Two Reasons Why Priority Numbers Demonstrate the Wrong Priority

Let's forget the fact that you have already read the title of this post.....

What do banks, airlines, retail stores, vanity clinics, shipping, restaurants, pharmacies, schools, electric utilities, water utilities, cable companies, government offices, hospitals, and a long list of organizations added every year have in common?

Can you guess? 

Many customer service managers swear its the greatest invention ever introduce in customer service.

Are we getting closer?

Here's another hint....

In spite of the fact they tell you it will get you served promptly and quickly it never does.

It comes in many forms, materials, and sizes.

It attracts almost everybody's attention except the person who is supposed to give you the attention.

Ok....let's get it over with.....

It's a priority number.

Banks use it....airlines use it.....retail stores have it....you get it....

Personally, I hate it. I have worked in customer service for almost twenty years. The use of priority numbers never came up as an alternative in improving customer service.

There are two and I have only these two reasons why I would not use priority numbers to improve any customer service response process or program.

Reason Number One
Priority numbers give your people a false sense that they have started the customer service process. Giving or offering customers a paper, cardboard, plastic or even a disc bearing a number gives frontline service people the feeling that they have already started serving customers.

My first example and usually a more common one is the experience I have with banks. Bank tellers give me the impression that tellering is a process that seems to have a universal intent of socially or psychologically disconnecting service staff from the essence of customers. They can't seem to look at you in the eyes or even give you a passing glance even when you are in front of them.

My first experience of holding a priority number myself was when I accompanied my mom to buy airplane tickets. After you get the number, frontline staff just totally ignore you.

Frontline personnel probably have this conversation in their heads that since we (the Customer) already have a number they can proceed to step two which says: "I'll get to you when it pleases me" or "I'll get to you after I get back from lunch". Since there's a likelihood of 9 out of 10 this service staff don't like people in general, this can be a really long wait for you (the Customer).

Just recently, I walked into a retail store that specializes in computer accessories (one of many big chains of similar kind). After stepping in I stayed right in front of one of the many service counters in a room of seven sales staff. I was the third customer with two already lining up on one of the counters.

The second customer (a lady) told me to get one of those recycled compact discs with a big number on it because they won't serve you unless you get a priority number. I guess the staff was very serious about the numbers because there were seven of them in the store. Nobody thought of just calling the second lady and serve her since she already has Number Two on her hand.

I called out to a guy in the other counter across the one I was lining up to and the response he shouted back was to get a priority number. I responded by just telling the guy that there's at least five of them doing nothing. Why can't they just ask me what I need and if they don't have it, then I can just leave. The guy still insist on me getting a number and then he turns his back to go back to what he was doing (which is nothing).

Maybe I am downright condescending or just totally dumb but I had a distinct feeling that these sales counter people were made to believe the following:

• Customers generally cannot count beyond five.
• Customers do not understand that numbers on disc are very important to customer service.
• Customers do not care about recycling compact discs that is why they don't know what the priority number is for.
• Customers have no idea that what comes after two is three and so on.
• Customers are supposed to follow the sequence of numbers displayed and flashing on light-emitting diodes.
• Customers can only be served by sales staff directly in front of them.

May be you can add some more to these theories and assumptions. I think some genius in these retail organizations just invented the best customer service process for dummies.

Reason Number Two
A priority number in the hand of a Customer is a contradiction in terms. Although the primary purpose is to prioritize (taken from the word "priority") service  to Customers, the exact opposite is what Customers actually perceive, feel and experience on a regular basis. 

When I enter an organization and see a number dispensing device, I actually don't feel that I will be served. The first feeling I will have is I will be staying on some bench or standing in some corner to wait indefinitely. This trend has not change for at least  30 years of my life.

I have waited on many benches from social security offices, hospitals, business permit counters, trade name registration, clinics, bus stations, and even in a pizza parlor.

Priority numbers are never reassuring. It only tells me one thing consistently----wait and bear it.

One incident about priority numbers that really push this concept to the "hilt" happened in a government-managed hospital. I never forgot this incident because it made headlines in a local daily newspaper.

A man bleeding walked in with a really long knife stuck in his back. Apparently and obviously (well I thought it was obvious to the nurse in the Emergency Section then) the man was stabbed from behind and the assailant probably did not have time to pull out the knife from the man's back.

The first thing the nurse did (of course) is to ask the man to get a priority number and fill up a form. Even today for some reason, I still can't get my head around the fact that for an organization dedicated to saving human lives, this extreme mutation of callousness can come in the form of a customer service process or patient care process (a fancy name).

I thought medical professionals have this hypocritical, hypocritical, or hypo-allergenic oath that they subscribe to. It's kind of hard to remember these terms when institutions don't really mean to follow anything written on them.

If you are even remotely considering doing this in your own store (or hospital), I suggest you walk into and line up (short of being stabbed from behind) inside the store of your nearest or worst competitor. It doesn't matter which. You just need a perspective. This perspective is called "shooting yourself in the foot".

If you still don't get it, I suggest not getting a gun. There's a fire ax nearby somewhere inside your own store....

........break glass....

......take axe...and then.....

....drop it on your foot.

If you're a bit hurt that I might be inadvertently referring to your enterprise I apologize ...really....now about the ax in your store....

I would like to sincerely help you with that ax.

Know What You Want From Advertising

There's this prevailing myth that advertising sells. I personally would want to believe this. Imagine the cost you'll save if you don't have to go through all that recruitment, training, and paying wages to get people to sell.

For salespeople who earn solely on commissions, they would wish that advertising actually sells anything. Salespeople know that the launch of every new ad campaign is merely an opportunity to ride on a short burst of interest for their offering.

Selling door to door is as common today as it was 50 years ago.

If you take extra effort to look at books and sales training materials now and 50 years ago, you'll find out that the training outline hasn't changed much.

Even the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical and medical industry still rely mainly on door-to-door selling.

The amount of business cards and free sample products on a typical doctor's clinic is a clear demonstration of how pervasive is door-to-door selling in this industry.

Unless any form of advertising tool or device actually delivers a product and accepts payment, I suggest sticking to direct selling. Advertising outfits or agencies will make you believe that whatever they are doing is actually selling.

Very few people creating those ad campaigns in advertising actually do selling and very few still actually sell their services by advertising.

You may not believe this but most advertising agencies still use the old method of advertising: door-to-door selling.

Don't you think it's funny that a business creating advertising doesn't actually use advertising to sell their business?

I actually find it monumentally stupid that some businesses actually pay so much for a press conference to launch an advertising campaign that will "supposedly" sell a new product.

Most of these types of launching are really more appropriate for mass-produced consumer goods.

You see all these VIPs from the company together with advertising executives making speeches, making a toast, cheering, and congratulating themselves after "unveiling" a big screen that will give you a preview of the advertising campaign.

Advertising in mass-produced consumer items requires a consistent and ever-increasing amount of investment. Competition for customer attention is keen in these markets.

There is so much noise and clutter created by this keen competition that all the players in even the smallest industries cannot help but invest in advertising whether they believe it works or not.

Even when I was in advertising, I always believe that advertising impact should be measured in some way.

Unless your brand is as popular as tap water to the whole of humanity, you have to selfishly define what you need to accomplish with every advertising copy you approve for release. By the way, today even drinking water is sold under dozens of brands through advertising.

There are two (2) advertising media you have to watch out for: newspaper and radio advertisement. As a small enterprise, the cost of a TV ad maybe too way off your comfort zone.

In a newspaper ad, you will need a certain visual impact and readability.

Notice that I did not use visual appeal.

I use visual impact and readability.

You can use visual appeal on billboards but the same material may not be so appealing as a full-page ad on a newspaper because the whole paper only shows black, white, and grey.

You may argue that there is already color in some newspapers today. Yes there is color but it's going to cost you from 25% to 50% more per color. You have to ask yourself: Will the additional color with its accompanying cost guarantee a certain level of return on investment in terms of actual sales?

The timing of your newspaper ad is important.

You may have to do a little detective work on what days in a week your target audience actually read their paper. Of course, you have to know what local daily they actually buy or subscribe to.

You also have to decide if you are going to use newspaper ads on a regular basis.

Newspapers brag about their circulation in thousands per day. This figure actually indicates how many copies of their paper actually go out to both street buyers and subscribers.

Don't get impressed by their figures just yet. These figures may not have any impact on the kind of audience you want.

Let's assume the local daily has a circulation of 45,000 a day.

They quote 1200 bucks for advertising space for your advertising copy. They will make a sales pitch of translating this cost to about 3 cents per exposure.

They get this by dividing the cost of advertising space by the total daily circulation which is 1200 over 45,000.

I don't use this formula in measuring my cost.

I measure my advertising cost in real terms.

I usually get about three (3) ads in a week to not only get exposure but also to test the cost of the ad in real terms. This also works well if you already know how much it costs to acquire a new customer.

When I was marketing short courses for Microsoft Office and Network Administration, I measure results by actually documenting the calls made as a direct result of a newspaper ad.

I know that it takes about 75 bucks at least to get a new customer to sign up for a course. This cost includes salespeople's time, pamphlets, registration forms, and other things that eventually lead to a customer shelling out his cash for the course.

The local daily has a circulation of 15000 per day. We took an ad that cost us about 5,000 bucks but it advertised not just one course but the whole line of computer training brands.

It went out on a Sunday. From Monday to Saturday of the next week it recorded 680 calls in direct response to the ad.

The actual cost per inquiry from customers is 7 bucks and 35 cents!

Since only 32 actually signed up, my actual cost of generating new customers is 156 bucks and 25 cents.

Remember that my usual cost of acquiring new customers is 75 bucks. This tells me that it will cost me 100% more per new customer if I continue to use newspaper ads to acquire customers.

You must also view this cost from another perspective.

It is not the ad that actually made people sign up.

It's the person handling the phone inquiry trained specifically to close sales over the phone that made the sign-up for the courses possible.

If the objective of the ad is simply to create enough interest to make people call and make inquiries, the ad campaign was a great success.

It took only 7 bucks and 35 cents per inquiry. The profit margin for only 15 people signing up was 7500 bucks.

You can actually apply this formula to radio advertisements.

The difference between a radio ad and a newspaper ad is that you can test the audio copy of the ad before you broadcast it.

I usually define the following objectives for my newspaper and radio ads:

• induce the reader or listener to call and inquire
• register for the service or product advertised via phone
• make reservations via phone
• ask for the freebies (if the ad is promising freebies)
• capture specific information about prospects or callers
• walk into the store and present a cut-out coupon or gift certificate
• log in to the website
• leave name and email address on a registration web page
• download a free e-book with a return link to our website

Go through the above list. I have not included selling as one of the objectives. Until recently most conventional advertising does not lend to selling of any kind.

As I said, until recently.

 

 

 

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