Do you trust your friends when they recommend a product to you? Research shows that most people trust that more than advertising and most other forms of marketing, but should they? A hot topic the last month on a number of customer and marketing blogs and publications has been Staples’ “Speak Easy” program, which I believe falls somewhere in the gray area of marketing ethics.
Poor customer service seems to be getting worse, but it depends on where consumers live in the U.S. that determines how they react to bad service.
Yesterday at the RightNow Summit, its user conference in Colorado Springs, CEO Greg Gianforte summarized the second annual joint Harris Interactive and RightNow Customer Experience Impact Report and revealed some surprising results.
Of the North American consumers surveyed, Midwesterners are the most emotional of consumers, with many likely to swear and cry; Westerners are more likely to never return to a company or post a negative blog entry/online review after a bad customer experience; Southerners, on the other hand, are least likely to swear but are the most likely to fantasize about defacing company property; and Northeners are least likely to register a complaint or tell others about a bad experience and are the least likely to post a negative blog entry.
Media buyers are the new rock stars, according to David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americas and Chairman of Carat Asia-Pacific.
Being the head of the world's largest independent media buying operation, he would think so, but a perusal of his new book, "Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the $300 Billion Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume" (Wiley), co-written with the late New York magazine columnist Bernice Kanner, finds that he may well be onto something.
There's lots of buzz around the business impact of virtual worlds like Second Life. Sure, it's great for fantasy gamers holed up in their basements, but how will it grow business? Companies like IBM, Xerox and others have jumped in, using its community features to hold virtual meetings and show clients product demonstrations. But it's not just for the big players. You see, in Second Life you can be whomever you want to be, shedding your real-life limitations. For individuals, that may mean making your avatar a body-builder or a bikini model. For businesses, especially small ones, it means interacting with prospects and customers all over the world, using the same tools as the Fortune fat cats. Today's issue of 1to1 Weekly illustrates how one small company flexed its relationship muscles on Second Life.
A colleague of mine at Carlson Marketing recently sent me an email detailing a horrible customer experience she had with Budget Car Rentals while traveling in Costa Rica. During her trip, her rental car’s tire went flat. While changing it, she was robbed on the side of the road, losing her passport, cell phone, cash, and credit cards. But the way she describes it, the customer service experience that followed was almost as bad as the roadside robbery.
Martha and I both like Fred Reichheld’s Net Promoter Score, which we consider to be a convenient, quick way to get a handle on whether your company is building enough customer equity to sustain your growth and profit in the future. We think of it as a kind of leading indicator of lifetime value change. Most of you reading this blog will already be familiar with Reichheld’s concept, we’ve had a couple of conversations on it elsewhere in this blog, in "CFOs and CMOs - Maybe we can help each other?" and in "My Net Promoter Problem."
Recently a colleague of mine at the British research company Infoquest sent me a white paper called "Net Promoter Score -- The Search for the Magic Pill," disputing the usefulness of NPS as a tool for understanding customer loyalty and value. It is an eight-page analysis, authored by Howard Ploman, President of Infoquest International, and offers an interesting and insightful appraisal of the disadvantages of trying to rely on NPS as an all-purpose gauge of customer loyalty.
Yesterday, BusinessWeek featured an article in which the editors went directly to Wal-Mart managers—the employees closest to the customers—to ask them their ideas about how to fix the struggling behemoth.
Many of the managers' ideas were simple and even obvious, but as the article pointed out, they’re ideas that were generated after talking with customers and listening to what they want.
Take chocolate doughnuts. Wal-Mart has been cutting back on making fresh doughnuts because they don’t make much money for stores. But the store managers have a different perspective. They say they actually get people into the stores and then while there they buy other merchandise.
When the magazine contacted Wal-Mart a spokesperson seemed to be dismissive of the manager’s ideas, declining to comment on them. That may be a mistake.
In 1to1 Magazine’s upcoming October issue, contributing writer Erika Rasmusson Janes will explore how tapping employees for fresh ideas generates new processes, services, and products that companies otherwise can’t produce. She reveals that employee feedback is relevant in improving customer service and making internal changes. Rasmusson says that frontline employees are the ones who see patterns to customer satisfaction and know what hinders efficiencies.
Hopefully Wal-Mart won’t take the BW article with a grain of salt. The company needs to realize that its employees are the biggest untapped resources available—and one that should not be ignored.
When thumbing through the latest business books, coming upon the title "Why Is Everyone Smiling?" (Brown Books) might cause one to look around his or her office and reply, "Uh, everyone ISN'T smiling."
But if that's true, your company might learn a lesson from the book's author, Paul Spiegelman, co-founder of healthcare-exclusive customer interaction center The Beryl Companies, who firmly believes that happy employees lead to happy customers -- and has the figures to back it up.
More than clever advertising or price discounts, if you want more customers you should encourage positive word-of-mouth from your current customers. So many studies show that it's a successful strategy. But knowing and doing are two different things. How do you get customers to start talking?
Is customer loyalty a marketing myth? Some say it is. I guess it depends on how you define loyalty.
I’d have to say that, like love, there are many shades of loyalty. I love my daughter, and I love my dog, and I love chocolate. Is the love I have for each the same? Of course not.
It’s the same with loyalty.
Most people will now admit that the customer isn’t always right, but sometimes where to draw the line between giving in to and refusing a request can be very blurry. The New York Times ran an article yesterday on its website about Nova Rico, a cartography company that sells custom-designed globes and has received custom orders from some countries that pose an ethical dilemma.
On magazine death prognosticator site Magazinedeathpool.com, the producer, or Grim Reaper as he or she calls himself, has been predicting the termination of specific magazines since early last year.
Many magazines have passed on to its Death Pool Hall of Fame since launching. Even Business 2.0 and Fast Company are among the most recent business magazines that the Reaper predicts to get the axe. While there are many elements that can be attributed to a publication’s close, I want to call attention to a new study from Nielsen//Netratings and Mediamark Research Inc.
By linking data from NetView, Nielsen//NetRatings’ Internet audience measurement service, with corresponding data points from MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer, the data revealed that an average of 83 percent of the visitors to the Web sites of 23 large circulation monthly magazines access those magazines’ content solely online. And it seems as though age doesn’t play a part in which medium is accessed. Of people ages 18-44, 82 percent solely accessed content online and 82 percent of visitors over the age of 45 also only got their magazine content on the Web.
These statistics not only mark a change in innovation online, but it calls for data-driven cross media plans. As more activities go cross channel, how will marketers and advertisers plan for projects and budgets and how can they effectively track responses? Some of the best companies are still tracking convergence manually, not having enough resources or systems to adequately provide analysis.
While the publishing industry is a niche example, it’s still an indication of how business is evolving and converging. Are you prepared to make the necessary changes to keep up with this changing landscape? If not, are you willing to face the scythe?
Most of you can doubtless recall Dr. Pepper's ubiquitous "Be a Pepper" ad campaign of the 1970s (All together now: "I'm a Pepper, He's a Pepper, She's a Pepper, We're a Pepper, Wouldn't You Like to be a Pepper, Too?"). Though the good Doctor officially retired the slogan in the mid-'80s, it's still a mainstay of life, popping up everywhere from sitcoms and movies to, er, blogs ... and the TV ads can, of course, still be viewed on YouTube. (Whatever happened to David Naughton, anyhow?)
Dr. Pepper has since tried out a number of messages (including the less-than-transcendent "Authentic blend of 23 flavors" and the numbingly bland "I Want It All"), none of which have given "Be a Pepper" a run for its money.
That got me thinking: when is it time for a company to change its brand motto? If you've got something that works -- that maybe has even penetrated people's everyday conversation -- should you try to update it at some point, or let it be?
How much are your customers worth to your firm? It's a question many would like to answer, but few actually take the time to really understand. But if you look strategically, often times you've already got the information available to figure it out. A new study from Aberdeen Research we feature in this week's 1to1 Weekly newsletter picked out a few tactics for companies to analyze to learn which customers are MVCs and which are worth "firing."
FedEx is known for absolutely, positively getting packages to their appointed destination overnight. But its more recent focus is to absolutely, positively continue to raise the bar on its customer experience, according to Om Chokriwala, managing director of strategic marketing. During his presentation at the recent Customer Feedback Week, Chokriwala revealed how the company is doing so.
Continue reading "When You Absolutely, Positively Want Loyalty" »
In today’s issue of the Marketing X-Factor newsletter, I wrote the Hot List story about a study published by Pew Research that attempted to draw a portrait of “Generation Next.” The study defined the generation as 18-25 year olds, a group that has also been described using a number of other terms. As a member of the 18-25 demographic, I found the findings to be accurate based on my experience, but I disagreed with defining my generation using the term “Generation Next.”
With the movement toward new channels like social networks, virtual worlds, and mobile rapidly evolving, that brings up the question “How important is email to the future of marketing?”
In light of these new technologies, marketers might consider bypassing email. But anyone who circumvents email is risking a still critical piece of their multichannel marketing and sales strategy. In fact the DMA estimates that commercial email in 2007 is forecast to generate $21.9 billion in U.S. sales. And each dollar spent on email is projected to generate more than $48 in sales.
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog.
“On today’s Internet…amateurism, rather than expertise, is celebrated, even revered....The professional is being replaced by the amateur, the lexicographer by the layperson, the Harvard professor by the unschooled populace.”
This, in case you’re wondering, is a bad thing, according to Andrew Keen’s new book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture” (Doubleday/Currency). And yes, most of it is just as apocalyptic as its subtitle indicates.
Teams win and lose. Players, even those revered by fans, sometimes get traded. There are so many variables in the professional sports business. But for the New Jersey Nets basketball team, the one constant is the customer experience. CEO Brett Yormark acts as host to as many fans and employees as possible during each game, ensuring that the experience is the utmost off the court.
Every day there are millions of people watching sports, game shows, or just about anything on TV and thinking to themselves “I could do a better job than (insert quarterback, contestant, or cable TV show host’s name here).” That used to be the end of the conversation for the couch potato unhappy he never got the shot to live out his dreams. Today, however, some companies would like people to believe that through consumer-created content and the emphasis on user participation, everyone has an equal chance be nationally recognized for something. But do they?
Continue reading "Consumer-Generated Content: All are Equal, but Some are More Equal Than Others" »
I was back in Vegas this week, this time attending the content-packed Customer Feedback Week. Day one kicked off with a stellar presentation by Kip Knight, vice president of marketing for eBay North America. Knight warmed us up with his twist on Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits: the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Customer-Centric Companies.
Continue reading "eBay’s Kip Knight on Customer Centricity" »
This week I've seen the inside of FedEx Kinko's more times than I would have liked. The reason being is I needed to print labels for a large mailing but first needed to do a mail merge from an Excel spreadsheet. Not being well-versed in Excel, I assumed the people who do print for a living would surely know how it's done. They must get this request regulary, I thought.
To my surprise (and dismay) no one at any of the three stores in town knew how to do a mail merge, which resulted in me spending hours behind the counter trying to figure it out with the employees. One man has worked at one of the stores for seven years and still hasn't yet learned this service.
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