Mark Irving, advertising company director, on the relationship between bad customer service and bad advertising.
I've always thought there's a bit of a correlation between good customer service and good advertising.
I like to test this from time by visiting stores not as a business owner but as an everyday shopper trying to find the best deal. I'm interested in a number of things like whether the shelves are fully stocked, is the store clean and tidy and what colour post-it notes they use.
Most of all I'm interested in their level of customer service. I often find that if their customer service is poor, the quality of advertising is often bad as well.
After looking through what would be described as a variety store, I asked the man over the counter if the business had a website. He answered in quite a threatening manner: "Why do you want to know that for" as if I was asking for his passport and wife's date of birth.
Looking through his product brochure after leaving, I noticed much of it was cluttered, with a choice of font that made the writing a lot more difficult to read than it should have.
Another store I went in to, I had to actually ask to be served as the two females in their early 20s thought it was more important to talk about their weekend than to serve a customer.
Now this store did have a website and while certain things like the ease of layout and navigation did impress me, it didn't have a product search function, which is quite important to have if you are selling or advertising a big range of products.
As far as the poor customer service goes, I'm not saying we have to go down the "American customer service model" of: "High my name's Tammy, I'm you're waitress for today, can I fix you boys a couple of drinks."
But I think we can learn a lot from the Americans in terms of how they do value their customers. But as they say, the best advertising is word of mouth advertising. That particular store was advertising itself, but in a very bad manner.
My final interaction was with a smallish business (that manufactures a building product used in the construction of some houses) on how to improve their website.
One of a few things I noticed was that they included a couple of features like the dimensions and colour of the products but none of the benefits.
When I pointed this out, the business owner's reply was: "I don't give a s*** about the benefits, I've been selling this for over 20 years and I know what the customer wants." Now I don't give a s*** about some things, like whether the Black Caps win or lose (I used to). But not giving a s*** about leaving out your product benefits isn't the best when we're trying to fight our way out of a recession.
I also knew, having worked on this particular product before that there are about three very good product benefits. These include adding value to your home, regulating the temperature during the seasons, plus being incredibly durable. Even if you think it's blindingly obvious you should always include the product benefits, because to many they won't be obvious.
I think most of us understand the importance of good customer service and the positive reaction we feel when we have been well looked after. And from my experiences, the businesses who offer good customer service often seem to use advertising which is well thought out and easy to digest.
Mark Irving
Mark Irving is the Director of Range Advertising and Communications.
