Mary had a delivery service business. Her idea was to market to senior citizens who couldn’t get out every day. She came to me as a SCORE counselor because her business was struggling and she thought she needed marketing help. She had been marketing to seniors for more than a year and was frustrated by her results. She hoped I would have silver bullet that would change everything.

My first question to Mary was had she written a business plan. I wanted to see her marketing plan and forecast of sales. Mary told me she had written one before she started but she said she “just didn’t believe it.” A business counselor had worked on cash flow section with her but forecast was much more optimistic than she really believed possible.

It always astonishes me that people go into business with a business plan that seems impossible to them. If business owner doesn’t believe it then who will? Not believing your own plan should be a red flag to entrepreneur to go back to drawing board.

The owner may need to redefine their market or update their idea to something that will generate business owner needs. It may take more market research (What does market want? How much is target market willing to pay?) It may take a more robust marketing plan in order to reach numbers entrepreneur needs to get sales flowing. It may also take more money to fund necessary marketing or support equipment or services.

Sometimes entrepreneur just needs more confidence in his/her own ability to get work. In that case it may be that entrepreneur needs to work in someone else’s business first to see how it is done and gain that confidence.

Another tact that an owner might take would be to make a minimal investment in business to get it going and find other work for self-support while he/she experimented with business-a pilot or beta of sorts. This in effect would be real time market research.

I’m not hear to bitch about flaky computers, though. (Believe me, I’ve done plenty of that!) No, I’m here to talk about very different experiences that I had with customer service representatives that handled each case. These laptops came from different manufacturers, and quality of service that I received seemed to reflect very different customer service policies on parts of these companies. In a moment, you’ll see what I mean.

Case Study #1: What were they thinking?

So I called up one of manufacturers to explain that my laptop refused to power up. I also pointed out that this very same computer had failed four times before—each time, manifesting same problem.

Without preamble, technical support rep said, “Tell me your e-mail address.”

I was puzzled by this question and taken aback by his bluntness. I asked, “Excuse me, but why do you need this information? That’s rather private.”

“I’m going to send you a troubleshooting guide,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “My computer is down, and you plan to fix this by sending me something via e-mail? Did it occur to you that I might not have any e-mail access? Besides, I know what problem is, since it’s happened repeatedly in past.”

Right off bat, this fellow committed three clear mistakes. First, he failed to show proper respect in dealing with customer. A properly trained rep would have asked for one’s e-mail address in more deferential terms. “Do you mind if I ask for your e-mail address?” would have been vastly more polite.

Second, he failed to immediately let customer know why he was asking for an e-mail address. People are naturally reluctant to share such details, as a matter of privacy (and as a safeguard against spam!). That’s why it’s very important to immediately let customer know why you’re asking for this information. “Do you mind if I ask for your e-mail address? I’d like to send you a troubleshooting guide,” would have been a perfect way to ask.

Most importantly though, this rep clearly wasn’t paying close attention to customer’s problem. It should have occurred to rep that customer might not have e-mail access—after all, his computer was down! Once again, this problem could have been avoided by asking a simple question, namely, “Do you still have some means of e-mail access?”

I suspect that these problems occurred because customer service rep had been minimally trained and was following a fixed script. I say that because my subsequent questions seemed to catch him off guard, and so he responded with same (rather non-sensical) answer.

“Can you put me in touch with a manager?” I asked. Instead of answering, he replied, “Well, if you send your laptop to us, we will fix it for a fee.”

This scenario played itself over and over again. “This computer has failed me far too many times, and is obviously unreliable. Can you tell me which phone number I should call to provide customer feedback?” I said. His reply: “If you send it to us, we will fix it for a fee.” (I rolled my eyes skyward.)

“That’s not what I’m asking,” I said with deliberate tones. “Can you tell me how I can contact your company to provide feedback on this product?” “If you send it to us, we will fix it for…” By then I had lost it. “THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M ASKING!!!!” I yelled back in frustration.

Sadly, this was not an isolated incident. Indeed, I had similar experiences with this company’s technical support reps before. This leads me to believe that problem lies in part with corporate culture of that company.