Why Drones and Automating Social Media Can Be an Issue

I am a big advocate of quality customer service and giving your customer what they want. Months ago I wrote about my frustration at this store where the owner of the place finds it extremely important to take the best parking spot.  While most of her customers struggle to get a parking spot and sometimes are not successful, this translates to less business. She decided to keep the space for herself while announcing to everyone that the parking spot is for the owner.

I struggle every day in looking for ways to create the easiest and shortest path in between a client and the decision of hiring me for a new project.

Sometimes we miss the simplest details. The health food store owner feels that her title as the owner is more important than the time of her customers. I remember when I worked for Sam’s Club when I started college. We where told that we had to park our vehicles at the end of the parking lot.

Many employees really did not get the fact that we needed to make it easier for the customers that where spending the money; the reason we had a job. Some of them continuously resisted and always thought they had pulled one on management when they where able to sneak their car closer to the entrance. Sadly, those same people worked with me in 1999 in Sam’s and till this day are working at that place with no passion or love for what they do. One of the reasons I canceled my Sam’s Club membership was because that was reflected in the way the deal with customers.

I understand how a lazy person values the privilege to have a closer parking spot.  Maybe this should be a performance metric to evaluate those trying to park closer even when they have been told they should not.

I understand where companies at their headquarters hand over the best parking spots to their loyal employees which have worked at the place for decades much like at a client of mine that literally made us Auditors (we rarely got any love, the main reason I moved out of auditing) almost have to take a cab especially in winter to get to the front door. Even though I still think it would have been more valuable to assign those parking slots to the best performers or leaving them open to instill community among the ranks.

A few weeks ago I had someone looking for a quick solution to automate his social media profiles. This person, similar to the owner of the natural store, thinks his time is more important to him than to engage with the individuals he wants to reach. After attempting to have him understand he could not automate social media profiles and have it run by a robot I gave up and clearly told him I could not help him.

Thankfully my friend @chrisbrogan explained a similar situation and the reasons why you can’t automate social media on THE BIGGEST SECRET OF SOCIAL MEDIA days after that.

So many business and project owners are constantly looking for shortcuts or privileges when they have not even earned them. The worst part is that they do things to their clients and audience that even they would not enjoy.

The owner of the health food does not enjoy walking far away from where she parks but she expects her customers to enjoy it. Nobody likes to receive Spam but individuals like @frankielojopr, Sonia Alvarez Fonseca (Caguas.gov.pr), Triangle Dealers (Car Dealership), @searslatino (see previous post) decide they are going to push their message via spam to complete strangers.

Management at a customer service center might not like the process of pushing various buttons to get a hold of someone when they have an issue but they decide to implement the same complex systems to save money when it is up to them to make the decision.

What things are you doing to your customers? Take a look at yourself and many of us can find something we need to improve on every day?

If you have places where they don’t value you as a customer why do you continue to support them?

photo credit by ell brown