Companies to Customers: "Don't Bother Us By Calling!"

DMCG Results

Have you noticed how difficult it is to find a customer service phone number these days? They give you email, Chat, and links. But your questions are complex and difficult to resolve. Your questions require a phone call to cut through the information maze.

Let’s get down to everyday reality for a few seconds. The problem gets worse when you decide to buy.

It’s as if the business world were conspiring together to keep you from spending your money.

You search the manufacturer’s website for the contact information. But you search in vain for that sales phone number. In many instances, you will never find the contact address or phone number because it isn’t there. If it exists on the website, it is often hidden under layers of clicks.

I think that many companies today make it quite clear they DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU.

Companies apply the same losing approach to existing customers. This kills present and future sales to save money.

The company actually increases it's sales costs when their product finally does sell. Such behavior reduces sales. Frustrated customers call the service or warranty departments rather than sales.

That’s a no-go because you do not have the product serial number allowing you access to a live person.

If you're a customer, the problem continues. The service group wants you to pay a service fee for product support first before they will talk with you.

This bad behavior weakens brands and causes the loss of many customers.

Why are companies so inept at customer service? Don’t they get it? Will they stay in business or prosper for long in a society that demands service above all? In your view, do companies understand that the prospect and customer are the bosses?  

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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