| What’s up with customer
service?
 By
Keith Clark
How the pro audio industry distinguishes itself
Within the past week, we’ve been compelled to change our telephone
service provider and our auto insurance provider, due to months
and months of, frankly, getting jerked around. Nothing like sitting
down at the desk with the first cup of coffee of the day, picking
up the phone and hearing “click click.” And then silence.
Particularly aggravating when you’ve been overpaying said
telecom conglomerate as a result of its own billing errors resulting
in hours spent trying to fix a problem of the company’s own
creation just to get your own money back!
If I noted the names of both of these
companies, you’d know them immediately. But my point is not
to name names, but rather to ask: how stupid can the management
of these companies really be? They spend millions of dollars annually
in bombarding you and me via television, radio, mail, print and
the Internet with messages attempting to coerce us into using their
products/services.
But this is the part that’s truly
perplexing: they’ve already got me - a paying customer - on
board, presumably at a profitable fee, and then they do their level
best to drive me away while continuing to outlay the massive amounts
of money to coerce potential customers to also come on board. All
with a backdrop of news reports noting these same companies are
laying off employees by the thousands! And there, I suspect, is
a primary root of the problem.
Veteran employees usually
attain their status because they care about mundane things like
service as opposed to vapid marketing, and further, they’ve
learned a lot about their product or service over the years, knowledge
that is invaluable when shared with customers. Alas, in times of
mass layoffs, these very people are among the first to go due to
their larger paychecks. (But hey, by all means, be sure to dump
a wheel barrel full of cash into another 30-second spot during the
Super Bowl…)
Where am I going with this? In the past
several years, I’ve run across a significant number of pro
audio enterprises (in all their various forms) that fly in the face
of these allegedly more sophisticated corporations in terms of supporting
their customers. In fact, from a percentage standpoint, I’d
be willing to wager our industry is way more successful at providing
commensurate support as compared to the average of the whole.
I’ve
talked to many principles of sound reinforcement companies - concert
and contracting - that don’t even have to advertise to enjoy
a steady flow of profitable business in their region. In every case,
they’ve attributed this success to treating the customer with
respect through an approach of honesty and dogged pursuit of serving
what they sell. And I’ve seen the employees of these same
companies in lock step, walking this walk and talking this talk.
That kind of commitment gets around.
From the larger manufacturing
levels of this industry down to the single-person shop, there is
a savvy that probably can’t be attained via the most noted
MBA program at the loftiest Ivy League college. It is a savvy of
common sense that’s so easily disregarded and/or ignored in
the machinations of massive multinational corporations. A savvy
that says if we are going to invest in marketing, then we’re
going to develop messages that respect our customers, and if we
say it, we’re gonna back it up. And it’s a savvy borne
of too many experiences like the one I describe above that leads
to a tireless policy of “that won’t happen to my customers.”
It’s
called caring, and it’s a big reason I’m honored to
be in this business.
Keith Clark is editorial director for ProSoundWeb and Live Sound
International magazine and can be reached at keith@prosoundweb.com
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