Posts Tagged ‘customer communication’

I received a surprise in the mail today – a women’s magazine I don’t subscribe to. But, according to the address label, I’m going to be getting the magazine for a full year. Three words come to mind: Gift. Horse. Mouth. Has this ever happened to you? I called the magazine to see if

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563). During a recent flight on US Airways, I heard the following cabin announcement:  “We are dimming the cabin lights but you can find your personal light in the passenger service unit.” Passenger Service Unit? They were referring to the

I like to herald businesses that really tailor their offerings to what customers want and when they want it. I just read about http://www.shopittome.com/ - it's a terrific concept, they will alert you when your favorite brands/stores have sales! I wanted to call attention to this website because: a) it's a

A friend of mine sent along an email he got from FinancialTimes.com. He is a subscriber of FT.com and he was impressed enough to send this to me, and I’m impressed enough to share it with you. This is an example of the way to communicate to customers when you care about developing long-term relationships. This email tells their customers that they matter. I love

Were you wondering how Starbucks was going to survive their competition’s barrage of ads and low prices? One

Companies that send too many outbound messages can end up harassing their customers. That is how customers feel and while some marketers might suggest that sending more messages (email, mail, any format) may increase the response rate, the bigger issue is the damage done in turning off customers. One company that fits the bill is AT&T. They clearly want me to

Many packaged good products are shrinking while the price stays the same. From the customer perspective this can feel sneaky -- because it is rarely announced. Check out this graphical email message I received from Ben & Jerry's. It explains how a premium

Does your company or industry have a big change coming up? For example, let's say you sell televisions. This time next year, analog TV sets won't be able to receive broadcasts without a special digital converter because the government is looking to auction off the analog spectrum of the airwaves. My advice is this: consider how changes in your business,

Few companies proactively contact their customers. Most communications between customer and company tend to have an obvious ulterior motive—to sell something. I decided to do things differently when I started at a dot-com. I created a program that sent every new customer who registered on the site a personal message from a staff member. This message included an offer to

When your customers get mixed messages from your organization what happens? They might give up trying to figure out what is right or they might ask for clarification. Do you want to take the chance that they might give up? I don’t think so. I bring this up because inconsistency in message, tone and information especially is critical to your business. Yet