Your Customers Are Lying To You.

They do it every day and it’s costing you money.

The worst part is you’re the one that causes it.

Take dinner last night in a Texas Roadhouse restaurant.

I’m sitting at the bar, with the rep from one of main vendors.

As I’m holding the menu at arm’s length, because I’d left my reading glasses in my car, the manager came by and he suggested the “Fall off the bones” ribs. They’re fantastic, he said.

I took his “social proof” and ordered ‘em.

Just as they brought my full rack of ribs and some broccoli, another diner sat down to my right and we struck up a conversation. He was a salesman too and ate out a lot, like me.

He asked about the ribs and I told him they weren’t very good. I had just eaten some fantastic ribs at Jack’s BBQ in downtown Nashville a few days before and these paled in comparison to those.

I actually had to ask for a “bucket” of BBQ sauce to cover these with to try and make ‘em palatable.

He asked about the broccoli and I showed him the 3 small florets with the giant stalks, kinda opposite of what you’d really like to have.

The waitress/bartender then asked for his order and he chose to ignore my “social proof” and got a steak and ribs combo, but at least he got mashed potatoes, instead of thick-stalked broccoli

When his food came, I watched closely as he took his first bite of ribs. Almost simultaneously, the waitress/bartender asked how his food was.

He asked for a “bucket” of BBQ sauce … just like I had to do.

Here’s How You Do It The Wrong Way

A few minutes later, the manager who’d pimped the ribs came by and asked my new friend about his ribs. “They’re fantastic!”, he said.

The manager said they always were and walked away with his smile.

I asked him why he lied to the manager.

“I just told him what he wanted to hear.”, he said.

This goes on all the time and like I said, you, like the manager, cause it.

Here’s How You Do It The Right Way

If that manager had really wanted to know what we thought, he could have offered to send us some ribs, without prejudicing our review with his opinion and asked us to be really honest with him as to what we thought.

As it turned out, the manager will go on believing a lie.

He won’t know that nobody likes his ribs.

His repeat business, for ribs, will be very low.

And he won’t have learned how to learn, which would make the difference between mediocrity and massive success.

Do you prejudice your customers comments or do you set them up to give you honest feedback?

Are you missing out on the very bit of info that would move your business from mediocre to massive?

If you need help determining, send me an email or leave me a comment below and I’ll help you help yourself.

EDIT 12/21/09 – Besides leaving a great comment, Glenn Ross wrote a great post about customers that lie.

© Mike Sigers for Simplenomics, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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I’m reading a NYTimes article that’s letting me know that, since times are bad, Hyatt has decided to finally value their customers and do business like the rest of us have been doing it for several decades.

I’m not that impressed, especially since it took a downturn in the economy to force them to use this strategy.

“In the days ahead, managers and employees of the Hyatt hotel chain will be doing favors for some of their customers. Maybe they always did them, but these favors will be different: they will be what Hyatt Hotels’ C.E.O., Mark Hoplamazian, has called “random acts of generosity,” like unexpectedly picking up the tab for your hotel-bar drinks or hotel-spa massage.”

I just stayed at The Renaissance in Tampa, while on business. They already knew how to do favors for their customers, like grab an Escalade and run a couple of guests across the road to a restaurant and then come and get them. Like room service that tastes great and is reasonable, even inexpensive. Like bottled water that’s actually in a bottle, is cold and is free. Like cold water with sliced oranges in it in the massive, exquisite foyer. Like employee’s who are personable, friendly, knowledgeable and professional.

“A coming paper in the Journal of Marketing addresses that very subject. Building on past research on the role of gratitude in human relationships, it argues that a customer who is made to feel grateful most likely becomes enduringly loyal as a result. Gratitude, as the paper bluntly puts it, can “increase purchase intentions, sales growth and share of wallet.”

Are they serious? Did it take you til 2009 to figure out that to get, you have to give.

How long has the rest of the world know about this? Ummm, since about the time that humans were created.

Wait, it gets even better. They have an educrat on board with this drivel:

“Robert Palmatier, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Washington and an author of the paper, says that making a customer feel truly grateful toward a business is harder than it might sound. And the hard-wired feelings of reciprocity that can trigger gratitude can just as easily trigger the sense that you’re being treated unfairly.”

What he’s saying here is he’s never done anything, marketing, customer service or sales-wise,  outside of a classroom and he thinks being nice to people might backfire.

The chances of that are around 10,000,000:1 … I’m willing to take that chance.

Outside of my snarky comments, the article really is worth a read.

Reciprocity is real. Humans do respond to it and it shouldn’t have taken you or Hyatt this long to catch on.

By the way, I’m a Hilton family of hotels customer when it’s on my dollar and they’ve been doing nice things for me for years. It didn’t take a downturn for them to give in to this eons-old style of doing business.

© Mike Sigers for Simplenomics, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Mr. Karmazin,

You’re satellite radio operation, SIRIUS XM, is broken.

When the people you employ to work with and for the subscribers won’t actually work with and for the subscribers, you don’t have a chance of survival.

Bad business.

Tech Support at SIRIUS XM doesn’t actually support tech.

How do I know? I’ve tried to reach them and have them actually help me receive the channels I pay for…even though I don’t actually receive them.

And yes, even though I can’t listen to the channels I want, ala carte, I’m still being billed as if I were.

Bad business.

Your Tech Support people hide behind a vast cadre of people who answer the phone in varying dialects, the least of which is English, which the vast majority of your subscribers speak.

Bad business.

Don’t believe me? Click this link to read the previous, ongoing plea for tech support and then tell me if you really believe in what you’re doing.

I wonder if Liberty Media Corp., you remember, the nice people who gave you a $530 million dollar bailout recently, I wonder if they treat people like this at DirecTV?

I wonder if their board would keep you around if they actually knew what they bought into?

I wouldn’t.

If you can actually talk to someone in Tech Support, would you ask them to fix my problem?

I would…if I could talk to them.

Thanks.

EDIT 3/24/09 – After 2 days and four calls from a corporate type, I have a solution in the works.

I’m not completely happy, how could you be, if you’d been thru what I’ve been thru the last 2+ weeks.

I am heartened by the change in modus operendi.

The ‘solution’ will cost me about $72 extra dollars per year, so it’s more than livable, but the hassle and hour after hour of frustration on the phone was worth thousands of dollars if you’d paid me my going rate as a sales, customer service and marketing consultant.

Maybe SIRIUS will hire me to help them troubleshoot a few of their problems, which are many and massive, as far as customer service and websites go.

If you haven’t done so, please read the whole encounter by clicking the link. You’ll feel as bad for me as I do for them.

EDIT 3/25/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/26/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/27/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/28/09 – Still no radio

EDIT 3/29/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT – 3/30/09 – I called the nice young lady and asked why I still had no radio, no Tracking number and no phone call.

She said someone should have called and sent a Tracking number and apologized. The apologies are starting to grow old.

She gave me the Tracking info on my new MiRGE radio, which should arrive on 4/01/09.

That will be 8 days since they agreed to send one.

Personally, I’d have made damn sure it went out that day or the next and I’ve have sent it Next Day Air or Second Day Air at the very least.

I guess when you have ten’s of millions of subscribers, you take ‘em for granted.

EDIT – 3/31/09 – Still waiting. Should arrive tomorrow.

EDIT – 4/1/09 – New MiRGE radio arrived. I’ll try to get it installed and activated ASAP.

EDIT – 4/2/09 – Can get the SIRIUS channels. No XM channels as of yet.

EDIT 4/3/09 – No change. Can’t get anyone who speaks as much English as I do and they cannot get the XM chaanels to activate. I wish you could hear these fools and the sillyass things they have me try.

EDIT – 4/4/09 – No change.

EDIT – 4/5/09 – It’s Sunday, so I have the entire day to try and get someone who speaks good English and can get the XM channels to work.

I spoke with 5-7 people today. Not one was American or had a tremendous grasp of the English language.

They have zero technical skiils to boot.

Same thing each time. Turn off the radio, unplug all the wires plug it in and I’ll send the signal and it will work.

No, it doesn’t work.

I spent 2 1/2 hours sitting in my car and 7 1/2 hours total on the phone and/or waiting for the XM channels to activate.

I’m now 28 days into this nightmare.

I should take bets on when it will end…if it ever does.

Tomorrow I call Corporate again and see if the can find someone who can make it all go away.

EDIT 4/6/09 – The nice young lady in Customer care was advised of the complete and utter inability of the Customer Service reps to get my service activated properly.

She called me back with a gentleman from the IT Dept., I think. I know his name if you need it.

He suggested I send them the radio, let him activate it and he’d send it back.

Since that was less than the ideal advice, I suggested he activate a radio and send it to me and I’d send the one I have back in the same box.

Simple and much, much better.

I hope to get an email with a Tracking number sometime later today.

Until then I have no service, but I’d bet my subscription is ticking just as if I actually had what I was paying for.

I tried to get thru to Jim Meyer, VP of Operations, but he wasn’t taking calls…or not mine anyway.

How about you Mel? You available for a call. You guys have my number and you can reach me anytime from 8 am til 11 pm Central.

Call me. I’m 29 or so days into this precial brand of SIRIUS hell.

Ten’s of thousands of people are reading this post. Let’s talk about how bad you guys are.

EDIT 4/7/09 – Hi Mel. I know you’ve read the email I sent you.

But you haven’t called.

Why? Is it because you’re the CEO of a $2 billion a year company?

Don’t let that stop you, becuase your $2 billion company is losing money every month.

I’m part of the ownership group of a $100 million company that isn’t losing money every month.

I’m also a sales, marketing and customer service consultant that’s in demand every week.

Oh yeah, the replacement MiRGE radio you guys sent me today?

Well, Mel, it didn’t work. It had no XM service on it.

Even though your Engineering guy said he personally activated it before he put it in the UPS box.

Another sucky day in SIRIUSland, Mel.

Another bad day for your team.

Call me. I’ll help you help your team.

EDIT 4/8/09 – Another day down, Mel.

Day 31 I think.

Still no solution.

Another radio on the way.

Another day lost and more to come. Guaranteed.

Most ‘Reputation Management Consultants’ would tell you to call me or at least comment here, Mel.

It might make you guys look like you care.

Although, it’s been so bad for so long, you may not even be able to save your reputation.

I’ll link to an article/post that might be good for you to read:

http://www.flyteblog.com/flyte/2009/04/managing-your-online-reputation.html

EDIT 4/9/09 – Thankfully, Mel ol’ buddy, the ordeal may be over. I received a radio today that actually worked and had SIRIUS and XM programming on it.

It’s not a done deal, yet, because you guys still have to “merge” it with my account, but I’m betting you get thru that with flying colors…just like you did the other 30+ days of this mess.

It’s been nice using you guys to create the perfect case study in how to not protect your online reputation.

Thanks for being there for me Mel. It was nice to never hear from you or any other senior brass.

Good luck with that stock price thing.

© Mike Sigers for Simplenomics, 2009. | Permalink | 40 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Okay, SIRIUS, I know you’re strugglin’ a bit, but….

I had to call three times to your Customer Service today to get a simple answer.

I’m simple and I like simple, so that’s what I was after.

The first one’s command of the English language was so poor, that I, as a Kentuckian, could not even fathom why someone would have him answer the phone, because I had no chance up being understood or understanding.

I quickly hung up and called back.

The second guy was a bit better, but not entirely functional as a phone rep.

My problem is this…

I have SIRIUS in my car, in which I spend 4-10 hours a day, on the road.

I love baseball and it’s getting close to baseball season.

Rather than spend another spring, summer and fall unable to listen to a lot of day games, a few night games, news and updates, I want to add any and all baseball packages to my account.

Any. All. I’ll gladly pay. Here’s my money. Take it.

The rep I spoke to could not even begin to tell me how to add baseball to my account ala carte. Nope, you can’t do it.

So I mentioned that if I can’t have baseball, now that you’ve merged with XM, I’ll just switch over to XM and drop you guys like a bad habit.

All he could do was laugh.

I understand, ’cause I’m a funny guy.

Then I mentioned that I wasn’t kiddin’ and that he needed a find way to to add baseball, ala carte, like it says you can do on the SIRIUS website.

Sorry, he says, but I can sell you a lifetime package of other programming for …

I had to remind him, not only do I not want to buy a lifetime package, I’m going to cancel my account and subscribe to the same channels, thru XM, so I can listen to baseball.

You guys win either way, but I’m now an unhappy customer because I had to go thru the trouble to do that.

More laughter.

I am a funny guy. Did I mention I wasn’t laughing?

I hang up and search the website for some help.

Can’t find any. I ain’t saying it ain’t there, I just could not easily find it.

There has to be somebody who cares. Has to be.

Somebody. Who. Cares.

I try one more time. One LAST time.

This time I get somebody who speaks better English than I ever hope to be able to speak.

Nice guy. Clear, deep voice. That works well on the phone. Note that.

I tell him about my dilemma and previous experiences.

In less than 3 seconds he solved my problem. Almost.

All I have to do to be able to receive the XM channels and buy ala carte programming is upgrade my radio.

Maybe $100. Maybe just a bit more.

Damn! I’ve been a quarterly-paying credit card subscriber for years and now I have to spend more on a radio, just to be able to spend more on programming.

Did you catch the irony there. I have to spend more on equipment to spend more on programming.

Seth Godin could have a field day blogging about that, but I’m not as eloquent, nor am I in the mood. You do it, Seth, then I’ll know it was done right.

The solution kinda sucks, but I can live with it and sleep at night.

While I’m on the road tomorrow, I’ll try to schedule my lunch time around a stop at Sam’s Club or a Best Buy store and see if I can find the specific radio that the rep told me to get.

BTW, SIRIUS, if you want to know the name of the guy who thinks I’m a comedian or the fantastic rep who knew what the heck he was doing, just call me. I know you have my cellphone number, because your system asked me for it 3 times and both rep’s asked me for it as well.

It would be nice if your system would send that with me as I get switched from your automated rep, who happens to be a humorless she-devil, to the live rep, but, like I said, I know your strugglin’, so whenever you get to it is okay with me.

And if you need help with strategizing your email campaign that can get you more ala carte sales, just call or email me and I’ll be glad to help…for a fee.

If you’ll actually tell your subscribers about this, I’m betting you can sell more equipment and programming, but if you leave it up to your phone rep’s, well…

EDIT 3/10/09 – Yesterday I bought the radio the rep told me to buy. I installed it easily and called Customer Service to activate it and de-activate the old one.

The first rep I got sounded like Miss Cleo, who may need have had to get a job after her infomercial went under.

She was clueless about how to do anything I needed.

She had no idea that SIRIUS even provided channels ala carte. And she wouldn’t naviagte to the page on their website that proved it for a fact.

After 2 hours, yes, two whole hours, she told me to hang on for a minute and put me on hold. After about 25-30 minutes, I promised I’d hold for a week if it took that long for her to come back.

After more than 30 minutes another later young lady came on and asked why I was on hold.

I told her my story and she told me I had been placed in the cancellation queue.

When she asked me if I wanted to cancel, I retold the story and said not only did I not want to cancel, I had bought a new radio and wanted to add channels.

She then worked with me for another 1 1/2 hours, but we never did get my ala carte channels.

She then promised that someone would call me within 24 hours and fix my problem.

It’s been over 14 hours and I haven’t had a call.

And you guys wonder why you’re strugglin’, why your stock’s in the tank and why you needed a bailout from an investor.

I’ll ask again…

Hey SIRIUS, Can You Help Me?

EDIT 3/11/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/12/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/13/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/14/09 – Still no call.

Hey SIRIUS, Will You Ever Help Me?

EDIT 3/15/09 – I just spoke to another Customer Service rep who told me, after I had to re-explain everything that had previously happened, that not only could he not help me, my support ticket that had ben “escalated” several days ago had not even been looked at yet.

Wow. Talk about absolute and utter stupidity by a company that makes it’s money by selling a monthly subscription service.

He said it would take 7 days for anybody to even look at it.

I pay for a 24 hour a day service and they can’t even look at it for 7 days, not including weekends, which I happen to pay for.

The issue apparently involves their website and the Ala Carte Gold package, which, by now, several hundred other subscribers might have signed up for. If they did sign up, they too have a service that they can’t actually use the way it was designed to be used.

Again I have to say, this is part of why you needed a bailout and why your stick absolutely sucks and you’re on the verge of bankruptcy.

How many hundred of thoudans of subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions because of this absolutely horrendous service?

I could go on and on, but they don’t really care either way. They know they’re not long for this world and their employees are all out looking for other jobs.

Note to whoever buys these guys out: Good luck…you’ll need it to repair the bad word of mouth that these guys have earner the easy way…piss poor service.

EDIT 3/16/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/17/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/18/09 – I called them…again. The poor young lady stuck to her script and would not budge when I explained that we’d already done all the stupid, childish things she wanted me to try.

English was not her native tongue and her ability to wrap her mind around the word problem that an issue like this presents was ZERO. Because of that limitation, she had ZERO ability to understand and ZERO chance at being able to troubleshooting it.

I was in a good humor, so I went out to my car, unplugged the radio, re-connected the antenna and power cord and she was amazed when it didn’t work. Really. Amazed.

Finally, after over an hour, I had to “insist” that she ask somebody about the problem.

Now they admit to at least 10 people with the same problem and I’m in line with them, waiting very un-patiently, for SIRIUS to be able to find and afford someone to fix their problem, which I KNOW is in their website.

I asked her why, with at least 10 people suffering from the same problem, for at least 2 weeks, why they didn’t just assign someone to the problem and get it fixed ? “Because it’s a hard problem”, she said.

Really ? A hard problem ?

Think about how hard it is for at least 10 subscribers to pay for a radio and programming that they can’t listen to… after you’ve had hundreds of phone calls and 2 weeks to fix it.

THAT’S hard.

EDIT 3/19/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/20/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/21/09 – Still no call.

EDIT 3/22/09 – Still no call.

Hey SIRIUS, Will You Ever Help Me?

EDIT 3/23/09 – I received two calls from”corporate”. Nothing much, helpwise, but it’s a start.

EDIT 3/24/09 – A very professional, very nice lady from corporate called me and we talked about the issues.

After further research, she had to apologize that the customer service person who told me to upgrade to a Starmate 5 radio to be able to get the sports (baseball) channels I wanted was wrong.

Notwithstanding is the fact that the SIRIUS website also says the same thing.

Notwithstanding that the channels are in the lineup.

Notwithstanding that the channels are ‘selectable’ in the Ala Carte Gold menu.

Now I’m really disappointed, because it’s a comedy of continuous eroors that isn’t that dang funny.

While she looks into all my options, I consider cancelling my subscription and eating the $129.99 I spent on the radio.

She calls back with another option. The MiRGE radio will allow me to get every SIRIUS channel and every XM channel.

Every. Freakin’. Channel.

Where was this info 2 weeks ago.

It’s about $6 more per month, but whoopee, who worries about another $6 when you’re paying to listen to radio, which is basically free anyway.

If I’m silly enough to pay $13.99, I’m silly enough to pay $19.99.

It hasn’t happened yet, and I’m not happy yet, but after 2+ weeks, it’s a nice change of modus operendi for SIRIUS.

I’ll keep you updated.

EDIT 3/25/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/26/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/27/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT 3/28/09 – Still no radio

EDIT 3/29/09 – Still no radio.

EDIT – 3/30/09 – I called the nice young lady and asked why I still had no radio, no Tracking number and no phone call.

She said someone should have called and sent a Tracking number and apologized. The apologies are starting to grow old.

She gave me the Tracking info on my new MiRGE radio, which should arrive on 4/01/09.

That will be 8 days since they agreed to send one.

Personally, I’d have made damn sure it went out that day or the next and I’ve have sent it Next Day Air or Second Day Air at the very least.

I guess when you have ten’s of millions of subscribers, you take ‘em for granted.

EDIT – 3/31/09 – Still waiting. Should arrive tomorrow.

EDIT – 4/1/09 – New MiRGE radio arrived. I’ll try to get it installed and activated ASAP.

EDIT – 4/2/09 – Can get the SIRIUS channels. No XM channels as of yet.

EDIT 4/3/09 – No change. Can’t get anyone who speaks as much English as I do and they cannot get the XM chaanels to activate. I wish you could hear these fools and the sillyass things they have me try.

EDIT – 4/4/09 – No change.

EDIT – 4/5/09 – It’s Sunday, so I have the entire day to try and get someone who speaks good English and can get the XM channels to work.

I spoke with 5-7 people today. Not one was American or had a tremendous grasp of the English language.

They have zero technical skiils to boot.

Same thing each time. Turn off the radio, unplug all the wires plug it in and I’ll send the signal and it will work.

No, it doesn’t work.

I spent 2 1/2 hours sitting in my car and 7 1/2 hours total on the phone and/or waiting for the XM channels to activate.

I’m now 28 days into this nightmare.

I should take bets on when it will end…if it ever does.

Tomorrow I call Corporate again and see if the can find someone who can make it all go away.

EDIT 4/6/09 – The nice young lady in Corporate was advised of the complete and utter inability of the Customer Service reps to get my service activated properly.

She called me back with a gentleman from the IT Dept., I think.

He suggested I send them the radio, let him activate it and he’d send it back.

Since that was less than the ideal advice, I suggested he activate a radio and send it to me and I’d send the one I have back in the same box.

Simple and much, much better.

I hope to get an email with a Tracking number sometime later today.

Until then I have no service, but I’d bet my subscription is ticking just as if I actually had what I was paying for.

EDIT 4/7/09 – Got the replacement MiRGE radio today. The letter from the nice guy in Engineering said he personally activated the radio with SIRIUS and XM service before he sent it. I put it in the cradle in my vehicle and it had no XM service…just like the previous radio.

What a freakin’ special hell SIRIUS is.

I called the Engineer and he hasn’t called back yet.

I called the nice, young lady in Customer Care and she was as flabber-freakin’-gasted as I was.

What could they say except, “We’re sorry.”

Did that help me or placate my extreme anger and disappointment in any way?

No.

What kind of torture will they subject me to next?

Stay tuned to find out.

EDIT 4/8/09 – Talked to the nice guy in Engineering today. He’s sending another radio that he will personally activate with SIRIUIS and XM service, just like the last one.

Also gonna try another antenna and another cradle/dock.

I’m like a guinea gig…or more like a crash dummy!

I’ll be on a business trip til late, so I may not get to try it til late tomorrow night, but, as always, I’ll keep you updated.

I think this was Day 31.

Would you keep trying or would you give up?

EDIT 4/9/09 – It’s over! The nightmare may finally be over!

The nice guy from Engineering sent me another radio that he had activated with XM and SIRIUS programming and when I plugged it into my dock it actually worked this time.

Now, before we get too feisty, it’s on a Demo account, not mine, so we still have to cross that creek, without getting dunked.

Let’s see if that goes smoothly before we declare a truce in this battle.

I’ll let you guys know as soon as it’s settled sometime next week.

© Mike Sigers for Simplenomics, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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As most of you know, we spent 8 days without power after a recent icestorm.

When my electricity was restored, I tried connecting to the internet. I have 2 ISP’s, just in case of some type of prolonged downtime or outage.

My main ISP was down, also because of no electricity and downed lines.

My backup was fine, so I used them for 2-3 days before I tried my main ISP again and found that they had come back online.

Here’s my question:

If you were that main ISP and you knew you were down for 7, 8 or 10 days and so were your customers, would you pro-rate all of your customers bills to reflect those days of no service or would you wait and try to satisfy just those who complained?

I have no idea as to what they’re going to do, but I’d like to have some advice waiting for them when I see my next bill. So feel free to use the comments below to tell me what you’d do and why.

Thanks, in advance, for the advice?

© Mike Sigers for Simplenomics, 2009. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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