Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Referral Marketing: Customer Service

This past weekend, I had a cap put on the back of my pickup. If I must say so myself, it's beautiful. It matches my Tacoma perfectly. I've lasted nearly 3 years without a cap and now ... I feel that my truck is complete ... except for one thing. The cap was ordered with a mistake. I had requested that the window that is facing the truck cab be a slider so that I could have easy access between the cap and the cab. (are you following me?) The cap arrived without that slider window. Of course, no one noticed it while it was being installed. I noticed it right away upon inspecting their work (which was very well done).

Apparently, the man taking the order wrote down that I wanted the sliding window, but since it wasn't where it was supposed to be on the sheet of paper, the man reading the order did not catch it. So, what does this mean to me, the consumer? I'll need to fit them into my schedule again, drive another 40 miles, and take another hour of my time ... not to mention that they will need to completely remove the cap again to replace the window. I can understand human error, however, I'm hoping that the inconvenience is taken into consideration.

I believe this happened because the man reading the order was operating on auto pilot and failed to see beyond the obvious. So, let's think about how this applies to your referral marketing efforts?! Are you operating on auto pilot with your referral partners? in your networking groups? in your office? at networking events? If you are ... you quite possibly could miss a fine detail that could cost you alot of money and/or time to repair. Your relationships could reach a stale mate because of you not giving much to them. Your creativity could wither away. Ultimately, the referrals coming in could significantly slow down because you're not focused on helping the people in your networking group.

Are you willing to have your referral customer service suffer?

No comments: