1. Believing you can be an expert on everything. Brilliance isn't always transferable from one discipline to another or from one area of business to another. It's not uncommon to find business innovators spending time designing the company logo, even though they lack graphic-design experience-or the CFO writing letters to customers, causing irritation and anger. Recognizing limitations can help head off serious problems before they occur.
2. Web sites that limit the customer's access to a company. Information and access are the two primary purposes of a company Web site. The corporate Web site of Xerox, a leading company in the document technology field, offers easy access to the company's sales offices around the world. But try to locate corporate executives and you hit a firewall. Xerox's online annual report, for example, has no contact information. There are names but no office locations, telephone numbers, or E-mail addresses.
Contrast this with the accessibility offered by an Apple, eBay or Amazon.com. User-friendly means more than ads and an occasional smile. If the goal is building customer confidence, accessibility is essential.
3. An overflowing voice mailbox. 'This mailbox is full' is a customer-satisfaction killer. More often than not, callers hear it when they need service. The words not only cause frustration but send the message that the person is swamped with work, unresponsive, or gone. It's difficult to 'erase' such a message because it becomes embedded in the caller's mind: 'Is this going to happen with every call?'
4. Telephone calls and E-mail messages that are not returned promptly. It may seem overly obvious or unnecessary to suggest that one of the most effective ways to impress a customer or prospect is to return a call or E-mail message quickly. But if it were so obvious, it wouldn't be necessary to talk about. Not all calls need instant attention. It's the same for E-mail. But a fast response gives those contacting you the feeling that they're important.
5. Contacting the customer only when you have something to sell. Getting through to customers and prospects is often difficult because experience has taught them that salespeople call only when they want to make a sale. And this makes it a call that can be avoided or delayed. Even if there's another purpose to the call, salespeople have been 'branded.'
6. Failing to fill requests promptly. Customer service has changed. E-commerce companies have set a far more demanding standard. The efficiency with which Internet merchandisers such as Dell Computer and Amazon.com fill requests has raised customer expectations. Order confirmations can be received even before consumers log off! Order airline tickets with American Express and they can be available the next day.
Responsiveness is the new measure of personal service. While it's no longer necessary to talk to a human being to receive personal service, receiving quick confirmation is essential because it eliminates doubt.
7. Saying your telephone number too fast. It sounds insignificant. Why make an issue out of something this minor? Because it's irritating to the person who receives your message. If you rush through it, you give the impression not only that you're bothered or have something better to do, but that this is the way you conduct business.
8. Calling it a newsletter when it's an ad. If it looks like an ad and reads like an ad, it isn't a newsletter. If you think you can dupe customers with the word 'newsletter' on the front page, forget it. Newsletters provide helpful information and give you an opportunity to demonstrate that you know something and don't just sell something. If you want to connect with customers, make it a newsletter.
9. Using the partnering pretense. While partnering may be a hot concept, it often fails in the execution. More often than not, it's used to mask selling. Just because a salesperson might use 'consultant' on a business card doesn't change the fact that he or she is a salesperson. The word 'sales' isn't the problem; it's the attempt to get to the prospect or customer using false colors. Customers know the difference.
10. Letting shoddy work go out the door. The product may be first-class or the service may be top-drawer. But what about the letter, faxes, and marketing materials? About 99 in 100 unsolicited faxes are junk. If you don't have high standards for yourself, why should customers think you will behave differently should they do business with you?
11. Self-serving voice-mail messages. 'I'll get back to you as soon as I can' or 'I'm away from my desk or on the phone...' are too-common voice-mail messages with many variations. Although they sound friendly enough, they're actually quite arrogant. Voice mail isn't about where we are or what we happen to be doing. The covert message comes through all too clearly: 'I'll make the decisions on which calls I'll return and when.' Answering calls quickly sends the right message. Other words aren't necessary.
12. Talking like a consultant and acting like a huckster. Although words are important, using them to disguise yourself sends the wrong message. Calling yourself a 'consultant' or tacking on 'consultative selling' to your title to describe what you do while behaving as if your only goal is to make the sale seals your image in the customer's mind. Customers come to view you as someone who will do anything to make a sale.
13. Failure to be consistent. Whether they're approaching sales, penetrating markets, or building market awareness, many companies jump from one strategy to another hoping to find the right combination. The only consistency that's valuable is to keep looking for something new to improve results. Ironically, the figures never reach the targets because a program is never given the opportunity to succeed. At some point, a company becomes known for not sticking with anything. That's bad branding.
14. Trying to look different than you are. How many small businesses use a photo of a large office building to give the impression that this is their 'headquarters'? In the same way, a large financial services company promoted products it couldn't deliver because the CEO wanted to create the right impression with customers. The deception worked on only one person. Each time a customer requested a fictitious product, approval was denied. Wouldn't it have been a more prudent strategy to own the niche for which the company had built a solid reputation over many years?
15. 'I know we can save you money. When can we get together?' This tired sales-appointment strategy is useless. Experienced salespeople know this, and so do customers. Sometimes it seems that the only ones who don't get the message are sales managers.
The approach diminishes credibility because it lacks differentiation. Astute customers know that price is never the only factor that separates one product or service from another. The Yugo failed in the United States because the company believed Americans wanted a cheap car. What consumers wanted was value for their dollar and Yugo couldn't deliver.
16. Preparing sales-driven presentations. Inappropriate sales presentations do as much as anything to mar a company's reputation. Negative factors include boilerplate wording that fails to appreciate the individual customer's situation, and pricing that reflects what the salesperson wants to sell rather than what will benefit the customer. Today's customers expect sales presentations to offer realistic, appropriate solutions.
17. Making exaggerated claims. The tendency to over-promise and exaggerate performance ability are not just distortions, they're stupid. Once customers realize they've been duped, they're angry and strike back, directly or indirectly.
A national organization claims that it has hundreds of members with high-dollar volume sales for its particular industry. But anyone checking the member list knows different. As a result, many who could benefit from membership say, 'That's not for us.' Exaggeration only defaces a company's image.
18. Failure to establish a conscious identity. It's no accident that Fortune 500 companies invest heavily in creating and sustaining carefully crafted images. However, as massive mergers take place, maintaining these identities becomes more difficult because so many factors must be controlled. This opens the way for middle-market and smaller firms to seize the initiative. Ten years ago, Sears had the image of 'yesterday's merchandiser' and almost went out of business. Today, Sears is robust as a result of building an identity that is credible to its customers.