Customer care? That offer is over!

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: preoccupied object behind the bar was wearing one of those badges. ‘I’m carol, and it’s everywhere I’ll give customer care.’ She was diligently examining something that she had fished out of her left ear, gently rolling it between thumb and forefinger, before looking at it more closely. Finally becoming aware of me looking at her, she returned a challenging, gorgon state. Trying to put her at her ease, I explained that I was simply taking a professional interest in her badge. ‘Oh this,’ she said, turning the badge towards her while still retaining a grip on her little treasure, ‘that offer’s finished! We bin taken over. That customer care thing was put on by the other lot, and they don’t own us no more.’

I used to get mobs of pitchfork-and blazing-brand-wielding marketing people beating a path to my castle gates by suggesting that the whole marketing thing basically sucks, but that may not be true. After all, you can even get a degree in it, by jiminee. Lets examine then what marketing does, and doesn’t do.

I suppose at its simplest our enterprise is driven by our customer’s inclination to buy the things that we offer. To make things that people want to buy, and to make them buy those things, we need to understand why people buy.

Everyone buys because they expect something.

It’s the customers’ expectation of a problem solved, a certain level of performance, travel experience, or flavour—the list of what we expect could go on for ever, but test this for yourself. Whether you intend to buy a book of matches or a jet plane, pause before handing over the money and think about what you expect to happen.

I am not the first person to notice this, and loopy management consultants wasted no time in complicating this simple idea into a difficult and mostly barmy theory—one which, I must admit, I subscribed to for a while. When doing customer care consultancy, it was felt necessary to be able to define the difference between good service and bad service. I would look piercingly at my victims and say ‘Do you ever give bad service?’

The penitent would nod sadly, the defiant would shake their heads violently, and the wearily undecided would shrug. Now the coupe de grass. ‘How do you know when you are giving bad service?’