Hi, I'm Kelly, the co-founder, creative director, and senior copywriter at Humanity-based customer service is the new rule
Since customer service is a top-down equation, poor customer service experiences are clearly designed with pessimism in mind. Which is odd because that’s a person or a team of people working against human nature to manifest experiences they themselves do not want to encounter.
‘I’m just doing what they tell me,’ we hear customer service reps say. I frequently tell the pleasant ones, “You sound like a nice person. I hope you one day find an employer who will allow you to do a great job.” (Most reps actually tell me they appreciate hearing that, and the conversation always gets better afterward.)
If management isn’t designing humanity-based customer service processes, we need a revolt.
Customer service can be an overall positive experience which helps companies keep existing customers happy. In fact, that’s how it used to be, and for good reason. It’s always cheaper to keep your existing customers happy than to attract new ones. (It also helps people speak of you in a good tone.)
If your customer service team is treating people poorly, you lose revenue as you hemorrhage customers, and you have to spend more on marketing. If, on the other hand, your team is working with human nature in mind to make sure people have positive experiences, you keep customers happy and can budget your marketing more frugally (or grow more).
Somewhere along the way, someone who was treated poorly decided they didn’t like their customers, and they wanted new ones, no matter the cost. How this attitude caught on like wildfire is something of a mystery. Barnes & Noble comes to mind. When their stores were packed with book-buying public, they brought in creature comforts and chocolate because people buy those things when they are comfortable. Customers bought less of these items when BN changed to aggressive sales tactics that made people uncomfortable. They could have taken the hint, it seems.
The companies who buck the trend, like Zappos and CDBaby, stand out for it. Both of these stellar examples embrace human nature in everything they do, and their reputations (and profits) rock because of it.
Poor customer service is the rule that should never have gained prominence because it lacks a fundamental level of humanity, and can lead only to failure. It’s refreshing to see smart companies challenge it. Good customer service is good marketing and a business fundamental.
We are inherently a world of optimists
If you divided everyone in your life into two columns, optimists on the left and pessimists on the right, you would wind up with one full column and one empty column. Which is which?
The question of optimist or pessimist has an easy answer every time. Like many questions, the answer can go only one way if honesty is employed. Optimism represents life, and pessimism represents death. That’s reality, not a metaphor.
Like most life forms, we involuntarily fight for life. It’s in our nature. And it stays firmly planted there all the way up until the end of our lives here.
The idea of pessimism gets validation only when people are treated poorly, often in repeated fashion, until their spirit is broken. Even after a person’s spirit is broken, their inner optimism usually still grasps a glimmer of hope for something better such as escape, redemption or success.
The only possible honest answer to the question of optimist or pessimist is: optimist.
Your greatest potential
Is it possible that when we reach a high level of comfort in a profession, it is our signal and clearest indicator that to realize our greatest potential, it’s time to move on to the next challenge?
Is this scary sounding? Good. Considering potential is exciting.
How would the country be doing if this were applied (five years ago) to large bank executives and state legislators. If they can do such a great job squandering personal potential and opportunity for doing good, imagine what they could accomplish in a new career where they are forced, just like most people, to prove their worthiness rather than defend their positions.
Better yet, think about how many great careers one person could enjoy. A great many I suspect. Most people have too many great ideas and not enough time to pursue them all. If you changed up your career every time you attained a high level of success, how many of your ideas could you bring to fruition? It’s entirely possible your greatest potential success lies in one of your dormant ideas.
Honest marketing begins within
Honest marketing used to be thought of as impossible. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it had to do with romancing a stone, or to put it more succinctly, polishing a turd (ick). Thing is, honest marketing has always resonated better than fictional messages, inflated promises or (gasp) marketing lies.
We all tell ourselves little lies. It’s how we get past the unbelievable; how we embrace the impossible, inconvenient, or unacceptable, which is kind of a weird habit because in the long run, it always comes back to bite us.
Companies are dishonest with themselves all the time when it comes to their marketing. It most often manifests in false messages in advertising, websites, promises.
I’ve seen clients self-inflate budgets they can’t afford to increase or talk themselves into buying advertising space they can’t afford. The most common of lies people and businesses market to themselves are in regards to the claims they make about their products. When they do it – and people do it every day – they open a bottomless can of worms with two heads, eleven lives and sharp fangs that inflict ‘lie hangover,’ a highly poisonous substance. And the thing is, there is absolutely no need for it.
There’s a difference between polishing a boring truth and being misleading. One involves first telling yourself a lie, then marketing it to others until you both believe it. The better path involves strong creative. That’s it. Nothing misleading, negative, or fang-bearing.
Honesty in marketing is truly all that’s needed to connect with people.
How do you market from within? Do you tell yourself convenient half-truths, or are you honest and up-front with yourself?
Honest marketing begins within. When you are honest with yourself, you manifest what you need, and it comes through in everything you do. Whether or not they tell you directly, people notice; you see it as people trust your brand and messages, and your business rises as direct result.
The toxicity of buddy deals
How often do you try to get ‘buddy deals’? People have approached me, saying a ‘buddy deal’ went south and didn’t turn out how they wanted. So they came to me, saying they wanted to do it the right way, saying they didn’t want to skimp on budget, telling themselves (and me too) they were entering into the relationship with completely different intentions.
Funny thing is, each time this has happened, the businessperson tried to negotiate on price (bigly, like 50% or more discount big), then wound up going with another buddy deal after I refused to give them one.
Could I give them a deal? Sure, I could (not 50%), but that would only serve to set us both up to fail, and I have no interest in failure. They shouldn’t either (but they often do). After all, they came to me because they found out that ‘getting a deal’ netted them less than what they wanted.
I’m rarely given the opportunity to ask people if they are being honest with themselves when they go for the next buddy deal. Then again, I already know the answer and they probably do too, deep down inside.
Buddy deals are great when it’s a long-time friends equation, but when it’s that person you met at a networking party once and exchanged cards with, there’s no ‘buddy’ in the deal. Seeking a deal there is essentially trying to put one over on the person being asked. Perhaps worse, however, is the fact that the person doing the asking isn’t being honest with themselves, which undermines the foundations of both their marketing and their brand.
Change is easy, make work exciting
Why make work exciting? If your work is mind-numbing, imagine how your product feels. Imagine how the people using your product experience it. Mind-numbing is mind-numbing no matter how you market it. It comes through in your dialog, in your brand, and in your product.
We need excitement!
There is always a new way to package an old product. A twist on an idea, a tweak that makes a new product or changes everything. That’s what we need. And nearly anyone can do it (which means you can too).
When you change how you work, you change your product.
I have a client who has been extremely successful over the years, but now she’s having a hard time dealing with the new economy. I’ve listened to her look at every angle under the sun as to why things aren’t working like they used to. But she’s skipping one very important thing. Actually, it’s the #1 most important thing.
It’s her.
The question is not why things aren’t working like they used to. In fact, that’s not a question—it’s a fact. The only thing she needs to change to regain her success pattern is her approach to work. That means she has to change. Change is hard. Well, it seems hard. Change is easy when you consider the benefits and the fact that the same amount of effort is required whether she works the old way or changes and works in a new way.
The truth is change is exciting, and since ‘exciting’ and ‘nervous’ produce the same feeling in the stomach, we tend to avoid both.
Power is personal. Equality is each person’s right.
Martin Luther King, Jr. died the year I was born. In the time that passed between those two events and now, a profoundly different attitude towards the equality of human beings has been embraced by generations. It’s been marketed, promoted, believed, and thankfully, celebrated.
What hasn’t happened, unfortunately, is total equality and elimination of racism as an idea that proliferates society and poisons human interaction.
To be perfectly straightforward, I was blind to this hard fact until I returned to university in 2011, where I began studying humanities. I believe in a day when racism no longer exists, but we are not yet there—not even close.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. put forth one essential reality (among many), that human beings are created equal. There has never been a day in my life when I thought anything different. Human is human is human. That’s not to say I’ve been a saint, but it is to say that I have always been stunned when I read about or witnessed people of one race treating those of another with less respect than we all deserve. I’ve thought this way as long as I can recall. I was born with this belief.
In school, I’ve discovered that a different reality exists in this country on the topic of racism. People still to this very day bury their heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. But it does.
All you have to do to experience racism is change your skin color (admittedly difficult), or simply ask someone who has experienced it themselves. It’s not something that ‘happened back then.’ It’s happening right now, today, and people will share their experiences if you ask and actively listen. It happens to African-Americans from all walks of life, from the downtrodden to the highest reaches of social status, and it happens to people of other ethnicities. It’s not just about race, though that is perhaps the most visible form of racism present today. If you ask and really listen, you may gain a new perspective that inspires action and positive change, or at the very least a greater awareness of how it impacts your life and those of your neighbors.
Before reentering university, I had never been exposed to the idea that being born ‘white’ was a privilege, but it is. Now I see, and I’m affected by it. It’s not because I have privilege, though by accounts of those who are not white, I do. I am affected because others do not have the exact same privilege—because equality is not universal. I am affected because I have always seen different skin color as something rich and beautiful, but now I see that much of society regards it in the opposite manner. And thinking back, I have experienced this at close range, and it has affected me. And I have fought against it without even realizing I was fighting.
This brings me to another essential Martin Luther King, Jr. idea, that we must work for our freedom (thank you, Seth Godin, for mentioning this today). Working is fighting, peacefully. Working is finding a way to promote ideas you find meaningful, valuable and just.
The French philosopher, Voltaire, said, “All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free.”
Power is personal. Power is what you believe it to be. You gain power by believing, finding a way to pursue your beliefs, and working to live by them.
Equality, on the other hand, is not handed out. It is not our place to grant equality. Equality is each person’s right from the moment they are born. And where it is obviously not present, where we can see the injustice of inequality exists in our society, it is our responsibility as humans to not bury our heads in the sand, but to support our fellow human beings in their struggle for attaining equality.
I don’t mean to preach. This is me living by my beliefs.
Working better to push your boundaries
This is about working better. It’s about work being better, not mind-numbing or boring.
I can barely stay awake. I’m nodding off to sleep so many times today I’ve lost count. Actually, I’m too tired to count. And you know what? I’m wearing a big, silly, happy grin because this is exactly how it ought to be. Why? Because I just worked my proverbial arse off for eight days straight, including at least three all-nighters, in the course of redesigning a literary magazine from cover to cover for Antioch University Seattle‘s KNOCK. I couldn’t be happier.
Somehow, I also fit in writing probably the most powerful piece of poetry I’ve ever penned, designed a logo and packaging for a new client product, and rewrote some client blog posts.
By the end of these eight days, I had no idea what was the date, nor even what day of the week we were on. Perfect.
This is how work ought to be. It’s working better. It’s falling asleep from exhaustion instead of boredom. It’s exciting.
Work was never meant to be a routine set of repeat, mind-numbing actions that bore people to sleep. Was it? Well, if it was, that time is over.
I hope work is designed to be meaningful activity that pushes our capabilities as human beings, brings joy to the mind, manifests better living conditions, and makes the world a good place to be.
People ask how I can pull all-nighters at my age. How can I not? They ask how I stay awake. Same answer. I get so excited by the work that I don’t even have to try to stay awake. I work, therefore, I am awake. (Eventually, of course, I do sleep!)
The last five days of this project were amazing. I was the art director and designer, but I also got to flex my illustration muscles several times over, learn some things about writing (by reading outstanding content), and work with a dedicated team of insanely talented and equally engaged people. They pushed me, and I pushed them back. And vice versa.
For our efforts, we netted a completely redesigned 98-page magazine, which will release on January 20. I’ll be sleeping until the launch party. Well, that and working.
Are you working better? How are you pushing your boundaries?
Kablam! Now it’s a marketing blog
KellyHobkirk.com is now a marketing blog. I’ll still be writing about brands and branding primarily on my branding and advertising firm website, trainofthought.net. Inevitable it is that some talk of brands and branding will still be here because marketing and brands are intrinsically tied together, like apple and seeds.
This is a blog about marketing, working better, and customer service, for uncommon thinkers and unusual companies.
Temp post for Technorati
59FVUECFK5U8
