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Brick No138: You Are Number 9,453
By Matt Weston, Thursday 31 March 2005 Confessions of a careless type I've got a confession to make. If you sent me an email asking for your complimentary Google AdWords voucher last Thursday, it probably bounced. My fault completely: I gave out the wrong email address. I put a stray "s" in bussinessbricks.co.uk. (My previous most embarrassing typo in 137 Bricks was writing rouge trader instead of rogue trader. A red-faced gaffe.) Apologies. This is the correct address if you've been playing the waiting game this week: mailto:google@businessbricks.co.uk T's and C's on using the £20 vouchers here. You are number 9,453 Speaking of long waits, it seems anti call centre militancy is on the up and up: (1) "You are number 9,453. Your call is important to us. So don't hang up or you will lose your place in line." (2) Call Centres: How To Strike Back (3) Meg Daniel presses zero whenever she hears a computerized operator on the telephone so that she can talk to a real person. "Just because they want a computer to handle me doesn't mean I have to play along," she said. But is all this fear and loathing of call centres because we, as customers, don't like waiting, or because we don't like being automated? Hold that thought. 108 Happy Meal (TM) Combinations At McDonald's circa 1985, if you wanted something that wasn't on the menu you could always pick the gherkin out of your Big Mac. Unlike call centres, McDonald's succeeded in automating the customer. A short menu meant the staff, the rulebook, the process, and even the customers were easy to automate. And that put the f's in fast food. (The reason that, 20 years later, McDonald's is broken isn't because of a short menu. It's because of what was on the menu. 108 Happy Meal Combinations aren't going to help one bit.) The fact is, with McDonald's the customer could see that the automation was worth it. The benefit was fast food. The problem with most call centres is that the benefit of automation all goes to the company doing the outsourcing. It's all explained as cost cutting, but it isn't easy for the customer to see the saving. Whereas McDonald's made the automation transparent, because it underpinned the benefit, most companies that use call centres ask them to disguise the fact. (Making 80p an hour Indian operators to use phone names like Molly for example.) If automation gives a benefit, why not communicate it to the customer in a way she or he understands? Again, hold that thought. When was the last time anyone overheard an e mail? February's Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA) award for excellent newspaper advertising was won by this ad: (The NMA page may say registration only, but try typing any email address in the "Already Registered" box.) Usually, ads that win awards aren't the same as those that pull the best results. But this ad is an exception. As judge Richard Flintham put it: "[This] giant little small-space ad for the Samaritans punched massively above its weight and made me pick it." It sparked a 40 per cent rise in traffic through the Samaritans email service. (By the way, I keep a bright green swipe file of good, bad and ugly ads I tear out of publications. And of ads written by agencies, charity ads always seem to work harder. Perhaps it's because agencies feel more accountable or guilty when it's charity money they're spending?) Back to the Samaritans ad: as you can see, it has a single call-to-action, email jo@samaritans.org. If you don't want to risk being overheard, you drop Jo an email. And it works because you know that, at the end of that call to action, is a skilled, caring reader. (Even if it's not always Jo.) You might be forgiven for thinking that the Samaritans have nothing to do with call centres. But, fundamentally, the call centre hotline and the jo@samaritans.org are both set up to deal with problems. They just do it differently. The way companies that use call centres deal with problems is to treat them as a cost that needs to be cut. For call centre, read cost centre. They ask you to filter yourself through a multiple-choice tree where you end up speaking to a one-task, low-skilled worker. As I said above, you wouldn't mind so much if you could see the benefit to you. But the Samaritans, and here's the parallel with small businesses, treat problems as opportunities to help. Unlike big businesses, small businesses should be able to make every incoming call a profit centre. If you can solve a problem, you build towards the next sale or the next word-of-mouth referral. And if you can't figure out a way to make incoming calls profitable then surely you're either targeting too wide a niche, or there's something wrong with what you're selling. Bric-A-Brac (1) Jo Moulds asked for help writing a feature for the Daily Express in Brick No135's Bric-A-Brac. She asked me to send a big thank you to everyone who replied (over 70 readers). JM's story, featuring two Business Bricks' couples, will appear sometime in April. (2) "McDonald's are offering hungry rappers between $1 and $5 for every play of rap songs which name-check their Big Mac burger". Link. (3) Six New Cats. We added 16 new Brickies to the directory last week. And that meant adding 6 new categories: Office Supplies, Disabled Services, Security, Architects, Builders and Estate Agents. Perhaps the last three should talk? (4) And finally: if you're in the throes of writing your business plan, Bricks partner Palo Alto are running a 15% Easter discount for readers. That's £84.99 from £99.99 for Business Plan Pro. (The discount only shows up when you click "Buy Now" btw.) Remember to sign up: back to top |
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