Sunday, February 19, 2006

Employees are customers, too

Here is the text of a jolting note left for the manager of Blenz Coffee by four of his employees:

Scott,

Your staff is tired of your attitude, your inconsideration, your ungratefulness, and lack of trust. If you expected more from us, you should have thought more about your staff than your business.

We are good, loyal workers but you always let us down. Be more of a people person, ok? You will see that it pays more. We quit today because this is the end and you didn’t do anything to prevent it. Treat your staff better.

As Ben McConnell writes, This note illustrates the adage: Employees tend to quit their bosses, not their companies.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Swiss Cottage Cabs, Shari's Berries, and responsibility evasion

Duck responsibility, enrage a customer. As Seth Godin explains, it really is that simple. He publishes an email sent to a customer of Shari’s Berries, about a $65+ order for chocolate covered strawberries that they guaranteed would be delivered on Valentine’s Day:

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXX,

We are writing to inform you that your order for delivery February 14th was not shipped yesterday as requested.

We are prepared to ship your order on February 14th for arrival on the 15th ..  Alternatively, you do have the option of canceling your order, but we’d
rather you did not.

We regret that your order did not ship as requested and in consideration of this delay, if you wish us to still ship the order, we will provide a discount of 40% off the normal product price.

Please choose which course of action you wish that we take by replying to this email or by sending an email to service@berries.com.

Sincerely,

Shari’s Berries Customer Service Team

If this seems to you like a reasonable way to serve a disappointed customer, listen to Seth.

"Swiss Cottage Cabs, Shari's Berries, and responsibility evasion" continued...

Thursday, February 16, 2006

How to write a marketing story that sticks

Dave Gray, CEO of Xplane, boils it down:

Your story must be

1. Relevant: People care about things that are relevant to them and their situation. To make a story relevant you need to get inside your audience’s heads. The more you understand how they see the world and what they care about, the more relevant your story will become.

2. Unique: The benefits you describe need to be unique to you and available nowhere else. If your benefits aren’t unique, you will become commoditized, and people won’t why they should come to you. You might have a great story that gets great results for someone else!

3. Memorable: The story must not only hold people’s attention, it’s got to be easy to remember. You can’t always control the timing, so you need to be sure people can recall the essentials at a later date. You also want a story that’s interesting enough to pass on to others, and easy enough to tell that people tell it consistently.

A story that meets these criteria will get results for you more often than not.

Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, every day we are faced with marketing stories that make us think, “So what?” - if they register enough to make us think at all. Perhaps turning a fresh eye to the stories you’re telling with your marketing, armed with Gray’s advice, could reveal some surprises. (If you’re not telling any stories in your marketing, . I’d love to speak to you.)

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Barclays Bank's customer service Rx

Peter Curtis writes on The Business Editors blog of Barclays Bank’s plans to go cheesy with their customer service.

As the BBC reports, its ATMs are to be renamed “holes in the wall” and a sign in the window is to welcome customers with the message “Through this door walk the nicest people in the world”. Give me strength.

Perhaps I’m just a miserable curmudgeon, but I’m afraid there’s something about this faux-chumminess that makes me want to heave… By all means talk to me in plain English – ditching the jargon that often surrounds financial products can only be a good thing. But don’t pretend to be my friend – it simply isn’t credible.

The problem, of course, is that money - not even the amount in Barclays’ coffers - cannot buy credibility. No matter how much a business wants to appear to ‘keep it real,’ the money-churning, almighty effort it constitutes to them still shines through. You can almost hear the bank managers groaning in anticipation - along with customers.

What would it take to really shape up their customer service? Curtis has a practical suggestion:

If Barclays can deliver genuine improvements in service, that will be something worth shouting about. As someone who’s fed up of negotiating labyrinthine bank call centres, a renewed focus on a more branch-based service would certainly be welcome.

More generally, I’d suggest this prescription (from Adrants via the Big Blog Company):

Give a shit. Basically, that’s what this boils down to. Consumers are not a vast collection of numbers on a spreadsheet or a nice collection of 5 categories with silly marketing names like “early, suburban adopter.” They are people with real concerns that will, ultimately, lead to a better product. Listen and give a shit. That’s good marketing medicine.

Verizon CMO Stratton talks tough to agencies

Oneangrycustomer relays the details of Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton’s take on what awaits ad agencies in the years to come. Sounds like someone’s been taking a ride on the Cluetrain (or listening to Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi). Some highlights of Stratton’s remarks:

“What you’ve been selling for the last 50 years no longer works.”

“Before they figure out where to put their money, your marketer clients will hire and fire agency after agency, seeking someone, anyone, who can tell them where they might go next.”

“But your clients actually need more than just an audience. One of the consequences of the evolution of our media-delivery systems over the last 10 years is that the audience you do ultimately find is much less receptive to the message you’re trying to send. They are absolutely armed and ready to get to the content they want while avoiding the message you are trying to implant within it.”

“They need much more than an audience. They need an audience that cares about what they have to say. They need their message to be relevant to the audience they are saying it to.”

It is tempting to wonder how it could take so long for such educated and experienced people to understand this. But it is refreshing and heartening to hear very blunt talk along these lines from someone in Stratton’s position.

The fact is that individual companies have been figuring this out on their own, without much guidance from industry bigwigs or major research projects, for years now. It is, after all, pretty straightforward to understand. The question for businesses everywhere is whether or not they are going to wait on the industry bigwigs and major research projects to help them figure out how it all applies to them. If the answer is no, keep visiting this blog or get in touch.