A Tale of Two Worlds

I have had a good reminder as to why we must continually focus on ensuring we deliver a world class customer experience. Below is my ‘tale of two worlds’ when it comes to customer service.

Any good story needs a setting….so here it is. We are looking at radio advertising – having never used this medium, I sent an email to the two industry players, mediaworks and radionetwork. And a plot – a chocolatier with no experience in radio, looking to chart the unknown and murky waters of radio advertising, in an attempt to deliver a message of hope to the customers of tomorrow who have laboured under the burden of bad chocolate for too long and not yet experienced the ‘Kako’ revolution in chocolate.

And a good story also requires a hero – in this tale, that is Mediaworks – they phone me the next day, arrange a time to come see me, and we have a great meeting – the rep is helpful, fun, and really wants to understand my business so she can come up with a plan of attack that will maximise our advertising impact. They made me feel important. And valued. No sales spiel. Just a genuine attempt to understand my business and who we want to communicate with. There is hope indeed for those downtrodden by ordinary, boring chocolate.

But wait, a tale cannot be complete without a villian! I get no contact from Radionetwork for over a week. By this time, I have already met with Mediaworks, who heroically leapt to the aid of the poor chocolatier with no radio experience. A rep finally makes contact and blames their internal mail servers and tells my why it isn’t their fault for the delay, as they had only just received the email.  But I understand these things happen, and I agree to make a time with them.  A couple more days go by until today – the rep rings me and apologises, she has to move my meeting because their national sales manager wants to have an internal meeting. And the proposed re-schedule time clashes with another appointment. Ah ha! Attempts are already underway to thwart our herioc quest to deliver fine chocolate to the good people of Auckland. And you have to love the addition of irony into the story – a sales meeting to no doubt discuss strategies for meeting sales targets – at the expense of a potential new customer!

Now to the ending – for what is a story without an epic ending! Well, this chapter of the story is still being written, so watch this space!

Telling this story makes me realise how important it is that our customers always come first and are genuinely at the heart of everything we do. (we assume the hero role here of course!). In the hectic day to day demands that come from running a business, it is easy to lose sight of the priorities, and this just re-enforces to me that our philosophy, ingrained into our DNA, will forever be “customer first”. Having an amazing product is simply not enough if the customer is not the priority. A record Valentine’s Day trade proves that when you love your customer, they will love you right back! Ah, a happy ending…

OK enough story telling for one day, now it is back to the quest of perfect chocolate making.  I might work on some 64% dark chocolate truffles using couverture from Madagascar – a  dry earthy chocolate that our dark chocolate fans should enjoy! mmm chocolate!