A TEST OF CUSTOMER SERVICE Chris Byrnes I would like to share this true story with you because it illustrates the importance of customer service. It occurred a few years ago in New Zealand, at one of the radio stations of which I was a co-owner. It was after 5:30 on a Friday evening and the drive jock received a call on the business line. One of the policies of our company was that after hours, the business line should be answered whenever there was a live announcer in the control room. (Overnights, both the contest and business lines were answered by a service, so you could phone the radio station anytime day or night and a real person would answer your call.) This particular call was from a well-known, out-of-town client who apologized for calling after hours but asked for a copy of one of his commercials. But, it wasn't a commercial from his current campaign to which he referred; it was a spot that had run a few months prior. Making the request even more complicated, the client asked if someone could drop off a cassette tape of the spots, along with copies of the scripts to a local hotel that evening since he was leaving very early the next morning. The jock asked for the client's hotel phone number and promised that he'd either fulfill his request or phone him back.
As it happened there was a staff function in the station's boardroom that evening, and everyone who had finished work for the day was partying and having a great time. The producer said he could find and dub the spots onto cassette and the creative director went off to print up the scripts. Dave Grove, the drive jock, volunteered to drop off the material to the hotel after his shift finished at 7, since he was "going that way anyway" to pick up his girlfriend. We all thought nothing more of it and returned to the boardroom party, one of the "famous affairs" our company regularly held to help build esprit de corps.
The following Monday morning when Dave got to work, he told us that the most amazing thing had happened when he arrived at the James Cook Hotel and asked for the client at the Reception desk. He was directed to the conference level and ushered into the main hall. There were about three hundred employees from a company called "Tony's Tires" in the room and they were attending their annual convention. The person who had called the radio station, Steve Lange, was at the podium giving a speech on the benefits of great client service. He stopped his talk and asked Dave to come up to the podium and hand him the package.
Steve then explained to the conference attendees what he had done. This client spent a lot of money on newspaper, television and radio advertising. He had called every media outlet in the market after 5 PM that evening and asked each one for copy from a previous campaign he had run with their company. He got three no replies, two answering services, that informed him the company was closed for the weekend along with a request to call back during office hours, and two recorded messages that asked him to leave a message in the general mailbox. He managed to speak to a live person in three instances. One told him that no one could help him until Monday; one took a message and said someone would call him back but it may not be until Monday; and of course our station where Dave promised he would get it done or phone him back immediately.
One of the reasons our stations were #1 in revenues and audience share was because of our focus on great customer service. This resulted in an outstanding, caring image among both our listeners and our clients. In fact the motto of the company was "Service, Excellence and Fun." and what Dave Grove did that night in 1996 was not that unusual in our eyes. But it sure impressed our client and everyone in that conference room! The client went on to say that no other media outlet had fulfilled his request, even though his company invested a lot of money with each media outlet in the city.
It was not long after that incident that Tony's Tires changed its media buys in the Wellington market and our radio group got the lion's share of the budget. The example is a reminder to ask yourself if you really offer great service to both your clients and listeners. If your radio station fielded a call to your business line after 5:30 on a Friday evening, would anyone answer the call and would anyone actually bother to deal with such an unusual request? Is all your staff focused on service, excellence and fun?
I was speaking with a group-owner a few days ago and he asked me what the principles upon which ByrnesMedia was founded were? Of course I told him my story and how I had learned about the benefits of providing great service, striving for excellence in everything we do and when possible, having some fun along the way. I also told him the example provided by Robert Bart of Switzerland. Robert was a very successful businessman who wanted to give something back to the community that had been so good to him. He joined a local Rotary Club and worked hard on various community service projects, eventually becoming a District Governor of Rotary in Switzerland. I thought he accurately summed up great personal service when he said the following: "You can rely on me; I am Dependable; I am available; I give more than I take and I add value wherever possible." He was talking about an organization that is founded on the principle of fostering service as an ideal of worthy enterprise. At ByrnesMedia, we do our very best to live up to Robert's definition of great service. In part it's because we know the benefits of providing great service but we are also doing our best to restore the image of the broadcast consultant, which has been somewhat tarnished by, as one General Manager recently described, "out-of-work program directors who call themselves consultants." These people make our job that much more difficult but I believe that if you were to contact any of our clients they would tell you about our high level of service, excellence and fun. |