Episode #23 – Delta Airlines Customer Service, Selling Fish Oil, a Fantastic New Search Engine, and a BIG Marketing Lesson from Easy Car Rental.
September 24, 2008
Episode #23 - Delta Airlines customer service sucks. They really do. I’m one of their premium, platinum, super duper flyers, and they don’t treat me any different from anyone else. But that’s still not the point. I needed to call them about changing my flight during Hurricane Ike, and it was not a good experience as you’ll see…
The viewer question this week is about marketing a unique fish oil product! Think about the PRINCIPLE behind the advice I give and see if you can apply it to your business.
There’s a new search utility that you will LOVE! I guarantee it. It really is amazing. It puts the fun back into search, AND it’s faster than Google!
This episode’s BIG marketing lesson is from EasyCar, a British car rental company. They turned the tradtional car rental model on its head – I’ll explain why.
Resources and websites mentioned in this episode:
GetHuman (bypass automated phone systems)
Viddler.com (register for a free account & post comments about this video)
SearchMe.com (new search utility – try it!)
EasyCar.com (British Car Rental Company)
Buy the ‘Help My Business’ DVD & Audio Set (Episodes 1-20)
Regards,
September 24th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Hi Andrew, Here is my worst Customer services experience. Like many people I have a number of products in my home from Samsun, mobile phone, LCD tv, printer etc. so I was quite comfortable spending around £725.00 on a laptop. After a few day’s a number of softeware issues arose. After a number of fruitless and frustrating calls to Samsung Customer Services I was informed by Customer Services Special Advisor, yes reallt, that they had no responsibilty for software issues (contradicted by M/Soft) so don’t bother them with non hardware faults again. Result? One returned laptop and a new purchase from Dell. Result? Every problem repaired, advice to improve matters and follow up calls to make sure problem resolved. The very best service and what a contrast. I am now resolved never to buy a Samsung product again, have changed the phone, replaced the printer, bought two new (non Sammsung )LCD tv’s and relegated the Samsung one to the spare bedroom. I guess the lesson is if you get bad service, spend your money elsewhere.
John
September 24th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hi John,
Interesting to hear that, because I also had a bad Samsung experience recently. I bought a Bluray DVD player that didn’t work from day 1. It went back for repair TWICE over a period of 4 months, and I never had a functioning unit. In the end I gave up trying to deal with them (it was taking too much time), and I too will never buy any Samsung electronics item again.
Andrew
September 24th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Well – I tried searchme.com and was not impressed. Twice when I typed in a keyword – it got hung up. Then, once I scrolled thru the sites they show, there was no way to go to another page.
I’m not sure about others, but I find the best sites on pages after the first page many times, even at Google. Many people put out good info but don’t know how to get to the top of the search engines, so it is many times worth going deeper to find sites.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Bob,
I understand that different people search in different ways, but I’ve become a big fan of SearchMe.com. It’s not perfect, but it’s still in public beta, so bear that in mind.
The 2 key advantages for me are speed of previewing lots of search results, coupled with the fun element.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say that couldn’t go to another page. Search me continually updates the results as you scroll, so once you scroll to the far right, it’ll give you a new set of results to keep scrolling through, automatically.
I encourage you to persist with it a little longer. It might win you over…
September 25th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Hi Andrew,
Many thanks for another fun show.
Talking about outsourcing, have you seen this video:
http://www.callcentermovie.com/
Talking about bad custiomer service – where should I start? Most customer service seems to be bad these days. And I am still amazed that companies take so long to reply to emails, or simply ignore them.
See you next week,
Lisa
http://www.SurveySam.com
September 25th, 2008 at 8:50 am
All decent fish oils are molecularly distilled and they all display that fact prominantly on their labels and websites. Purity is a big issue in this product, and anyone who takes it knows that cheap oil is probably contaminated. It’s the first thing I looked for when your segment displayed their homepage, and that information wasn’t there, so they should definitely add it. They can’t, however, say that their product stands out from the rest on this point, tho. Too many other oils are highly purified thru distillation.
Their banner also looked really familiar to me, and it turns out to be a really close knockoff of Nordic Naturals, one of the highest quality fish oils on the market.
And, what’s the “E” in omega-3E?
September 28th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Good points made by lorraine regarding the fish oil – molecular distillation is barely a USP anymore, but it could be said that the fish are ‘hand-caught in the cold northern waters of the Arctic, where fish are thought to have less toxins than those harvested further south’ – or something along those lines. And good episode – I wish I could have watched it earlier in the week – I hate waiting until the weekend!
As far as Samsung, I have never had a problem with their electronic devices – I’ve even dropped a 19″ CRT monitor from the back of a truck and it worked great afterward- scratched, but worked great. Actually, I had a Samsung monitor fizzle out on me 18 months after I received it as a gift and Samsung replaced it at no charge, and even covered shipping of my monitor to them and the new monitor to me – that couldn’t have been cheap. Anyway, I’ve stuck with them for pretty much everything I buy because I have had such good experience with them.
Andrew, I really liked the bit about outsourcing something to the customer and then make that ’something’ into a positive for the company – I did exactly that with some therapies in my office. In the past I had patients wait to talk to me after they finished a certain therapy. This ‘post-treatment talking’ could sometimes last another 10 minutes, and it was almost always irrelevant small talk. I started telling patients that they can get off the therapy themselves (as long as they were physically able) and make their way up to the font desk and schedule their next appointment. I let them know that they don’t have to wait around for me anymore and can leave as soon as they schedule at the front – wow did that time start adding up. That change alone has allowed me to see 1-4 more people per hour, which adds up by the end of the day – and really adds up by the end of the week!
Thanks again, Andrew, for your time, energy, and ideas!
dr.scott
http://www.hilltopwellness.com
September 29th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Very helpful comments Dr Scott, your take on the fish oil is an excellent tweak – I told you I was no expert in that niche! Anyway, I think viewers got the principle behind the message and the comments from Lorraine and yourself were most helpful.
Thanks for sharing your breakthrough about outsourcing to the customer, great example!
Regards
Andrew
September 30th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Hi Andrew,
I really like your show. I love the nifty clicks portion. Is there anywhere that you have a list of them? If not this would be great! I would even be willing to pay for a small ebook that contained all of them with a small description.
Thanks,
Mike
September 30th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hi Michael,
Funny you should say that – in a couple of weeks I’m launching a members only website called ‘NiftyClicks.com’ – I’ll be mentioning it on the show soon, but you can go there for a sneak peak prior to the launch.
My friends have ALL been begging me to compile an organized collection of Nifty Clicks, with video tutorials on how to use them, so that’s how the NiftyClicks.com site was born.
Regards
Andrew