client acquisition. Its the standard marketing rule - generating a new customer is "x" times more expensive that retaining one you've already sold.

What are your competitors offering your clients that you could easily offer them yourselves to ensure they stay with you? That's what you should be asking yourself.

Let your customers do the work for you

While I am not the biggest fan of Ticketmaster due to their monopoly over ticket sales and thus some ridiculous "service fees" that are attached to most tickets, they do do a lot of things right.

One of their best marketing ideas is allowing customers to create a bank of bands/acts that are "Favourites". When one of your Favourites is having a show in your hometown Ticketmaster will kick out an email telling you as much. How genius is that? The customer feels special because they know right when a concert in their hometown is announced and Ticketmaster has to do less marketing of the show. These people will want to be the one to announce to their friends that they know a show is coming so you've got instant word of mouth, and all Ticketmaster had to do was put the tool in place so their best customers could do the selling for them.

Sometimes it pays to let your customers do a little of the work for you. All you have to do is provide them with the tools, just like how you outfit your sales team with collateral.

Blocking talent

As a recent entrant into the job market I have noticed an alarming trend - companies blocking talent from working for them. And I am writing this entry from the perspective of a slightly bitter job hunter, but also from a practical approach to running a company.

The main way companies shield themselves from talented individuals is with the "Industry Experience" requirement.

Now, in all fairness, there is some value in this argument. Often specific industries have intricacies and best practices that are handy to know. So having someone with this knowledge is of great advantage.

However, you are also limiting your potential hire to a very niche market. Imagine the possible intelligent, talented candidates that you are blocking by having this as one of your top criteria in your job search. Best practices and industry knowledge are something that can be picked up by an intelligent person. Intelligence and skills are tougher to teach. I'm just saying.

No excuse for poor customer service

Over the past month two issues have arisen from purchases my girlfriend made. They have been handled in two completely different ways, and should leave one brand completely embarassed of itself.

When we were in New York she bought a pair of Lucky Brand Jeans from their store. She had been looking for a specific pair for a while and fell in love with a pair she found at the Lucky store. This is not her or my first purchase of Lucky product, we purchase a large number of clothes from their stores. She had been trying on two different sizes in the store and when she made the purchase the girl helping her mistakenly put the wrong size in her bag. An honest mistake, but one the company clearly should have a process in place to rectify considering we live in Canada. An email was sent three weeks ago to their online customer service explaining the situation.....and we have not received even an automated reply from the company. Brutal. Disappointing. Unacceptable. We spend hundreds of dollars on every purchase we make from the company and they cannot even respond to a simple email.

In stark contrast to that my lovely lady also purchased a box of General Mills granola bars and upon opening one of them up found a bug inside. Not exactly tasty. She sent a note to the company and within 24 hours had an apology and word that they would send some coupons to her since her product was not up to snuff. She received those coupons within a week and it was essentially twelve dollars worth of free product, double or triple the value of the granola bars she had initially bought.

To this day she still hasn't heard from Lucky Brand.

In a world with the internet you should easily have the facilities in your company to deal with customer issues with your product. People that purchase your brand are already sold on your company and it is far easier to please them and keep them purchasing your products as opposed to finding new customers who know nothing about your brand. So why would you mess around with something as easy as responding to an email???? It boggles the mind. Lucky has stores all across North America and yet they don't have the capability to respond to an email. To me that reeks of a company I no longer want to deal with. Sorry Lucky, you've lost two customers and we will be telling friends of your deficiencies.

Nice clothes are only part of running a business.

Your friendly neighbourhood internet store

The internet makes the whole world a marketplace for your customers if you so choose. But it also allows companies to automate and essentially become lazy on their customer service.

Someone buys something and gets an automated email response with the order summary, shipping info and receipt - it's pretty standard practice for e-commerce.

But what happens when you change things up.

I recently ordered my girlfriend a bouquet of flowers because i'm just such an awesome boyfriend and I was looking online at the various flower shops in Vancouver that delivered. I finally settled on a florist and ordered the bouquet and of course received an automated email confirming all the details.

Then, to my surprise, later that day I received an email from the florist letting me know that he "would be delivering a beautiful bouquet to ------ on March 16th for me. Thanks, Joel"

That simple email that took him 10 seconds to send just earned him a repeat customer. The next time I look to suck up to my girlfriend I will definitely be going to the same place.

It's that easy to turn your standard online store into one that makes your customers feel more important than a standard automated reply.

Does your marketing smell a little funky?

It might not be a bad thing to have an odor as part of your marketing efforts. Every Tuesday while I am driving home from work my nostrils all of a sudden perk up as I pass a certain point in my route, a KFC restaurant. They've got my attention for those few seconds I smell that delicious KFC odor wafting out from their building. I can only imagine how many people get sucked into ordering a quick bucket of chicken for dinner on their way home instead of making something at home. It's great marketing on their part. Attacking people's noses with a delicious smell at a time when they will be craving food.

So why don't more businesses utilize this type of approach to getting people's attention? Sure there are some odor pollution rules in most major cities but if you are a business that relies on people stopping and entering your location to purchase your product wouldn't smell be a great way to grab their attention.

Retail locations that market smelly products use it in malls all the time - The Body Shop, Lush, etc. But what about the other stores. Just because your company doesn't traditional deal with a smelly product doesn't mean you can't use the sense of smell to draw in prospective customers. If you are a surf shop in Vancouver, why not have a beach odor pouring out of your store? What about a shoe store, get the smell of fresh leather or that new shoe smell trapped and have it wafting from your location. You should be able to grab lots of people's attention as they go buy.

Cook something different up for your marketing plans. It'll be so g-double-o-d good.

Viagra-ing your brand

Newfoundland and Labrador don't claim to offer visitors a big city experience, in fact they market themselves as the exact opposite of that - quiet, small, and friendly. Have a look at some of their most recent television ads. The scenery is breathtaking, the music is calming and it makes you want to hop on the next flight to take it all in for yourself.





But they save the best for last, and enhance their brand image at the same time, by offering a personalized telephone number on the last screen. Sure it's a 1-800 number, but you have an actual person's name to speak too. How small town is that? How personal and special do you feel calling a specific person as opposed to a main phone line? Simply brilliant marketing, and no doubt leaves a smile on peoples faces - exactly the way they want people to react.

Socially outsourcing your marketing

As more and more companies start to latch on to social media and look at ways to leverage it, there seems to be one tactic that is used again and again to engage customers - Getting the masses to do your marketing work for you. Offering some sort of incentive (monetary or prize typically) in return for them creating your next brand name, commercial, slogan, etc. Companies are straying from the often expensive creative agency in favour of asking their customers, fans, friends to provide them with ideas, concepts, mock ups, and anything else.

Is it really "engaging your customers" or are you more taking advantage of them by using their creative work for cheap (Some of the prizes can be as small as iPods and iPads)? Individuals won't typically know what this intellectual property can actually be worth and they will have no knowledge of copyrights or trademarks like marketing people that work in the business.

Some of the ideas generated through this social outsourcing could result in the next "google" brand name or the next mac vs. apple commercials that are wildly successful for a company, yet the individual who has poured their time and hours into the project usually is modestly compensated.

Then there is the flipside that sometimes it may not be worth a company's time. If you receive a large number of responses to your social outsourcing you want to go through them all in search of gold. I'm sure more often than not you will be looking at pyrite because these individuals don't have the experience and knowledge of a creative agency. Creativity isn't something that requires an MBA but advertising companies are successful for a reason.

So where do you stand on this idea of social outsourcing? I think the trend will probably fade out but maybe that is just the rantings of someone who's amazing ideas continue to be left in the "pyrite" pile when he submits them.