The pointless gift that says so much

A call from BT:

"We've reviewed your account and you are paying £4 a month too much for your phone and broadband service. For the next 12 months we'd like to reduce your monthly charge. And to thank you for your loyalty we'll send you a BT Vision box. Is that OK with you?"

"Let me just check what you are offering: I commit to a 12 month contract and in return get a £4 a month reduction in my bill, and a BT Vision box. No other commitment. Is that correct?"

"Yes, Mr Hancock, that's absolutely correct".
 
"Sounds great, but I already have Sky so don't want BT Vision. Can you reduce my bill but not send me the box?"

You know how the story ends. I can have the price reduction only if I agree to take delivery of the box. I now have a BT Vision box that I will never use, to accompany the BT Home Hub wireless router that I was sent when I moved house, and that I also don't use. 

BT clearly is concerned about customer retention, and has come up with a deal to entice people to stay. But it commits the cardinal sin of customer management: focusing on the product and not on the customer. The message they intended to convey was "we care about your business". What they actually have communicated is "we aren't listening to you, and we don't care about the unnecessary impact of our activities on the environment".

All my experience tells me that if you focus only on the outcome - in this case increased customer retention - you will achieve less than if you focus on being the best at what you do. Rather than dumping unwanted boxes on its customers to lock them in for 12 months, if BT were to focus on finding out what they would value, meeting their needs and taking greater responsibility for its impact on the environment, it would surely see a more positive impact on customer retention - and on customers' perception of the BT brand.

The brand that can afford to ignore customer loyalty

It should be one of the most exciting purchases in your life. Deciding what to buy, working out what you can afford, prioritising, selecting your options, planning for the delivery date. Then there's the question of finance packages. And after-sales service. Sometimes, though, it's more stressful than exciting, which really shouldn't be the case. After all, for many of us, it's the second largest investment we'll ever make, after buying a house. I've just been through the process:

I've always been something of a mainstream buyer, but this was heralded as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with very limited availability. This was the deal: once I had worked out what I wanted, I was to submit an application. I would be told whether I had been successful and, if so, exactly what had been allocated to me (they were available in just three metallic colours) and where I could take delivery (distribution centres were being set up in various locations, mainly in the South of England, but also in places such as Manchester and Newcastle). But the supplier would take my payment before telling me what I would take delivery of, and where. My head told me I was being taken for a ride, but at this point I was so caught up in the hype that I went through with the deal. I had my heart set on the gold one: 0 - 100 in 9.6 seconds, with awesome styling. But in the end they told me I hadn't been allocated anything, although I can apply again for one of the lesser-known versions that no-one else wants. And to do that I have to join an online stampede at 6 a.m. this Friday.

I feel let down. I won't be buying from them again. No business can afford to treat its customers this badly and expect to survive. We all know that customer loyalty is critical to long-term business success. Unless you are a unique business that doesn't expect to be around beyond next year, and doesn't need to concern itself with issues such as reputation, advocacy and customer retention. And I can think of only one of them. I've heard they'll be out of business by the end of August next year. Here's a picture of the salesman who got me hooked.

Enough said

Today I received an email inviting me to download a white paper entitled "Building Customer Centricity through Expertise-Based Interactions".

They could have called it "Doing a great job for your customers by knowing what you're talking about".

But they didn't.

Apparently the paper "discusses the emergence of customer centricity as a result of growing customer sophistication and empowerment across geographies and market segments" and "the need for businesses large and small to embrace customer centricity and to take steps to internalise it as the driving force behind business processes and policies ... by revising business processes to ensure outcomes are customer-oriented and that every activity within a process is aimed at maximizing customer satisfaction" and "by focusing on expertise-based interactions as a way to broaden customer collaboration and participation into the very business processes designed to serve their needs and, by extension, maximizing customer satisfaction and facilitating cross-selling and up-selling."

In other words:

Customers everywhere are getting smarter. You have to be single-minded in getting your whole organisation to give customers a great experience. You have to know what you're talking about. And you have to be ready to change the way you work if it's better for the customer, because that will make them do more and buy more.

Enough said.

Clarity or consensus? You decide

So now we have given our verdict - or at least a few of us have - on one of the most rancorous political debates since, well, the last one. Dozens of explanations, hundreds of arguments and thousands of soundbites occupied a majority of the political elite and a minority of the rest of us in an increasingly frantic anticlimax.

The argument seemed to boil down to this: would you rather be led or represented by someone that more people strongly support than any other candidate, or by someone that most people are prepared to accept?

MPs would have to work harder for our votes, we were told. They'd have to get us on board, appeal to a broad constituency. 'We have to take people with us', you could imagine them saying, when planning how to attract the holy grail of 50.1% of people who at least would accept the idea of their joining the ranks of our 650 elected representatives.

'We have to take people with us': also heard in board rooms and senior management meetings, especially in the not-for-profit sector. We can change the way we work for the better, but only if we can get people onside.

It's a position that is hard to dispute. But how do we get people to share a vision for change? Should leaders appeal to the majority and get everyone to agree on the way forward? Or should they describe a clear vision, energise people with their conviction and recruit advocates who will help them to make change happen?

When I have asked people facing change to choose between two approaches, they have invariably chosen clarity over consensus. 'Tell us what has to happen, explain why it will be better, and make clear what you expect of us'.

Is the direction that more people believe in better than the choice that most will accept? In the case of our democracy, ironically that question was answered by a minority of electors. As for the challenges facing business and fundraising leaders the answer has to be a resounding 'yes'.

Clients are hapless, timid and lazy: discuss

In one of the leading fundraising blogs I came across this paragraph this week:

"Clients are timid, frightened creatures in the main, too often unable or unwilling to grasp real opportunities for fear that this might render them liable to criticism, or that the suggested initiative might fail. Or that it might entail extra work and inconvenience or,… well, whatever."

I don't for a moment believe that I have the right to make judgements about my clients. But I find them to be people of great integrity: thoughtful, generous and committed.

Perhaps it is fair to say that the fundraising sector is not always the most dynamic. And the need to take care of precious resources (the original meaning of 'stewardship') can lead to a cautious approach to new opportunities and changes of direction. But we shouldn't equate the desire to reflect on challenges and to take time over important decisions with timidity and indolence.

Timid or thoughtful? Lazy or committed? What do you think? And, if you're a client, how would you assess your suppliers?