I do. I remember being treated well when I went to spend my hard earned money. I remember people actually wanting to help me when I had a problem. I remember when there was competition for my loyalty and my business. Every once in a while I am treated to that old-time service. Most of the time I am not. There are more reasons than I care to go into here, but the fabric of our society has some holes in it, and customer service is in one of the holes that needs repairing.
The Safeway store near where I live is one of the most friendly shopping places I have ever experienced. Great management. The Fry's store across the street - in contrast - is a miserable place with employees who prefer to stare into the void to engaging the customer.
And artists need to remember the customer experience is important as well. Some of the irritations that are easily avoided:
- Dull voice mail greetings
I have heard some of the most dull and lifeless VM greetings in existance when calling photographers and designers to discuss consulting gigs or work.
Make them lively. Let the caller know that you will call them back at a specific time, or if you are out for a short time, let them know. If you are on location in Montana shooting for a major annual report, put that in there as well if appropos to your situation. - Really bad business forms
Impersonal, dull, flat and difficult to read business papers shout that you don't care. You do care, don't you? I hope so... now show it. Brighten them up. Add images, art, easy to understand language... anything to say you care about your business and theirs. - Horrible to worse web site
I have seen sites with no contact information listed, entry pages inferring that I am a copyright infringing scumbag who they are reluctantly allowing to view their work, and by the way -- "they know who we are." Broken links, same news item that was there four months ago, same portfolio images as well, pages that say "coming soon", no idea as to what the photographer does, no "meet the photographer" info, bad writing and poor spelling... and the list goes on. - Emails that go unanswered
Email is instant communication. Understand that or don't use it. Telling me that you only check your email on the weekends tells me you don't care about my communications with you.
There are lots of things bigger and smaller in scope than those above, but in total they become your story, your brand, your total identity. Making things a little bit better on every front can make the experience of being in business more fun and make dealing with your business a delightful return to the time when people actually cared.
The point that he makes about pricing being cut to the bone and not caring about the business anymore is well taken in our industry, you know. So, in order to be noticed... to be the "Purple Cow", you do what everyone else isn't doing. Customer service is one of the easiest areas to shine in. You love what you do, so let everyone know that you love working with them.
Seth's Blog: "That said, my trip the other day set a new record. I chalk it up to the new 'We don't care, we don't have to' economy. In many segments, so much profit has been squeezed out that there's no room to hire and train great people. And there's not enough competition to harm the bad actors."
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