Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it's one of the few that doesn't involve commercialism and religion--just family, friends, and bountiful food, paying a fitting tribute to the American ideals of productivity and prosperity.
Along with eggnog, Christmas sales in October, and layoffs, there's another tradition at this time of the year: the turkey shoot. But at 1to1, the turkey shoot doesn't have much to do with slaughtering birds; instead, it's about taking a fond look back at some of the greatest fiascos, customer service-related and otherwise, of the previous eleven months.
I started the great 1to1 Turkey Shoot tradition a year ago (and had plenty to work with, I might add), but 2008 seems to be shaping up as just about the turkiest yet. So let's get shooting...
It was supposed to be a great marketing idea. Give everyone in America a free Dr. Pepper if the supposed Guns 'n Roses album "Chinese Democracy" ever came out. The album finally was released, so Dr. Pepper had to make good on its promise. Unfortunately, the execution of its plan didn't work out so well, which may harm its brand affinity in the end.
Here's irony for you: A website dedicated to helping businesspeople connect makes it difficult to connect with their staff for support--and, unbelievably, for sales.
In my role as Adjunct Professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, I have the opportunity and the honor to work with talented faculty and exceptional students. It's always a pleasure to me to get to North Carolina.
After a recent session with MBA students, my colleague Professor Christine Moorman and I received the following question from a class participant: What is the value of segmenting customers and devising a profile of customer needs when you are a start-up and have "no customers?"
Continue reading "A Question for Start-Ups: Why Will You Have Customers?" »
Why do people shop online? Convenience? No sales tax? Bigger selection? Discounted prices? Maybe the better question would be why people continue to shop offline. For some, window shopping is like a hobby. I'm sure many of us have visited a mall for no apparent reason other than to kill some time and maybe purchase something as an afterthought. But it's that impulse buy that retailers love. It's the magazine rack at the grocery store checkout, the new video game endcap display in the electronics store, and the rows of candy just about everywhere that stimulates our visual senses and makes us forget about checking the price or asking "do I really need that?" Until now, window shopping and impulse buying were strictly offline activities. But finally the web has found a way for us to forget about what search term brought us to a page, and simply browse.
"The greatest competition you'll ever face is you."
Words of wisdom to live by from Bruce Jenner. The gold medal decathlon winner in the 1976 Summer Olympics keynoted the Sage Summit yesterday in Denver and inspired the audience to turn the current pressures into a new level of commitment to its personal best.
A day hardly passes without news of significant layoffs at some financial, publishing, or automaking concern, which set me to wondering how companies can maintain employee morale in such a climate. There seems to be no end of advice out there.
This is the question facing politicians today. But it also represents a case study in the conflict between short-term costs and long-term benefits - probably the most difficult conflict faced by businesses and governments today.
If we bail them out, then we definitely avoid a lot of pain over the next year, as thousands of workers retain their jobs, as auto assembly lines keep ordering parts from suppliers, and as thousands of car dealers continue to have uninterrupted supplies of inventory. But using taxpayer dollars to save these misfiring corporate giants today will almost certainly cost us a great deal more in the long term. For a variety of reasons, the business models that GM and Ford are operating make them completely uncompetitive with rivals like Toyota, Nissan, and even Mercedes - all of whom also employ thousands of other Americans in their U.S.-based manufacturing facilities and dealerships.
If you want a terrific explanation of some of the fatal and probably irreconcilable flaws in the very structure of the GM and Ford businesses, when compared to their most immediate competitors, see this Wall Street Journal article by NYU Distinguished Research Scholar Michael Levine.
Continue reading "Should GM and Ford Be Bailed Out or Not?" »
Last week I had an opportunity to talk to Don Peppers about the current state of the economy and what businesses can do about it. Granted, we agree that some of the issues are out of businesses' hands, due to the stock market and the dollar's roller coaster ride. But, a lack of customer centricity certainly played a part in where we are today, he says, and he cautions that future moves -- like the potential auto industry bailout -- should be centered around building customer lifetime value, not just green cars, in order to secure long-term success.
Continue reading "Don Peppers Puts Financial Turmoil Into Customer Perspective" »
These days, the Nets basketball organization is looking more like a full-service career management company.
Continue reading "The Nets Score Points With Unemployed Fans" »
I recently came across yet another example of history repeating itself--and not in a good way. We've all heard the stories of CRM failures caused by companies rushing to plug in the technology to fix a problem instead of first understanding and crafting a CRM strategy.
Well, one of the current areas of "Let's just do it" (yes, there are several) is Net Promoter Score (NPS). Now, whether you buy in to the concept of NPS or not isn't the point. The point is, if you're going to use it--or any other customer strategy or supporting tool for that matter--you must first understand how it applies to your business to do it right.
"Now more than ever" is often one of those empty-headed phrases that companies use to engender interest and/or excitement about themselves. It always gets me to wondering just how useful a given product or service actually was in the past, and just why it's so much more relevant "now." (It also unfailingly reminds me of the 1992 movie The Player, whose studio loudly boasted "Movies: Now More Than Ever," with no one ever considering what that actually means.)
But lately I've come to see that the phrase can actually have some value, as in: Now more than ever, you need to engage your customers.
The new issue of 1to1 Magazine features a story by Jeremy Nedelka about how companies can learn more about their prospects and customers by checking out social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. I think these sites are great for networking and connecting with friends, but there is a line that needs to be drawn between personal and professional information. What's the etiquette?
The recipe for customer centricity has a long list of ingredients that companies use to varying degrees. But no matter what mix companies choose, there are two elements that are essential: trust and culture.
Continue reading "The Two Key Elements of Customer Orientation" »
Did you watch CNN's election coverage last night and wonder how the network sent correspondent Jessica Yellin from Obama's Chicago headquarters to the New York broadcasting center, to stand in front of Wolf Blitzer?
Despite various national polls showing double-digit leads for Barack Obama, we awake (and, one hopes, vote) today not really knowing for sure who our next president will be. Part of this is due to the television news media's wanting maximum viewers tonight, of course, but there's also the desire to avoid the unsettling spectre of another "Dewey Defeats Truman" debacle.
While predictive analytics from firms like SPSS -- whose senior vice president, market strategy Colin Shearer told me not long ago was "absolutely" looking at the Obama/McCain question -- are nothing to sneeze at, they don't capture the imagination like Halloween masks and Baskin-Robbins ice cream can.
Yep, as John Mellencamp would put it: this is ourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr country.
I know, it's way too early. I've still got gobs of Halloween candy leftover, and the skeleton is still on my front door. But now that we're in November many people's thoughts turn to holiday shopping. And with consumers guarding their wallets a lot closer these days, retailers need to think critically about their customer service strategies for the holiday season.
