In response to my earlier post, in which I said “customers don’t care about channels.” Tomas Kohl writes:
Agreed, though if I indicate my preference for e-mail over telephone, I damn well mean I expect NOT to phoned. Plus, 99% percent of the time, e-mail will suffice; the possible exceptions being: your credit card has been skimmed, or: you’re 3 months behind on your payment schedule and we’re sending a death squad your way; not much more I reckon.”
Thanks, Tomas — you helped me to see me comment in a new light, and went on to make another good point.
When I said “channel preferences don’t matter,” I was reacting to market research which asks consumers their channel preferences in a generic, abstract sense. But Tomas is right on. If a customer specifies a channel preference specific to certain interactions, and makes those preferences clear to the specific firms he or she deals with — then that preference damn well matters.
Tomas also raises another good point which many firms don’t seem to explicitly understand. There are times when the rules have to be broken. You have to use judgment (human or system) in certain cases, and call, email, or send regular mail if its warranted.
Good advice, Tomas. Thanks.
Technorati Tags: Marketing, Email, Tomas Kohl
What about if Tomas indicates his preference is to be contacted by e-mail… and then asks a reasonably broad question. Because that’s where most of this issue comes up – a customer asks a question, then indicates their channel preference.
“Can you send me some information about a car loan”
I don’t know about the financial institutions that you deal with… but where I work, there are many types of car loans. Car loans for environmentally friendly cars, car loans for new cars, car loans for old cars, secured loans, unsecured loans…
At some point you need to draw the line, don’t you?
Try explaining all that in an email, you’ll run into at least two hurdles…
1. The email is inevitably going to be long, unless you provide some generic (read: crap) response like ‘Please refer to our website for information on our various car loans’.
2. The call center consultant (after all, it’s these guys that write the emails) is either going to write a crap email (well we pay them peanuts don’t we?) or spend a significant amount of time writing the email (if indeed they are one of the rare ones that can write).
This is contrasting to a simple phone call…
“Hi, I’m just calling about your email. What type of car were you interested in?”
“Oh, a Toyta Prius”
“Great choice! We have an car loan for green cars like the Prius. Rates start at…”
Basically what I’m saying is that if Tomas sends me a request for loan information, I’m going to call him. Either that or send him an email asking if it’s ok to call, because this is a complex matter that is easier dealt with by drilling down on what he wants, and then going from there…
Thanks, guys, for making this conversation much more interesting than my original post (where I reacted to Ron’s original post).
What James is writing is spot-on: in this scenario, the phone call can help the customer get the right answer more quickly than a prolonged e-mail exchange. The customer might not have known that when he indicated his preference for e-mail.
When I say “I expect not to be phoned”, I am referring to those situations where your grant an organization a right to interrupt you with an unsolicited offer (just in case they may have something of interest, but not in the middle of family dinner, thank you very much).
Sure enough, when my bank has news about suspicious transactions on my card, I want them to use their own head and – just like Ron wrote – use judgement.
Thanks again.