Well, it happened again.

I responded to a radio commercial, with a great brand promise, only to become disappointed, frustrated and angry when the company didn't live up to its promise.

The company, which specializes in window replacement, promises that they are "revolutionizing the home improvement industry one customer at a time", by providing "exceptional customer service." Only they didn't, at least not in our case.

The first salesman spent an hour inspecting our house and our windows, left and never delivered a quote on the cost. After a call to his office, one of the owners came out. He was everything you don't want a salesperson to be-pushy, hard-sell, insistent-determined to leave with a contract. He didn't.

I wanted to work with this company. That's why we called them in the first place. While their radio commercials are pretty mundane, they spend a ton of money on radio. I'm always ready to support a company that believes so strongly in the medium. Except when they don't live up to whom they say they are and what they say they do.

So as writers of radio commercials-what's the lesson? When clients insist on including words like "exceptional customer service" in their ads, don't just take their word for it-make them prove it. Ask the hard questions: How would you make an unhappy customer happy? How do you define "service?" What's your most extreme example of great customer service? If they can't or won't answer your questions, those promises don't belong in their radio ad.

Now when a company does live up to its promise-consumers take notice. Example: "Greenwich Office Supplies", which was hoping to sell office supplies to Fortune 500 companies. The owner was a stickler for providing exceptional customer service. In fact, he was so adamant, we created a radio commercial where he sharpened the pencils in the pencil boxes-to save people time.

One day, a man came into the store, asked for the owner and handed him a box of pencils, "Sharpen these, please." Warren, the store owner laughed and sharpened all 12 pencils. The customer then placed a $10,000 order.

Radio and promises-a powerful combination-when the promise made is kept. If it turns out to be just empty words, as consumers, we get angry. And in this age of Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites it's no longer just our neighbors and friends we tell-it's the world.

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