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You’re human. Make sure you don’t forget it.
“The thing I really like about you,” said a client recently, “is that you give it to me with both barrels.”
A back-handed compliment, or a genuine vote of praise? I wasn’t sure, so I silently winced and left a little pause for him to continue.
“You’d be surprised how unusual that is these days,” he said. “Most people dress the truth up in jargon and buzzwords, as if they’re trying to impress. Or worse, trying not to offend me. If it’s the truth, I want to know it.”
So a compliment then.
I’m not innately more truthful than the next person. It’s just that I have an aversion to corpspeak, double-talk and beating around the bush. Sometimes, I have to admit, it gets me into trouble.
But mostly, the reaction is positive.
‘Giving it with both barrels’ may be an extreme way of putting it, but it gets the idea across. Here it is, you’re saying. Make of it what you will.
And more importantly, make of me what you will. Because everything we do sends out a signal.
And slashing through the undergrowth of double-talk keeps it real. And makes it more human.
Up close and personal
In these days of mass communication, one smallish-but-growing company I know sends out sales letters using Courier, to mimic the font of typewritten letters.
They also sign the letters by hand. Not a scanned signature sneakily printed in blue, or green, or anything but black, so it appears real. This one is real.
But they don’t stop there. They sales manager writes the salutation (‘Dear Mrs Jones…’) by hand too.
Now you can’t do this if you have huge volumes or dodgy handwriting.
But in this case, the sales manager does a small batch every day, and they’re sent out at the end of the week. As my grandmother used to say, ‘every little mickle makes a muckle’ (translation: it all adds up).
And he writes beautiful, old-fashioned cursive script, which adds a touch of class.
So the company is playing to its strengths (and penmanship), and immediately setting itself apart from the competition.
The response has been impressive.
Conversion has gone up, customer satisfaction has jumped, and the perception of the company has changed.
As the company grows, the volume will at some point get too much, and the quaint old handwritten letters will have to be dropped. But for now, it’s manageable.
And it’s a winning idea.
The real deal
There’s no replacing the human touch. People like people, and we’re all essentially sociable.
So trade on that, and do everything you can to humanise the face of your company.
Here are some simple things you can try:
- Include real photos of you and your staff on your website, preferably smiling.
- Don’t hide behind grand-sounding phrases or business-speak. Strive to sound positive and upbeat, so that you connect with people.
- Don’t use catch-all email addresses (response@, info@, enquiry@) which always conjure up images of a bit bucket that’s regularly emptied into the ether without so much as a second thought.
- Empower people (or yourself). A few years ago, a client of mine gave their staff carte blanche to sort customer problems out, whatever the cost. If it’s broken, fix it, they said. No need to get clearance first. They braced themselves for a spike in costs. But it never came. Instead, their staff took the initiative, acted responsibly and just did it. The results? Lower costs and happier customers. Counter-intuitive but true.
- Start a blog, and choose a tone that’s deliberately different to the rest of your site copy: more informal, less corporate, more relaxed. Show people that you’re real.
iTouch
Like I said, people like people. And human contact makes a difference. In these days of social networking where it’s not unusual to have 600 ‘friends’, cyberspace can be a lonely place.
Peeling back the layers and getting to a real person isn’t always easy.
So make it easy.
Like GetHuman does. It’s a great little site that allows you to bypass the endless telephone menu systems, so you can…well, get to a human (the clue’s in the name).
So what can you do today?
Change that response form? Reword that auto-responder email? Make your voicemail welcome message sound less like you’re being held hostage by Colombian drug lords and reading from a script?
Whatever it is, do it now and watch the magic. Just let rip.
With both barrels if you have to.
Find out more:
- People power: escape the menu maze and find a real live person at GetHuman.com.
- Mind your language: buzzwords galore at Web Economy bull***t generator. It’s funny and tragic at the same time. And if you recognise the generated phrases from your own copy, best reach for the red pen.
Death, taxes and missed opportunities
“I don’t know what to do,” said my friend on the phone, the angst clearly audible in his voice. “Should I or shouldn’t I?”
And this crucial decision he had to take?
Whether or not to buy a fridge before VAT went up on Tuesday. This was Monday, and my friend was paralysed by indecision.
“If I don’t do it today, I won’t beat the VAT increase,” he lamented.
Beat the VAT increase, I thought with a wry smile. He’ s obviously got swept along by the tide of hysteria surrounding the tax increase from 17.5% to 20%.
Take a deep breath, I counselled. And he did.
Then so did I, just for good measure, and to give my voice the note of gravitas of a primary-school maths teacher.
“Let’s look at the facts,” I said professorially.
And the facts are simple. If you’re buying a fridge that’s £400 before tax, then VAT at 17.5% adds another £70 to it. So it’s £470 in total. And when you add VAT at 20%? It comes to a grand total of £480.
So you’ve saved the princely sum of £10. Enough to put a couple of bottles of Australian chardonnay in that shiny new fridge, but not much else.
“Ten pounds?” my friend said scornfully. “Is that it?”
Yes. I’m afraid it is.
And there and then, he decided to stay in bed and watch a bit more daytime TV, on the last official day of his Christmas break.
The fridge could wait.
2 + 2 = 5
Let’s face it – we’re all a bit innumerate these days.
The decline started with calculators, and continued with digital watches, PCs and mobile phones. Who needs to do mental arithmetic when gadgets do it all for us?
I read an article earlier this week saying that prices were going up by 20%, and a rush of panic buying was expected. I’m not surprised, with that whopping increase on the horizon.
On Monday, 3 Jan – the last day at the old rate – there were reported to be queues at petrol stations around the UK.
Why? If it costs £40 to fill up your car before VAT, then on Monday, your total bill is £47. On Tuesday, it’s £48. So that’s a pound more.
Add a few more pence for the increase in duty, and you might hit £1.40.
And for that, it’s worth queuing in near-freezing temperatures, running the engine to keep the heater going, thus wasting even more fuel?
I don’t think so.
Number schnumber
OK, so we’re innumerate. So what?
Well although we don’t understand the detail (percentages, fractions, discounts, multiples) we do understand the bottom line. I do, you do, your customers do.
When you’re setting your prices and working out your discounts, bear in mind a few simple things:
- Customers remember: when the VAT rate temporarily dropped a couple of years ago from 17.5% to 15%, the manager at my gym told me it would be ‘too difficult administratively’ to change what I paid each month. So I paid the same, but they kept more, as they handed over less tax. Conversely, a year later, when the rate returned to 17.5%, that administrative difficulty suddenly vanished and I ended up paying more. So they scored – twice. Punters in the changing room were not happy, and it still rankles. Now it’s going up again, and it simply reminds members of the earlier sleight of hand.
- Customers aren’t taken in. Is £499 cheaper than £500? Yes, but not much. Enough to make a difference? Maybe, though perhaps not in the way you imagine. To me, and probably to more people than you think – the dyed-in-the-wool cynics out there – it’s a just a transparent ploy to get customers reaching for their wallet. It’s one of the reasons I never give anyone a quote that ends in 9. They’re cleverer than that.
- Customers notice. Now that we’ve gone from 17.5% to 20%, prices that were nice and neat last year suddenly look messy. That £15 mobile phone contract now works out at an unfortunate £15.32. And that carefully pitched £19.99 widget crashes through the pain barrier and ends up at £20.42. So what do you do? Well how about leaving prices where they are? First, you keep that nice round figure. And second, and more importantly, you endear yourself to your customers, as you take the hit, not them. I’ve already made a mental note of who’s leaving prices unchanged in 2011, and who’s increasing them. So are your customers.
Numbers are complicated if you let them be. And easy if you put a bit of thought into them.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin:
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
And he was right. There’s nothing we can do about death and taxes. It’s a numbers game – and when you’re number’s up, you pay the taxman (or the ferryman).
But opportunities?
Well they’re ours to lose. So let’s make sure we win them.
Happy New Year.
The downside of keeping up appearances
The other day, on the treadmill at my local gym, while watching Sky News, I was struck by something.
No, not a dumbbell or a gym shoe. But a thought.
Am I the only person in the world not dyeing my hair?
Now of course I’m not, but watching the newreaders, sports reporters and correspondents, you could be forgiven for thinking that we live in a world where grey has been banished forever.
Salt and pepa (and more salt)
OK, time for a little test – on me.
Here’s the photo you’ll see popping up all over my site. It was taken a few months ago, and (if you get up close and squint) it shows some grey hair:
Let’s indulge in some time travel. Fast-forward and we get this:
Now I don’t know about you, but I think that looks pretty distinguished.
I’m thinking George Clooney, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, or even erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling (minus the caterpillar eyebrows, obviously).
On the other hand, I could decide that grey was a bridge too far, and go for the raven’s wing look:
Hmm.
East End car salesman? Dodgy geezer at Newmarket offering odds on the gee-gees? Desperate-but-loveable on a dating site?
I don’t think so.
Maybe instead I’d go for a halfway house solution, the preferred choice of newsreaders everywhere.
The silver wingtips that they hope that will make people think He couldn’t be dyeing his hair. If he were, he wouldn’t have grey bits on the side.
Oh dear. Now that’s just sad.
And the problem is that the greyer – or whiter – the wingtips get, the bigger the difference between the sides and the unnaturally dark top.
Cruella de Vil here we come. Not for me, I think.
The colour of money
And the connection with copywriting, marketing and the world of business? I hear you ask, weary after last night’s office party and struggling to follow my seasonal meanderings.
It’s simple.
Everything you do sends out a signal – including trying to appear to be something you’re not. It speaks volumes about your honesty, integrity and credibility.
The business equivalent of a hint of a tint might be:
- Pretending your company is bigger than it is (we, we, we).
- Claiming the offer is free when it’s actually free*.
- Talking about a product that’s worth X so that Y seems a really good deal by comparison.
- Dodging responsibility for a problem that’s clearly of your making.
- Talking in a language that overblown, larding it with marketing hype and a generous dollop of business buzzwords.
And the solution? Well you could try to:
- Be yourself (people might just like you).
- Humanise your company (people might just like it).
- Admit your mistakes (the sky won’t fall in).
- Not conceal yourself behind pompous circumlocutions and grandiloquent expressions (like those ones). Talk normal.
And remember, if everybody else is coming over all black-and-silver-wingtips, being different can set you apart. Keeping up appearances and doing a me-too means you blend in with the pack.
The bottom line? It’s OK to be grey (as long as you’re not dull, that is).
And if you’re still not convinced, here’s one last test. Santa A or Santa B?
Thought so.
Merry Christmas.
P.S. Is it just me, or do you start humming Nessun dorma when you look at B?
Lateral thinking, low flying and Facebook pensioners
You’re a huge multinational organisation with offices in every country on earth. You’ve grown exponentially over the last 10 years, to become one of the most recognisable brands on the planet. Yet 15 years ago, the company didn’t even exist.
You’re making so much money you don’t know what to do with it. You acquire companies, give your employees a raise, and still you have billions in the bank.
You’ve gone from upstart startup to a company teetering on the edge of unpopularity (when you cross the line that separates deserved and undeserving success).
Who are you?
Google of course.
So what do you do? Keep telling your story, of course. But in a different way. A touchy-feely, non-marketing-y way.
And where where do you start?
Well libraries are as good a place as any. And my local library is just where I spotted this concertina card last week:
The brightly coloured panels shout from the display stand. And the feelgood quotes make you want to find out more – which you can do if you turn the card over.
There, in simple, non-techie language are details of Gmail, Skype, Google News, as well as a host of other useful non-Google (but don’t tell anybody) stuff like banking online, catching up on TV, finding old friends and booking holidays.
It’s clever on so many levels:
- It’s left-of-field. People aren’t expecting to be marketed to in a library. Informed, entertained, educated – yes. But not marketed to. So it’s the ideal place to market.
- It connects perfectly with the audience: IT-challenged, older, not sure what ‘online’ is all about. And it talks in a language that’s friendly and informal.
- It takes the hype out of marketing, and makes it ‘real’ (or as real as those pesky quotes will allow).
- It plays on people’s emotions. Who could resist the pull of a video-chat with grandchildren in Hong Kong or a daughter in Canada?
But it doesn’t stop there.
The campaign points to a URL that promises A Simple Guide to the Internet. And that’s just what it delivers.
It’s a slick piece of marketing that works because it flies beneath the radar. And it’s one you could easily emulate.
So what are you waiting for? Why not start today by:
- Simplifying your message.
- Using everyday language – every day.
- Getting other people to tell your story.
- Looking beyond what your stuff does and instead at how it makes your customers feel.
- Looking at unusual channels to promote your products and services (hint: libraries don’t charge).
This Google campaign is very clearly aimed at older users (check out the Facebook pensioners in the video at the link below) but the same approach could be used with any age group.
And what’s in it for Google, given that all these services are free?
An audience for Google AdWords, of course. Like I said, it’s clever on so many levels.
So why not copy the approach?
All it takes is a bit of lateral thinking, and you too can fly under the radar. And one day, you might just have have an office in every country on earth and billions in the bank.
(Might, I said.)
Find out more:
Customer service and the art of being cheerful
“It doesn’t cost anything to be nice,” said a friend of mine recently, over a caramel latte with wings.
What she didn’t add is that not being nice does cost something. Customer goodwill. And sometimes, custom itself.
A few days later, her observation was thrown into stark relief when I almost (though not quite) changed my mobile phone operator yet again.
Yes, yes, I know it only seems like yesterday that I changed to the oddly named giffgaff, but I was lured by the siren call of hundreds of minutes, texts galore and unlimited web browsing.
Plus the sexiest phone ever, with a 4″ touch screen, a 1GHz processor and a 5MP camera.
So why almost?
The answer is simple: service. With, and without, a smile.
The online mobile phone shop was busy, busy, busy. They didn’t reply to emails. They were unreachable on the phone, unless you were willing to listen to Total Eclipse of the Heart for 45 minutes (torture even in the 80s, when it first came out).
So before I even got my hands on that technological marvel and talked, texted and surfed, I was having a bad service experience.
Meanwhile, over at giffgaff Towers, things were altogether more laid back – and on the ball. A winning combination.
I logged a request for a PAC (Port Authorisation Code) so I could take my number with me. Then, I settled down for a long wait, my expectations set by the snail’s-pace service of my new provider.
Minutes later, a jaunty missive winged its way to my In Box:
We’re gutted that you’ve decided to leave giffgaff, however, here’s that all important PAC that you requested.
If you do, however, ever fancy a ‘second coming’ and want to rejoin giffgaff you are more than welcome to do so.
If you have any more questions or queries don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Kindest regards & good luck
Gutted. Second coming. Good luck.
Aah. Doesn’t it just melt your heart?
It did mine. And there and then, I decided to stay with giffgaff. So they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by adopting a simple strategy.
Being nice. Even when I was dumping them.
Now that’s what I call class.
Loves me, loves me not
If only everybody was as gracious in defeat, they might not be defeated so often.
As part of my recent dejunking exercise, I’ve been reviewing how I use my time. And I decided that Lovefilm had to go – at least for a while.
Luckily, their site had just the ticket: a payment holiday. Yay, I thought. Up to 90 days when I don’t have to scratch around to find yet another film I don’t really want to watch but feel duty-bound to, because I have to clock up the requisite number of DVDs a month.
Sorry, it said when I clicked the link. Some types of subscription don’t qualify for payment holidays. Please call…
…an Indian call centre. Where I got the third degree and a half-hearted attempt to persuade me to stay by offering me a program for a games console (I don’t have one).
I walked out on that relationship without so much as a backward glance. And I was left with the bitter taste of a bad service experience.
Reaping and sowing
Sometimes, I lose work to the competition. Who doesn’t?
But when a prospective client tells me they’ve decided to go with somebody else, I always wish them the very best and hope it all goes well.
Why?
Two reasons.
First, nothing eats away at you like bitterness and resentment. Sure, you’ve spent time on the pitch, and yes, you could have spent the time more profitably.
But if you hadn’t put your all into trying to win the business, wouldn’t you have wondered ever afterwards whether you might, just possibly, have won it if you’d tried a little harder?
So try hard, and if you lose, be a good loser. It’ll make you feel better.
But second, and as important, people remember good losers. On more than one occasion, I’ve had people who decided not to use me for one project come back to me for another. Or recommend me to a friend.
Or even, in extreme cases, come back to me to re-do the original project they took elsewhere, only to see it badly botched. (And no, I never permit myself a wry smile, even on the telephone – it shows in your voice.)
So my caramel-latte chum was right – being nice doesn’t cost anything. And it might just be the best form of marketing you have.
So spread the love. Because one day, you’ll get it back.
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