8 Ways You Can Stop Annoying Your Customers

TL; DR

Listing how we annoy customers may seem tongue-in-cheek. Still, it’s actually a reality check and one of the components we look at for our clients. In short, the list below will help you recognize and mitigate how often you annoy your customers.

8 Way You Can Stop Annoying Your Customers

1. 1. Target market/audience
   2. Echo chamber
   3. Website
   4. Social media
   5. Email
   6. Norm violations
   7. Language
   8. Feedback

Critical Questions to Ask Yourself:

1. 1. Do you know if you are annoying your customers?
   2. Do you ask your customers for feedback?
   3. What are you doing to address customer issues?

End State:

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” – John Lydgate

The Deep Dive

What is Annoying?

Do not answer that; it is a trick question. Anything that gives your customer a reason to disengage or not return is a potential annoyance. Some issues are correctable through customer engagement or education, while others are unavoidable. And, of course, you can’t please everyone.

As a business owner, you have to recognize customer friction points and address them before they do or as close to real-time as possible. Let’s take a look at a few issues you can fix right now to stop annoying your customers.

Target Market and Target Audience

One way to annoy your customers is not knowing if they should be customers or sending the wrong message. We’ve all seen random ads that do a horrible job of identifying us as the target market. Even worse is when a business gets it wrong. The impacts of such a mistake reflect the lack of customers and their refusal to engage with your brand. You have to know your market and your audience. Below is a chart to remind you of the differences (Monash University).

If you only listen to the people you want to listen to, you will only hear what you want to hear. That is an echo chamber, and that is what annoys your customers. It is an easy trap to fall into and becomes the antithesis of why you collect customer feedback. You have to escape the chamber, expand your reach, and listen to all of your customers. Your mother will always say something positive whether she understands or not. What you need is the opinion of your mother-in-law; because she’s always been critical of you and will bring you back down to reality.

Website

I really wanted to use stronger language and link examples, but that would be poor form. Besides, I know we have all visited a website that made our eyes bleed or quickly close the tab in frustration. Here is a shortlist of what customers consider annoying:

1. 1. Fonts: too small, or companies use too many.
   2. Colors: there are too many colors or similar hues that decrease legibility.
   3. Pop-ups. Lots of pop-ups.
   4. Privacy: there is no privacy message, terms and conditions, or GDPR/CCPA compliance.
   5. Information: it is old, unrelated, misleading, or non-existent.
   6. Links: links do not work (dead) or point to the wrong page.

Seriously, my friends, that list is a drop in the ocean. In short, there more websites that fall into the “what the heck?” category than the winning category. Why is this? Well, according to the website Clutch.co:

“In-house help is the most common digital marketing resource (43%), but industry leaders say that small businesses that try to handle everything in-house may overextend themselves.”

https://clutch.co/agencies/digital/resources/small-business-digital-marketing-survey-2018

That means 43% of small business websites are DIY. I’m willing to wager that the driver behind 80-90% of those sites is not an expert. If an owner invests more time on their website than in sales, inventory, and other necessary factors, their priorities need reassessment. Furthermore, it is not that you cannot make and maintain your website; it’s a matter of should you. Besides, that’s precisely why BRKLYN Creative is here to help you avoid turbulent waters.

Social Media

Social media is the global public square, and you need to ensure that your business has a presence. Moreover, you have to take the necessary steps to ensure your brand shows consistency, speaks with one voice and provides a positive experience. Here are some social media tips to stop annoying your customers:

• • social media spamming
  • creating constant urgency
  • making excuses and redirecting blame going dark after a few negative comments

Your social media channels are digital agents of your brand. If your customers cannot use the primary way they communicate to get results, they look elsewhere.

Email

Here’s some free chicken: don’t spam your customers. Seriously, just stop.

In a broader sense, use email for good. Unlike most communication methods, a customer will make a quick decision on whether to open an email based on a clear subject or lack thereof (another annoyance). Even if you have the right subject, the wrong message will risk further emails sent to the trash bin. Emails should be clear, concise, and infrequent. Here are some of the most common emails that clog inboxes:

• • Minor product updates – use social media channels.
  • Sales – if everything is on sale all the time, nothing is on sale.
  • Newsletters – if you are using social media correctly, you can opt to use a drip campaign and get visitors back to your site. Irrelevant – emails that have no consideration for the customer.
  • Intrusive – unsolicited emails that occur without customer action.

Norm Violations

Norm violations are behaviors socially accepted and expected. Some norm violations include:

• • bait-and-switch
  • ignoring customers
  • blocking leads or customers on social media
  • not informing customers when a product is out of stock

Stop annoying your customers by limiting how you contribute to norm violations. These social fouls may ruin your credibility, and weaken your brand’s equity.

Language

In an earlier article, I covered why you should educate and inform your customer. Part of the educating process requires you to teach the language. For example, I know from watching countless hours of Gordon Ramsey that a steak has at least 5 levels of doneness. Customers may not know this, so you have to educate them. Five Guys will educate you on what ‘All the Way’ means. If you are using industry terms with a new customer, they will be confused, annoyed, or think you are talking over their head. Whatever the case, a customer is less likely to want to come back. Speak to customers as a customer and save all the code-speak for behind the counter.

Feedback

In short, you don’t know how to listen, or you just ignore your customer’s feedback. Your lack of taking feedback relates directly to social media and norm violations. These violations can and will build on each other, a recipe for disaster. Think back to primary school; your teacher did not give you bad marks out of a desire to make your life miserable. Okay, well, there was Mrs. Penderson’s math class, but that’s an outlier. The bad marks reflected your knowledge of a subject, and now you can take that information and learn from it or ignore it (this is a feedback loop in its most basic form). The same goes for customer feedback; what are you going to do with it?

Let’s Do This

As you can see, marketing has an immense and immediate effect on improving your customer engagement and recognizing how to mitigate customer annoyance. We can make sure you understand the tools available to you to ensure your most significant investment, the customer, trust your brand. Contact us, and let’s make a plan.

Works Cited

1. 1. Ballou, E. (2018, March 29). How small businesses invest in digital marketing in 2018 – Clutch.co. Clutch.co. Retrieved January 20, 2019, from https://clutch.co/agencies/digital/resources/small-business-digital-marketing-survey-2018
   2. Monash University. Target Market. 15 Aug. 2017, www.monash.edu/business/marketing/marketing-dictionary/t/target-market.
   3. Monash University. Target Audience. 8 Feb. 2018, www.monash.edu/business/marketing/marketing-dictionary/t/target-audience.

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