Customer Service With A Capital ‘C’
McDonald’s Corp. has announced a new marketing strategy designed to deliver superior, “hassle-free” customer service. In so doing, it moved customer satisfaction ahead of pricing and a varied product line as a company priority.
This is in keeping with a growing realization in all types and sizes of businesses that the customer is, indeed, king … or queen, as the case may be.
It also reflects the importance of featuring customer service as an indisputable goal in a company’s strategic and tactical plans.
One of our readers, Pardner Wynn, E-mailed a reaction to our recent column on the topic.
“As president of a seven-person educational software company, I have a pretty simple ‘yes /no’ policy that I believe greatly enhances customer satisfaction: No one can say ‘no’ to a customer except me.
“On the flip side of the equation, of course, anyone I can trust enough to answer our phone can be trusted to say ‘yes’ to a customer anytime they feel it is reasonable, or solve the customer’s problem anyway they see fit. The worst case result is that once or twice a month some employee might be ‘unduly’ generous with a customer (e.g. shipping a replacement disk at no charge when a customer lost theirs, honoring a promotion for a few extra days because a customer was on vacation, etc.) but extra-happy customers aren’t much of a downside.
“Sure, with our ‘no no’s but mine’ policy I end up handling 20 or 30 extra requests every month that could be handled by somebody else, but: (a) I hear about EVERY unresolved customer issue BEFORE our customer decides to take his biz somewhere else, and (b) even if I end up saying ‘no,’ I think the majority of our customers genuinely appreciate the fact that the head spud was at least willing to discuss the issue rather than leave it up to an anonymous staffer or clerical person.
“I suppose when our company has 20 times as many people, I’ll lower the ‘no’ authority to a VP or department manager position, but for now its an exclusively an executive responsibility.
“I have another technique that also works well. It is verboten to write the word ‘Customer’ with a lower case ‘c’ (except in marketing brochures, since most of our customers are English teachers). Somehow, just seeing it capitalized (like our names) subtly reinforces the fact that Customers aren’t account numbers but people, just like us.”
Q. I’m in the process of developing a name for a new product my partners and I have developed, and we’ve decided a number would be best. Can we protect our choice with a trademark?
A. Probably not, if all you’re going to use is a number.
Let’s say you choose 71. That would mean that the rest of us would have two less digits to use when we add or subtract unless we got permission from you first.
However, if you pick a “fanciful” arrangement like “7-Eleven,” for example, you have a good chance of establishing trademark protection. (Just like 4-in-1 Oil, Formula 44 and 7-Up.) “Special K” is an example of how the alphabet can be used.
The attorneys tell us that the trick is to avoid stand-alone words that are “generic” or simply descriptive. This probably applies to all word-less digits and words like “weatherproof,” which are in common usage.
In this case, you’d want to think about names that are “suggestive” or “fanciful” like “Stormstrong” or “TopTuff.”
You can’t simply take a word or number that is essential to ordinary communication and reserve it for your own use. And, don’t forget, once you select a name, you are going to have to defend it against others who might feel that it also fits their circumstances. The stronger your claim is by virtue of its uniqueness or fancifulness, the better your ability to reserve its usage.
It’s important to know you are on solid ground before you invest a lot of marketing dollars in promotion and the establishment of consumer recognition. Accordingly, it’s a wise idea to check the trademark register to see if anyone already adopted your chosen mark.
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