I’ve just finished Scott Stratten’s second book The Book of Business Awesome. An excellent read (or in my case a listen – I have it – along with his first book – Unmarketing – in the car) I can highly recommend it.
But I have to warn you – you will come out of the other side with a changed world view.
Among many other marketing observations, Scott talks of the hoops that companies make their customers jump through. And as soon as your eyes are opened these things are everywhere.
EVERYWHERE!
I can’t stop seeing them. And this morning I think a small blood vessel in my left eye burst.
I had to speak to Telefonica – Spain’s telephone provider – about a complaint I have. I’m not going to bore you with the details – suffice to say they suggested I send an email to the small business complaints department.
I have no problem with that – it makes sense. Gives me a chance to explain my situation and for them to have a written record of my complaint. And here comes the hoop…. this is the email address you have to send your message to:
te_atencion_y_ventas_pymes@telefonica.es
Why? Why can’t it be something simple? Why have an address that is almost impossible to note down correctly over the phone the first time? In English we can say hyphen or underscore – that makes things complicated enough – but in Spanish it’s the same word – guion – so it’s guion medio (dash in the middle) or guion bajo (lower dash).
I had already jumped through three hoops just to get to the person I needed to speak to – press 1 – confirm the telephone number – state the reason for the call…. but this felt more like an attempt to prevent me from complaining rather than an invitation.
The nice lady that attended me also offered to send me a copy of my contract and asked for my email address – resisting the temptation to make one up on the spot that could be used as the name for an obscure village in Wales I told her: info@advent.es How hard is that?
When Scott Stratten is translated into Spanish I might just send them a link… if I can get an address from them for book recommendations.
In the meantime I’m just going to have to go through life without the goggles I was wearing…. thanks a lot, Scott!
