notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

Over-zealous salesmen, beware!

ERIC SINK is not just complaining about over-zealous store employees at Best Buy who would bombard him with unwanted offers whenever he shops there. He’s got an idea:

What I want is a Best Buy “Quiet Zone” card. Instead of blue like the Reward Zone card, this one would be red. I have no idea how my Reward Zone card works, but my Quiet Zone card would work like this: Whenever a Best Buy employee sees it, they immediately shut up. That’s it. All I have to do is wave my red card and suddenly every blue shirt in my vicinity will put a cork in it. Don’t even finish your sentence. I am buying exactly what I came here to buy, and nothing else.

Brilliant. Sometimes, oftentimes, I don’t want any kind of relationship from my vendor: I know exactly what I want, and I also know that I do not want anything else at the moment. A simple transaction, please, let’s get this over with. Here’s my money.

I think one of the tragedies of CRM - and one of the reasons it’s failing to deliver - is that it makes selling an automated process that can be launched at unsuspecting customers anytime. I call for service - change of a telephone number on my contract - and the rep would instantly try to cross-sell/up-sell me if I don’t hang-up immediately. Did I say change of a phone number?

The ubiquity of fully-automated channels have created the environment in which I don’t have to interact with anyone if I don’t want to. Shopping on the internet has reduced my contact with human beings on the other side to a bearable minimum. Now, looking at it from the standpoint of a business owner, that’s a serious trouble.

Instead of wastefully keeping their “push” models, companies like Best Buy should do everything to create honey-pots, pull their customers instead of launching grenades at them, create experiences that online stores cannot, by definition, replicate.

Let’s see - a hardware store could create a play-area for geeks to try-out stuff before purchasing, to assemble their new dream Quad-core X-Fi double-8800GTX computer in a controlled environment and with help available, so that the experience of shopping there vastly exceeds anything available online.

And sure enough, customers pleased with the experience will buy more - ‘nuf said.

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September 13, 2007 | Filed Under CRM 

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