I Asked a Telemarketer for Her Number — I Actually Wanted It!

Filed Under Customer Think, Successful Blog | 13 Comments

Leave a Message at the Tone

Customer Think Logo

My son is a recent college graduate.

Since his last year of school started, our phone has been inundated with calls from Student Loan Consolidation Services. They’re calling, asking for my son. Their objective is his business. His name is on some list of the class of 2007. They want to refinance what they assume to be my son’s school loans.

To say these calls are an irritant is to say that major dental surgery is not fun. It’s a relentless one-a-at-time water torture — daily ringing, the same hour, the same number. No message is left on the machine. Eventually we have to answer each one to make it stop.

The call routine is almost word-for-word predictable. The waste of time is pitiful. A bored caller goes through a call script, and we go through our own to get off the call list — the list we shouldn’t be on to start with.

Then this week, Maria called.

When I said, “Who’s calling?”

She said, “Are you his mother?” It was authentic and transparent. Imagine that. She wanted to know about the person — me — answering the phone.

Before she got much further, I had to ask her name, thank her, tell her how nice that was.

We had a great conversation. She asked my son’s situation. She told me two things she liked about what she had to offer and why she believed in it. We both knew it wasn’t my decision.

Then, I did something I’ve never done before. I asked a telemarketer if I could have her number. I took it down and gave it to my son. One day later, I explained to him why he should call her.

Maria, the caller from National Student Loan Division, deserves this mention. She made me a person, when her whole industry had made me a target.

Thank you, Maria.

Yeah, I’m thinking it’s sad that I find this remarkable.

I’m also thinking that maybe if we tell everyone . . . Maria might be the first and the only.

[Please know that this is not an endorsement of the company or a recommendation of their financing. I have not done the research. This is as statement of an outstanding example of customer relationships.]

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related:
See the Customer Think Series on the Successful Series page.

Share This

Reality Check from Kent Newsome

Filed Under Business Life, Customer Think, Guest Writer | 12 Comments

Pass It On

Sometimes a sentence jumps out and grabs me by the ears. It’s always something easily forgotten so simply and elegantly said that I must pass it on.

Those who promote blogging for one thing or another always pretend that corporate non-tech America has or is about to embrace blogging, when the reality is that other than email, corporate non-tech America hasn’t even embraced the internet. –Kent Newsome

How many ways do we only see ourselves?

Thank you, Kent!

–ME ‘Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Share This

Blogging Lessons I Learned in Dancing School

Filed Under Customer Think | 24 Comments

One-and-a-Two

ballerina bag via morguefile.com

I learned these lessons about blogging in dancing school, when I was a wee thing.

  1. Looking in the mirror can be distracting.

  2. When I try to be someone else, I’m not graceful.

  3. Expression isn’t much, if I don’t know what I’m doing.

  4. Stuff that looks easy sure takes practice to do well.

  5. Smile.

My dance teacher was brilliant.

The World Wide Web didn’t even exist then.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Share This

Words We Search with, Words We Sell with

Filed Under Business Book, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 21 Comments

When Words Fuel the Internet

Customer Think Logo

Words are the fuel of the Internet. We type the name or description of a product, service, or topic into a search engine, and the search engine takes us to it. With luck we get where we would like to be. Easy enough from our end — usually.

Of course, our search words have to match those that marketers use to describe their product. And therein lies the problem. Sometimes as marketers, we are too clever for our searchers, or as my husband would argue, “Peach is fruit, NOT a color.”

In his post Words That Work at Marketing Profs, Gerry McGovern, uses the book “Words that Work,” by Frank Luntz to show that the words we sell with are often not the words we punch into a search engine. Take a look at Prof. McGovern’s examples:

However, according to Overture, in December 2006, 730,958 people searched for “used car,” while only 949 searched for “pre-owned vehicle.”

Nearly 73,000 people searched for “housewife” (122,000 searched for “desperate housewife”), while only 43 searched for “stay-at-home-mom.”

Over 30,000 searched for “gay marriage” while 19,000 searched for ” same-sex marriage.”

While about 17,000 people search for “impotence,” over 100,000 search for “erectile dysfunction,” proving that some words are indeed falling into disuse, even from a search point of view.

The point is that the words that might bring us to products — cheap office supplies, budget hotel — aren’t the same words that sell us when we get there — office supplies at great prices, campy hotel. Prof McGoven wonders whether we need to use more than one set of terms to describe things. Hmmmm. I don’t know.

I keep thinking that transparency and deep knowledge of our customers as people would lead us to write copy that naturally avoids the problem.

I’d love to know what you think.

– ME “Lia” Strauss

Related
Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About What You Think
Do You Know the Difference Between Quality and Cost?
Blog Promotion: How to Write for People and Search Engine Spiders

Share This

Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About What You Think

Filed Under Customer Think, Successful Blog | 17 Comments

That Couldn’t Be Us Or Could It?

Customer Think Logo

I share a joke with a friend in California. It’s like a script. It goes like this.

I call him up. He answers.

I say, “Hi, Eddie, how am I?”

He replies, “Oh, you’re fine. What do you think of me?”

I tell him he’s wonderful.

Then he says, “Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think about my sweater?”

That’s when we laugh to think that we’re not like the people who actually do that.

This morning at Poynter Online something made me realize how it is to do what Eddie I joke about.

Butch Ward gave five New Year’s Resolutions. It’s number 2 that brought this thought home to me. His second resolution was talk to your readers. My thought was I do that. He offered fine advice on ways to engage in dynamic conversation. Then Mr. Ward made a suggestion for this New Year’s conversation . . .

Don’t ask him what he wants you to put in his newspaper or on his news broadcast. Instead, ask what he does. What she thinks. Then you decide how your newsroom can be more relevant to their world.

That’s when I realized it.

Those standard, customer-survey questions sound like “What do you think of my sweater? What do you think of ME?”

Sure, we need to ask how we’re doing, but those can’t be the only questions, or we’ll never know our readers.

Authentic values aren’t revealed by survey questions.

Relationships and understanding come from listening to what folks want to talk about — dreams, desires, unexpressed needs and wishes — what they find marvelous, annoying, heartwarming, concerning, breathtaking. At least, that’s my experience.

But hey, enough about me. Let’s talk about what you think.

What do find worth spending thoughts and words on?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Share This

« go back — keep looking »