The New York Times today has a story, “A New Capital of Call Centers,” which focuses on the fact that many companies with US customers are moving their call centers to the Phillipines or back to the U.S. because personnel in the new locations speak better English than, say, their counterparts in India.
Evidently, these companies believe that customers’ primary concern is the quality of the language used by the call center agents. My primary concern, however, is whether or not the call center agent is actually able to answer my questions, solve my problem, and/or take my order accurately. Overall, I’ve had much better luck with the hard-to-understand foreign agents who seem to know what they are talking about than with US-based agents who are poorly trained and/or work in call centers in which no system is in place to help callers actually get their questions answered.
In brief, I wish companies would pay more attention to this Renee’s Rule™: Make my life easy.
What do you wish?
When I won a Turnaround of the Year Award from the Turnaround Management Association (TMA) in 1997, I was thrilled. In addition to the thrill of being recognized for my achievements, during the award ceremony, I had the opportunity and the pleasure to deliver a thank you and give credit to Ron Torland, the CEO who brought me into the company, gave me full operating authority, worked with me side-by-side, and supported my decisions, some of which were extremely unpopular. The turnaround would not have been possible without his participation.
When I attended the TMA awards presentation at the conference this year, it struck me that things have really changed. There were so many awards given to so many people that there were no speeches–just lots of people marching across the stage.
Think about it: How many announcements about awards events or awards being bestowed do you receive every week? Clearly, these awards bring people into each organization and its events, and they are are certainly great marketing tools for both the organizations and the winners, but I can’t help feeling that the significance of these awards has been diminished.
In my last post, I questioned the wisdom of Foundary.com’s lack of a search function. In fact, I had actually sent an email to them about this topic.
Here is a part of their reply: “Because we have a very limited, specialized, selection and each sale only lasts a few days there is no search feature.”
There is hope, however. When I visited their site today, there was a “Search” field…It doesn’t work for items on their site–it takes visitors to other websites–but I am hoping this means they listened and will develop an effective search function in the not-to-distant future. If they do, I may shop there.
Zulily.com and Foundary.com are websites that offer products of interest to me, HOWEVER, I don’t shop at either one because those sites have no effective search function. There is no field that says, “Search.”
What are they thinking? I assume they think people will buy a larger number of items if they have to navigate through lots of different pages to find something of interest because they’ll see multiple items they’d like to buy.
This may be a great strategy for shoppers who either live to shop or have plenty of time on their hands, but it may prevent busy people from doing any shopping at all on those sites.
Here is the question: Are the total sales to people with time to shop likely to be larger than total sales WOULD be if it were easy to search for specific items on these websites? My gut feel is that if these websites had first-rate search functionality, they would land sales not only from people who have time to shop but also from those who are pressed for time.
Perhaps I live in a warped reality–but most of the people I know (all age groups) would prefer EASY and TIME-SAVING to CUMBERSOME and TIME-CONSUMING.
Retailers are always trying something new to boost sales, but this latest trick, having NO price tag, looks like a mistake to me.
For people who live to shop and have plenty of time to do so, being able to see the price may not matter, but for busy people, having to take time to find a clerk in order to learn the price of an item of interest is not only annoying but may also prevent them from making a purchase.
Take me, for example: I definitely do not live to shop and, when I need something, generally shop en route to some other activity. A few weeks ago, I spotted the perfect purse at Nordstrom–exactly what I’d been seeking for almost a year: leather, waterproof, big enough to hold an iPad and to serve as a tote for carrying shoes, etc. Perfect for trips to New York City. It was not a necessity but would definitely have been nice to have.
No price tag. No price tag on the outside; no price tag on the inside. The clerk was helping other customers but told me that not having price tags on purses was their new policy. I was on my way to a meeting and couldn’t wait. Nordstrom lost a sale.
Today, while hiking through a mall on my way to purchase a necessity, I spotted the perfect gift for my granddaughter at a kiosk. No price tag. For that matter, no clerk. Therefore, that kiosk lost a sale.
I suppose that the theory behind this no price tag strategy is that when customers have to ask the price, it gives the sales person a chance either to make the sale and/or sell different or additional items.
It would be interesting to know (but tough to measure) whether the benefits of this strategy outweigh the costs of lost sales. I’m sure it is NOT a good plan for customers like me.
If you follow my blog, you know I see a strong need for smaller stores with limited products. Bitten by the economy, retailers are buying into this approach.
Best Buy is reducing its footprint. Also mentioned in the story? Jo-Ann Fabric and PetSmart.
Still, it sounds like these size reductions are cost-cutting moves rather than a realization that many consumers seek and prefer a faster, easier, less stressful shopping experience.
On April 18, 2006–just five years ago–the Canadian dollar was worth .88 U.S. dollars. Today, April 18, 2011, the Canadian dollar is worth 1.04 U.S.
What does that say about where we have been and where we are going?
The greatest danger to the future of our democracy is that too many people are unable to differentiate between what is fact and what is fiction and too few care.
Although I certainly agree that academic achievement needs to be improved in our country, no job in our educational system is more important than ensuring that our citizens can evaluate critically the information they receive.
Perhaps you have followed the Kyl/Colbert saga which prompted this post. Senator Jon Kyl declared in a speech in the US Senate that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s budget goes to abortions. He was more than slightly off the mark: the percentage is only 3%, and his office said that his comment was “not intended to be a factual statement.” The comedian Stephen Colbert responded with a twitter campaign that mocked Kyl’s behavior and drew attention to the lack of fact-based discussion which has become all too common.
Regardless of how we may feel about the abortion issue, it is scary to see that our elected officials (and too many others) simply don’t care about basing their arguments on facts. We will never all agree on all topics, but let’s base our disagreements on FACT rather than on FICTION. If we do not, we risk domination by demagoguery.
If you read my January post “Size DOES matter: The Pop-up Principle,” you know I’ve been saying that smaller stores that offer a narrower selection may prove more profitable for retailers because smaller stores accomplish two important things: Done effectively, they both reduce retailers’ costs AND provide a faster, less stressful shopping experience for customers.
Now, Walmart appears to be taking my advice. See article in the Huffington Post today.
In the case of Walmart, smaller stores will not only offer the advantages I’ve listed above but will also make Walmart’s merchandise and low-prices accessible to new customers who currently don’t want to or can’t travel to their super-sized stores.
I promised to provide a series of posts regarding my predictions for 10-year trends. So..here is the first: Over the next 10 years, at least one appliance maker will figure out how to produce reliable, long-lasting appliances at a moderate cost. (I am thinking particularly about ovens and refrigerators.) These appliances will sell like the proverbial hot cakes.
Their success will be driven by three things:
- Consumer demand for appliances that work and require few repairs
- Improved production technology that will produce such appliances more cheaply than is now possible
- Viral “advertising” via the internet as consumers discover that such appliances exist
I hope this is not wishful thinking…….
As a child, growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, I became a science fiction nut, and my interest in the future and what technology can achieve has endured.
In 1985, when I was in my MBA program, I took a course about “The Future.” It was taught by Harold Linstone. As a part of that course, each student wrote a scenario of what he/she thought the world would be like in 2000. I have saved my copy (It was composed on my Apple IIe. My sons were quite enthralled with it at the time, so it is preserved for all posterity in my safe deposit box.)
Among other things, I predicted that by the year 2000, there would be “terrorist attacks on our shores.” Am I prescient? Not really–To prepare for the assignment, I simply did a great deal of reading about trends at the time.
Some of my predictions were right; some were wrong. Some were right, but I had NO idea what they meant. (e.g., I predicted that we would be communicating via electronic mail, but I had NO idea that we would call it “email” and that it would dramatically change our lives.)
So..for what it’s worth, I am going to start a series of blog posts containing my predictions about what will occur over the next ten years. Some will be right; some will be wrong.. In any event I’ll be on-the-record, and it will be interesting to see the extent to which my predictions are accurate.
