Blog: What Business Are You Really In?

A while ago, I spent 20 minutes on the phone with a customer service representative for ordering some new business cards which would cost me less than 20 Euros. This was after me registering an Internet account and uploading my design in a certain graphic format they wanted, choosing the paper type and picking and choosing from a bunch of other available options. Even though the website was designed in such a way that one would be able to complete the entire transaction on their own, I ended up calling them up because I am very particular when it comes to business cards. The service rep really took the time to make sure he understands my requirements and made a few suggestions of his own as to what type of paper would probably make more impact considering the font type, color combination, etc.

This whole episode got me thinking however, whether or not the company is really getting a reasonable ROI out of my business and hundreds of others like me considering the top line revenue (in this case 20 Euros), and the entire cost they are absorbing (in this case 20 minutes of a rep’s time plus raw material plus printing plus packaging plus handling). Simple math tells me no, most probably they would not be making a reasonable return out of such transactions. Simple logic tells me there must be more than meets the eye here. Just to be sure whether or not I accidentally talked to a rep who was perhaps new to his job or liked the sound of my voice, which is very unlikely, I called back and landed of course by another service rep posing a few more questions and this time around the second rep was just as helpful as the first one. I ended up taking another 10 minutes of another rep’s time. Part of it was curiosity and another part was sheer interest to confirm another concept everyone learns in business school, marketing 101, conventional wisdom, etc., but tends to forget from time to time which is:

Perhaps companies do not tend to but rather are forced to forget this concept and cut corners from time to time. I think most people would agree that given the same subject, theory and practice are two very different sides of the same coin and therefore is just happens that sometimes in practice it is not as easy to implement a solid high quality customer service throughout the organization and create the necessary — and expensive — support infrastructure behind it. I remember reading an interview some time ago with the CEO of the biggest online shoe store and I forget whether it was in Germany or the US, in any case he said: “we are not in the shoe business rather we are the business of satisfying our customers, we just happen to be selling shoes”. Perhaps he was exaggerating a bit, but this just goes to show what I stated before which is what a valuable asset a satisfied customer could be. Now the catch is that the opposite could be true as well which is how detrimental an unsatisfied customer could become. I think companies who have taken steps to make sure that they provide high quality customer service, create and hire for positions such as CEOs and by CEO I mean Customer Experience Officers or similar, have understood the concept that a satisfied customer will be a returning customer and a returning customer could bring others with them and a returning customer is an educated customer in terms their expectations from a particular product or service. So, they help their customers get over their “learning curve” instead of cutting corners and being short-sighted and this to me is a calculated risk with a very high probability of reaching the desired ROI already in the next round of transaction(s). I believe this is what happened to me and my business card episode but wait, there is more.

I got my business cards delivered a couple of days later and here comes the BUT: I was not satisfied with the quality of the finished product. So, there I was after spending a fair amount of time on this trivial task and holding in my hands what I had paid for and thought I was getting, still not satisfied. Bad quality = unhappy customer = switch supplier, right? Well as it turned out for me, not at all. Even though I was not satisfied with the quality of the finished product it did not matter to me all that much, because I was satisfied with quality of the service I got, with the quality of the customer service reps’ professionalism and with the way I was treated. I did go back to their website and placed another order with them while changing a few of the parameters for the second order, this time around completing the entire transaction on my own without having to call anyone since they had “educated” me and since I knew I can always “rely” on human help if needed. In this case, paying even twice as much for the same product was not a turn-off as far as I was concerned. Now imagine how easy it would have been for me to just switch suppliers and furthermore imagine what if this whole experience was not about 20 Euros rather 200,000 Euros for a transaction between two businesses, aka B2B.

For sure, placing a 200,000 Euro order is not in any way, shape or form comparable with my 20 Euro business card story since no one in their right mind would just forget about the 200K order and place a second one without making a quality claim. However, I truly do believe that the same holds true in B2B, meaning decisions whether or not to stay, leave, or switch are rarely made based on one factor only. As a supplier, even if you don’t get everything right the first time around, you might have the luxury of forgiveness if other parts of the equation are right and Customer Service, in my opinion, plays an essential role regardless.

By the way, I did receive my cards three days later and this time around they were exactly what I wanted.

by: Ali Hoorsun – July 2017