Firms1 ‘not living up to promise’

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 8

Firms 1 ‘not living up to promise’

Many New Zealand firms are not living up to the promises they make in advertisements, says an Australian marketing expert. Mr Barry Urquhart, managing director of an Australian firm, Marketing Focus, is in Christchurch to run seminars teaching better consumer relations. He is promoting a customer “bill of rights” to teach sales people to relate to their customers. New Zealand customers were being treated badly at present, he said. “Customers are having their expectations raised as the result of advertising, but staff are not delivering it,” he said. New Zealanders need training in the service industry to respond to customers properly, according to Mr Urquhart. “In New Zealand we have 60 per cent of the work force in the service industry and yet we have never had ingrained in New Zealand a service ideal,” he said. In most cases half of a

firm’s overheads were wages yet less than 1 per cent of their gross income was spent on training and this was mostly .skills training. “You go into a bank and the girl is an expert on the teller machines and the computer, but this is not the equipment to deal with the customer," he said. The result was car sales people referring to their customers as “turkeys" and airline crews calling their passengers “the ’ herd," and treating them accordingly. Customer resistance needed to be broken down and staff had to start treating customers properly. Firms with good customer relations would build a valuable base of customer loyalty, he said. According to Mr Urquhart, customers are entitled to a variety of services, ranging from a “sense of belonging” and “caring” assistance to the assurance that all services will be completed and followed up efficiently.