The Buying Traumasutra

 

Reminiscent of a 70s spaghetti Western movie, I had a good, bad and ugly week. What I needed was Clint Eastwood, in person, because he, better than me, would have managed the sulking collection of customer-service and tech-support workers who “helped” me this week. In my opinion, these reps, all of them, ineptly represented their megabuck corporations while, upstairs, the marketing departments sang and danced.

It started when, in Barnes and Noble, I read Harvard Business Review’s July-August cover headline that said “The New Basics of Marketing.” A glimpse of an interior pull quote sold me. It said, “A team of Harley-Davidson employees, all motorcycle enthusiasts, spend time on the road with customers, to develop the kind of intimacy that could cement Harley’s status as a best friend.”

I became intrigued, because Harley’s new, relationship-building endeavor is a game changer, i.e., Milwaukee Iron goes “intimate.”

Such a marketing package is painfully comparable to Subaru’s promotions — those maudlin ads picturing sweet dogs and faithful cars — and certainly not reflective of the tattooed, blood-brother, pay-my-bail lifestyle adopted by genuine Harley clansmen.

Everything changed when they added electric starters.

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Harley Davidson’s 2013 consolidated revenue was $5.9 billion. What do you suppose it spends on marketing?

Amusing mysteries
Although unintentional, the Review article — “Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer Relationships” — was scarily amusing. It describes the process of analyzing customer feedback via social media and says, “if words such as ‘love’ and ‘loyal’ are cropping up in discussions about a brand, you’re most likely looking at customers who are signaling … a ‘marriage partnership’ with the brand.”

This is high-level, marketing analysis.

Ozone level.

The authors, Jill Avery, Susan Fournier and John Wittenbraker, say corporations often manage their relationships haphazardly and therefore commit unprofitable blunders. They advised corporate leaders to improve their relational intelligence and. interestingly, the three writers label customer-relationship types.

For example: One-night stand, complete stranger, fleeting acquaintance, fling, secret affair, enemies, villain-victim, stalker-prey, guru-disciple, dealer-addict, master-slave, teammates, buddies and old friends.

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Their text describes a Frito-Lay corporate survey that discovered Cheetos’ over-21 buyers used the product to feel “playful and a tad naughty.” They titled the adult Cheetos eaters as a “secret-affair” group and said licking Cheetos-orange residue from ones fingers makes grownups feel they’re breaking the rules.

If this is a big-data study result, we have little to fear from the NSA.

Frito-Lay’s 2013 sales reached $11.1 billion. What do you suppose it spends on marketing?

Ground level
My recent customer-relations trauma began last Saturday, when I telephoned Time Warner TV, to ask what time the local shop closed. I wanted to trade a cable box. My iPhone search gave an 800 number, which I dialed because TW didn’t list a local number. A recording said I was number 28 in the call line and promised to call me back.

It did, after the store had closed.

Meanwhile, I dialed Time Warner’s sales number and requested the Sundance channel be added to my cable choices. They did, but my home system denied access to the channel. I called again and was instructed to reboot, wait and try it again.

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I rebooted.

I waited.

I tried it again.

Two days later, I telephoned Time Warner customer service and said, “I signed up for Sundance, and it’s not coming through, so what should I do?”

The customer-service rep said, “I’m sorry … but what’s a Sundance?”

Time Warner’s 2013 sales reached $22.1 billion. What do you suppose it spends on marketing?

Next
I recently purchased an item from a Brooklyn Sprint store and later learned my local, corporate Sprint store wouldn’t accept a return because the Brooklyn store — one that looked exactly like any other Sprint store (signs, window posters, nifty phones and accessories) — was a third-party operation.

Many Sprint-signed, street-front stores, plus Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart, are third-party (licensee) stores and, get this — Sprint corporate won’t accept returns on items purchased at its third-party stores.

You don’t learn this in school.

Via the telephone, corporate Sprint’s customer-service person said I hadn’t read the three-page receipt carefully. Apparently, it tells of the limited-return policy, which is a Catch 22, because one doesn’t receive the receipt until after the purchase.

The customer-service person also ignored that my purchase receipts and contracts bore the Sprint name and logo — and that the contract payments were assigned to my Sprint account.

You can imagine the conversation.

She said I must return a third-party store purchase directly to the third-party store.

No exceptions.

I telephoned Brooklyn. There, the third-party Sprint store manager, standing some 700 miles from my house, said I must return the item to their store in person.

No exceptions.

The corporate Sprint rep said if I couldn’t meet their demands, I would be required to pay — or buy out — the full, two-year contract. This for a three-week-old item that didn’t perform as advertised.

The Harvard Business Review writers describe such a circumstance as a “master-slave relationship,” but they identified the customer as the aggressive master.

I saw it the other way.

The Review article describes buyers in a negative sense — as objects to be manipulated. The article said new, sophisticated tools for analyzing customer data “finally allow organizations to personalize and manage customer relationships.”

Hmmm.

Eventually, Sprint corporate agreed to accept the return item, but only after I mentioned small-claims court.

I’ve yet to see a credit on my bill.

Sprint’s 2013 sales exceeded $28 billion. What do you suppose it spends on marketing?

Logitech and caveat emptor
Meanwhile, my wife, in a quiet revolution against Time Warner, bought a Sony Bravia Smart TV. Best Buy was offering them on sale. It’s equipped with Roku, an Internet-based system that provides access to NetFlix and several international movie sources. She added a Logitech keyboard for the Sony Smart TV, one the Best Buy sales guy recommended.

It didn’t work.

She called Logitech customer support. Its customer service person, placing her in the Review writer’s “casual acquaintance” category, said “You’ll have to talk to Sony.”

She couldn’t wirelessly link her MacBook Pro to the Sony Smart TV either, but this is understandable. Sony’s headquarters is in Tokyo and Apple’s is in California — they obviously haven’t met.

Best Buys sales, in 2013, reached $49 billion; Logitech’s 2013 sales reached $2.1 billion; Sony made $128.4 billion; and Apple ascended to $171 billion. What do you suppose they spend on marketing?