National Clothesline

‘Bait and switch” advertising, as most of you know, is when a company offers a great deal on a car, a sofa, a vacation package or anything else, but once the customer is lured in, they are told that item is sold out and are then pressured into buying another similar item at a higher price.

If the company’s intent was to sell the customer something other than the advertised item and the promise was made with the knowledge that it would not be fulfilled, then it was a lie. As David Ogilvy once said: “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”

Fortunately, blatant misrepresentations are becoming less common. Instead, companies are more likely to rely on tactics in which claims are technically accurate but couched in such a way that customers may initially be led to believe they are getting something more.

The “free checking” frenzy started by the banking industry is a classic example. Customers quickly became cynical when they realized that “free checking” offers carried many disclaimers, contingencies, and hidden fees that made these accounts anything but free.

Cell phone plans whose advertised rate is only good for the first three months, automobile leases that require large down payments, video rentals whose late fees far exceeded the original cost of rental, round-trip airfare advertised for $49 but available only on a handful of seats — these are all examples that represent a gamble on the part of the company that the additional traffic generated by the misleading claims will outweigh the resulting loss of customer satisfaction.

On more than one occasion, I’ve worked with cleaners who advertised “Any garment for $1.99” or something similar. Because of up-charging, the final price usually ended up in the three-dollar-plus range.

While this may be a source of pride for the drycleaner, when customers realize this discrepancy they are less than pleased. In fact, they develop a deep mistrust for the drycleaner.

This kind of pricing can lead to an increase in claims for lost and damaged garments. Once a customer ’s confidence is shaken, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to win it back again.

Smart drycleaners refuse to mortgage their future and their reputations for a short-term bump in sales. This is the key reason that drycleaners with high customer satisfaction gain the most market share over time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally against up-charges, because they are quite justifiable in many circumstances, like pleated skits, for instance. I just think it makes more sense to have a base price that compensates for the majority of garment variances, without having to change the price customers generally expect to pay for every garment that comes across the counter.

Not only is honest communication with customers one of the most effective means of satisfying them, it costs essentially nothing to implement.

Securing customer confidence doesn’t only involve honest pricing; it comes from not breaking commitments or promises that can leave customers hanging with nowhere to turn.

When an employee takes the easy way out by telling a customer what she wants to hear, the statements may be the result of a personal desire to avoid conflict or to follow company policy on handling a particular situation.

Let’s face it, when confronted with an angry customer who wants to know why her order isn ’t ready, or if someone will look into the problem and promptly get back to her, there is always that little voice urging us to just say whatever the customer wants to hear to just get her off your back and let somebody else worry about the consequences later.

The urge to commit to what the customer wants to hear is particularly strong if there is at least a chance it will actually happen.

Doctors know that statistics have shown if you tell the patient in great detail about the procedure beforehand (they call it good bedside manner), the patient will be much more relaxed about the whole thing than if they have no idea what ’s coming next.

Larry Kellner, the CEO of Continental Airlines, says, “It’s how we work with our passengers so they know what to expect, and then you deliver on those expectations. When something doesn ’t quite work out, you tell them why it didn’t work out.”

People are a lot more forgiving than we sometimes give them credit for. You just need to avoid the temptation to delay the inevitable. You may be able to avoid an uncomfortable conversation today, but it ’s going to be a heck of a lot more uncomfortable if you wait until you have no choice but to notify your customer.

The impact of being able to reach the same individual should not be underestimated. Customers want to feel as if there is a real person with a real name who will act as their personal champion when it comes to getting their problems resolved. The best scenario is to empower your employees to handle problems on their own.

A promise broken and then made good can even be more powerful than a promise never broken at all. But the ability to follow through on commitments and fulfill expectations is one of the cornerstones of customer satisfaction and a requirement for turning simply satisfied apathetics into true advocates.