After lashing out at Verizon and Vonage a little while ago, I thought I’d move on to other topics.
But Verizon can’t help but make simple mistakes in their direct mail efforts. On Friday, I received yet another first-class mailing, this time promoting Verizon’s FiOS Internet service.
Since I’ve now been a triple-play customer for two months and paid two bills for the service, this mailing is slightly redundant. Unlike the last promotion, this one has doesn’t even include a letter signed by an identifiable person. I guess they knew this was so poorly done that nobody wanted to sign it?
Of interest is the fact that the return address for the FiOS Internet service is Annapolis MD, while the TV promotion came out of Irving, TX. This confirms my suspicion that the FiOS product is multiple business units hammered together.
Summary and takeaways
- Share your internal customer lists across multiple business units and suppress against those customer files when you are undertaking a promotion.
- Always suppress against your transactional/payment database. Your internal marketing databases might not be updated, due to either sloth or neglect, but the department that counts the money always knows who’s paying and who’s not.
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I’ve written about good customer service in the past, highlighting my excellent experience with L.L. Bean. I’ve postulated that quality customer service is actually free, because the incremental sales more than make up for “excessive” talk time and refunds/credits granted by your customer service representatives.