By Mark Blezard.
I’m a big fan of advertising. I used to sell media space and enjoyed it. It kept me at the ‘pointy end’ of new product launches. However, this pic got me thinking…
There are some organisations that survive through reputation alone. No advertising whatsoever! I know, from bitter experience, that some of these organisations are restaurants. Too proud to have to ‘call for customers’, and yet full every night. I knocked on a hundred of such doors.
How do they do it? Customer service. And how do they do that? Investing in their staff with training, more training, and measurement. Measuring success with customer feedback, measuring skills, and measuring employee satisfaction.
And so what’s my point? If you are responsible for a marketing budget you are wasting your company’s cash if customer service is poor. At best, you are keeping afloat with a colander. Train first, market second.