In this excellent Forbes article “Are You Killing Your Customer Service with these Language Mistakes,” Micah Solomon confirms what I’ve believed for years… the language your sales associates speak must align with your brand. This canon holds true especially for luxury brands, since luxury customers have heightened service expectations.
Continue reading “Has your luxury experience been ruined by bad language?”
Your customers have said it. You’ve probably said it yourself. “No thanks, I’m just looking” is the most common response to the oft heard question “May I help you?”
How can you avoid the “I’m just looking?” response from customers? The first step is to stop asking closed-ended questions. By using inquisitive, open-ended questions, you’ll initiate a dialogue and side-track the automated “I’m just looking” comeback. (Check out this previous blog post for tips on asking open-ended questions.)
Kudos To You: 10 Top To-Do’s To Keep Those Customers Coming
Think about what you can do to keep the customers you have.
In today’s New York Times, fashion commentator Vanessa Friedman coined a new term (with the help of one of her readers): smart luxury. Friedman uses the term to describe designer Tomas Maier’s new aesthetically luxurious styles that don’t carry a luxury price tag. Friedman suggests ‘smart luxury’ could serve double duty as a substitute for the less pleasant sounding ‘wearables’. Who wouldn’t want to buy smart luxury?
What are your thoughts? Is ‘smart luxury’ a phrase that will catch on? (Read the New York Time’s article here.)
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In a previous post I dissected the upcoming Journal of Consumer Research report that purportedly found customers who receive poor treatment from sales associates in a luxury retail environment are more likely to make a purchase. Many blogs turned this particular factoid into a headline. But if you dove deeper into the study, you saw that this off-putting approach had no staying power. It only worked on aspirational customers and not for customers who were already familiar with the brand. Even worse, the majority of aspirational customers who, in a vain attempt to be considered “part of the club,” succumbed to the snooty behavior of their luxury sales person, wound up returning their purchases within two weeks.
Continue reading “7 out of 10 Affluent Customers Disappointed by In-Store Service”
By now you’ve probably listened to Ryan Block’s excruciating attempt to cancel his Comcast service with a customer service representative “gone wild.” (If not, you can listen here). The recording starts already 10 minutes into the call. In this case the representative, known as a “retention specialist,” tries to force Mr. Block into explaining why he’s canceling his service, even as Mr. Block repeatedly declines to do so. The recording has gone viral and Comcast has admitted it’s “embarrassed by the call.” In a recent apology issued by Comcast, Tom Karinshak, SVP, Customer Experience, said the way in which the representative communicated was “not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.”
It happened again! I walked into one of those posh, ultra-luxurious shops on Fifth Avenue and the smartly dressed, beautifully coiffed sales associate asked “May I help you?” I’m sure she’d been trained on the company value proposition and was knowledgeable on all the new product lines, but what she didn’t know is this is one of the worst ways to greet a customer! Too often this question is met with a polite “No thank you. I’m just looking.” That’s because “May I help you?” is a closed-ended question—it can be answered with “yes” or “no.” The next time you go shopping, listen to the number of closed-ended questions you’re asked: “Do you like this one?,” “Do you have a budget?,” “Is this the right color?,” “Will that be all for today?”
Continue reading “Good salespeople have great answers, but great salespeople have great questions”
Through its innovative Lexus “Amazing in Motion” campaign with the STROBE project in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Lexus intends to use art as a vehicle to translate its brand across the globe. The art campaign celebrates art, technology, innovation and movement – all elements of the Lexus brand. Above all, “Amazing in Motion” shows a new creative side of Lexus, according to Brian Bolain, Corporate Marketing Communications Manager at Lexus. Bolain believes the STROBE project, through its inventive use of tumbling LED-lit acrobats and stuntmen, will transmit the message of speed and movement across language barriers, “As the brand has now expanded to over 80 world markets, it is more important than ever that there be some common understanding of what Lexus represents that transcends any barriers that language might present.”
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