A Tale of Customer Data, Email Marketing, and Fast Food

Do you know what's happening this week in the world of business? It's Customer Service Week, which means that organizations should make the extra effort to acknowledge the importance of customer service and its impact on profits. With that objective in mind, I'd like to share a recent customer experience.

I received an email from a doctor's office. The email served as confirmation for an upcoming appointment. While I definitely prefer an email confirmation rather than an intrusive phone call or text, this email stood out due to its poor customer service.

The email included the date and time for my upcoming appointment but also included the following sentence: "If this is your first visit, make sure to arrive 15 minutes early to fill out new patient paperwork."

Since I'm a long-time patient, and this upcoming appointment will probably be my tenth visit, that sentence should not have been included in the email.

The inclusion of that sentence made me wonder why the doctor's office doesn't have two different versions of its email appointment confirmations. Would it be too difficult to send one version without that sentence to existing patients?

In today's era of data overload, the doctor's office has my name, address, date of birth, insurance information, dates of previous appointments, and my medical records. So, when sending an email confirmation, it would have been simple to remove the sentence about "first visit/new patient paperwork."

According to RestaurantDive, "The problem isn't that you don't have data. It's that none of it connects."

And according to Joe Rospars, Founder and CEO of Blue State Digital, "Big data is about having an understanding of what your relationship is with the people who are most important to you - and an awareness of the potential in that relationship."

Lastly, here's an excellent example of looking at customer data and then taking action. Juan Castro of West for Elavon shared an analogy from the early days of fast food: "Chains used to sell burgers, fries, and sodas separately, until the data showed that customers were buying all three nearly every time. The combo meal is a business improvement from that observation."

SHARE THIS: The problem isn't that you don't have data. It's that none of it connects. ~RestaurantDive #CX #CustomerServiceWeek #BrandExperience #DebbieLaskeysBlog

Image Credit: Vecteezy/Shohor Ali.