For business owners, CEOs, and Directors,

If you’re interested in learning the art and science of driving your customers mad, to slash your bottom line, and potentially sink your business, then this will be the most exciting article you will ever read.

Let me explain:

Numerous customer studies have been done to demonstrate the importance of the customer experience and what it means financially to businesses. These studies have discovered and proven the powerful effect of the customer experience on the bottom line of most businesses.

American Express, Forrester, McKinsey, Consumer Reports, the White House Office of Consumer Affairs—just to name a few—have researched, surveyed, and measured the impact of the customer experience on the earning potential of many businesses.

These findings are nothing short of amazing… Why?

Well, as you probably already know: a recent Forrester paper discovered that a 1% increase in customer experience would result in $65 million dollars in additional revenue for an upscale hotel chain.

Does that excite you?

…

It sure as heck should!

Because it means that one small change in your customer experience could have HUGE financial results.

BUT… this article isn’t about improving your customer experience and making you money (although, if you do the exact opposite of what I’m about to suggest you will make money… lots of it… says Forrester).

Instead, I’m going to show you how to ruin your customer experience to lose money… to throw it all away!

Why? Because buried within this fun article is a lesson to be learned…

I’m doing this because it seems—it appears to me—that many businesses are frustrating their customers. Whether they are doing this purposely or not I can only guess. But… when I have frequent frustrating experiences with some businesses, I begin to wonder if they are deliberate because sometimes they feel so well executed.

So, as a shrewd marketer, I’ve wrote this article to test the waters, to see if any of these businesses take my ideas and follow me up on my offer.

So, for the first time ever, I’m going to reveal my top tips, tricks, and secrets to shrink and sink your business by frustrating your customers, 1% at a time!

Now let’s begin.

There are a couple things you need to know. Let’s have a look at your customers because they’re the heart of the matter.

Here’s what you’ve got to understand: customers are people and they have feelings, problems, and questions. Realize that—and this is KEY—customers are looking for quick and easy resolutions to their problems and questions.

Again, for emphasis… customers are looking for quick and easy resolutions to their problems and questions. So knowing this, how can you maximize customer frustration?

Simple.

We give them what they aren’t looking for—slow and painful resolutions to their problems and questions. How we do this is very important: we setup as many—AS MANY—frustrating experiences as possible!

Got that?

Good.

Now, do you know where the best place to setup a well-executed series of frustrating experiences to maximize customer madness?

Hint: It’s the center of your customer experience and if you optimize this one thing you will see dramatic results.

Dramatic because this is where you can make many 1% fixes to noticeably impact your customer experience.

It’s where you have all sorts of cutting-edge technology designed to interact with customers.

If you haven’t already guessed…

It’s Your
Contact Center

Absolutely, this is the best place to implement frustrating experiences that will make your customers mad. Why? Because it comes in direct contact with so many customers.

So, it’s critically important that you take control of your contact center operations. Because it is here we you will implement my top tips, tricks, and secrets. Consider the following my arsenal of weapons to wreak maximum frustration.

Anyone of these tips, tricks or secrets should create seething frustration. What’s best, is that any single one could easily be the fix to shrink your bottom line. (Remember, all you need is a little tiny 1% decrease in your customer experience and it could cost your business a BIG bundle of cash.)

The first weapon is…

Fudge & Mess
with Your Metrics

I could get in a lot of trouble for revealing this “naughty” secret. But, believe it or not, most contact centers report the wrong metrics. In fact, I’m shocked when I see a contact center actually reporting the right metrics.

Before I reveal why contact centers do this, here is big secret #1: fudge ’n mess with your metrics!

For example, if you have a high-call abandon rate (something that may signify poor customer service), there are two ways to fix this. Don’t report it or just make up metrics that suit your mischievous agenda. The choice is yours!

Now then, why do contact center staff do such mischievous things? It’s very simple… because if they didn’t fudge and mess they would be reporting the real metrics… and real metrics hurt…

“80% of companies say they deliver “superior” customer service. While 8% of people think these same companies deliver “superior” customer service. “

– “Customer Service Hell” by Brad Tuttle, Time, 2011

Force ’Em to Call

This is the most important tip of this entire article for the reason that most of the following tips, tricks and secrets can’t be implemented unless this is used.

Here’s the thing, customers have many devices and many methods of communication. Knowing this little gem of information, we have to frustrate the customer by… doing business on none of them but one—the phone.

Vital Note: people have preferences and if you want to frustrate someone, you don’t consider them.

Moving along now to our next weapon…

Hide Your
Contact Center Phone #

This trick is like a double-edged sword. On one edge, it will slash your call volumes and on the other it will frustrate your customers before they even call your contact center.

Brilliant, if I must say so myself…

When a customer needs to contact your business, often she will go to your website to find a phone number (which directs to your contact center). In case you didn’t know, and despite what best practices say, it’s become common practice to hide your call center number as best as possible.

In fact, the best method is to omit it from your website completely. But often due to corporate policy it needs to be on the website, somewhere. So, what’s the solution?

You hide it… somewhere…

And you do this by placing it in areas that are the least obvious.

Warning: do not, I repeat, DO NOT place your contact center number anywhere on the homepage or contact us page. Doing so is a BIG mistake because customers would be able to find it quickly and without effort.

And that’s a recipe for customer satisfaction… not customer frustration!

Rather, the number should be made as small as possible, then… placed in a hard to find… illogical…  not-so-obvious spot.

Make them search for it!

Get the customer to put on their detective hat!

Here’s two easy ways to to find out if your phone number is in a hard to find, illogical, not-so-obvious spot.

First, good placement of a hidden number should take 3 to 5 minutes to find, at LEAST!

Second, when they find the phone number the customer should think “why the #!@% is the phone number on the [insert hard to find, illogical, not-so-obvious spot here]?!?”

Key Takeaway: The longer it takes to find your phone number, the better.

Can You Say That Again?

First impressions are everything. So make the best impression with lousy call quality.

The objective here is to make it as difficult as possible for the customer to talk to your agent, and vise-versa. This method has the effect of causing confusion and frustration as the customer and agent struggle to understand each other.

You know the kind of call quality you hear when you’re driving through a freeway tunnel? Aim for that.

Then…

Make Them Wait

I’ve heard that when a customer is on hold for longer than 5 minutes they rate the customer experience poorly. This one is dead-easy. Put them on hold for longer than 5 minutes.

A Risky Pro Tip: after 5 minutes you should “accidentally” hang up!

They’ll either call you back mad or craft a vile prose—about you and your company—that goes viral on Facebook.

Great stuff… but there’s more…

3 Things to Say
To Ignite Immediate
Anger

These three secret phrases are contact center “cult classics”. They’re perfect for adding insult to injury. Work these phrases into your call center scripts as often as possible. These cannot be overused.

The Golden Rule: repeat, reuse and recycle—be liberal with use.

• “We’re unable to answer your question. Please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx to talk with a representative from our customer care”
• “We’re so sorry, but we’re experiencing very heavy call volumes. Try back another time or continue to hold.”
• “Your call is so important to us. Please continue to hold.”

Interesting Note: I call these 3 call scripts the Fake Phrases of Empathy. Again, be liberal with use for maximum frustration.

Next weapon…

Hit Them Right in The Ears
with Terrible Music on Hold

Hands-down, all-time personal favorite. I’ve seen it used again and again. And yet, amazingly, it never gets old!

The key to this fantastic trick is playing awful… and I mean awful… music while the customer is on hold. It’s an experience few can endure.

The reason for this is simple and the psychology is most interesting. You see, the customer knows you don’t give a damn about their call, and they have no choice in the selection of music, so there’s a very good chance they don’t enjoy what they are hearing.

Amateur Tip: in the event that the customer actually happens to enjoy the song, insert your most brazen (and unwelcome) company advertisement into the music. If you are feeling creative toss in a couple Fake Phrases of Empathy.

Expert Tip: to really get under the customer’s skin start the song over from the very beginning after each brazen and jarring advertisement. That way, if they happen to enjoy the song he will never get to hear the song play completely through.

Do you know what the best kind of advertisement is to play to a frustrated customer?

…

It’s an upsell!

Shoving a product pitch into the face of a frustrated customer is brilliant! Whoever thought of this one is a genius!

It’s like the equivalent of an arm reaching out of the phone and slapping the customer in the face. It works like a charm.

Just a couple left now…

Voice Talent Inconsistencies

This is a great technique to tarnish your brand image. This works amazingly well for businesses that have worked hard to develop their brand image.

Here’s the secret: make sure the voice of your automated answering system sounds nothing like the voice you use in your branding. That way, when the customer calls your contact center, your brand image is instantly lost.

How to lose your brand image almost entirely: use multiple voice talents to further tarnish any branding opportunities. To maximize results, each menu should have a different voice talent. The more variety and inconsistent you can get, the better.

For example, use a male with a deep voice on menu 1, on menu 2 have a female, and on menu three have another male that is different sounding from the first, with a very different tonality and pace.

For the best effect, find voice talents that sound unwelcoming (warning: don’t pay for professional voice talents, instead, you can cut corners and get much cheaper voice talents by using your very own unskilled voice talents—employees).

Don’t Remember What
The Customer Says!

Ah… another personal favorite… this one has great potential to frustrate any level-headed customer AND is easily implemented.

Here’s how it works: the agent asks for customer information such as date of birth, address, account numbers, or an access card number (really, anything long and tedious and requiring lots and lots of repeating, double checking, and correcting) under the guise of verifying their account. Then—and this is critical!—pass the customer off to another agent to ask the same things all over again. This is called the Question and Pass then Forget.

If you setup your contact center correctly, you can string two or three of these together and the customer will get exponentially frustrated with each Question and Pass then Forget.

Advanced Technique: in addition to the typical “verification” type questions, get the customer to state his or her problem in depth and with as much detail as possible… then pass the call to the next agent. What will the next agent do? Simple. Ask the customer to state her problem all over again. This trick works wonders!

Reply Very, Very Slowly
To Email—Always!

Here is another wonderful opportunity to let your customer down. It’s truly amazing! The trick to this one is…

Complete tardiness.

Most customers are satisfied if they receive an email within 24 hours. So, this one is dead-easy to: don’t respond to any emails for at least 24 hours.

Most contact centers have this one down.

But, there are a few things you can do to spice this one up. Such as, always responding with an automated email saying how important their email is to you and explicitly telling the customer not to respond to the email because you won’t read it or reply to it anyways. (This really emphasis how little you actually care about them).

So there you have it… my top tips, tricks and secrets to shrinking your bottom line by driving your customers mad.

But Wait,
There’s More…

Now, there are a few things you should know. First, this list doesn’t include everything, it only includes some of the many fixes.

Anyone one of the above tips, tricks, or secrets could be the 1% fix to dramatically slash your bottom-line.

But remember, this list isn’t complete. I’ve left out a lot of my other suggestions.

Now, if you’re one of the few people who don’t want to drive customers away, you want to grow your business and bottom line, it’s simple—just do the opposite of everything above. If you need help doing that, give me a ring…

Paul Nielsen,
Call 519.474.4333 x 223