Get a direct marketer drunk enough and an ugly truth emerges: Every so often, there is a temptation to give a customer what-for. An online marketer, Despair, Inc. (http://www.despair.com) gives flesh to this fantasy.
Despair Inc.’s wares are the warped-mirror image of every cheery up-and-at-‘em poster ever hung in a high school guidance department. The site offers de-motivational products – posters, calendars, mugs and such – design to take the luster off even the most Pollyannaish outlook. And Despair Inc.’s attitudes toward customer service and fulfillment are in line with this negative philosophy.
On Despair.com, a rainbow-adorned landscape photo is labeled “Dreams” – but the caption reads, “Dreams are like rainbows. Only idiots chase them.” A shot of two hands clasped in handshake is labeled “Consulting.” The caption? “If you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”
Marketers may be especially drawn to the “Disservice” poster, which depicts a needle in a haystack followed by the sentiment, “It takes months to find a customer, but only seconds to lose one. The good news is we should run out of them in no time.”
Somewhere, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is spinning in his grave.
The company’s e-mail “Wailing List” signup page touts its “Permission Harassment” policy. The same page asserts “No. We WON’T share your e-mail address with other companies. No one wants it, anyway. GET OVER YOURSELF.”
A “Customer Disservice” page asserts “In an effort to further reduce interactions with customers, we’ve added our revolutionary Troubled Ticketing system. If you would like to report a problem, simply click the link below and complete the accompanying Problem Report. After firing the responsible Little Person, their replacement will get back to you as soon as is convenient for us.”
Customers are also invited to fax in complaints, and one page offers a photo of a smiling customer service rep cheerfully feeding these faxes into a paper shredder.
Even e-mail order confirmations are in the site’s spirit. Purchase something, and you’re likely to receive a note from the company’s “unfulfillment department” that starts off:
“Thank you for your recent order from Despair, Inc.
“I'd like to personally welcome you to our growing body of Dissatisfied Customers, but to do so might evidence some actual concern for service and protocol. This might then lead to customer satisfaction, which would defeat the purpose altogether. That is why you have received this generic, form-generated email, written by some nameless lackey in our marketing department.
“Having established that any pretense of consideration for *your* needs would be counter-productive to our raison d'etre at Despair Inc, let us now ponder a subject of greater interest to those among us who are worthy of both of our collective attentions - that person being me [company founder E.L. Kersten, whose mustachioed visage litters the site].”
It’s fun stuff, but there is a very real object lesson here: Marketers may recognize elements of this within their own customer service operations – which, assumedly, can’t incorporate it as appropriately as Despair Inc. has. Within this site, it’s amusing. Within others, even if it’s not this blatant, it’s deadly.
Perhaps I should have called ol’ E.L. himself for a comment or two about this, but it was getting late, and in the spirit of his site I decided to not to make the effort.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
