The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
See us at SpeechTEK!
Tuesday - August 07, 2007 12:37 PM in
If you're planning to be at the SpeechTEK conference in New York in a couple weeks, come visit us in booth #507. We're busy getting stuff ready to go this week, and I'm expecting a great show. I'll be speaking twice: once at 11:30 Monday morning, and again moderating a session at 2 PM Wednesday.
Okay, now that I've got the housekeeping stuff ouot of the way, I'm going to launch into one of my standard rants.
Why, oh why, does everything at a tradeshow have to be so &%^* expensive?!?
I've heard all the sales arguments: "it's a small price to pay for the exposure," and so forth, and I don't mind paying the promoter for the booth space. After all, the guy who runs the show is taking a big financial risk, and doing a lot of work to bring customers to the event.
But look at some of the other prices: $110 for a single electrical outlet in our booth (not even a full circuit, either: we're only allowed to draw 500W). $750 for a wired Internet connection for three days ($400 for WiFi access). $200 for a table--not even a nice table, but a crappy folding table disguised with a polyester tablecloth. $50 for a cheap plastic folding chair. Many items cost more to rent for three days than to buy brand-new.
These are the prices the hotel and the exhibit services company charge, and they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. Want to pay less than the extortionate hotel price for electricity? Tough luck.
Oh, and if your booth can't be carried in by hand by a single person and set up without tools in under 30 minutes, you're not allowed to set it up yourself. Installation and disassembly will run almost $200/hour with a one hour minimum.
It would be cheaper to hire my lawyer and accountant to do the job instead. They'd probably do a better job, too.
Which brings me to the other half of the rant. For these kinds of prices, you'd at least expect a reasonable level of service, but that's asking too much. I pretty much assume I'm going to have some problem with the exhibitor services at every show. We've been overcharged, billed for services neither requested nor delivered, and even been dunned when the exhibit services company actually owed usmoney. Good luck getting a refund, by the way: if you overpay, often they'll only offer a credit for future services not a check for the overpayment.
Worse, the terms are some of the worst I've ever encountered. Not only do they demand payment in full in advance, but they also ask you to sign a blanket credit card authorization. Do I trust them to bill the credit card correctly? Hah!
(On that last point, by the way, I always refuse. I simply will not sign a blanket credit card authorization, especially with companies which tend to do such a poor job. We pay in advance by company check, and if the exhibit services company thinks we owe them more money after the fact, they can invoice us like everyone else.)
So if I'm ever offered the CEO position at Cisco, Microsoft, or some other huge company with tons of market power, one thing I'll do is start refusing to exhibit at these events unless the hotel and expo services companies start offering reasonable terms and prices. Sadly, at VocaLabs, we don't have the ability to make that stick.
Okay, rant over. Come see us at SpeechTEK.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Why, oh why, does everything at a tradeshow have to be so &%^* expensive?!?
I've heard all the sales arguments: "it's a small price to pay for the exposure," and so forth, and I don't mind paying the promoter for the booth space. After all, the guy who runs the show is taking a big financial risk, and doing a lot of work to bring customers to the event.
But look at some of the other prices: $110 for a single electrical outlet in our booth (not even a full circuit, either: we're only allowed to draw 500W). $750 for a wired Internet connection for three days ($400 for WiFi access). $200 for a table--not even a nice table, but a crappy folding table disguised with a polyester tablecloth. $50 for a cheap plastic folding chair. Many items cost more to rent for three days than to buy brand-new.
These are the prices the hotel and the exhibit services company charge, and they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. Want to pay less than the extortionate hotel price for electricity? Tough luck.
Oh, and if your booth can't be carried in by hand by a single person and set up without tools in under 30 minutes, you're not allowed to set it up yourself. Installation and disassembly will run almost $200/hour with a one hour minimum.
It would be cheaper to hire my lawyer and accountant to do the job instead. They'd probably do a better job, too.
Which brings me to the other half of the rant. For these kinds of prices, you'd at least expect a reasonable level of service, but that's asking too much. I pretty much assume I'm going to have some problem with the exhibitor services at every show. We've been overcharged, billed for services neither requested nor delivered, and even been dunned when the exhibit services company actually owed usmoney. Good luck getting a refund, by the way: if you overpay, often they'll only offer a credit for future services not a check for the overpayment.
Worse, the terms are some of the worst I've ever encountered. Not only do they demand payment in full in advance, but they also ask you to sign a blanket credit card authorization. Do I trust them to bill the credit card correctly? Hah!
(On that last point, by the way, I always refuse. I simply will not sign a blanket credit card authorization, especially with companies which tend to do such a poor job. We pay in advance by company check, and if the exhibit services company thinks we owe them more money after the fact, they can invoice us like everyone else.)
So if I'm ever offered the CEO position at Cisco, Microsoft, or some other huge company with tons of market power, one thing I'll do is start refusing to exhibit at these events unless the hotel and expo services companies start offering reasonable terms and prices. Sadly, at VocaLabs, we don't have the ability to make that stick.
Okay, rant over. Come see us at SpeechTEK.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 12:37 PM by | | | |