Guerrilla Customer Service

I buy magazines for the ads. My take on art: the artist’s personal propaganda campaign. Aesthetics is too important in communications, and the reason behind its importance is the sheer impact of marketing any message. I see marketing everywhere.

As for tactics, practices, and cleverness, guerrilla marketing and customer service are recently married. When you call for tech support, and the representative asks if you need any assistance with your X, but you currently only have a Y. You’re freaking out. Did they put X on my bill? How much is X? Should I have X? Next week, you call and add X to your list of services. He wasn’t upselling. He was suggesting you needed assistance with something you didn’t have, and you are curious as to why you don’t have it. He usually has a great response – sound scripted? indeed – regarding the add on cost or the value of the “missing” product.

It’s guerrilla because it plays on your existing knowledge of customer service screw ups. Billing incidents and errors. All sorts of horrific daily interactions. It’s unfortunate that we accept these types of errors as consumers so openly that the customer service industry is willing to sacrifice strength and confidence for a quick sell.

Another simple example: Caller ID in the customer service industry is beautiful. Mrs. Smith, how can I assist you today? Instant relationship. They know you.

Some fun ways to twist customer service:

How did you hear about us?

Most customers know that if they can mention a publication or ad they may receive a discount or bonus offer. Offer a word of mouth deal instead. We want to give you a percentage discount just for listening to your friends and family.

Change the scripted hold jibber jabber

It says the same things everytime: all of our representatives blah blah blah. What if instead of putting marketing messages in this space, you actually pre-assist the customer. We’re currently on the line with other broken gizmos. Please ensure your gizmo has been revampified by following these steps…