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Little Things That Matter

November 27, 2006

I hope readers in the US had a nice holiday.  Today I am going to talk about little things that can make a big difference.

As regular readers know, I recently published a book, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing.

I am working with Book Surge, and Amazon company for the publishing.  They have been good to work with and by no means is this a blog post bashing them.  However, I do want to use what happened as a lesson in perspective.

I got my shipment of 100 books in the mail last week.  Many of them had minor imperfections in the cover and as I looked through, I could see that the ink did not dry well before they were put together.  I called Book Surge and they have a replacement shipment being printed. - Good Customer Service - and I know they work with multiple printers and will investigate why this happened.

Here is the perspective issue.  They did everything right from their perspective.  The book industry has a process where you rip off the covers and send them back, to prove you did not sell them.  I understand this.

Here is the thing from my perspective.  I am not a crook.  I am saying they are flawed and I sent pictures of some of the covers as examples.  Why do I have to spend time today ripping up books and going to the post office?  Why not use the less bad covers as promotional copies or donate them to local libraries or schools? (Some appear to have minor scratches and would not have been very noticeable to many people)

And I just missed the chance to do book signings before the holiday season. 

Did I ask them about this?  No.  They did their job and I understand their process.  But the little things matter and even if I am smiling on the outside, I am somewhat frustrated on the inside.

The little things they could have done are:

  • Allow me to use the books for promotion and just throw away the really bad ones.
  • Sent a pre-paid envelope for the covers, if they must have them.
  • Ordered me a few extra copies for the hassle.

Again I want to say they have been very good to work with.  They have clearly defined processes and have been very responsive.  I wrote this as an illustration to you that there is a difference between fixing a problem and creating a fan.Š

- Thank You!

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Marketing ROI, Buzzoodle, Blog 

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Comments

3 Responses to “Little Things That Matter”

  1. Natalie Ferguson on November 27th, 2006 10:59 pm

    Oh I hate that! Whne a business mucks up, they shpould go out of their way to fix it, not make you go out of your way to alert them to the problem. It’s all about turning a bad situation into a positive one and, like you say, it is so easy.

    I find the same thing when you want to make a complaint about a company, especially the big ones make you got through their official complaint process requiring formal letters, purchasing stamps etc, it’s a pain and you wonder how someone who has wronged you can then expect you to bother trying ot put it right.

  2. Andrew Shuttleworth on November 28th, 2006 9:37 am

    Great story. I had a similar experience with Salesforce.com in Japan. For business reasons I wanted to downgrade my account so I sent a nice mail explaining why. I was already a bit frustrated that I had to do that for a service that claims to be ‘on-demand’ but no biggie. What I hadn’t accounted for was a mid-week public holiday that cut me short of the 5 days notice I was supposed to give in order for the next months bill. To keep it short, I was technically wrong, but on appealing for a bit of leniency I was quoted the FAQ and told that nothing could be done.

    The service was efficient but once again no way to make fans.

  3. Ron McDaniel on November 29th, 2006 12:01 am

    Thanks so much for your comments.

    Again, Book Surge has been good to work with, but if they wanted to improve and really stand out as exceptional (at least in this case) it would not have taken much extra effort. I am glad people are commenting on this, and I hope you not only share ways you have seen this in action with other companies, but also share ways you could make your business better with little improvements.

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