At ‘The Elephant Sanctuary’ – a non-profit organization based in Hohenwald, Tennessee – an elephant named Jenny became very animated when a new elephant named Shirley arrived.
After looking into the animals’ backgrounds, workers at the Sanctuary found that the two had performed with the same circus for only a few months—22 years earlier.
Elephants have great memories.
If you annoy a customer, they become like elephants. Many years ago a certain marketer – a generally good marketer, by the way, who knows his stuff – ignored my emails.
I was a paid subscriber to his newsletter, and I was missing a couple of issues. All I wanted was for him or one of his people (he had virtual assistants) to send me the link to the missing issues. It would have taken maybe a minute to do it.
But all of my emails and customer service desk requests went unanswered.
And I have never, ever forgotten that. To this day, when I see one of his offers cross my desk, I won’t buy it.
It doesn’t matter if it looks like the greatest thing ever, or the missing piece to my internet marketing pie. I won’t buy it.
And I’m not alone, either.
According to American Express, 78% of customers will end a business relationship on the spot due to poor customer service.
In my case, I loved the newsletter. I read every issue and implemented many of the ideas. It made me money.
And yet, I had such a bad taste in my mouth after being repeatedly ignored, that I cancelled my monthly subscription.
If you’re overwhelmed by customer service requests, you might want to take a long, hard look at your business.
Are there things you can improve? Better systems you can put into place?
Or perhaps you simply need to hire a virtual assistant to answer customer service requests for you, so that you can focus your attention on building the business.
