The email from Citibank was lame, but for a huge company, not totally surprising. However, the arrival of this email does not necessarily negate that the company is listening. Toward the end of the post, I make that connection and most of the time, it’s true. In this case, however, I don’t think it is responsible to connect one lame email with a company’s entire attitude.

That said, the moral of the post – companies who fail to listen will be overtaken by those that do – still stands. I believe that will only become more apparent as time goes on. -End update

To fail may be human, but for a company to fail at customer service these days may well be disaster.

You may remember when I mentioned a Citibank ad last week in a post about features versus benefits in advertising. Their print ad was spot-on when it spoke about how Citibank fit into their customers’ lives (plus, who can resist a cute puppy?).

Epic Fail

So when I sent them an email noting my complimentary post, I expected at least a quick “thanks!” That’s the response I got from Moosejaw (they even promised to send me some schwag which must have gotten lost in the mail…). So imagine my surprise then almost 48 hours later, they reply with a standard “sorry, we can’t even respond to your email” email.

The email isn’t that important and I don’t expect a pat on the back from a multi-national company. However, the time delay tells me that this was not an auto-generated email – some person sitting at a computer was getting paid to send Citibank customers (or fans!) crappy, say-nothing emails. Which means their customer service representative’s job is to rebuff customers or potential customers.

What It Means To Be Human

Yet, on the same day I received this epic fail, I went to Amazon.com. On the top of the homepage – the very first thing you saw – Amazon was thanking its customers for buying the Kindle, offering special discounts for those who ordered in advance, and relating in a totally human way by showing off the Kindle cake. How different is this response?

Maybe Seth Godin is right (again). About two-thirds through the first disc of the Meatball Sundae audio disc, Godin talks about the difference between companies that sold stuff (meatballs) before the internet and those that grew their business on and through the internet (the sundae). (Incidentally, notice that there are two friendly mentions on the Meatball Sundae Amazon page that tell me the book is available on a Kindle.)

The point of his whole book is that you can’t just use the fun new web tools – blogs, wikis, Facebook, etc. – to sell that same regular stuff. These new tools require a whole new business model. And the reality is that it is really, really difficult to do this if you are in the meatball business.

Sometimes you can learn from failure; hell, sometimes it’s down-right hilarious. But to fail at customer service these days, when it’s as easy and cheap as an email, is ludicrous. Sure, Citibank is the old model, selling meatballs like they have for a hundred years. But it’s time to clean the dust out of your ears and start listening to your customers. Either that or you won’t have to worry about them being customers for much longer.

Features Vs. Benefits

In their book Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath frequently mention the difference between features and benefits. Features are specific details that made the product unique or special. These are the phrases that the guys on any sales floor repeat ad naseum. Benefits, however, explain how the product fits into a person’s life or makes their lives easier or better.

If you’ve ever had a job, you’ve probably talked about features – we all do it. That’s because when we spend 8 or 10 hours a day on something, we like to think it is in some way worthwhile. If you work for Wendy’s, you can explain how your burgers vary from McDonald’s. If you assemble televisions, you know all the specs.

There is a cruel truth about features though: no one cares but you. It’s sad, I know, because we all want our thing (whatever that is) to be the best. But the consumer doesn’t really care about how you want to be the best. She wants to know how your product will impact her life.

Chip and Dan give a few examples of the difference between features and benefits. It’s the difference between selling “the world’s great lawn fertilizer” and selling “the world’s best looking lawn.” It’s the difference between selling drill-bits and telling Dad how to hang his kid’s pictures.

When Engineers Write Ads

So let’s go back to that radio ad we heard on the way to work. It was almost like they threw out the marketing team and asked the engineers to make the ad. The car industry seems to have forgotten how customers behave: no one compares your truck’s payload capacity before buying, no one knows who J.D. Power and Associates is, and no one knows what the hell a “hemi” is (or why on earth they should want one).

In this example, the engineers are speaking one language and the consumer is speaking another. From Chip and Dan: “[T]he moral of the story is to find a ‘universal language,’ one that everyone speaks fluently. Inevitably, that universal language will be concrete” (pg. 115).

The Good Example

BG dropped me off at the train station and I started reading the March issue of Wired magazine. Just a few pages in I serendipitously found a good example of features vs. benefits. This Citibank ad shows a real dog sleeping next to a toy poodle. In the 40-odd words to the right of the picture, there’s a short story about how Max the dog was depressed. His owners tried everything, but eventually bought Max a toy poodle as a companion. It worked and now everyone sleeps better at night. The Citibank arch links “stuffed poodle” with “smitten dog.”

How perfect is this example of speaking in terms of benefits? Citibank’s marketing team could have touted any number of features: their financial know-how, their FDIC ranking, their IRA revenue-generating power. Instead, they spoke the customer’s language – how your Citibank card can please your pet and help you get a better night’s sleep. Bravo, Citibank. Benefits trump features any day of the week.