A few days back, I wrote to the support dept for one of the places I work with.  I told them, quite politely and in detail, that a browser plug-in they supply was only working correctly in FireFox.  I supplied them with pictures showing how the widget was failing to work.  I did everything but actually re-write the code for them.

Their reply?  “We don’t support browsers, but if you have problems with your account, contact us again.”

Granted, this was a 1st-level support person, someone who follows scripts and sends back canned answers.  This answer will satisfy some people, and tick off others just enough so they don’t ask for more help.  And then there’s me.

But this is exactly why I teach my staff and interns to READ and THINK.  If they don’t know an answer, they should admit it, and tell the person that real help will be coming soon – and then make sure it does.  Because one person providing poor support makes your entire organization look stupid.  It does more damage than not providing support at all.

Most poor e-mail support comes from not reading the incoming e-mail.  A lot of high-end support ticket software pre-screens incoming support requests and suggests the “best” reply.  In other words, real people aren’t doing their jobs.  They assume (ASS-U-ME) that a platitude and a pat on the head works for everyone.  And it doesn’t.

Support is a keystone of marketing, people! It’s not the 99 orders you sell and fill correctly, it’s how you handle the one that gets messed up.  What’s important to people is how you address their questions and concerns.  Frankly, a seemless transaction that satisfies (there’s that word again!) their needs or desires goes right out of their head.

The original Tylenol poisoning scandal was handled so amazingly well, their actions were held up as a paragon of crisis management across multiple industries for over 25 years.  This time, Johnson & Johnson screwed the pooch with the Tylenol (and other) recalls.  From now on, which will they be remembered for?

Am I equating failed code support with a bungled cover-up?  Absolutely not.  But look what poor support choices have done for J&J this time.  What can it do to your business?

I’ve recently been savaged by haters (okay, one of my friends commented over a beer) about the paucity of blog posts on this web site.

It’s simple.  When I start writing, it usually turns out to be an article, or a chapter in an upcoming book.  It’s very rare when I can keep the word count down enough to make it a blog post.

Besides, posting a chapter from the middle of a book is like inviting someone in during the middle of a conversation.  I tend to “build” books and articles in a pyramidal fashion – laying all the ground work, explaining things, and then the stuff on top relies on the groundwork to support it, to make the information understandable.  When the underpinnings aren’t there, everything falls apart.

I’ll try to do a better job going forward.

I was going to put “link” singular in the title, because people might think it referred to golf if I used the plural.  About 1/4 of a second later, I realized that I would be defeating the purpose of this post if I shied away.  So, here we are.

I’ve talked before about putting your business somewhere it will be tripped over.  One of the best ways to do this is with a links page on your site.  That is, a list of other sites, blogs, resources – whatever – that you like, are local to you, or are recommending to your clients/customers/patients.

Links perform a couple major functions.  The first is that done correctly they are the on-line equivalent of a personal recommendation.  If you’ve read almost anything I’ve written, you’ll know that word-of-mouth promotion is the be-all and end-all of marketing (how’s that for hyperbole!).  Well, at any rate, it’s damned important.  Most of our “decisions” are not decisions at all, but simply following the recommendations of those we know.

The second function of links, and the one we’re discussing here, is that they provide what I call search hooks.  Let’s say you put a link to a local Italian restaurant on your site – one you happen to like.  Your website deals with, let’s say. . . exotic fish.  I’m an af-fish-ianado (I couldn’t pass up the pun) of both exotic aquatics and Italian food, but today I’m searching for someplace to have lunch.  One of the links that pops up in my search happens to be from your fish site.  I visit, like what I see, and mark it for later before clicking the link to visit the restaurant’s page.  You can do that with shoe stores, your doctor, a doggie playcare facility. . . almost anything as long as you can show relevance.  A page full of random links?  Those went out in the dark ages of the ‘net – about 1999.

If you put up a dozen links, that’s a dozen more ways your site can be found during engine searches.

Minstrel might be a more accurate word, but from the 1850’s on, that word has gained a different and less desirable meaning in the U.S.

Long before there were written languages, history was passed orally from place to place, and generation to generation.  Stories and news were memorized, often set to rhyme or meter because the tales were so long.  Even after languages allowed histories to be written down, the cost of making copies or of transporting original works was so high that traveling tell-tales were still important.

If you read my books or articles – even my blog posts – you’ll note that I spend a lot of time telling stories.  Narratives allow the teller to work in facts and statistics, important words and phrases, in specific places and in order.  Tales allow the listener/reader to absorb salient points without having said points stick in their mental craw.  Or simply: stories help facts go down, like sugar helps medicine go down.

We are programmed to remember stories and rhymes – studies have shown this over and over again.  The Bible uses parables or illustrative stories to make moral lessons easier to remember.  Easy-to-remember stories are also easy-to-repeat stories.

Some of us, it’s true, are more at home with a roster of facts, figures and statistics.  Some of us (including myself) did very well in school because we remembered dates, names and other ephemera and could regurgitate it on command.  But narratives – stories with a beginning, middle and end, and having a moral or “point” to them – are easier for most members of our culture to remember.  (Oddly, this particular post doesn’t try to tell a story!  Hmm. . . )  If you can remember the story, you can apply it’s lessons.

Which is why I spend a lot of time educating via stories.

A couple years back, I was approached to ghost write a book.  It didn’t quite work out the way either of us planned, and so I became the co-author of the book.  It’s a book about the modeling business.

Well, it’s really a marketing book for models.  It’s the same advice I give to a lot of my other clients, couched in terms of the modeling industry, and sprinkled with liberal amounts of  “personality” from my co-author and the star of the show.

The dirty little secret is: I’m re-writing the book for two other industries.  Most of the info will be the same, just immersed in examples from that particular field the book’s targeted toward.

The elephant in the room: first, that I’ve got my name on a book covering an adult – possibly scandalous – topic.  And I’ve written a number of articles to expand on topics I didn’t feel were adequately covered in the book.

The blind men and the elephant.  We’re all familiar with the story of four blind men in a room with an elephant, each trying to guess at the whole by examining only a part with their limited senses.  A snake, for the man holding the trunk.  A boulder for the man feeling the side.  A tree for the man wrapping his arms around the leg.  And a palm frond for the man holding the ear.

In writing books exploring different aspects of marketing for different industries, I’m learning not only about those industries, but more about marketing as a whole.  I’m seeing it from different angles, defining and testing different marketing principles.  I’m practicing what I teach to interns: spend your career trying to prove the experts are wrong.  In doing so, I become a much better advocate for my clients who have no association with the industries in which my books and articles are set.

I find that as we learn more and more about something – a task, a subject, a person – we tend to gloss over and eventually ignore The Basics.  We think we know everything about whatever or whomever, and jump right over the foundational things that got us to where we are now.  We start to run, without bothering to walk.

Starting to learn karate at age 36 was a real eye-opener.  I watched other people in the dojo, some who’d started before me, and others who’d come after.  I noticed that most people, regardless of their age, wanted to just plow ahead and learn the next technique, the next form (kata).  I felt like I didn’t fit in, because I felt I was being pushed along too quickly.  I knew there were deeper meanings about what I’d already been taught that I wasn’t being given the time to learn.

I’d never been on a learning spiral before, and it amazed me to see that the simple building blocks fit together and made up the more advanced techniques I was learning.  (I was one of those people whose natural learning process was self-directed, and made a steep – almost vertical – climb, until I hit something I didn’t intuitively understand.  Then I dropped that subject and went on to the next.)  Coming back around to something I’d already studied, this time from a higher level of experience, brought me a lot of knowledge and insight I could not have gotten the first time around.

It was when I started to teach karate that I began to appreciate The Basics.  Not just the basics of karate, but of anything.  Everything.  That’s when I decided I would offer internships at Agile’.  I began to see that anything which wasn’t built on a solid foundation was often useless.  Worse, it could be damaging to the person doing them.

Too often I see long-time marketers rushing in to deep, convoluted campaigns without making sure The Basics are in place.  And their clients, not knowing any better, simply pay the bills and think, “This is costing me an arm and a leg – it must be worth it!”  When the campaigns fall flat, when the new customers fail to arrive carrying armloads of cash, it’s the economy’s fault, or the media’s fault, or Joe in the mailroom.  It’s never the marketer, and never the customer.

When I’m hired by a client, I’m expected to be able to perform my job.  That’s why I’ve been hired; the client is an expert at what they do, and I’m an expert at marketing.  They don’t want to know what I know, they want me to reach into my black box of tricks and perform a miracle or three.

I do that better and more often than others, because I know and can apply The Basics.