Customer World

Inside Steve's Brain- customer-centric design thinking

Here's an overview of the new book that's just got released - Inside Steve's brain ( Nishad sent this to me a few hours ago). Personally, it tells me a lot about the way the man is thinking, pushing( the people around him), acting-on( his instincts) and executing( without being worried about what the world thinks about him). Customer-centric enterprises need to have customer-centric design thinking - the way their products need to be conceived, designed and delivered. Steve just does it with impeccable perfection and style.    Here's the preview before you rush-out to buy:

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What are the icons of your customer service?

If you are obsessed with customer-centricity in your organization, it make sense to have some icons that serves as a benchmark for the organization to emulate and live-up to. CRM Buyer has an interesting article on how Lands' End did it:

Motivation can take many forms. At Lands' End these days, it has taken the shape of a London taxicab parked in front of the company's headquarters, its black paint buffed to a mirror-like shine, its grille festooned with a Christmas wreath.

Historic Return Policy

Lands' End, now a division of Sears, has built a reputation for 44 years on customer service. The London taxi, returned by a customer in 2005, has become Lands' End's version of a well-known Nordstrom legend, in which a customer was allowed to return tires even though Nordstrom never sold tires.

However, in this case, Lands' End really did sell the car, back in 1984. The London taxi was featured on the cover of Lands' End's holiday catalog that year as a special luxury item. The cab, complete with a right-side steering wheel, and filled with classic English cashmere clothing and gifts, was sold for US$19,000 to a Kansas native. The woman bought it as a gift for her husband, who was a car collector.

In 2005, the man called Lands' End and invoked the company's unconditional guarantee policy that allows customers to return any item that they are not satisfied with for an exchange or refund of the full purchase price. He got the $19,000 back, and Lands' End got the car.

The taxi would be worth between $10,000 and $12,000 now, according to Richard Lentinello, editor of Hemmings Motor News, a monthly publication for car enthusiasts based in Vermont.

It's more than a cab. McCreight says the taxi is a valuable symbol.

"For thousands of employees, or new employees, to say, if you're designing a product, and you're going to need to stand behind that product 21 years later, how dearly and how much attention do you take to design it," McCreight(President of Lands' End) said.

I personally think this is a lovely quote from McCreight and one that is extremely relevant. Many companies develop products or policies, sell or run it for sometime, only to later revoke it! Companies need to realize that such revoked products or policies leave customers confused, frustrated and miffed. It pays to plan just in case your customer returns after 21 years!

Bank Customers Say Give Me Some Respect

According to a recent survey report by Allegiance - Pulse of America Survey, there are 4 key areas banks need to engage with customers.

Helpful Service:  Customers like doing business with a bank that saves them time and money. Banks have focused on wait times, and overall, they are meeting customer expectations. But saving time is not limited to waiting in line. For example, online banking services should be easy to use and understand, which creates a strong avenue to build engagement.
Clear Communications: Customers are reluctant to rely on banks for unbiased financial information, yet they thirst for knowledge about the newest and best products and services available to them. Customers are saying you can connect with me emotionally by telling me about a product that is relevant to my situation. 
Personal Connection: Customers say that their one-on-one experiences with bank representatives (tellers, loan officers, or managers) have a meaningful effect on their engagement, both positive and negative. Banks should not underestimate the power of each one-on-one experience in building lasting engagement, and they should establish training and processes to establish best practices. 
Respect:  Banks must do better at making customers feel respected. Engaged customers cite bank reps who deliver service with speed and confidence. Dissatisfied customers cite bank fees as causing stress, which makes them feel less respected. In particular, some customers feel disrespected when banks game the system to increase bank fees wherever they can. The message to banks: Engaged customer are also savvy customers and expect to be treated fairly.

I quite agree with personal connection as an important engagement pillar, as technology is taking away personalized service from banking. Hence, banks need to identify ways of building personal connection with customers as they invest more in self-service technologies.

Customer Relationships are Conversations

There is a lovely little post by Valeria Maltoni where she tracks a post in Tom Peters blog on " What is customer relationship? " She writes:

The working definition they’ve come up with is:

A relationship is an ongoing conversation with a customer, in which the customer never thinks of you without thinking of the two of you.

Customer relationships are conversation only and if there is an unwavering commitment on the part of the company to make it so. Let’s not forget that in exchange for providing a product or service, the company gets compensation.

So far, the best reasoning I read about the whole discussion comes from Paul H in the UK:

customer relationship should be what the customer wants it to be. We want that to be a human relationship.

While it matters how we think about customer relationships and approach the opportunities we have to begin or continue these conversations with a mindset and attitude of service...

Secrets to building a customer-centric organization - # 1

I have been coming across some interesting quotes (which resonate a lot & appeal to me) as building blocks towards creating a customer-centric organization. There is no one formula but I thought I will blog about them (as and when I find them), aggregate them here so as to serve as a resource for all. Here's the first!

Which promotions do consumers trust?

There's an emarketer report on what US adults find worthwhile and trust when it comes to promotions. To me, it's a benchmark of how consumers may see them across different geographies too. Take a look: 

Virtual Kitchens - Consumers get involved

NY Times has an interesting article on how recipe searches on the internet are gaining huge interest among women:

Roughly 50 million people, or one-third of active Internet users in the United States, visited food sites in May, Mr. Cassar said, with sites like foodnetwork.com and kraft.com attracting more than seven million people. If recent and expected changes are any indication, these visitors are looking for friends as much as they are seeking recipes.

Condé Nast’s epicurious.com late last month introduced My Epi, a set of online tools perhaps best characterized as Facebook for foodies. Readers have long been able to compile their own recipe collections on the site. But now users on Epicurious, which was among the earliest recipe-sharing destinations on the Web, can search the virtual recipe boxes of other users, create profile pages for themselves and sift through profiles of other users with whom they may share similar interests.

In the coming months, marthastewart.com, the online division of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, will also allow users to collect, share, rate and review recipes with other users on the site. “And that’ll just be the beginning of our community and personalization initiative,” said Jody Jones, the editorial director of the Web site. “These are big growth areas for us.”

American Express brings its customer community together

American Express has launched a unique online initiative called The Members Project that enables its cardmembers to come together as a community by submitting and sharing their project ideas for making a positive impact in the world. Cardmembers can rate and discuss the project ideas on message boards and will ultimately vote and choose one innovative winning idea that American Express will help
bring to life with up to $5 million. The Members Project, which is a part of American Express' new brand campaign, "Are You a Cardmember," highlights the value of being a Cardmember and part of the American Express Cardmember community. "Our Cardmembers make up a unique community -- one that is highly engaged and passionate -- and we know that they care about the world around them," said Jud Linville, president of American Express Consumer Card Services Group. "Through the unique experience of The Members Project, our community of Cardmembers is pulling together and collectively shaking up the world just a little bit to do some good."

Cardmembers can go register and submit their project ideas for making a broad positive impact in one of the following categories: Arts & Entertainment, Business & Finance, Education, Environment & Wildlife, Fun, Health & Fitness and Community Development. Cardmembers can also participate by rating or posting comments about project ideas already submitted. For every Cardmember that registers, regardless of whether they come up with a project idea or just add their input on project ideas already submitted, American Express will contribute $1 toward the winning idea. The more Cardmembers registered, the more dollars available. American Express will commit at least $1 million and up to $5 million for the winning idea.

I love the deep engagement that this idea will create with their cardmembers.

Why not skin for credit cards?

Financial services products are sometimes too intimidating for consumers or too transaction focussed. How can you make an age old financial product like credit card interesting. Why not skins for credit cards that you have in your wallet? I read about this idea and thought it was quite interesting. It just makes the category interesting and financial services brands can make it a conversation starter for consumers.

..a company called CreditCovers started selling "skins," with special designs that consumers can stick over the fronts of their cards, theoretically transforming them from mere financial tools to emblems of identity...

Looks quite cool to me.

UIDs - User Initiated Discussions

I had recently posted about the impact of UGC(user generated content) in travel and the rising power of user-driven marketing. It seems this is an interesting trend that is gaining ground. Myspace, the social networking site, conducted a study called neverendingfriending and there are some interesting facts from this study. Forbes has carried an article on the same which mentions some of the highlights of the study which include:

• When a MySpace user talks, her friends listen.
• ..in addition to the 1.8 million MySpace users who said they plan to buy a new Electronic Arts game after seeing the company’s ad campaign on MySpace (at a cost of $1.19 per user), 4.5 million more — people who saw the brand’s profile or heard about the product from a friend, but didn’t see the ads — said they’d buy it, too.
• MySpace calls that kind of word-of-mouth spreading of an online ad campaign the “momentum effect,” and says its ability to calculate the chatty effect is the best thing to happen to social network marketing since, well, clicks.

Some key questions that came to mind were:

1. User Initiated Discussions(UIDs) in social networking sites drive brand awareness and conversions. How will one monetize this impact as this has an effect beyond CPT and CPC?
2. For advertisers' and social networking sites, it is more than just getting more dollars but may be is there a need for a new form of "giving back" to the community that needs to be adopted by brands?
3. Context-driven conversations(CDCs) have to become accountable and transparent. Is there a need for a new kind of tracking  that needs to evolve? It has to move beyond white papers and studies in my opinion for ad dollars to move here.

How to build customer interaction

Maria Mandel' s Breakthrough Summit keynote address provides directions for how marketers need to build interaction with consumers:

Become a better storyteller
Consumers are more likely to pay attention to campaigns based on solid and entertaining storylines. As an example, Mandel referenced the Jerry Seinfeld-Superman-American Express campaign, which was widely successfully because of its integration of online and offline promotional tools and its amusing resurrection of one of America's favorite comic book action heroes. Another example she presented was the "Brawny Academy" campaign and its tie-in to reality TV, as well as its success at integrating Brawny paper towels into the storyline.

Create interaction
Instead of trying to draw the consumer to a campaign, engage the existing community where they are in an interactive experience. For this point, Mandel used Ogilvy's IBM Codestation campaign as an example. Based on research that a high number of people that engage in Second Life are software developers, Ogilvy integrated the campaign into the Second Life environment to tap into that a consumer market most likely to respond to an IBM product.

Get them talking
The success rate for viral campaigns can skyrocket a brand to success like never before. Mandel used the "Shave Everywhere" campaign as an example. She also used a Dove spot, Evolution, that had originally been intended for a self esteem workshop that ended up on YouTube and proved more successful than Ogilvy's Super Bowl ad. The Dove spot also spawned numerous spoof videos, proving that a great campaign can experience extended brand recognition when it spurs interaction with consumers.

Making a product, control the transaction

I read this interesting piece of article in Wired about a company called MusicToday and their business model. It conjured-up a lot of thoughts in my head on how marketing and marketing service providers have to reinvent themselves for this new era.

In the article, John Legend, the musician quotes "I can't let someone else have more control over the relationship people have with my music than I do,". The article goes on to explain "there's a compelling lesson here for any company that makes a product: If you control a piece of the transaction, you understand more about your customers. By aggregating fan data that artists haven't usually been privy to, Musictoday can help shape decisions such as where to tour, advertise, or deploy superfans to evangelize. Considering that an estimated 60% of concert tickets typically go unsold every year, that kind of targeting is no small contribution. "We're able to say to artists, 'We know more about your fans than you do,'" says Nathan Hubbard, 31, who runs Musictoday as Capshaw's chief of staff. "Let's put our heads together and figure out how to monetize this relationship."

This is the fundamental shift that marketing has to take accountability for. It's more than just building a brand and a set of values around it. It's about owning customers by identifying them, understanding their behaviour real time, adding value to their relationship with the brand continously and building a tangible bond with the customer and the product. Marketing, therefore, has to extract budgets for doing all of this rather than just building awareness and recall.

Also, there is a lesson in this for agencies/consultants/marketing services providers too. Their product is an idea. Are they monetizing it well enough is the question that came to my mind. It needs a new revenue model to extract value around every touch point the idea is creating an impact and therefore build a tangible revenue or value for them. It needs dumping of old methods and thinking of new ones. Of course, keeping the customer at the core of all their efforts.

Travel consumers trust each other - CGC is a big trend

According to a research study released by Compete, when making travel decisions, consumers listen to one another. In total, consumer generated content (CGC) already influences $10 billion a year in online travel bookings.  Consumers are increasingly embracing their peers’ voices online: 20% rely on CGC when planning travel, and they consider this content more credible than reviews from professionals or information from the brands themselves.

To understand how marketers can create a strategy for getting involved in the conversation, Compete analyzed the effectiveness of three innovators in the travel category that have already embraced CGC:

• Sheraton Hotels pushed its standard website booking functionality aside, transforming into a social platform revolving around a “Global Neighborhood”
• Southwest Airlines launched a promotion to involve consumers in its marketing campaign through a contest for creating the best “Wanna Get Away” commercial
• TripAdvisor has become the single largest source of consumer-generated travel reviews online, with over 5 million consumers sharing in an ongoing dialogue

Three strategies recommended are:

Nissan gets customers involved with lost keys

NY Times reports:

HOW does a carmaker unlock the door to reaching distracted, elusive customers in an increasingly competitive category? Nissan North America is hoping the answer may lie with, um, keys.

For the promotion, 20,000 key rings will be deliberately “lost” in bars, concert halls, sports arenas and other public places in seven large markets.

Each key ring will have three keys, all real, and two tags. The biggest key resembles a car key and the other two look as if they could fit the locks on house or office doors.

One tag declares, “If found, please do not return,” because the Altima “has Intelligent Key with push-button ignition, and I no longer need these,” a reference to the technology that allows an Altima owner to start the car by pressing a button on the dash rather than inserting a key.

The same tag invites the finder to learn more about the ignition system by visiting a section of the Nissan Web site (nissanusa.com/altima).

The other tag, labeled “Gas Card,” resembles the plastic keychain devices for electronic payment sponsored by service stations like Exxon and Mobil. The tag offers the finder of the key ring a chance to enter a sweepstakes, either by sending text messages or visiting another Web site (altimakeys.com), which is to be available this week.

What drives deep engagement in communities?

Just read a nice piece of research on what drives deep engagement, involvement when brands want to build communities. Looks like if you can't drive involvement, passion, alignment of minds and a channel for dialogue and sharing, communities won't take-off. I also felt as I read this research, as communities grow, we need to break them down into smaller communities of similar interests to sustain interest and engagement amongst members. Communities are not about "width of users" but  about "depth of usage".Read on for some extremely good insights:

People Engage More With Small, Branded, Well-Lit Communities!

According to Communispace, in this new era of "conversational marketing", the measure for engagement in a community isn't the number of people logging on. Rather, it's how actively people participate in the community.

New Communispace research, which analyzed participation behavior among 26,539 members of 66 private online communities, provides an initial look at member participation in communities.
The study evaluated communities along three participation metrics:

• Frequency - how often members contribute
• Volume - the number of contributions made by each member
• Bystander or "lurker" rate - what percentage of members are simply observing versus actively participating.

Key findings of the research are:

The more intimate the community, the more people participate:

• 86 percent of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities (average community size: 300-500 people) made contributions.
• Only 14 percent merely logged in and observed, or "lurked."
• In contrast, on public social networking websites, blogs, and message boards, this ratio is typically reversed, i.e., the vast majority of site visitors do not contribute. In fact, in a typical online forum (e.g., wiki, community, message board or blog), one percent of site visitors contribute and the other 99 percent lurk.

People get more involved when they know whom they are talking to and why

• Branded sites showed a higher volume of participation.
• When potential members were considering whether to participate in a community, they were 30 percent more likely to log on when the welcome notice disclosed the company sponsoring the community. Branded sites had an initial log in rate of 71 percent, compared with 55 percent for unbranded sites. This suggests that transparency - being upfront about who's behind the community - is a key factor for companies that want to engage with customers in a community.

Why people participate: social glue, shared passion, having a voice

• Communities of parents get the highest involvement
• Differences between how men and women participate: based on analysis of single-sex communities, the research found that although members of women's communities participated more frequently than men, men seemed to have more to say when they did participate: 4.8 weekly contributions for men compared to 4.1 for the women.
• Homogeneity triggers participation
• Education and household income were not related to community member participation
• Having a voice, productive leisure: One of the implications from the research is that people may get more involved in private, intimate communities because they feel like they can have a say.Another implication is that people may view the time spent as "productive leisure." They see participating as an interesting or fun outlet for communicating with other people who love what they love.

Making Social Networking mainstream

NY Times has a very interesting article on how enterprises are making Social Networking as a platform to get  companies closer to their customers.

I really love the extension of the idea to business because social networking was seen more as a "peripheral community" among industry leaders. These sites were seen as a hub of young consumers getting together more as a hobby and sharing amongst themselves common issues and interests. Imagine, if this can become mainstream for enterprises - making it the hub for its customers! I think this is a big idea and inflection point for social networking this year and the future too.

When large companies & visionaries like Cisco Systems, Ning(the latest venture of the Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen) put their might behind it, this idea has the capacity to really fly. Look at some examples of how it can be used:

• Imagine a social networking site for Whirpool where women who have bought their products can share their experiences,recipes, usage problems, service issues etc. in a social networking context. This could lead them to meet new friends, new information about raising children, new usage ideas etc. and Whirlpool will be the catalyst for this community. It could end-up in them sharing photos, holiday information etc. and this community will help Whirlpool design its products and services better for them. Imagine they allow customers to build their own site, invite their friends, look and feel are customized etc.
• Or a bank where people talk about money and issues wrt money - How to save, how to increase their wealth, investment opportunities, chat on financial services brands, their agents or Financial planners, their concerns and fears about the future of their investments, retirement plans etc. Imagine a banking website having a social networking site that can allow this community to grow and spread on the web, mobile, TV etc.
• Social networking can become the call centre of the future. The agents are customers themselves!

I think this is a great opportunity but companies need to be just the catalyst for such forums. They need to enable, listen, share, collaborate, engage with these customers and prospects if enterprise social networking has to come of age.

Dripvertising - Is this the future?

I was reading an article in NY Times on how Microsoft  launched Windows Vista last week. There is an interesting point in the article that reinforced my long-held belief that we are going to see seismic shifts in marketing communications and how consumers will consume communication - "Messages in Drips" as I have termed it. It's no more the blockbuster approach of the past! It's happening as we speak and is gaining ground rapidly.

Here's the point Brian Marr of Microsoft makes in the article that reaffirms my belief:

“We wanted something very special for this audience; something very low key,” ....“This is an audience that is very cautious about marketing.”

Take a closer look at this:"low key", "cautious about marketing". That's the biggest challenge for brands today! Marketing to the ever cautious consumer!

How has Microsoft approached this problem? They launched a site called clearification.com. According to NY Times:

The campaign offers a series of “webisodes,” or stories told in short video clips. Microsoft also sponsored a performance tour for Mr. Martin and his Comedy Central special....

News of the clearification.com site was released in e-mail messages to influential blogs like laughingsquid.com and on video sites like YouTube.com. The site also lets visitors sign up for an alert to notify them when the latest webisode is released.

It's interesting how messages are being released in "drips". This creates a high level of engagement and involvement plus don't forget the buzz it creates.

I believe "drip messages" can capture the imagination of consumers. There is a lot intrigue and expectations in this kind of story-telling for brands. It's pretty media neutral and does many things a 30-sec spot can never do - dialogue, converse, respond, interact and build an experience. This is the way marketing communications is headed in the future.It's not devices like TiVo any more that pose a challenge for marketers. Brands need to break the "cautious wall" consumers have built around themselves.

The article ends with this quote"...The idea is to deliver something with depth and substance.”. Never mind the jargon -"Dripvertising" but surely this approach makes a lot of sense to me.

Conversations are never assembly line

Joseph Jaffe is one person who does a great job of building collaborative projects. After his successful book Life after the 30 Sec Spot, he has started to write a  new book - Join the conversation and has invited people to contribute. I have tried to contribute my thoughts in Chapter 10 - Why are you so afraid of conversation? Here's my take:

It is a good idea to trace this to the history and growth of organizations in the industrial age. This was the age where efficiency was the focus. Organizations were built around driving productivity. People were trained to do things over and over again - faster and quicker. For over a century, people worked in an era of mass production. Hence, they forgot the ability to develop conversations. They worked in large organizations that told them what to do rather than get them to explore what to do.

We therefore moved from

• an era of 'inventory of goods' to an era of 'inventory of ideas'.
• an era of 'scarcity' to an era of ' insatiable choices'
• an era of ' information poverty' to an era of 'information overload'

Imagine the kind of shift they would have to make for this new eco-system. They had to express, share and collaborate to get prepared for such an environment. This is a new work culture altogether for them. Also, one-size-fits-all product strategy became irrelevant.

Conversation at the end of the day is two-way. Conversations require

• A capability to accept reality as it were because that's how consumers talk amongst themselves
• Ability to listen and respond in an unbiased manner
• Skills to experiment,learn and develop
• Ability to change the course of one's action swiftly, even if the decision was wrong

Hence, they were not ready for a conversation era. An environment where one has to express, empathize, engage, enable and empower. The mindset a marketer must have is not to 'inform at any cost' but 'spread at no cost'. This is a new marketing paradigm that demands new thinking, new rules and new ideas.

Recognizing an idea

Very often, I find people extremely protective about their ideas. They do not want to share it.They get obssesed with it. They are unwilling to listen, change or improve upon it further. The idea then dies a natural death because in their opinion nobody is willing to buy it. 

Here's some great advice from Doc Searls for such people so that they can evaluate their ideas first. Though this advice is for entrepreneurs with new business ideas, I think it holds good for anybody who is in the business of creating ideas esp. in the emerging open source marketing world:

1. Ideas aren't physical. Regardless of the legalities, treating ideas as possessions insults their vast combustive power. Jefferson put it best:
   

   The moment [an idea] is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

2. Ideas aren't worth jack unless other people can put them to use.
3. Ideas won't change the world unless others can improve on them.
4. Ideas grow by participation, not isolation.
5. Ideas change as they grow. Their core remains the same, but their scope enlarges with successful use.
6. Ideas have unexpected results. No one person can begin to imagine all the results of a good idea. That's another reason to welcome participation.
7. Nobody's going to "steal" your ideas, any more than they can steal your cerebrum. You're the source. Authority over the idea begins with you.
8. Authority derives from originality and respect. You can't get respect for your original ideas unless those ideas prove useful to others.

The business impact of blogs

Much has been written about the power of blogs and its power to shape customer opinion. Measuring the business impact of blogs is an area of great interest to me. Some key questions I often ask myself are:

• Is blogging an island without too many inhabitants - Is it a niche waiting to get mainstream?
• Does the opinion of bloggers matter at all when it comes to brand purchase decisions?
• Do consumers consider blogs as a trustworthy source vis-a-vis other forms of media?
• Is user-generated content considered valuable by customers?
• Is it possible to summarize the business impact of blogs by way of addressable customer numbers? Is it a large enough market waiting to be tapped by marketers?

Well, there seems to be some answers for these questions. Here's a research done by IPSOS in Europe - a leading marketing research firm. I think this research clearly gives directions for other markets too, on how customers perceive this new medium and its impact on brands. Here's the presentation: