Customer care? That offer is over!

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: marketing people trying to achieve? Why did you hire them, and what was it you wanted them to do? When will you know if they have done it? Obviously you must set them objectives. To measure those objectives it would be good to have benchmarks and key performance indicators. Oh yeah? Down that route lies ruin, as Government has so cheerfully proved with its health and education policies. How, I will hope to prove to you a little later, but for now let’s ask Tarquin and Gervaise what bang they are going to give us for our bucks.

They chorus in unison ‘Footfall! Increased footfall.’

To translate for those of us who don’t speak fluent marketing jargon, this means bums on seats, people coming through the door for the first time. What they don’t do is increase profit, or increase sales (they are giving the food away, for Heaven’s sake). No, they are simply increasing the number of people who give us a try. Is that what you wanted? So the answer is yes, you want lots more potential customers. The hard-faced salesmen of yore used to call them leads or prospects, and those we sold to or signed up would become conversions. The fewer that escaped, the better the conversion rate. A simple idea that has got lost in the mists of time and the obfuscation of new-think.

Consider this, have you ever eaten at a motorway service restaurant? Would you seriously want to go back? you would try to avoid eating there again, even if your life depended on it. Gervaise and Tarquin Marketing may have increased footfall, more customers pouring through the door finding out just how bad we are. our offering is crap and we are spending good money to help people find that out, spending half of our turnover to piss off the population twice as fast as we used to. Perhaps someone should have explained to the 27-stone kid, with the badge that reads ‘I’m Kevin, I’m here to help’, and a little red boiler suit so tight it is flossing his bottom, exactly what promises the marketing company are making to our customers, and what we are trying to do. It is no good spending a fortune shovelling customers through the door if Kevin is shovelling them straight back out of it again.

A jolly interlude