For Love of Cat

Concerned about occasional customer complaints about pricing, a specialized veterinary clinic was at a loss. It wasn’t like the staff were all spending their giant paychecks on Jaguars and Italian shoes. The clinic was constantly reinvesting in state-of-the art equipment and continuing education for technicians, assistants, and veterinarians.  The vets donated tons of of time to the international boards, state veterinary school, and local shelters.

And every cat who came in to the clinic received unparalleled care — before an appointment ends, she will have been seen by a veterinary assistant, a veterinary technician, and the veterinarian. If a cat needed surgery, there were always a vet and two vet techs working the procedure, not just the vet and an assistant.

If only everyone knew the value of what they were paying for!  Surely the complaints would stop.  So the clinic began posting its credentials.  Diplomas, commendations, awards covered the walls.  And some people kept complaining.

Worried about losing clients, the clinic did a survey of pricing of other, non-specialty vets around the area and cut some of its prices.  Within a couple of months, it was operating in the red. It didn’t know how to cut its prices further without sacrificing service. It was determined not to sacrifice service.

And yet people were still complaining.

Almost as an act of desperation, they agreed to pay for some focus groups. I told them that I wanted a list of their favorite clients, and a list of the people who would be their favorite clients if only they weren’t bitching so much about prices.  I said, “Let’s see what the difference is between the two groups. Then we can go out and look for more people like the ones in the non-complaining group (we’ll call them Group A) and let the complainers (Group B) take their business to the cheap vets, since they don’t appreciate you anyway.”

The vet expected to find a difference in income, education, marital status, proximity to the clinic, gender, presence of children at home.  What we found was this:

Group A: “My 16-year old diabetic cat needs injections every day.  Last Christmas, we called a family meeting and we had a vote: Christmas presents or medicine for the cat.  We voted medicine for the cat.”

Group B: “Are you nuts?  It’s a cat.”

There it was.  People’s willingness to pay high prices for veterinary care wasn’t about how much they valued the veterinarian.  It was about how much they valued the cat.  They weren’t spending money on veterinary services; they were spending money on the cat.

The clinic discovered through this process that it wasn’t just in the business of providing health care for cats; it was in the business of keeping a family’s beloved cat happy, healthy, and in the family for as long as possible.  It came to understand that its “patients” weren’t just the cats, but the cats’ owners as well, who needed to have their relationships with their cats supported and affirmed.

The veterinary clinic would never have learned this by sending out a survey, because the survey questions would have been developed in line with what the vet thought was most important — credentials, expertise, experience.  What was most important to its clients, though, was their relationship with this valued member of the family.

Learning this created a whole new marketing opportunity for the Cat Care Clinic: to groom “perfect” clients by helping foster deep bonds between pets and their owners early in the pet’s life.  Now, when you go to the Cat Care Clinic with your brand new kitten, everyone who isn’t otherwise occupied rushes to the waiting room to have a peek and coo over your find. The proud cat owner puffs up her chest and thinks proudly, yes, I did indeed find the most adorable kitten ever, didn’t I?  (Granted, the clinic staff were already doing that, which is why the non-complainers loved this clinic in the first place.  One man in the focus group had said, “I go to the Cat Care Clinic because they don’t make you feel crazy for loving your cat.”)

Then the assistant pulls out a camera and takes the kitten’s picture — and hands you a baby book to paste the picture into.

All around the office walls, little quizzes are posted which ask questions like: What does it mean when your cat walks with its tail straight up in the air? How does purring happen? What does it mean when your cat turns her ears around? All of the questions are intended to start an owner paying attention to the quirks and personality of her cat, to begin forging that bond.  Now there are very few clients of this clinic who would scoff,  Are you nuts? It’s a cat!

Moral: Pricing issues are hardly ever about price — they’re about value.  If people are talking about price, it’s because you yet haven’t tapped in to what it is they truly care about.

Even if the clinic had suspected that love of cat was playing a significant role in owners’ attitudes toward price, it still would probably not have learned what it needed to learn from a survey.  If it were to ask, for example, for people to rate how much they love their cats on a scale of one to five, almost everyone would surely have answered “five.”  But the trouble with surveys and scales is that one person’s “five” is another person’s “Are you nuts?  It’s a cat.” You can’t learn anything about love by asking people to rate something on a scale of one to five.  The only way you can find out about love is by listening to people’s stories.

Lesson: Marketing isn’t just about promotions and advertising.  It is about giving people a terrific experience that is relevant to your business and their desires.

Notice that none of the stuff the clinic is doing now has anything to do with what we think of as “marketing.”  That’s because marketing isn’t about telling people what to buy.  It’s about connecting what people want with what you have to offer.

Think of every experience people have with your business as “marketing.”  Yes, you need high quality to stay in the game.  But that’s not the only thing people are paying for.

Junior Jones

Tip: My pets have better health insurance than I do.  I get it from Veterinary Pet Insurance.

Brown on brown

“This is beautiful!” one of the advertising people exclaimed.  “It should definitely be in the running for first prize.”  The three other advertising guys agreed.  This brochure was, indeed, a thing of beauty.  It was the shining crown of this advertising competition.

Then why was the group still there, arguing about it?  Because the marketing person disagreed.

It was late.  Everyone was hungry.  Tempers were getting short.  “What is your problem?” one of the advertising guys finally demanded.

The marketing person heaved a big sigh.  “It’s brown on brown,” she said.

“That’s one of the qualities that makes it so beautiful!”

“It’s a brochure for a nursing home.  The target is the old person they’re trying to get to move into the nursing home.”

“So?”

“So, it’s printed on tan paper in brown ink in 9 point type.”

“So?”

“The target reader is not going to be able to read it!”

Moral: No matter how beautiful your marketing materials are, if they can’t do what they’re supposed to do — communicate — they don’t deserve a prize.

Lesson: It doesn’t do any good any good to tell a compelling story if nobody can get it.  Your first job is to make certain that your words can be received and comprehended.  Colin Wheildon’s research found that the harder you make people work to figure out what it is you are saying, the less likely people are to comprehend what you’ve said — that is, provided you haven’t already lost them before they’ve reached the end of the page.  The effectiveness of your words depends on their being conveyed in a way that supports your meaning.   Your words are only a part of the “story” you are telling about your business.  When people are reading your words on a printed page, scanning them on a computer screen, or hearing them on the radio or television, they are also experiencing:

• Readability — how easy/difficult it is to discern the words, based on your choice of typefaces, font sizes and colors, background colors, placement on the page…
• Language — how easy/difficult it is to figure out what you’re saying, based on your tone, accent, use of colloquialisms, the complexity of your sentences, the formality/informality of your approach…
• Visuals — the stories told by the photos, illustrations, colors, designs, and moving images you use…
• Kinesthetic — the weight and substance of the paper your messages appear on, how loud  your volume is set, the sort of music you use…

Think about the goals of your advertising.  Do you want to win beauty contests or do you want to communicate why, of all the choices people have available to them, they should choose your product/service?  A well-designed advertisement can’t make a weak story strong.  But a poorly-designed advertisement can undermine a strong story — even if it looks beautiful.

The customer is always right: part one

David Friedman tells this humbling story:

I recall the day early in my career when I worked in Penn Station in NYC fixing public pay phones.  A very large man – about 6’ 6” 250 lbs- called me over to where he was using the phone and told me the phone was broken.  It didn’t seem broken and I told him so.  Thereupon, he ripped the phone off the wall and broke the handset into two pieces. NOW THE PHONE WAS REALLY BROKEN!!

It’s easy to succumb to the temptation to get into a pissing contest with a customer, especially if the customer did something stupid like buy the wrong size or install a part backwards or call your service line without checking first to see if his unresponsive machine was even plugged in.

Here’s the question: What do you get by being right?  It means you’ve “won.”  But we’re supposed to be in relationship with our customers, not at war with them.  Win the argument, lose the customer.

There is one thing the customer is always right about — he always knows whether he is happy or unhappy. And, whether his reaction to your response is pulling a phone out of the wall or just quietly walking down the street to another vendor, that action is the direct result of what he is right about. And it’s the customer’s behavior — not the final score of the Who’s Right War — that has the ultimate impact on your business.

My own humbling story

I had bought my first house.  I was very proud of myself.  And now I owned a lawn.  (Still proud of myself)  Next step: procure a lawn mower.

As it happened, one weekend morning, while I was driving around, acquainting myself with my new neighborhood, I spotted seven lawn mowers of various ages sitting in front of a house.  They all had price tags on them.  I chose a slightly-rusted but still respectable-looking one that looked just like the lawn mower I had pushed around my yard as a kid — at least I would know how to get it started — and I drove home, proudly. I had bought a lawn mower that I already knew how to use for only $35.  What a smart shopper and home/lawn owner am I!

That afternoon, I pulled my brand new/old lawn mower to the very center of my backyard. I adjusted the height of the wheels, opened the choke, and cranked ‘er up.  Like butter.  How proud I was!  I pushed the lawn mower around the perimeter of the yard, still proud, and, at almost the very place where I had begun, the lawn mower stopped dead.  Uh oh.  I pulled the starter thingee a few more times, getting a response something like, Brrrrpppppp.  Well, now I’d flooded it.

So, I popped into the house, made myself a sandwich, and gave my lawn mower about a half hour before I went out and tried in again.  Again, my new/old lawn mower started right up, just like a dream.  I’m not only proud, but smart! I can’t believe I got this fabulous piece of machinery for only $35!  Once around the yard again.  And then: nothing.  Again.  Oh, well, at least now I know how to fix it.  I cranked it a few more times, flooded it again, went back into the house and cleaned the bathroom.  Came out in a half hour and tried it again. Brrrrpppppp. Brrrrpppppp. Brrrrpppppp.

I cranked it.  I kicked it.  I turned it upside and shook it a few times.  I cranked it some more, gave it some more time.  At the end of another 45 minutes, I wasn’t so proud anymore.  I was mad.  I can’t believe I paid $35 for this lousy lawn mower!  I dragged it to my car, opened the trunk, and prepared to drive over to the house of the bastard that sold me this piece of crap machinery, give him a piece of my mind, and demand my money back!

I stormed up to the swindler’s front door and furiously informed him that he had sold me a piece of junk.  He listened to me patiently, and said, “Well, I’m so sorry about this. Let’s take a look.”  He lifted the lawn mower out of the back of my car — gently, so as not to scratch my car — and set it on the grass.  While I stood there, arms folded, foot tapping, he studied the lawn mower carefully.  Then he held up one finger, as if to say, “Don’t go away,” and he stepped into his garage.  He came back with a gasoline can, filled up the mower’s gas tank, secured the lid, and put it back into my car.

“That ought to do it for you,” he said kindly.  “Let me know if you have any more problems with it.”  I’m very grateful to that guy, partly because he sold me a decent lawn mower for $35, but mostly for not glaring at me, arguing with me, heaving weary sighs, or otherwise rubbing my nose into what an idiot I was being.  His goal was to ease my unhappiness, and he did.  What he got out of it was a customer who then referred him to all of her lawn-owning friends.

Moral: If your customer thinks he’s unhappy, he is unhappy.  Regardless of whatever else your customer is wrong about, he will always be right in his assessment of how he’s feeling about his situation.

Lesson: Is your irritated customer worth the trouble of keeping around?  Your job, when confronted with an angry, unhappy customer, is to consider what your goal for your interaction is before you respond.  Is it to be right, to win the argument, or is it to relieve your customer’s unhappiness with his situation?  Whichever response you choose will have both short-term and long-term effects that range from losing a customer to securing one for life.  You can choose, quite reasonably, to decide to kiss a troublesome customer goodbye — that’s the subject for another post — but if you do, it should be done consciously and thoughtfully, burning as few bridges as possible — rather than as the result of your being as out-of-control as your customer seems to be.