Church of the Customer Blog
October 30, 2009, 12:35 PM
Kicking out unwanted customers
"Don't talk during the movie or we will take your ass out."
If you've been to an Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theater chain in Austin, Texas, then you've seen that semi-serious warning couched in a fun "public service announcement" before a movie showing. Theater founder Tim League knows that talkers mar the movie-watching experience for everyone else, and he does not tolerate them -- even if they punch the windshield of his car.
See, Tim was a customer recently at one of his theaters. A nearby loud-talker was asked by a theater waiter to keep it down. The customer protested, loudly, demanding to know who was offended by his talking. The waiter pointed to Tim.
Then it gets better... OK, worse.
After the the movie, the incensed customer followed Tim to his car, badgering him with anger. It climaxed with the customer punching the windshield of Tim's car, vowing never to return to an Alamo theater again.
To which Tim wrote on his blog:
"Fabulous.You sir are exactly the type of patron that I never want to see at an Alamo Drafthouse ever again. People who continue to talk when the movie has started are impolite, self-absorbed losers who were never taught common decency by their parents. WE DON’T EVER WANT YOU AT THE ALAMO. Please take your business elsewhere for the rest of your life....To our friendly customers, stay vigilant, report talkers and keep our theater safe from the raging hemorrhoids of cinematic society."
This happens all the time inside stores, movie theaters, sporting events, airline flights; an obnoxious customer makes everyone uncomfortable, and everyone in charge is oblivious.
Commenters on Tim's blog post love that he is standing up for them. If you stand with your best customers at the expense of the bad ones, you'll win bigger. The customer is always right -- if it's the right customer.
BONUS: Here's a years-ago example of an Alamo no talking "public service" video. This one stars the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards.
October 22, 2009, 12:31 PM
Twitter: the killer app for customer service
"Hello, this is Sam Kaufman from the AT&T Internet Executive Office, and I am calling about your tweets."
That's what I heard yesterday after posting a few tweets about my less-than-stellar customer service experience with an AT&T DSL technical support rep. The rep was trying to diagnose my DSL problems and after telling me to stay on the line for 10 minutes, he never returned after 30 minutes. I hung up. He never called back.
With a few hours of my AT&T tweet, @ATTJohnathon, a customer care rep on Twitter contacted me, asking if he could help. I DM'ed him my account number as he requested and he passed it on to Sam. Turns out Sam is part of the Customer Advocacy Center, where escalated customer complaints are sent. Sam says he has recently started receiving tweets from the AT&T Twitter team for follow-up.
AT&T is on board with social media for customer service. In addition to the five customer care reps on Twitter, the company has 23 social media channels on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Posterous and blogs.
Comcast may have been the first high-profile company to use Twitter for customer service, but now others are seeing the benefits as well, such as DirectTV, Wells Fargo, Alaska Airlines and FourSquare.
Twitter is the killer app for customer service. Companies can discover aggravating service problems by using a variety of tools to listen on tweets mentioning their name. A response can be nearly immediate.
It's good word of mouth, too. Mediocre service is such a standard that any form of pro-active Twitter customer service is worth talking about.
October 19, 2009, 03:24 PM
Fees are penalties. Always.
It's a wonder why some businesses can't grasp this. Consider the U.S. airlines last month:
- Southwest reported an 8.8% increase in revenue passenger miles. Its load factor, the percentage of seats that were filled, increased 11% from a year ago, to 74.7% — a big increase for a month in which schools reopen and summer vacation travels stop.
- JetBlue saw a 9.8% jump in passenger miles. Its load factor rose about 1% from the prior year, to 77.6%.
Compare those numbers to other airlines.
- Delta: Down 5% on its mainline operation. It also cut capacity by 5%.
- American: Down 2.6% domestically. It cut capacity by 6.9%.
- US Airways: Down 6.8% domestically. It cut capacity by 5.9%.
- United: Down 6.1% domestically. It cut capacity by 8%.
What's a key difference between Southwest and JetBlue vs. the others? No bag fee charges.
Before you say, "You can't correlate those two things, Jackie!" let it be noted that Southwest has commissioned several studies that show the traveling public hates bag fees.
Southwest seems to be doing pretty well as angry passengers migrate away from the bag-fee chargers. Southwest is even running an ad campaign with this message, called "Why do they hate your bags?"
Those nickle and dime fees add up, the airlines will say, but really, they do little more than penalize customers with complexity and disguise the end price. It's no different when a phone or cable company charges activation fees. May as well call them aggravation fees, as in "It's aggravating to have a new customer."
Little wonder passenger satisfaction with the airline industry has declined for a third consecutive year to a four-year low.
Wall Street analysts don't like Southwest's position on bag fees. They say the company is potentially losing $500 million per year in revenue. That's OK. No one likes greedy, short-sighted Wall Street analysts, either.
Kevin Krone, Southwest's VP of marketing, said it best : "If we're trying to get people to travel, we should probably let people take their suitcase."
Gotta love any company that keeps the obvious in perspective.
October 16, 2009, 03:30 PM
4 questions with author Jeanne Bliss
Many businesses are admired, but only an elite few have passionate, loyal, vocal fans. The kind of customers who not only come back time and time again, but rave to friends, family, and even strangers.
Jeanne Bliss has been the Chief Customer Officer for Lands End, Coldwell Banker, and Allstate, to name a few. Her new book, "I Love You More Than My Dog": Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad,
Q: You describe five types of decisions companies make; is one more difficult or easier than the rest, and how do they happen?
A: The foundation of every beloved company is their purposeful decision to believe. They believe in their employees. This frees them from rules, regulations and processes that take away ingenuity and inventiveness and spirit. And they believe their customers. This creates a level playing field between company and customer, where no one has the upper hand. By believing customers, companies remove the fine print, the unpublished rules and the just plain old stupid rules that make customers struggle to do business with them. This belief fuels the prosperity of human spirit common to all of the beloved companies. It is the underpinning of what draws customers to them and makes employees want to stay. There's no sequence to how companies become proficient at deciding to be there. It’s a funny way of saying this, but the act of believing is an essential core competency of beloved companies.
Q: Online communities and social media have helped create a sense of transparency. Have these been the drivers of a customer driven community or are they merely the byproduct?
A: What’s different about companies that people are drawn to is that they aren’t afraid to show up as who they are, foibles and all. This means earning the rave when they do things well. But it also means fessing up when things go wrong. These businesses allow people to bring the best version of themselves to work with them. They are nurtured and encouraged to apply their personal business decision making in their business decision making. It’s what enables companies such as Lush Cosmetics to have the open volley and exchange of ideas with employees and customers who debate and defend decisions on which 100 products they cut out each year. They enjoy family talk, not corporate talk. Griffin Hospital, for example, saw a 40% reduction in malpractice lawsuits when they decided to suspend the cynicism and trust families and patients by opening up complete records to them. A lot of companies want to “get” the rave. My take is that they’ve got that backwards. Companies need to earn the right to have customers tell their story.
Q: Do companies need to be customer-driven to grow?
A: Companies forget that customers keep them in business. Customers who love companies grow them. To understand this, think of customer math -- a rigorous way to track incoming customers by volume and value and then reconcile that number with the lost customers in that same period, comparing incoming and outgoing customer volume and value. The ‘aha moment’ comes when the math reveals that company marketing dollars are spent replacing customers lost rather than growing the business with the addition of new customers. In essence, many companies are running in place. I believe in elevating customers as the asset of the business. That means creating a competency for rigor around a) identifying and getting rid of those things driving customers away; and then b) getting really great at specific things that create a distinct memory and impression about a company and its people. We forget the fact that it’s the creation of those memories that we make on purpose or accidentally through our operations decisions or policy choices that connect or repel us from customers.
Q: What’s the biggest obstacle companies face in making them beloved?
A: Always looking at what each decision will get them. In a world where products and services are available in a hundred variations, these companies get a disproportionate piece of the pie because of how they treat their customers and employees. Acutely aware of how their every action impacts how customers feel and respond to them, they take the time to make purposeful decisions about the contacts they have with customers. So I’d say that the two biggest things in the way of companies adopting these decisions, is first, time: The rush of the deadline, of the quarter, and of making the quarterly sales goals. The second is silos. The inability of coming together as a unified operation to work together, fail and learn together and win together.
October 13, 2009, 10:01 AM
A social media truism
When times are good, participate.
When times are tough, participate more.
(Doesn't that read better than "advertise" in that old saying?)
October 09, 2009, 02:20 PM
How to create a killer conference
So how in the world did the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association nearly double the attendance of its annual summit from 600 in 2008 to 1,100 this year?
- Provide killer content. This one-day event had 5 tracks with enough variety for everyone: Fundamentals, Strategy, Tactical, Trends and Technical tracks. Sessions tackled key issues such as legal problems in online marketing, diversity in the interactive industry, and job strategies for a sucky economy.
- Its members are fiercely loyal. Five years ago, MIMA had 200 members. Two years ago, it had 700. Now it has 1,200. By focusing on a long-term loyalty strategy of membership growth, plus great content, attending the annual conference was a no-brainer for many members.
- Technology was everywhere. MIMA set up home bases on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube. They live-streamed the conference over the web. They created an iPhone app for attendees to browse the schedule and manage their conference experience. They encouraged attendees to download Bump, an iPhone app that allows people to exchange contact info by "bumping" their phones together.
- Best customer service ever. Whacked out customer service isn't usually part of most conferences, but it was here. Masseuses gave neck massages in the speaker green room and in the press room. A hospitality station offered laptop and phone charging. There was hand sanitizer galore to combat H1N1 flu fears. There were private breast pump rooms for moms. My favorite: Snuggies for those who were too cold (why are conferences forever freezing cold?)
- An event coordinator brimming with imagination. MIMA smartly put Jennifer Kane from Kane Consulting in charge of event management. Brimming with energy. Always smiling, even under stress. Always focused on the attendee's experience. It was her idea to do the hospitality station. The conference was managed like a fun, bustling restaurant with great service. There was even an official MIMA cupcake in conference bags.
- They were bold. In tough times, it's tempting to be conservative. Bare-bones everything. MIMA wasn't. It secured Seth Godin as the luncheon keynote speaker to drive attendance. They were right. The conference sold out 2 weeks before it happened.
- Humor. Maybe it's Minnesota, but humor was rich in its abundance at the conference. Weeks earlier, MIMA showed how by using the Seth Godin action figure to create a YouTube video called "Little Seth Godin at the Minnesota State Fair." In it, Little Seth gets rolled into a lefse. (It's a Scandinavian Minnesota thing.)
- Absolutely nutty creative. I asked Jen Kane if a TV would be at the reception party on Sunday, the night before the event, because my Steelers were playing the Chargers. (Yeah, I'm a fanatic.) Sure enough, they had a TV and, to my utter shock, they assembled a "Steelers lounge" just for me. They called it Jackie's Joint, and it came with VIP Reserved Chair, popcorn machine, gold pom poms and large screen TV. It was sick, and I loved it. (More pics here.)
October 08, 2009, 10:53 AM
Facebook fan pages are the future
Facebook fan pages are the future for three reasons: They're free, easy to create and build a nearly instantaneous pathway to evangelists, prospects or the curious.
When fans interact with a fan page on Facebook, that interaction is sent through the fan's news feed, which goes to all their friends, practically daring a chunk of them to see what the page is about.
Compared to Twitter, Facebook fan pages rule. You're not limited by Twitter's 140-character posts, plus it's far easier for fan page members to preview a photo, video or weblink than what Twitter offers.
What more could a brand manager want?
Finally, a Facebook fan page can be a strong leading indicator of how well a brand is doing at any one time with buzz-spreaders, some of whom could represent connected, influential customers. Its feedback is all qualitative, but a Facebook fan page could help guide a brand in 3 ways:
- It immediately surfaces questions, problems or issues. A fan page can create an immediate fix-it list.
- It tells you how well you're connecting with fans through Facebook's free "Insights" feature that graphs subscribes, unsubscribes, post quality and total interactions. Plus, you get some tasty demographic stats about your fans -- won't get that from Google Analytics or Twitter.
- It tells you what resonates with fans by the number of comments and "likes" people give each post.
With a little bit of imagination, it shouldn't be too hard for a brand manager to devise a spreadsheet filled with marketing tactics that emerge from a vibrant Facebook fan page.
P.S. Not giving up my Twitter account though, even if Miley Cyrus has.
P.P.S. You should friend me on Facebook here.
October 07, 2009, 04:46 PM
David Letterman, part 2
Continuing to show the rest of us what to do when we screw up, David Letterman spent 3 minutes and 20 seconds apologizing on last night's show after revealing last week he'd been part of an extortion plot.
The alleged plot was based on Letterman's relationships with women on his staff.
With a bit of humor and obvious emotion, Letterman is forthright and honest. He states the obvious without going into maudlin detail.
It's all forthright authenticity any company or person can learn from, even if you consider what Letterman did to be a sign of poor judgment.
The social media ban
A survey of 1,400 companies has found that 54% of them completely prohibit social media at work.
The companies that do allow their employees access to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or a host of other social networks do so in varying levels.
Just 10% allow employees access to social media for any type of use.
The story here isn't a preponderance of companies clueless about social media. The real story is the gift the those prohibitive companies have given to their competitors or a start-up in the 10% that have opened the social media doors.
The 10 percenters can set up company Facebook fan pages, add more people to the company Twitter account, set up a YouTube channel, a Squidoo account, a LinkedIn group, a Yammer account or a Ning network for employees who can tell their Facebook friends about the cool things they're doing at work. Plus they'll hear about any problems fans or customers encounter and have a front-line response ready to tackle them.
For the 10 percenters, this gift may not last long, but they have the chance to spread word of mouth about their work through network after network while their locked-down competitors futz over print brochures.
October 05, 2009, 05:11 PM
Yes on the FTC's disclosure rule for bloggers
The FTC says if bloggers write about products, they must disclose if they received payments and/or freebies from a company for the write-up. If not, it's an $11,000 fine per violation. (The FTC's note about disclosure is here.)
This is a good thing.
With just about every survey in the world finding that the majority of people today trust what's said online forums more so than any other marketing platform, then it's in the best interest of the public to ensure that the system isn't rigged for positive or negative reviews. Anything else is just a form of fraud. Trust is the bloodstream of commerce, and online trust has become a central component to how billions of dollars are spent by millions of people every day.
The vast majority of people don't run stop signs, yet we still have laws against it. Every infraction isn't caught or punished, but STOP isn't a guideline or an industry-developed suggestion. This is a good example of protecting the many from the reckless few, just as the FTC's blogger rule is.
Teaching every blogger that it's against the law to accept payments or freebies for writing about products will help maintain a measure of trust in the online marketplace. It won't stop some bloggers from acting recklessly or fraudulently, but it will remove any ambivalence or doubt about its legality. That's a start.
More:
- John Moore notes the top-line takeaways on the WOMMA blog.
- Brian says on TechCrunch that disclosure "can only help brands and bloggers."
- Kate at ClickZ has a good write-up, including how a fine might be levied.
- Jeff Jarvis makes a First Amendment, let-the-marketplace-decide argument.
October 02, 2009, 10:50 AM
David Letterman on how to frame a story
The David Letterman extortion story is a textbook case of how to get in front of bad buzz.
Letterman used Thursday night's show to tell the story of how a "48 Hours" producer allegedly demanded $2 million to not write a book and screenplay about Letterman's sexual exploits with women on his staff. Letterman informed authorities of the demand, and the producer was arrested.
For nearly 10 minutes on national TV, Letterman told the story with humor and pathos. It was a fairly hypnotic story, even if it was a bit tawdry. (That's television for ya.)
The story of the plot, the arrest and the motive would certainly have gotten out, all of which Letterman called "embarrassing." What's instructive here is that Letterman himself set the frame of the story. "Yes, I had sex with women," he says, which got a big laugh from the audience. Even if you think less of him, there's no denying it was a moment of refreshing authenticity.
How the conversation goes now in this Twitter-driven world now is all part of natural selection, but Letterman certainly neutralized far worse rumor-mongering that could have quickly spiraled, jeopardizing his reputation, maybe even his job.
By getting in front of the story, especially with self-effacing humor, Letterman saved a lot more face than he lost. It's a pretty good way to go for anyone or any company about to be in the hot seat.
Update: CBS removed the Letterman clip from its online site that I had embedded originally with this post, and it usually sends takedown notices to anyone who posts the clip on YouTube. It's increasingly difficult to find an online clip that isn't gone after a day or two.
September 21, 2009, 06:00 PM
There's a Ferrari in here somewhere
If only the message on this billboard outside my window at home in Austin were true.
The traditional ways marketers have driven sales and profit are accelerating in their obsolescene. New data from Nielsen shows that not only is word of mouth more important than ever, the opinions of strangers posted online is more effective than TV, radio and yes, even billboards.
Billboard advertising is easy. Banner ads are easy. Entire industries have been created to make them easy.
Creating a product or service worth talking about is hard. Done well, the ROI of excellent word of mouth makes traditional advertising look downright buggy-whippish.
September 14, 2009, 02:45 PM
A CIA factbook on Facebook
What's the most-represented country on Facebook?
Easy answer: The United States.
Second?
The U.K., another fairly easy answer.
But which country is the third-most represented?
Turkey.
Yes, Turkey, with (currently) 13 million of its 76 million residents on Facebook. Turkey beats out Canada for resident representation. I wouldn't have guessed.
It's real-time stats like these that make Nick's work on CheckFacebook.com valuable to anyone who needs data to make sense of the impact Facebook is having on business and culture.
One other real-time stat: A staggering 274 million people have registered themselves on Facebook, a number which could reach 300 million by the end of 2009 with no signs of letting up. When a company has 300 million customers, it creates a dynamic wake.
Where's the CIA World Factbook equivalent for social networks?
Bonus: Top 10 countries on Facebook, as measured by users:
| 1. | United States | 84,104,460 |
| 2. | United Kingdom | 19,801,120 |
| 3. | Turkey | 13,020,000 |
| 4. | Canada | 12,367,320 |
| 5. | France | 12,005,320 |
| 6. | Italy | 11,174,000 |
| 7. | Indonesia | 8,932,160 |
| 8. | Australia | 6,481,900 |
| 9. | Spain | 6,443,940 |
| 10. | Colombia | 6,109,400 |
September 05, 2009, 06:14 AM
AT&T and the 2 most important words
"We're sorry."
That's what you say when a large number of your customers are upset with you. AT&T customers have been complaining for months about dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and slow download speeds for the iPhone.
So, AT&T released this video on YouTube.
In it, "Seth the Blogger" (no, not that Seth) says AT&T has heard all the complaints but then congratulates his company for pioneering the smart phone industry. He also explains how cell networks operate with snoozingly detailed graphics and finally tries to explain how the company is spending money to fix the network.
But never he says what customers really want to hear: "We're sorry."
September 01, 2009, 01:50 PM
IKEA's font fury
Is IKEA, the global Swedish furniture chain, having a New Coke moment?
After 50 years of using the iconic Futura font for its catalog design, it has switched to Verdana. Hard-core IKEA fans, who love the brand for its design sensibility are upset. Their rallying cry: Verdana was invented by Microsoft for the computer screen, not paper. Verdana is just plain ugly. See the difference here:
Twitter is filled with angry comments extolling the company to "stop the Verdana madness." An online petition has 4,000 signatures.
IKEA made the switch because it's cheaper to use one font that works in digital and print media. They didn't anticipate a backlash; a spokeswoman for the company said:
"We're surprised. But I think it's mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don't think the broad public is that interested."
The uprising may have begun with people who know fonts but thanks to Facebook and Twitter, a broader audience knows, especially if you include the 300+ articles in the mainstream media.
Ultimately, is this important to IKEA? It depends on scale, of course, but also something that's not quantifiable: the depth of emotional attachment.
When a company has evangelists, it's often because it has core values. For IKEA, core values are style, chic design, and affordability. In that context, a typeface isn't just a typeface: it's an emotional catalyst. When Walmart changed its logo recently, no one complained. Walmart had nowhere to go but up since its core value is low prices, not reflect contemporary style or design. When Coke changed its formula in 1985, the outrage wasn't about its sugared water tasting worse, it was about the betrayal of an established core value. A psychologist who listened to complaints in the call center described the calls as the equivalent of the death of a family member.
For IKEA, the Futura font is (or was) the emotional subtext to IKEA's contemporary yet familiar vibe. For the purists and evangelists, switching to Verdana is a sign of something worse than a new font.
IKEA's next move is a big one. What do you think it should do?
(Image courtesy of the isdgn blog)
Meet "Little Seth Godin"
Did you know that world-renowned marketer and blogger Seth Godin has a Mini-Me? "Little Seth Godin" visits the Minnesota State Fair to promote his keynote speech at the October 5 Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association's Annual Summit.
I will also be keynoting this event. I do not have an action figure.
Tickets and information for the event are here.
August 13, 2009, 05:10 PM
Turning bad buzz around for Best Buy
Best Buy was in the news the other day for an oops. It offered a 52-inch HDTV that normally sells for $1,600 on its web site for $9.99. Eager web surfers gleefully pulled out their credit cards and placed orders.
As word of the deal spread, Best Buy realized the mistake, quickly pulled the offer from the site and announced it would not honor the purchases. The company cited its web site terms and conditions, which reserve the right to "revoke offers or correct errors" even if a credit card has already been charged. Upset tweeters took over, and Best Buy came out with a black eye.
Few people would expect Best Buy to honor what surely seems like human error but the bigger idea here is that every misstep, even embarrassing public ones, are an opportunity to turn bad buzz into good. Years ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told a newspaper he wouldn't hire the chief referee of the NBA "to manage a Dairy Queen." Ouch. Within days, Cuban accepted an offer to manage a DQ store in Dallas. While TV cameras and reporters captured the scene, Cuban was behind the counter, in DQ garb, serving customers -- and that was BT: Before Twitter. DQ was happy, Cuban was happy, and the media were happy they had a happy ending to a story.
Turning bad buzz into good takes fast, creative thinking, a sense of humor, and a willingness to happily eat virtual crow. Best Buy could put everyone who ordered the TV into a drawing then give away 10 of them. Or 100. Then they could even deliver the sets, with TV cameras rolling, and have their Geek Squad members install them for free.
You can either point to the rules when you screw up, or you can go beyond the obvious and do something worth talking about.
August 06, 2009, 10:42 AM
The twouble with Twitter
As of 10 am CST this morning, Twitter is down. While you are waiting for it come back up, perhaps this video will give us all some perspective : )
July 17, 2009, 12:10 PM
SEC complaint against Cuban dismissed
Last year, we blogged about the SEC going after one of our favorite marketing-driven entrepreneurs, Mark Cuban, and the selling of his interest in Mamma.com.
Today, a federal judge dismissed the complaint, giving the SEC 30 days to file an amended version, but overall striking a blow to the SEC's action. The judge also rejected some of Cuban's claims about his fiduciary relationship with the company.
Cuban hates to lose, and the judge's decision is definitely one for Cuban's win column.
July 14, 2009, 12:49 PM
Hype vs. excitement: expanded
We had nifty comments to the original hype vs. excitement post, so here's an enhanced version of the chart featuring them.
| Hype is: | Excitement is: |
| An impossible promise | A realistic promise |
| Sales-driven | Value-driven |
| Exclamation points | Passion |
| Obnoxious | Contagious |
| Cause for mistrust | Cause for belief |
| Overuse of adverbs | Adverb-free |
| Narcissistic | Optimistic |
| Segway | Bike Friday |
| Contrived | Authentic |
| Unsustainable | Fuel for the future |
| From COTC readers: | |
| Bound to burn out quickly | Bound to improve ROI (Zoltan Devai) |
| Overpromising | Overdelivering (Dan Limbach) |
| "Some restrictions apply" | Free (Bob Poole) |
| Mob mentality | Individual thrill (Jeannie Walters) |
| Artificially colored cornstarch | Top sirloin steak, medium-well (Jon Nichols) |
| Showing off | Showing up (Maria Reyes-McDavis) |
| Focused on yourself | Focused on your customer (Bruce Kaechele) |
July 07, 2009, 01:27 PM
Money vs. gold
The hubbub surrounding Moonfruit giving away 10 Macs over 10 days on Twitter is a good lesson for marketers on money vs. gold.
Give away money and people will question your motives or simply yawn with boredom.
Give away gold -- like a pallet of Macbook Pros, or tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial service -- and they'll line up for blocks.
July 01, 2009, 01:27 PM
WOM won't wait 'til Monday
Buzz isn't scheduled, especially bad buzz.
Thanks to Twitter, it can snowball into an avalanche of angry buzz after hours or during a weekend, just in time for the Monday morning news, as Amazon and Motrin recently learned. (Recent bad buzz for Domino's began on a Monday evening.)
The bigger the company, the more likely the inevitable unhappy Tweet that could begin Saturday morning. Then what? Who's monitoring your brand Friday night to Monday morning? Your social media manager? PR agency? Ad agency? Your social media intern?
Do you have a process to monitor and respond to weekend online word of mouth?
Let us know in the comments.
Hype vs. excitement
| Hype is: | Excitement is: |
| An impossible promise | A realistic promise |
| Sales-driven | Value-driven |
| Exclamation points | Passion |
| Obnoxious | Contagious |
| Cause for mistrust | Cause for belief |
| Overuse of adverbs | Adverb-free |
| Narcissistic | Optimistic |
| Segway | Bike Friday |
| Contrived | Authentic |
| Unsustainable | Fuel for the future |
How would you describe hype vs. excitement?
June 23, 2009, 01:15 PM
The secrecy tax
Apple apparently goes to great, almost CIA-like lengths to maintain secrecy.
It includes mazes of security doors, numeric codes to enter one's office, which is constantly monitored by security cameras, red warning lights when secret devices are unmasked, and the deliberate spread of misinformation inside the company, according to the Times.
Secrecy isn't a communications strategy at Apple. It's part of the company's cultural DNA, and it generates staggering levels of free press and PR.
That makes many companies want to emulate Apple's culture of secrecy, but the company is and always will be an anomaly. It has spent 30 years refining its secrecy culture. The physical and mental costs must be enormous, creating what surely must be a secrecy tax on its products.
So unless you have the world's most gifted engineers, designers and marketers with a track record of creating products that will sell a million units a year along with a gifted, messianic founder, then a culture based on transparency, truth and openness are a lot easier, and less expensive, to manage.
June 17, 2009, 04:34 PM
The intern trap
Would you let a company intern:
- Man your customer service line?
- Be your receptionist?
- Be your spokesperson to the Wall Street Journal?
- Be the main contact for your most talkative customers?
If not, then why do companies put, or think of putting, interns in charge of their social media presence?
"Let's put an intern in charge of our corporate Twitter ID" is heard a bit too often.
Interns can obviously be smart and bright and with the right training, can do things well. But interns are usually temporary; making one the face of your company on social media sites does them, and you, a disservice. Better to assign a longer-term and experienced member of customer service, account management, or technical support in a visible, and increasingly important, social media role.
June 15, 2009, 03:24 PM
An emerging metric: the GoodGuide score
A non-profit website founded and staffed by academics and researchers is scoring consumer products based on health, environmental and social impacts. Based on its purpose and how easy it is to use, GoodGuide could usher in a new metric: social value.
You could say social value is how well a company practices good corporate stewardship, something the typical may not concern himself with in the aisles of Walmart, but early adopters, buzz-spreaders and health-involved purchasers often do. For GoodGuide, good corporate stewardship includes product ingredients free of carcinogens, aren't brought to market via cruel animal testing and whose packaging is environmentally friendly.
For instance, here's how my deodorant, Dry Idea, stacks up on GoodGuide. It scores a 7.4 out of 10. Not bad, but Dry Idea is dinged for containing "controversial ingredients" aluminum zirconium and fragrance.
"Aluminum has long been known to have neurotoxic effects in humans and other animals," GoodGuide says. "Most aluminum used in deodorants and antiperspirants exists in either aluminum salts or aluminum-glycine complexes. Researchers continue to disagree about the risk of aluminum use in deodorants and antiperspirants, particularly the correlation of aluminum and other compounds and cancer in the upper quadrant of the breast near the underarm." Then it cites the research.
Fragrance, GoodGuide says, "is considered a trade secret, which means the company doesn't have to say what's in it - but generally fragrances have strong allergy and immune system toxicity concerns, and they often conceal the presence of toxic phthalates." Both explanations are enough for me to look at, and purchase, the highest-rated product in the category, Tom's of Maine Natural Deodorant. It, too, has "fragrance," but no aluminum, which has always worried me through the years.
"What we’re trying to do is flip the whole marketing world on its head,” says Dara O’Rourke, the University of California professor who launched the site last year. “Instead of companies telling you what to believe, customers are making the statements to the marketers about what they care about.”
The implications of what GoodGuide could mean for not just marketers, but big company culture, could be significant, especially in how people talk about products with one another, especially in families, where consumer product good decisions are often handed down generationally. If the free, non-ad-supported, easy-to-use (and easy to understand) GoodGuide starts showing up in research of big manufacturers of why their market share is suddenly slipping, it probably won't take long for companies to adapt.
June 10, 2009, 02:38 PM
The roots of word of mouth
Where does word of mouth come from?
A good experience, says Forrester.
A trustworthy relationship with peers, says Big Research.
A purple cow, says Seth Godin.
They're all right, but the bigger question is: What binds all of those source elements together?
The answer is almost always hidden within a company's culture.
Companies with great word of mouth tend to operate by a simple, yet inspiring purpose and well-defined values. They have created a cultural constitution, and every employee is sworn to abide by it, so help them God and the HR department. They understand that a purpose-driven company helps clarify decision-making while inspiring longer-term unity. They know that abiding by community-driven values compels employees to think of customers first, company second. They see the benefits of inspired, evangelistic customers and how company culture is the feeder river for streams of word of mouth.
When companies shun purpose and adherence to values, that's usually the source of trouble. Just look at credit card providers, health insurance plans, Internet service providers and TV service providers, whose four industries recently appeared in a Forrester report as generating more bad word of mouth than good. The primary interests of companies in those industries often are, in order of importance: company executives, institutional shareholders, Wall Street bankers and analysts, then customers. They stealthily raise fees, add hidden clauses to purposefully complex operating agreements and cut customer service before rolling back excessive executive compensation. It's not surprising then, that the government is now proposing standards to rein in excessive executive pay at publicly held companies.
Indeed, building word of mouth is bigger than simply paying employees well, much less leaving its function solely to the marketing or engineering departments. For creating good customer experiences, a company hires smart and empathetic people who believe in the company's culture and provide evidence of believing in its values. It does not hire talented jerks, regardless of education or work history. It expunges those who acted their way through the hiring process.
For building trustworthy customer relationships, a company makes decisions according to its values. They do not rely on bad profits, the kind which trick customers (often used by the industries in the Forrester report). A company with great word of mouth is consistently fair and honest with customers, employees, suppliers, vendors and competitors. They do the right thing and right their wrongs quickly, often going above and beyond what's necessary.
For creating purple cows, a company fosters creative thinking within tightly defined sandboxes to maintain elegant simplicity, a process that can be difficult but is ultimately rewarding to customers (and employees, especially), who crave simplicity in an age where complexity is daunting, worrisome and exhausting. Simplicity itself, especially with traditionally complicated products or systems, can be a bountiful source of word of mouth. Elegant simplicity is a form of art, and fans will gather to pay it homage.
June 04, 2009, 01:07 PM
10 new rules for credit cards
Since a large, taxpayer-bailed-out bank recently doubled the interest rate on my credit card without notice and tightened the fluctuating payment period to something like six hours, it seems highlights of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act that President Obama signed into law the other week are worth sharing and spreading:
- Prohibits retroactive rate increases unless the cardholder is at least 60 days behind in paying the bill. If a person does fall behind and the rate on past buys is increased, lenders must restore the lower rate after six months if the cardholder has paid monthly bills on time.
- Requires lenders to post their credit card agreements on the Internet and customers must receive 45 days notice before interest rates are increased.
- Requires anyone younger than 21 to prove that they can repay the money before being given a card or have a parent or guardian promise to pay off their debt if they default.
- Prohibits over-the-limit fees unless a cardholder elects to be allowed to go over a limit.
- Requires lenders to say how much time it would take and how much money in interest would be paid if only the minimum monthly payments are made.
- Requires that gift cards remain valid for five years.
- Bans "pay-to-pay" fees, which are charged when someone pays the bill by phone or on the Internet.
- Requires banks to give customers a reasonable time, such as 21 days, to pay the bill before it is considered late. Due dates must be the same date every month.
- Requires banks to give customers 45 days' notice before raising interest rates on new purchases, even if the customer is late or delinquent in paying the account.
- Prohibits retroactive rate increases. Does not include a provision that would require lenders to reduce the rate after six months if the person pays on time. Also would prohibit double-cycle billing.
May 28, 2009, 03:30 PM
Are you an enlightened stupid marketer?
Kevin Nalty aka Nalts explains the difference between stupid marketers and enlightened stupid marketers. In this video, Nalts explains "A non-marketer might be looking at this and saying, 'Stupid Marketer...isn't that an oxymoron."
"I say no, enlightened stupid marketers are at a fork in the road. Keep being stupid or be stupid but conceal that fact. I have several proven strategies for this."
Check out the strategies in his video.
Note: long time readers of this blog will remember Nalts from our post about his "blogger buzz" video back in 2007.
15 pounds lighter
I learned earlier this month that my right kidney had been highjacked by a 12-centimeter tumor. On top of that, my gall bladder was failing, too. Fun times.
A week later, both organs were removed during a four-hour surgery. Less than a week after that, I'd dropped 15 pounds on a diet of broth, Jello and apple juice. Take that, Valerie Bertinelli. I have 6-8 weeks of recovery ahead and barring any complications, that should be it. The physical ordeal is over. I'm not so sure about the mental and spiritual ordeal. All in due time.
If you're curious about renal cell carcinoma, or kidney cancer, here are the highlights: The disease grows stealthily. It doesn't show up in standard check-up blood tests. Symptoms often do not appear until after it has spread beyond the kidney. Unchecked, RCC can spread to the lungs, liver or lymph nodes. When that happens, life gets tougher. Like my diagnosis, it's often discovered in unrelated CT scans or x-rays. My RCC was caught before it spread, but that meant sacrificing my right kidney, a not uncommon treatment. Inexplicably, RCC afflicts men more than women. That's bad news for doctor-averse men. I've been semi-averse for the past 10 years; the only defense I can offer is that I've been healthy my entire life; no surgeries, no health problems. I can't remember the last time I had the flu. For the past two years, I exercised 4-5 times a week. Am I doctor-averse now? No way. Life is too short.
Twelve days after surgery, life isn't much different with one kidney. All functions are normal. That's one of the amazing aspects of our blood-cleansing kidneys: even one by itself works like a part-time consultant, at just 60-70% percent capacity. The bright side of life without a gall bladder is that my body no longer produces bile, which helps break down food. Bile is that bitter taste that sometimes seeps up from the stomach after eating too much. Without a gall bladder, the liver simply takes over. That means I'm free to eat and drink whatever I'd like. As one of my surgeons told me, "As far as I'm concerned, you can eat cheeseburgers dipped in Crisco." Not that I will; I don't want a heart surgeon. (My gall bladder was removed at the same time as my kidney because a CT scan showed it was filled with gall stones and was about a week away from causing a major attack. If there's such a thing as fortuitous timing with expendable, failing organs, I nailed it.)
My prognosis is great. The pathologists have been engaged in a spirited debate on whether my kidney was overtaken by a simple mass or a more aggressive, yet benign, mass. Either way, my primary surgeon, Dr. David Phillips, said on the day of my discharge from the hospital, "My gut tells me you're cured." I could tell it was gratifying for him to say that as gratifying as it was to hear it. It may sound like hyperbole, but the highly skilled and personable Drs. Phillips, Peter Ruff and Bob Markus saved my life. I can't think of a better recommendation.
Also gratifying, and humbling, was how my family and loved ones stepped up unselfishly in my time of need. I'm forever thankful and grateful to them; I have no idea how to repay their love, concern and kindness. I was astounded by the many blog post comments, emails and tweets of well wishes, prayers, offers of help, as well as the flowers and gifts from friends old and new. It's remarkable how all of that gave me strength and courage by making me feel less alone. Any form of outreach for someone who's ill is an act of healing. Thank you.
Because everything happened so quickly, I haven't fully processed this brush with mortality. Writing about it is cathartic, so I hope you'll forgive this indulgence. I do know that if my recent experience proves anything, it's how quickly things can change. How quickly things will change.
It's just a matter of when.
