Knowing Your Customer (And The Consequences of Not Doing So)

For those of you who don't know, it was my Birthday on Friday. No big deal really, as I celebrated the weekend before, but the story I'm about to tell you really needs some context in order for me to not look like a prick!

Picture this: It's a Friday, it's your birthday. You have just worked a full day (even though you had planned on ducking out a bit early :D) and you are sitting at home getting ready for a great night to yourself. Normally on your birthday you want to be around other people, but you have to leave at 5am on Sunday morning to catch a plane for a business trip, so you've decided to take it easy and have a night off.

Now imagine that as you are talking to your girlfriend via text message and chatting with some friends online, you receive a phone call from an unknown number At first you ignore it because you don't know the number, but who knows, the three beers you already have in you convince you that phone call could be your next ticket to stardom. You'll never know if you don't answer! Well, this is where the fun begins....

This nice young gentleman was on the other end of the line from "Scotialife", which I'm assuming is some subsidiary of Scotiabank, although that comes into question later. This young man skipped right past the small talk and began what I considered to be a fairly hard sell on some life insurance products. He talked about how awful it would be if I passed and left nothing to my loved ones, touted the features of the great products he had to offer, and after what seemed like 3-5 minutes of his continuous talking, he asked "Would you like to enroll in this program Mr. Tyhurst?" (or something to that effect).

Before i describe my response, I want to give this guy kudos. Telemarketing is a thankless job, but someone has got to do it. He was polite, relatively enthusiastic, and definitely knew some great responses to my objections. Unfortunately for him, I don't think he was equipped with the tools necessary in order to satisfy my needs. That being said, here's how it went (paraphrased from memory):

Me: No thank you, I am not interested.


Telemarketer: I completely understand Mr. Tyhurst, may I ask why you are not interested?


Me: Well really there are two issues here. First of all, I already have a very solid life insurance plan through my job at one of Canada's 50 Best companies. But second of all, I'm concerned about the way you were selling me this product. I'm in sales, and generally when you talk to a customer, you ask them what they are looking for from you, not what you can ram down their throat in the minimal amount of time you have with them. (I'm sure the beers may have made this language a bit more colourful... but it was my birthday... gimme a break!)


Telemarketer: Mr. Tyhurst, just so you know, there are many different options to our coverage, and the on I am offering you is not meant to replace your current plan, but supplement it for that extra protection for your family.


Me (acting interested just to see how he would handle it): Ok, I see what you mean, but I still don't think I'm interested.


Telemarketer: *He explains here for about another minute on the free $2000 of coverage I can get for 3 years without paying. As I'm hearing him talk, I'm thinking to myself "What the hell would I do with $2000 if I croak? And do I really want an insurance plan for $2000 that I didn't even ask for... sounds sketchy* Mr. Tyhurst, if you would like to take advantage of this offer? All that I would need would be your home address.


Me: *Now the red flags are going off, so I try to have a bit more fun* You know what, I could definitely be interested in that, however, I would like to receive the information by email. If I give you my email can you send me all the info?


Telemarketer: Sorry sir, but we do not give out that information via email.


Me: Can I get it on the Scotiabank website?


Telemarketer: Not on the Scotiabank site sir, you can access it at www.Scotialife.com

**The conversation went on for about another minute or so, with no sale closed, no information gained from me, and only a 3rd party website communicated via phone (which I have not visited). I had also requested that they do not contact me via phone anymore. Overall, I'd say the mission was a failure on his part**

Now, I'd like to do a short summary of the things that were so wrong with this call:
-All of the background stuff made me a grumpy bear to talk to on the phone. That's just how it was.

-These guys actually called me like a week before while I was at work, and I asked them to call back at 6pm
that night when I was home. I asked for that time because thats when I wanted it, not a week later on a friday at 6pm.

-Didn't ask me a single question until 3-5 minutes into the call. (How the heck was he supposed to know what to sell me?)

-Offering a free product ($2000 for 3 years) that I didn't particularly find any value in, ESPECIALLY if I have to give some 3rd party my address.

-Speaking of 3rd parties, Scotiabank clearly shit the bed here because they are either selling off my information (this guy had my cell phone #) OR this is actually a subsidiary of Scotiabank, but they don't give them access to my birthday, address, etc. The fact that this guy didn't have my address indicated to me that they were not part of Scotiabank and I sure as hell wasn't going to give them that information so they can send me more crap in the mail.

-They cannot send me any product details via email. What year are we living in? They expect me to accept some free insurance product over the phone without reading all of the fine print. Does this actually work on people?!? This blew me away.

Lesson of the day: Ask your customers about what they are looking for... it will go miles. If he was genuinely interested in what I wanted, he would have either already known it was my birthday, or found out so through conversation (trust me, I'm happy to share this info). If he would have found out it was my birthday he could have spun the whole conversation about life insurance and related it to my birthday and how every year it becomes more and more important to protect my loved ones. Then when I told him I was already covered, he could have pointed out some of the additional benefits that his product could have offered to supplement this plan... too bad he didn't get that far.

Life is kind of like meeting Johnny Reid in an airport....

except life will never serenade you!

I just couldn't resist weaving this picture into my post today:

My father sent me this pic of one of my previous managers at Rankin Construction and Johnny Reid at the Toronto airport, and somehow I really related to it. Let's set aside the fact that I had no idea who this guy was (Thanks Wikipedia!), but lets focus on how life is a lot like meeting an obscure celebrity in an airport:

-An airport is the embodiment of organized chaos.... you can barely find a spot at the bathroom stall but at the end of the day, after all of the pat downs, bad airport food, and sitting on the runway for 2 hours, you wind up with an interesting story and hopefully meet some cool people.

-Another thing that makes this metaphor on life relevant is that you never know when an opportunity might walk right past you, so you need to be hyper aware of your surroundings.... you might never know when Johnny Reid is going to walk by and give you a once in a lifetime moment.

-Consider that some people could care less if they met Johnny Reid or not... and most people probably wouldn't have even spotted him. The important part is that everybody has a different opportunity they are looking for in life. Just like one mans trash is another mans treasure, one persons Johnny Reid is just another dude at the airport, and thats okay.

-Even if it's not your dream moment, enjoy the moment for what it is worth. I'm sure our friend from Rankin wasn't waiting for his whole life to get this picture, but since he did, it's pretty cool. I know this feeling personally... I was involved in some work which required actresses and I saw one of the women I worked with on the television buying fishsticks.... it wasn't a defining moment of my life, but it was kind of cool to say "hey, I met her". Life is never going to be perfect, but you might as well make the most of the cards you are dealt.

-Life is all about people. You could go through all of the airports in the world twenty times over, but if there would no people there, they would be lifeless. Airports are the same as life... people are what make your life rich, not the money you have. In our world of fast paced social media and business deals it can be easy to forget this!

I'll leave you with this thought:

Connect with your fellow man. Do it often and with passion. It doesn't matter whether its a conversation with a stranger, a blog post, a telephone call, or a simple hello to a colleague when you come in to the office. If you do this, you'll be rich in more ways than one.

Being a Keeper Of The Flame- A new experience around every corner.

Lately I have been doing some serious soul searching... What is it that motivates me? What is it that I crave out of life? As part of this quest, I started reading "Keeper Of The Flame: How to inspire others on the cusp of change" by Mike Lipkin, and I'm really glad that I am. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own little world of ups and downs, we start to lose sight of the big picture. This is your classic "missing the forest through the trees analogy". But as I read this book, I am beginning to realize that my ultra optimistic attitude and dissatisfaction with the status quo doesn't make me crazy, it makes me a keeper of the flame... a source of light for both myself and others.

Ok, so I'm not quite a motivational speaker yet, but who knows.. maybe one day! Anyways, as part of this journey to live on the cusp of change, I thought I would participate in an online discussion during a live webcast of one of my favorite shows; The Agenda with Steve Paiken (http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda). Ok, this show is likely not something your average 20-something would watch, but I'm a geek, and a geek who is interested in world issues. I actually am upset that I missed yesterdays episode on the Web 3.0, but I digress.

I started off by watching the show from the comfort of my couch and Twittering my comments to the Agenda's online chat run by one of the producers, Mike Miner. Then I realized I was sending out my comments, but I wasn't getting in on what other people were saying... so I migrated to my computer room. (sidebar: yes, I know that I am living in the stone age by not having a TV in plain viewing space as my TV... one day when I can afford a second TV). I started participating in the chat, and I was a bit shocked to see that less than 10 people were interacting in the conversation on the site. I had to ask myself, is this show that obscure, or maybe people are just watching the comments as they go by? Either way, we had some great conversation and Steve even answered my question during the live webcast after the on air show (this is when only having 10 people is sweet!)... which I thought was super cool.

I exchanged a few private messages with the moderator/producer, and then decided this guy was super legit so I decide to follow him on Twitter so I could get the latest scoop on my show (@mikeminer). After this great experience I had interacting with a "traditional" media outlet, I wondered how I could continue my journey of being a keeper of the flame and continue experiencing new things.

Sure, a chat online with a TV show producer isn't ground breaking, but it's the first time I did it and its a first step in many of inspiring others on the cusp of change. Maybe the next step is volunteering to help at the show... that would be pretty cool I think. Heck, maybe I could even convince them to get Don Tapscott on the show so I could shake his hand... stay tuned to see what I can pull off.

My Favourite New Site

Kudos to Google Reader and Engadget for picking this doozy up for me. This site allows you to create a quick, minimalist site and link your standard social media tools to it. You can import your own background, set your fonts/colours, and voila! an easy website is up and running.

I must admit there is limited functionality at this time, but hopefully once they get their idea off the ground more features will be added. Some suggestions include adding the more obscure social sites as well as allowing you to adjust how big the text boxes are.

Until then though, I'm pretty content with what I put together in about 15 minutes.
http://flavors.me/coreytyhurst

Oh yes, there is also a premium feature for $20/year that allows you to track trends and include contact info, so this could definitely serve as an electronic business card/CV of sorts if you choose.

Falling Off The Face Of The Earth

I have not fallen off the face of the planet... although judging by my internet presence over the last week one could believe that!

Honestly, I have just been very busy with work/personal things. After my trip to Vancity/Calgary last week, I spent the whole (short) week at work catching up on administrative stuff, as well as connecting with some of my coworkers on the projects that we have all committed to. IN addition, my gf was on her reading week so when push comes to shove, she is more important my some silly blog.

But its Sunday, I'm back, and I'm hoping that this week I will be able to get back in the groove of writing about the latest happenings in the world. Since this is clearly a random post with no specific topic, I will leave you with the following for entertainment...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOZBU257ERE

Enjoy!