Disloyal Bonding Exposed: Protecting Customer Loyalty & Strengthening Service

Send us a text

In the third episode of our mini-series inspired by Whose Side Are You On? Disloyal Bonding and Strategic Lies, Bob & Jeremy continue their examination of deceptive business practices that manipulate customer loyalty – such as disloyal bonding and strategic lies.

Through insightful role-plays, they reveal real-world examples: a coffee shop falsely promoting recyclable materials, a tailor’s deceptive discount schemes, and a car service misleading customers with unnecessary software upgrades, showing that even major brands aren’t immune to dishonesty.

But it doesn’t end there. This episode also highlights the dangers of ignoring customer complaints, especially in cultures where feedback is scarce (like the UK). Bob and Jeremy show how this negligence can lead to financial losses and the breakdown of customer trust.

Don’t miss this engaging discussion as they gear up for the launch of Whose Side Are You On? on 1st October 2024. Pre-order your copy now on Amazon.co.uk! And stay tuned for the next episode in the series, where they’ll provide practical strategies for businesses to recognise these issues and retain loyal customers through exceptional service.

For more info, free resources, useful content & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.

Reality Training - Selling Certainty

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to episode 3, all about the book coming out
on the 1st of October.
Whose Side Are you On?
Disloyal Bonding and StrategicLies?
You're here with the twoauthors I'm Jeremy Blake and I'm
Bobby Murrell, and in episodethree we're going to look at
some real-life examples.
So, bobby, imagine you wake upin the morning and you think

(00:41):
you'll start your day with a cupof coffee.
I think we might just act thisout.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Bobby, so I'm going to be the coffee shop owner.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
This is just at the start of his day.
I'll set out what's happeningfor Bob on his day.
There's a problem with his car,but before that, he's going to
grab a coffee for himself.
He's going to whiz home andpick up his son, who's about to
start going into the sixth format his school, and going into
the sixth form at his school,and he's promised his son, of

(01:09):
course, as is the clothing listhe's going to get him a suit for
the sixth form.
So it's coffee suit and carproblem.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Okay, I'm in the coffee shop so I'm going into
the coffee shop and I've ordereda latte to take out and the cup
is given to me.
It's a cardboard style cup andit says on the side made from
recycled material and it's got aplastic lid that's going to go

(01:36):
on the top as well and I'mdelighted by this because I love
all things sustainable andenvironmentally friendly.
So I say to the person servingme are the lids compostable as
well?
I beg your pardon, say againthese lids, because you've got
recyclable cups.
Are these lids compostable as?

Speaker 1 (01:54):
well, I've got no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
We just chuck it all in this black bin bag oh right,
okay, so you're sellingrecyclable cups, but you don't
recycle yourselves.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, we just chuck it all in the bin bag and I get
rid of it at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Right.
Okay, now this offends mymiddle-class sensibilities
because I thought this was anice, trendy coffee shop that
would do right by theenvironment.
But really probably the onlyreason they're buying recyclable
cups is because they're cheap.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Well, or that they're lying to their customers that
they are environmentally soundand conscious and they're not.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Now, that's just a small example of a small coffee
shop doing something.
Let's move on up the line toanother version of this, a real
life example in the tailor shop.
So I go with my son.
He's trying on various suitsand the first one he tries on is
about 100 quid and quite nice.
The next one is a step up.
It's another hundred poundsmore but it's three piece and he

(02:52):
does look amazing in it.
And he comes out in the suitlooking amazing and I think okay
hello sir, hello uh, helloyoung man how much is this one?

Speaker 1 (03:03):
yeah, uh, this is Marc Laurier.
This suit, is it?

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Marc Laurier.
Really interesting designer andthis suit.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
It's actually double the first one your son tried on.
This is £199, this suit.
So it's just under the 200 mark.
How do you find it?
How do you find it?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Oh, he loves it.
It looks fantastic.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I think it looks very , very smart.
Yeah, fantastic.
What's the sort of thinking?

Speaker 2 (03:27):
I don't know.
It's double the price of theother one.
I'm just pondering on that.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, if you were to come back on Saturday, we
actually are having a 25% offsale that starts that day, and I
will be applying that to theMont Laurier, so you'll get a
further 25% off, if you don'tmind waiting until Saturday.
When does your son start school?
Well, he starts tomorrowactually, okay.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Your son's taking it off.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
We'll have a think.
We'll have a think.
Thank you, Right.
Okay, so there we are.
Here we have somebody applyingan immediate discount when
actually, if they just holdtheir ground, they might have
easily sold a £199 suit, butthey've devalued it immediately.
Now that's disloyal bonding,pretending to do me a favour,
but actually just sell me thesuit Now.
Lastly, and let's move to amajor brand, I'm taking my car,

(04:20):
and it's an expensive car, avery middle-class large car for
a large family, A hybrid car andI've got a problem with-class
large car for a large family, Ahybrid car and I've got a
problem with the battery and Ineed to get it checked over by
this leading.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
It's not charging properly at home, is it Not?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
charging properly.
I need to get it checkedbecause either I need a new
battery or they need to fix thebattery in some form and I'm
concerned about it.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
In, he walks to the service desk.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Up to the service desk, my car's outside.
Hello there, I'm just droppingoff my white estate.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Ah, yes, we had it in the book, but we didn't
actually have it.
I don't actually have a notedown here.
I mean, that was Trevor onyesterday.
Sometimes his notes are poor,but what is the problem with the
hybrid?

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, it's a hybrid and the battery doesn't seem to
be charging properly, so I can'tuse the electrical element very
easily.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Ah, this is the model they brought out a few years
ago.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, 2015.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, yeah.
The hybrids, then they're of alevel, but they're not great.
They do go wrong.
I mean the newer cars, they'vereally sort of cracked it but
the model that you're drivingaround there is one of the very
first hybrids.
It's quite poor actually, Right.
Yeah, they just hadn't quitemastered the charging of that.

(05:34):
Well, look, we'll take a look,but what I may have to tell you
is you may well need newsoftware on that.
New software.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, okay, okay.
Well, what does that cost?

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Well, as you know, the batteries are guaranteed and
we'd replace those, but that'sjust the lithium batteries
within your vehicle.
But you'll have to pay for thesoftware.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
As I said, it took a while to get it right.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Well, as I said, you know it took a while to get it
right.
Well, what does that cost?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
oh, it's going to be sort of 1500 to 2000 to put a
new disc in god, is there achance I won't have to do that?
Is there a chance you?

Speaker 1 (06:01):
might be able to fix it.
Unlikely being the 15 hybrid,oh, but I mean, the other option
for you is to have a look atthe new ones, which are much
better.
I mean, they've really workedit out it's not an option.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I need to get this car fixed, if I can, okay we'll
do our best, but I I have hadthem in.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
It's likely you're going to need the new software
system.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Okay, okay, well have a look, just give me a second,
where have you had it?

Speaker 1 (06:22):
where have you had it serviced and stuff, because you
you'll get a bit of discountfrom uh, from the, from the
brand itself, if you've beendoing it within main deal no, I
haven't.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
No, no, all right.
Well, you won't qualify, okay,okay, fine, right, okay, well,
give me bell, let me know how itlooks.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
And the bell takes place.
And of course, Bob leaves thatbrand sharpish and never drives
their vehicles again.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Now this is for somebody who'd been driving that
particular brand for over 10years.
So if you think about that, itmight be 20 years.
But if you think about theloyalty that we have for certain
car brands, that we have forcertain car brands, we drive
those brands for years and yearsand years.
When we feel that they've letus down, we don't say anything
to the brand.
Our brain just goes right I'vehad enough of this.

(07:04):
I'm going to get another brandand start with them and I'm not
going back and this poor dislawbehavior from this service
manager.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
And these are all true stories.
They're all real.
They've happened to Bob and I.
These stories between us.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
It damages our ability to go back.
Now, in different countriesthere are different levels of
complaint.
In the UK, our default, as youall know, is to not say anything
and never go back, and ofcourse, that means that you
can't put right what's gonewrong.
And that's how brands majorbrands lose customers forever
Customers whose lifetime valueis many, many tens of thousands

(07:45):
of pounds in this case and allof those are live retail
examples.
Within the different chaptersof Whose Side Are you On, which
comes out on the 1st of October,there are all sorts of
different service optionsdescribed so things like contact

(08:07):
centres that you'll all befamiliar with, retail examples
and, of course, service.
Sometimes, when you get peopleout to your home, they can
demonstrate dislaw bonding aswell.
There's all sorts of scenarioswhere we are faced with this
endemic problem, and what we doin the book is bring that to
life and also, as you'll findout in the next episode, we're

(08:28):
going to come up with somedifferent ideas of how you
actually tackle this problem andget rid of it for good.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Listen out for episode four.
Thanks for listening.