Customer service is still so often an oxymoron. I’m always amazed how ebullient I feel when a company makes good on its promises.

Our home computer had a virus with more tentacles than a octopus. After trying to download anti-virus software to aid my anti-virus software, I finally gave up. The virus had stolen my browser. I was cooked.

My anti-virus software was McAfee, so I called the anti-virus software company, and they offered me an $89 option to solve the problem. They’d take control of my computer remotely. And fix the problem.

And within an hour so, I was able to use the computer again. Voila!

The next day, I received a call from a gentleman who, clearly, had his feet up on a desk in India. I struggled to untangle his English. He was from McAfee. It was a customer satisfaction call. He asked, “Are you happy with the service?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“What?”

I realized he didn’t under my exclamatory. I said, “I am happy with the service of McAfee. Yes.” I repeated my satisfaction.

“Very good,”

Then I hung up. Happy with the service. Annoyed at the inconvenience of expressing my joy in plain English.

About 3 minutes later the phone rings again. It’s my friend again. He had talked with the technician. And the technician said that there was no virus on my computer. He simply unchecked a box that had to do with my proxy settings – and then he re-installed the anti-virus software.

Then the customer service person, whom I could barely understand, or barely wanted to understand, said, “We will refund your money.”

Yep, the computer works, and my $89 is back in my checking account (in 5 to 7 business days).

So, it truly isn’t what you say (or the accent with which you say it), it’s what you do.

P.S. Update:  The computer really did have a virus. A few days later, I had more problems. But I still felt a inner tingly feeling from McAfee’s honesty.

Every American Indian tribe (and every Texan and Mexican) feared the Comanches in the 1800s.

Their rise to dominance is in part a story of positioning strategy. I’m just finishing Sam Gwynne’s recent book, Empire of the Summer Moon – a riveting narrative on the rise and fall of one of the most feared tribes in American history. Only the Sioux on the northern plains come close to the Comanches’ ferocity.

The Comanches’ ascent can be traced clearly to their expertise in raising, breaking, and riding horses. Over the course of about 200 years, the tribe developed a specialty in handling horses. Consequently, the Comanches made their living by hunting buffalo and warring against other tribes (stealing their horses) and, eventually, killing the white man. The tribe had no patience for subsistence farming.

At a young age, Comanche boys had a horse to ride. By the time they were in their teens, a young brave could sweep up off the ground a wounded comrade at full gallop. For years, the Comanches raided and slaughtered the frontier settlers, including the Army and even the early Texas Rangers. For example, when chasing and then engaging the Comanches after a raid on a settlement, pursing soldiers would dismount their plodding Army horses to shoot their muskets. It took a minute or so to reload the rifle.

But the Comanches would stay on their mustangs, which were much leaner and faster than the those of the soldiers, and charge into a line of standing soldiers. By the time it took to reload a musket, a Comanche brave could shoot a dozen or more arrows while hanging on to the side of a horse at breakneck speed.

Eventually, the inexorable advance of the white man pushed out the Comanches. The white man slowly learned to ride more like a Comanche warrior – on a fast horse. And then came the game-changer: the Walker Colt, the repeating revolver. Then it was the white man’s turn to slaughter the Indians.

The simple point is that power comes from being really good at something. Ergo, one thing. Consequently, you develop a reputation (and a messaging strategy) for that one thing.

The specialist position is really the only tenable marketing strategy in today’s explosion of organizations, services, and products.

It is that time again: college visit season.

This spring my daughter, who is a junior, and I made it to five colleges for overnight campus visits.

A campus visit is no small thing. It involves time off school (and work for mom and dad), travel, and the expense of accommodations. You don’t do them on a whim. And you certainly don’t visit schools that your child is only mildly interested in.

By the time a prospective student visits the campus, that student is a “hot” prospect.

Schools foot a big bill to get them there—purchasing names for search mailings, sending admissions staff to college fairs, conducting email marketing and advertising campaigns, and designing glossy view books. Add to that the expense of the visit weekend itself – more mailings, tours, free meals and tee shirts and Nalgene bottles, and the herculean efforts of admissions staff, administrators, professors, and student ambassadors to make it all happen.

Why leave any element of the visit to chance?

Since my son was searching for his ideal college fit two years ago, I have been a proponent of overnight visits, thinking the best way to get a feel for a campus culture is to experience the campus. But not every school allows overnight visits.

Now I may know why.

Twice now my daughter has been picked up by her student host, brought back to the dorm, and told, “I have to go to the library to study for a big exam tomorrow. You can go and do the stuff they’ve got planned for prospects. Here’s my cell phone number – call me when you want to get back in the room.”

Huh?

You are leaving your hottest prospect to fend for herself for hours on end during a visit that could seal—or break—the deal?

At one school I learned that the student hosts aren’t compensated for their efforts, they aren’t trained, and they don’t even volunteer to be hosts. The admissions office sends them an email telling them they’ll be having a prospective student stay with them.

A prospective student is a potential paying customer – more than $120,000 for four years. A campus host is the closer.

Would you entrust the best leads in your sales pipeline to someone who isn’t ready, willing, and eager to engage in the sales process?

Would you allow your $120,000 prospect to feel lonely, bored, and annoyed during the most critical moments of the sales process?

By Bernice Mirrilees
Account Executive
CZ Marketing

A man walks into a bank.

All he wants to do is deposit a check. He should have trusted his instincts and used the ATM.

He is greeted by the sentinel guarding the door at the customer service desk, “Hello, welcome to Chase Bank. How may I help you?”

He averts his eyes: “I just want to deposit a check.”

The sentinel persists: “We can have one of our personal bankers help you.”

“No, really, I’m good. I have everything I need.”

He walks to the counter with deposit slips, fills one out, signs the check, and gets in line. I should have simply used the ATM.

As soon as he gets in line for the teller, another woman, perhaps the personal banker, approaches, “Why are you visiting Chase Bank today?”

“I’m here to deposit a check.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you today.”

“No, I just need to deposit this check and I’ll be good.”

Thirty seconds later a teller says, “I can help you here.”

She takes the check and deposit slip and says, “Do you have any other accounts with Chase?”

Can’t she see that on her computer screen? he thinks.

“Yes, I have my business account, my checking account, and my mortgage through Chase. I’ve been a customer since 1992 – you bought the bank we originally started with when we moved here from Colorado.”

The teller says, “Have you heard of Chase Exclusives?”

“I think so. I just need to deposit this check.”

“Well, you really need to hear about Chase Exclusives. It’s a credit card with a ton of awards and benefits. I can have a personal banker go though your accounts and see if you are receiving the full benefits of Chase.”

“I don’t really have time for this today.”

“Okay, so could you give me your telephone number? I’ll have our personal banker call you.”

He finally agrees, thinking, I’m free. Then, the teller says, “Why don’t you wait while I introduce you to your personal banker.”

By this time, he is perspiring, trying his best to be non-anxious and polite. He doesn’t give a hoot about Chase Exclusives. He needs no credit card with frivolous awards with every purchase.

Apparently, the bank has abandoned its monotonous, day-to-day activities (such as providing small businesses with lines of credit) and gone into another business: annoying its customers with stuff they don’t want.

We really do live in a post-advertising marketplace. It’s all white noise if you can’t deliver on the promise of your basic services.

Why is it so easy to find negative examples of marketing?

Several years ago my wife Jana and I needed to redo some floors in our house.

A local flooring store had an offer that was hard not to resist: 0 percent financing for a year.

While Jana and I are not prone to buy on credit, the offer piqued our interest. We visited the store, picked up some samples, and, finally, had some folks from the store out to measure our floors. We got the quote by email, choked a bit at the price, and then promptly delayed making a decision.

Several days passed. Then a week. We liked the folks at the store; the woman was warm, helpful. We thought about getting a second quote from a competitor, but delayed doing so.

The salesperson, though, never followed up after she emailed us the quote. No call. No email.

Finally, after a couple weeks, Jana and I finally said, “Well, are we going to do this or not?”

It made good sense to visit another flooring store and get another quote. We took (ergo, wasted) a perfectly good Saturday afternoon and visited a competitor that had no credit promotion. We had the measurements from the first flooring store, so on the spot the salesperson gave us a quote, for $1000 less, for the same flooring.

We wrote a check that afternoon. And saved $1000.

I hate to admit this: I probably would have paid $1000 more if the salesperson at the first store had simply followed up. All I needed was a nudge. I wanted to be sold to.

So what’s the relationship between marketing (the 0 percent financing offer) and sales (our signing the deal for $1,000 less at the second store)?

A phone call.

If you’re in the service industry (university enrollment, donor development, professional services, etc), and no one is paying attention to the relationship between marketing and “sales,” you may be missing out on picking off the low-hanging fruit.

The owner is Greek, the restaurant is Italian. And it serves the best Chicago-style stuffed pizza in the Chicago area.

That’s saying something, given that there’s a pizza joint on the four corners of every major intersection. This restaurant is not a franchise. Not a carry-out-only place. And while it serves other Italian food – I don’t know that for sure, since I’ve eaten only the pizza.

To beat the rush weekend evenings, we order in. That is, my wife or I call about 40 minutes ahead and place our order. We arrive with our three kids, two of which head to a playroom with video games and other toys.

We put our name in with the host, who most often is the grumpy, squatty gray-haired owner-grandma. She barely looks up when you walk up to the podium that she peers over to take your name. We remind her that we’ve already ordered. I don’t think she smiles. She plays no favorites.

The service is slow, the waiters and waitresses are never around when you want another drink. You wait for your check. You wait for the box to take home the leftover pizza. It’s the place to go if you want to test your patience.

In short the restaurant violates pretty much every marketing principle of the last quarter century.

Yet, I suspect that the owners fit the profile of the rich folks in the best-selling book, The Millionaire Next Door. The restaurant mints gold, the pizza is gold.

So I wonder what there is to take away from their success, and the only thing I can think of is this: Great pizza trumps great service. That is, if your product is really, really good, then your service can be average.

That doesn’t sound right to me, but I’m stumped.

Thoughts?

To read the first part of this interview, click here.

The surest way to fail is trying to be all things to all people. You can’t stake out your brand with a mish-mash of promises and services.

According to Harry Beckwith, author of Selling the Invisible, and You, Inc, you can only be one thing—and there are eight positions of power an organization can choose from. In this follow-up interview, CZ President Dave Goetz asks Beckwith to differentiate the positions and how to pick one that can work for you:

Brand &Strategy: Are there a limited number of positions your organization can possibly have?

Harry Beckwith: I believe there are eight positions of power in any market—and you start by focusing on one:

• Pioneer/Leader vs. Innovator;
• Premium vs. Discount;
• Specialist vs. Generalist; and,
• Performer vs. Service.

What’s the difference between the Pioneer/Leader and the Innovator?

The industry leader is big and well established, whereas the innovator is small and less established. Industry leaders rely on an established image, like “good,” “solid,” or “consistent.” The innovator, on the other hand, can be riskier. Tired of the old way of doing things, they think and execute outside the box. Apple is an excellent example of this—coming in and going after IBM.

What about the difference between the Premium and Discount position?

It’s based on pricing. It’s the difference between Tiffany’s and Target. Regardless of how you’re positioning, you want to be aware of your pricing and what it communicates. But your pricing, in most cases, doesn’t drive your message.

The premium priced position is desirable in a lot of ways because it communicates your brand quickly. The consumer knows what they’re getting, and even if it’s a lot of money, there’s a sense of security in that.

Why is there security?

No one’s going to fire you for choosing the best. And if you’re the best, you’re the one chosen. Take McKinsey Consulting: They’re master of the universe and will come up with a hell of a solution for you—but it’s going to cost you a lot.

There are also arguments for choosing a low-priced brand: “I’ve only got so much money, but I can’t do it myself.” Or, “Yeah, they’re low priced, but they know more about it than we do. They can help us, and it won’t cost us a fortune.” Let’s face it, there’s always a market for the lowest priced web developer, if all you want is something that runs, and it doesn’t matter what the product looks like.

But generally speaking, the Discount provider is not among those stalwart positions.

Is there also a sense of security when you choose a Specialist over a Generalist?

Yes, because a jack-of-all-trades can’t be a master of one. You want somebody who is highly experienced and highly specialized. All other things being equal, the more they know about something, the more they work with it, the more proficient they probably will be.

If you have a detached retina, you don’t want a general M.D. You want a detached retina specialist! There’s a security that goes with that.

When it comes to choosing a Performance or Service position, what must organizations consider?

The Performer is not concerned about a touchy-feely experience but focused on high levels of performance.

On the other hand, the Service position is client-oriented. They may not offer brilliant solutions, but they provide valuable solutions along with a good experience. When organizations focus on service, clients experience a high degree of comfort.

Why then do people choose the Performer?

Because everybody wants the best. Sometimes all we really want is a positively good outcome.

What if the outcome is great but the experience is terrible?

Some people find that the outcome really wasn’t worth it. I think people consistently underestimate how much we value the experience—and how little we value the performance. Often it’s difficult for us even to tell if it was a great performance.

For example, you hire a contractor to redo your slate in your bathroom. You get six different people in to do it. Now, there could be some real differences, but really I don’t know who does the better job. However, I sure know who I felt better working with. If so-and-so screws up, I like working with him because I can tell him, and he’ll fix it—and fix it properly.

We tend to put on our rational hats that values cost-benefit and performance outcomes. In the process, we lose sight of the fact that we’re human beings who like to be respected, like to feel good, and like working with people we can trust.