What's your account number?

This question, so frequently asked by phone attendants, leaves no doubt of how little the company understands (or cares) about good customer service.

(Photo by mollycakes)

There's rarely any need to ask the customer for a number that only makes sense from an internal process point of view.

Companies can use internal ID numbers as much as they want to control customer information, but businesses with really good customer service don't require clients to carry around a number just for the business' convenience. In most cases it's just as effective to ask for personal information such as name, address, and phone number for identification purposes. "Please have your account number ready" is simply not a customer-friendly approach to customer service.

High-Yields Methods redesigns and streamlines office/service process. They haven't paid me to talk about them, and the reason I'm mentioning the company is that their website is the first example I have seen in months in which "free download" is not a misnomer.

In order to download articles from their site, you are asked to provide some information they can use to improve their site or contact you if authorized to do so, but all fields are optional.

High-Yields Methods truly uses the opt-in marketing principles described by Seth Godin in his book Permission Marketing, as opposed to misleading and interruptive techniques used by so many other businesses.

What about your website? Is your download really free?











(Photo by sp3ccylad)

Related post: Convince me first

In this blog post, Scott Adams talks about how valuable it is to talk to someone who has used the products and solutions we are interested in buying, before we make a purchase decision. Online reviews from strangers are not the same, as one wonders whether "the favorable reviews are planted by the vendor, and the bad reviews are planted by his competitors".

He offers a creative solution to allow potential buyers to connect with past consumers of products while protecting the latter from being flooded with a million e-mails asking how do they like their new can opener:

Imagine a system that works like this: When you buy a product, you agree in advance to answer up to four e-mails from future potential customers, beginning no sooner than one year from when you make your purchase. It's totally optional, but agreeing gives you access to people who already bought the product you're considering today, to help you make your own decision. It would strike you as a fair deal.

Starting to provide reviews one year after the purchase seems excessive (particularly for time sensitive things, like travel recomendations), but the general idea is interesting, allowing people to ask specific questions and get qualified feedback, as opposed to having to rely on reviews that aren't necessarily trustworthy and may not cover the points that are important for one's decision making process.

"You are receiving this e-mail because you attended an event, downloaded trial software or registered for technical white papers from Annoying Software, Inc. To be unsubscribed from all future mailings, including event announcements, please go to http://www.annoyingsofware.com/unsubscribe."

Before downloading your trial software, I made sure I unchecked the option to subscribe to your newsletter.

By insisting and making me:

1) open an unsolicited email about your product;

2) go to a page and enter my email again (as if you don't have it already) to unsubscribe from future mailings,

you are ensuring that I'm not buying your product, ever.

As Seth Godin (bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change) puts it,

You do 95% of it right, then use cheesy fonts or lie a bit or try too hard and boom, that's it.