Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

Don't do as I do, do as I say

I have a habit of writing notes whenever I encounter something interesting especially in the area of marketing, consumer research, or management.  I save these notes and often they result in a Views.  Today's Views is a result of two observations involving the same organization over a two-year period.

In the summer of 1998, the AMA published an article in their magazine covering the major reasons for the decline in cooperation among consumers.  One of the top reasons was the length of interviews (frequently 30 minutes or longer).  I agree that we have a strong tendency to increase our interviews by asking "nice to know" questions.  These questions frequently have no bearing on the problem at hand.  It is just that someone thought the information should be known.  On August 12, 1998, I got a call from an organization representing the AMA.  They asked if I was willing to participate in a short interview.  I agreed and the short interview lasted 45 minutes.  Many of the questions were background and many were questions that I thought they should have known since I was a member of the AMA.  The meat of the interview could have been completed in about 15 minutes or less.

Some of the thoughts I had about the interview were that:

On May 2, 2000, I was preparing a presentation that involved the emergence of on-line research.  I remembered an article that was sent to me by a friend.  However, the article was faxed to me and my fax uses the old-fashioned rolled fax paper which has a tendency to fade rapidly.  I attempted to obtain a copy of the article through AMA.org.  The article either was not put into the archives or the retrieval system was not working properly.  I called the author, an AMA staff writer, thinking he would not only be happy to e-mail me a copy of the article but also may feel good that I remembered his article, his name and was going to use the article in my presentation.  Was I ever fooled again.  I was told that he did not have anything to do with the web site.  I asked if he could send me a copy.  I was told that was not his job.

Of all people, I would expect the AMA staff to understand "customer service."  While the author did not think sending out e-mails was a part of his description, I believe customer service is a part of all employees' job descriptions.  At least that was the way I was brought up, but then again that was a half century ago and times change.

I ended up sending a message to the webmaster.  He called back and then sent the article via e-mail.

Parting thoughts:

Telephone interviews of 30 minutes and longer are really too long.
Customer service should be the responsibility of everyone in the company.



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