How interactions with others can be mean ruin for your organization!

I remember this story that a sales friend of mine told me about a meeting he went on with his CEO and a potential client. They were waiting for the client who was delayed and while there his CEO started talking about someone back at the office and saying how incompetent she was and how in his organization he has no tolerance for fools and that it was his way or the highway. Well sure enough the client comes in and right away the scowl goes away, the smiles go out and they go in and have their meeting.

Well several weeks later my friend calls up the client wondering why they have not heard back regarding what had earlier seemed such a promising lead. The contact told him that the receptionist had overheard what the CEO had said and commented on how rude he was. The icing on the cake is when this was reported back to the CEO, he didn't take it as a lesson learned, he called up and told the client that they were not interested in doing business with them anyway and if that is how they do things than fine.

The point of this story is that every person who deals with the public from the CEO on down to customer service or even accounts payable is a brand ambassador. Each and everyone of them need to realize that all customers are key and that the cost of finding new customers far and away exceed the costs of acquiring new ones. Yet companies seem to think that the only people who are responsible for presenting the public face is either marketing and then by default sales. And sales gets the task by default only.

Every organization needs to review who speaks to the public and more importantly there needs to be some basic training in how to deal with the public and in many cases customers. It is amazing to me how much money an organization will pour into marketing and how much time and effort is spent on color schemes for advertising and what vehicles to use and then from the minute the contract is signed until the moment the license comes up for renewal nothing happens.

Or you can have a case where there is a problem and you get passed around from person to person, none of whom seem interested in helping you. In my mind it is amazing how little time or money is truly invested into the full 360 degree marketing process. Yet ironically when customers are unhappy and not purchasing or purchasing more renewals of the product, it is often the marketing group that faces the blame.

The take away here is that everyone who deals with customers works for marketing. Customers should be treated like the special beings that they are. The reason being is that if you think it is expensive to keep customers happy, try to find new ones to replace those who are unhappy. Of course, don't forget the old adage that an unhappy customer will tell six people for every person a happy customer will tell.