Even James Bond Can be Defeated by This Mistake . . .

The other day, I came across what I thought was a trailer for an action movie. I watched as the James Bond-like character performed death defying feats amidst moving vehicles and terrifying explosions without even breaking a sweat (Nudd, 2016). I was surprised to see what ultimately defeated this action hero in what turned out to be an Adobe Marketing Cloud spot called Secret Agent, which was recently released as part of Advertising Week.

https://youtu.be/MNmRJiRarH0

If it can happen to a James Bond-like character, it can happen to anyone.

How many times have you tried to take advantage of a special promotion or sales offer only to find that the salesperson you meet in the store has no idea what you are talking about? Or have you made a reservation online only to find out that it mysteriously disappeared by the time you reached your destination? Chances are, unless the salesperson is able to quickly find the information or consult with a supervisor, you might be out of luck, much like the character in Secret Agent.

I ran into a situation recently where I was observing a coworker in a retail store. She was attempting to assist a customer with her questions about the rewards program. The only problem was that the rewards points weren’t updated daily and there happened to be a technical glitch that made customer’s rewards point balance unavailable. The salesperson didn’t know what to do for the customer except to ask him to save his receipt and come back some other time to get the points credited toward his rewards account. Hopefully, it will be working when he returns.

This is just one example of a program that the marketing team had gone to great lengths to promote, but the sales staff were ill-equipped to implement due to a lack of communication and training. Unfortunately, when these issues occur, they can do more harm than good for the brand by hurting the customer experience, despite the good intentions of the promotional offer.

As communicators, we must consider how to ensure that every branch of our organization has the information and tools needed to provide an integrated experience. This requires marketing staff to understand the store experience and sales associates to understand the brand. Programs like Adobe Marketing Cloud (Adobe, n.d.) may be extraordinary tools to get us there, but we must also instill a standard for an integrated brand experience, an expectation for organization-wide communications, and training to enable every member of the organization to support the brand experience.

References

Adobe. (n.d.). Adobe Marketing Cloud rises to the top. Retrieved from http://landing.adobe.com/en/na/products/marketing-cloud/59361-forrester-emss-wave.html?s_cid=70114000002EvN3AAK&s_iid=70114000002JGu2AAG&sdid=4F569NLM&mv=search&s_kwcid=AL!3085!10!12221384696!21237683929&ef_id=V9iTzAAAACjtXjuM:20160926211314:s

Nudd, T. (2016, September 26). Ad of the day: Bad customer service brings down a secret agent in Adobe’s new comedy: A flashy new Adobe Marketing Cloud spot for Advertising Week. AdWeek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-bad-customer-service-brings-down-secret-agent-adobes-new-comedy-173703