September 29, 2008
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In the October issue of the magazine FastTalk, Fast Company interviews six political strategists to learn about how they study what you eat, drive and where you shop - and how this is making them more efficient at predicting how you vote.
The collection and study of data is also the topic of BusinessWeek senior writer Stephen Baker in his newly released book The Numerati.
It turns out that the political message that will get you to the voting booth might, oddly enough, be related to your shopping habits. Politics is tough - we’re not as polarized as one may think after all - nobody wants to talk to a pollster and many of us don’t even have a home phone anymore. But we all eat and buy new clothes.
Thanks to the help of technology, political strategist have now unprecedented access to our actual behavior - what we do vs. what we say we’ll do. That is a game-changing proposition, and one that businesses are only beginning to become aware of and utilize.
If Amazon can use algorithms to predict with some degree of accuracy what I’d like to read and buy on the basis of past purchases, why are so many businesses still grappling with the basics?
As to the date of this writing, many B2Bs are still trying to figure out who their customers are. Although we have become wiser as to the value of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies thanks to Google, it is still the popular search engine that is benefitting from our efforts by serving ads that target our search behavior (but not yet our intention) precisely.
The Internet already guides pricing decisions - before we make any purchases we tend to shop around for best deals and information. Although the final decision is often still made through and with our personal networks - we ask friends and family for recommendations more than we think.
Yet there is room somewhere in there for you to help time-starved customers and prospects choose you.
You may not realize it, but having a blog or social media effort helps your customers self-select. There is much talk about the ROI of social media. One of the benefits to you for having a niche blog, a forum, or hosting a community is that you can focus on providing a refresh on information that is useful and relevant to your customers.
If you’re looking for some ideas on content, monitor what your customers are buying and start from there. Write about related products or services they may not know or think about. Allow them to help each other and discuss your products openly at your site - enable comments, post links to reviews, respond and participate. This may be most valuable on eCommerce sites. Your customers are conducting this kind of research, why not host the information they are seeking in your digital hub?
If Amazon knows about the purchases we make on the site, it is fair to assume that stores also know how much we spend with them and what we buy. Why not use that information to make recommendations on future purchases?
You don’t need to be a large business to learn more about what your customers are seeking, either. In a recent discussion at my blog, Gianpaolo, the owner of a small winery in Italy shared that he is not only openly allowing customer reviews on his site, he is encouraging them:
I wrote on my blog that I wanted to create a tasting panel for my wines. Initially 50 then I increased to 100 people. In order to join the panel, people had to subscribe on a page of my blog that I've prepared. There was only one condition required, to have a blog or website. Even this condition wasn't strict and you could join without a blog if you'd send me an email motivating your decision to join in. The surprise was that the most passionate people were those without a blog and I received fantastic email by people that loved the wines, that didn't have blogs but that were ready to share the tasting with friends and would send email to me with tasting notes to be published on my blog.
The tasting panel has been split in two groups of 50 people, each of which received a random 6 bottles pack with our wines The first group has just started (people have received the wines last monday)and people are publishing their notes on their blogs now. I've asked that the panel ended at the end of this month, so we'll see more on the next days.
We promise that we'll republish all the notes on our blog (linking back to the original post if there is one), as soon as they are available, without altering, editing, censoring anything. The feedback section for each wine is active on our blog and will be there permanently and open to everyone to read and comment at any time about our wines, even outside the tasting panel.
Social media allows you to become more intimate with your customers, to show the personality of your business - and to collect data about what they like and why. In addition, you have the data from the purchases customers have made at your business.
You can add what people say they do to what they actually do - this is intelligence you can use to optimize not just your keywords on the site.
Take that data and learn how to make your offerings better. It also tells you who buys and why they buy, what is different about your business that connects with their taste - and to their values/beliefs, how they see themselves. Most importantly, all this information can give you insights on how to serve your customers better - how to make them happier so they come back for more, and send their friends your way, too.
We’ve talked about privacy here in the past. That remains a concern.
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent
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August 7, 2008
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I’d say that if it were, the question could almost be anything these days. We want, no we demand to exact it from others - colleagues, sometimes spouses, and most definitely companies as represented by their customer service representatives. But do you demand more of yourself?
Let me rephrase, do you enjoy it when others demand more-faster-now of you? Consider this.
Time is your greatest asset - yet it’s available in limited supply. “I didn’t have time,” “there’s only so much time,” “no time like the present.” There’s a reason why these expressions are popular - they are true.
According to Good Will Industries, the most dangerous word in the world is “wait”. When we tell people to wait, the message we are sending is that they are not important. Think about when people are told to wait for the schools to be fixed. Or imagine that you are sitting there and waiting for critical care. If you’ve seen the inside of an ER, you will know what I mean.
So we have time that is fixed and in scarce supply, and we have an aversion to waiting for anything. Do you surf away online when a web site or page do not load quickly? I find that often I do. We also have some history - we know, we assume, that when we call customer service, or go to a customer desk, things will slow down to a crawl after we have already waited for our turn. We are not relishing the thought.
Yet, faster does not mean busier, nor it means sloppy. According to Vince Poscente, it means being open to new ideas and opportunities, being flexible, and responding to change. It also means being focused on your destination, resisting the temptation to drown in unnecessary distractions, subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
For the meaningful to be part of it, you need to add involvement, passion and personal time. It is personal. At Patagonia, there is no separation between work and home. What if time were a resource that offers opportunities to explore your values and accomplish your goals?
What is your authentic purpose? What’s the authentic purpose of your customer service group? How simply, flexibly, and meaningfully can you do that? Imagine what you could accomplish if you allowed your customer facing groups to organize accessibility around destinations, end results, instead of limiting their accessibility around time. I think you might just have more-faster-now.
Valeria Maltoni . Conversation Agent
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July 31, 2008
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You do that without knowing it. You have a favorite restaurant, club, or gym based upon intangibles. You really like it there because it gives you that something extra you have come to expect of that place.
What would you do if that something were to disappear? As businesses face hard times, they may be forced into making tough decisions. A restaurant may stop carrying that red wine you so liked. The local gym has now installed machines to dispense towels.
Relationships, however, are not among the many things that can beautomated. Some of the easy, cost-cutting choices businesses make today will impact their bottom line tomorrow. How do you know which initiatives will save you and which ones will cost you in the long run?
The key is knowing what kind of business you want to be in. If you are in the "offering a place to escape the frantic daily grind" business, your brand delivery must follow your brand communication. Take for example luxury hotels. Why would you charge a premium to give your guests an Internet connection when they are already paying one to stay at your place?
Last year I stayed at an upscale hotel and discovered that not only I had to pay a small fortune each day on the wireless connection, I also needed to pay high fees if I wanted to use the gym. Furthermore, I
would get a discount only if I committed to go three days in a row ormore. You know that if you are attending a conference your schedule maybe at odds with the organizers'. That nixed the proposition for me.
A few years ago we were talking about delighting customers. Today we are lucky if we receive the level of service we paid for. Yet we all know as consumers that the brands we will buy again are those that
deliver on what they promise. Why the disconnect?
Yes, it might be a series of intangibles that keep you there - the reason why you love that place, product or service. When you walk away though, they suddenly become tangible losses for the business that
loses you.
Now think about your business and what sets it apart for your customers. Whatever that is, learn to appreciate it and cultivate it. When you choose what kid of brand your business wants to be and behave
that way, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In case you're wondering why this might be innovative, ask yourself how many businesses do it. It's not old if it hasn't been done!
Valeria Maltoni . Conversation Agent
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June 19, 2008
06:16 am | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Being constantly in contact with people who call or write because they have a problem can be a stressful job. When I gave customer service reps the chance to speak up about their experiences, they talked without inhibitions. Customer conversations can highlight funny moments - and embarrassing ones.
Here’s the skinny:
1. We are very impatient and often expect a resolution before we’ve given them a chance to find out what the problem is. Pity they don’t read minds.
2. We don’t listen very well. Repeating the same stuff a couple of times does not seem to work either.
3. We expect that all will be solved in a nanosecond, even when the problem is complex and beyond our comprehension.
4. Despite all this talk about conversation, we’re still pretty much tuned into one channel: ours.
5. We can be very inappropriate about the details we share on ourselves. Need to know is a beautiful thing.
6. The most discouraging thing is when we don’t believe them or trust them.
7. We sometimes call for really trivial things that we could deal with easily if we took the time. Still, we don’t want to.
8. A forum or online support site often contains more information than any one rep can give us. We call anyway.
9. We don’t let them diagnose the problem. That makes the solution a mismatch if we were wrong.
10. It is sometimes easier to give us advice and point us in a direction than it is to explain that all is well, there is no problem.
11. We have unrealistic expectations of what customer service reps can do for us besides helping with the problem that was the reason for our call.
12. The potential for a shouting match or a rude line is always looming in the background. That makes for an uneasy conversation. They know it, you know it.
13. We all think that all customer service reps know everything there is to know about our use of their services. Depending on the company’s diagnostic tools in place, they may not.
14. The best customer service reps are those who are not afraid to say “I don’t know” and set out to find out. We don’t think so.
15. At least one third of all answers we get are coaxed out from sheer insistence. If we were more patient, we’d get better information.
16. Although they do not cry on the phone with you, they can have some pretty depressing days because of you.
17. We are often already biased towards them because of a past experience with the company they work for.
18. We sometimes expect they solve problems that relate to the products or services offered by other companies.
19. We hang up a lot.
20. They rely on management to make the changes required. We often put them between a rock and a hard place.
21. They know that we will make the time to take customer satisfaction surveys to say how bad the service was, but not take the time to explain how good it was.
On the other hand, we could easily modify this list to make it about them. What does that say about us?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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March 15, 2008
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Customer service and brand marketing are rapidly converging. With the help of social media and courtesy of greater competitive forces, most companies are now finding that the experience of their brand is one of if not the differentiator for their brand. But wait, the experience does not have to be passive on the company side - the story the company reinforces in the minds of its customers counts.
This is valid especially with mature brands where predictability can become a double edged sword. Was Starbucks too much of a good thing? I asked a short two months ago. There is a conversation going on right now on several blogs about how the company could take its brand to the next level.
Although the company may call this a “brand conversation”, our customers just think of it as a cup of coffee and a chat worth going to that specific store and paying for. The brand is a by-product of that experience - no more and no less. Let’s not over-think it.
John Moore of Brand Autopsy, author of Tribal Knowledge, sums up this lesson for any business nicely in his book:
1. Be passionate about your business
2. Educate customers on how and why they should appreciate what you offer
3. Create a welcoming place, an experience easy to remember
Every word counts, every action counts, attitude counts. This is where I see plenty of opportunity for businesses to move back into customer service. The whole business, not just a lucky few on the front lines.
Recently Starbucks closed 7,000 of its U.S. locations for three hours so it could provide espresso excellence training to employees. Was that valuable to us?
I believe we become repeat purchasers of those products and services that have a good ratio between price and value. Yet, the most valuable of all brand experiences happen through direct conversations. These are the “in the moment” instances in which a company has the opportunity to either make or break your day, to choose whether it will be difficult and sloppy, or if it will make its actions count. Actions matter.
Valeria Maltoni . Conversation Agent . Philadelphia, PA . www.ConversationAgent.com
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February 21, 2008
06:59 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
You do: your product, your people, your process and your expertise. THEN it's time for the customer. This kind of thinking will kill the company you work for and it will make your job meaningless.
This is not simply the contrarian view of the old axiom “the customer always comes first”, it’s a reality of new business. Start any venture and, depending on the industry, you will have several competitors in the space of a few years, if not months. In technology and online businesses, we are talking a much shorter time frame -- because in some cases, the upside can be so great.
Choice is everywhere, it’s a force of nature in today’s marketplace. So while you’re focusing on you, your competitors are taking your customers away. It gets worse when you try to confuse, obfuscate and hide the truth -- you don’t have products and services that your customers want and need. It doesn't need to be that way.
Most companies think in terms of pounds of product or service, not ideas. Creativity is aimed only at the many ways in which the item should be sold rather than all the other areas it could touch, including the development of the product and service itself. Why do ideas matter?
Because they are the game changing parts. What makes you take a long lead over competition and build a sustainable business. Most importantly, because good ideas are market-driven and usually wrap around a customer need.
Yes, your people are important. How you select, recruit and retain talent is more important now than it ever was. With the right processes in place, you can do things better, faster, more efficiently -- if they are the right things. And your expertise matters, as long as you remember that listening is sometimes the best move you can ever make.
There’s not going to be a perfect balance to the time sheet. In the end, what comes last, when you get to it, should be placed right up front. Think of the customer first, think in terms of ideas. The rest follows.
Valeria Maltoni . Conversation Agent . Philadelphia, PA . <a href="http://www.conversationagent.com">www.conversationagent.com</a></em>
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January 31, 2008
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As there are may types of customers, there are as many ways companies and businesses choose to communicate with them. How and when you talk with your customers depends on your disposition towards them and shows up in your bottom line results.
When you’re well disposed and in listening mode, your customers will respond to your stance accordingly. If your focus is to provide value to them at every touch point, when you choose customers over what is convenient to you, then you will probably hear some positive comments and some suggestions to do better. You will hear them because your are listening. And that content will fuel your marketing intelligence for future action.
Some things you might learn during those conversations:
1. There are better processes you can put in place to deliver what your customers want in a differentiated manner during your sales cycle. Your personalization efforts are relevant and timed well.
2. Mary, Bob and Sue had good suggestions during the qualitative research. You also integrated that with quantitative data and are now going to save a bundle on that new product while delivering greater convenience to them. You take the opportunity to delight those customers with the news.
3. While you were selling the item for one use, you uncovered a completely new market thanks to an ingenious engineer who wanted to help his wife. Maybe you ask the engineer to be a testimonial for the new product extension.
This is all learning you incorporate in your marketing activities, refining them over time and getting an increasingly higher number of hits thanks also to referrals and word of mouth.
If instead you think that customers really do not know what they want, that you know better. When you ignore their requests and comments, all you hear are customer complaints. Sure you’d probably like to have the occasional testimonial to share with other customers, but your communication remains one way. That content is not fueling your marketing activities and you are back to square one every time.
Your marketing may look like this:
1. You spend most of your time focusing on the technology that underlies your product production. This does not depend on your customer’s buying cycle, because you are not taking their feedback into account. This is something that internally focused companies tend to do.
2. Since the intelligence you have on customers is that coming to you through complaints, you go and try to sell harder, sometimes cutting corners to grab market share.
It’s hard to stay profitable when your communication style is the second one. The only thing that will get tested here may be your customers’ patience.
Take a look at your communication style, and you’ll know what you think about your customers. Have you been on the receiving end of one or both styles?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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January 31, 2008
06:45 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
As there are may types of customers, there are as many ways companies and businesses choose to communicate with them. How and when you talk with your customers depends on your disposition towards them and shows up in your bottom line results.
When you’re well disposed and in listening mode, your customers will respond to your stance accordingly. If your focus is to provide value to them at every touch point, when you choose customers over what is convenient to you, then you will probably hear some positive comments and some suggestions to do better. You will hear them because your are listening. And that content will fuel your marketing intelligence for future action.
Some things you might learn during those conversations:
1. There are better processes you can put in place to deliver what your customers want in a differentiated manner during your sales cycle. Your personalization efforts are relevant and timed well.
2. Mary, Bob and Sue had good suggestions during the qualitative research. You also integrated that with quantitative data and are now going to save a bundle on that new product while delivering greater convenience to them. You take the opportunity to delight those customers with the news.
3. While you were selling the item for one use, you uncovered a completely new market thanks to an ingenious engineer who wanted to help his wife. Maybe you ask the engineer to be a testimonial for the new product extension.
This is all learning you incorporate in your marketing activities, refining them over time and getting an increasingly higher number of hits thanks also to referrals and word of mouth.
If instead you think that customers really do not know what they want, that you know better. When you ignore their requests and comments, all you hear are customer complaints. Sure you’d probably like to have the occasional testimonial to share with other customers, but your communication remains one way. That content is not fueling your marketing activities and you are back to square one every time.
Your marketing may look like this:
1. You spend most of your time focusing on the technology that underlies your product production. This does not depend on your customer’s buying cycle, because you are not taking their feedback into account. This is something that internally focused companies tend to do.
2. Since the intelligence you have on customers is that coming to you through complaints, you go and try to sell harder, sometimes cutting corners to grab market share.
It’s hard to stay profitable when your communication style is the second one. The only thing that will get tested here may be your customers’ patience.
Take a look at your communication style, and you’ll know what you think about your customers. Have you been on the receiving end of one or both styles?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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January 24, 2008
07:05 am | 0 recommendations | 4 comments
Advertising is our culture. In Twenty Ads that Shook The World, James Twitchell states that consumers today are more familiar with the language of advertising than that of history. You don’t believe me? Take the test. Here are a few words you ought to know about from your school curriculum. See if you recognize them and know their reference:
vector
biochemical pathways
complex sentence
Herman Melville
federalism
ampersand
Hoover Dam
Neville Chamberlain
Reign of Terror
paradox
installment buying
Ferdinand Magellan
Now look at another list. See if you recognize these words and expressions:
Just do it
Mmmm Mmmm good
Have it your way
57 varieties
Kills bugs dead
Because I’m worth it
Still going
We try harder
Be all that you can be
Snap, Crackle, Pop
Tony the Tiger
Quality is Job 1
How did you do? I don’t know about the first list, but I am confident that you got 100 percent right the second one. If as customers we remember the headlines of the most advertised brands, we surely also remember their promises. We speak the language of advertising. Do you?
Do you deliver on your promises? The classic example is Fedex. From their site:
“FedEx is known for its award-winning advertising and promotions. The reliability, speed, leadership, excellence and global reach that characterize FedEx are reflected in our sponsorships and emphasized in our advertising.”
Relax, it’s FedEx is the slogan. And they do deliver. I cannot remember a day when there was no FedEx -- what did we do with packages that had to get there?
Wal-Mart promises (and delivers) low prices. $18,036,870,062.49 and growing. This is the amount of money Wal-Mart has saved American families since January 1, 2008.
Apple promises something, too, but it's not explicit: coolness. If you look at all the touch points with customers -- the packaging, the product design, the web site layout and architecture, the little manuals included with the products, down to the white apple stickers included in the box. It all says you are cool. And so you are.
We’ve been trained to speak the language of advertising and we are sticklers for following up with you on your promises. Do you keep them?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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January 24, 2008
07:05 am | 0 recommendations | 4 comments
Advertising is our culture. In Twenty Ads that Shook The World, James Twitchell states that consumers today are more familiar with the language of advertising than that of history. You don’t believe me? Take the test. Here are a few words you ought to know about from your school curriculum. See if you recognize them and know their reference:
vector
biochemical pathways
complex sentence
Herman Melville
federalism
ampersand
Hoover Dam
Neville Chamberlain
Reign of Terror
paradox
installment buying
Ferdinand Magellan
Now look at another list. See if you recognize these words and expressions:
Just do it
Mmmm Mmmm good
Have it your way
57 varieties
Kills bugs dead
Because I’m worth it
Still going
We try harder
Be all that you can be
Snap, Crackle, Pop
Tony the Tiger
Quality is Job 1
How did you do? I don’t know about the first list, but I am confident that you got 100 percent right the second one. If as customers we remember the headlines of the most advertised brands, we surely also remember their promises. We speak the language of advertising. Do you?
Do you deliver on your promises? The classic example is Fedex. From their site:
“FedEx is known for its award-winning advertising and promotions. The reliability, speed, leadership, excellence and global reach that characterize FedEx are reflected in our sponsorships and emphasized in our advertising.”
Relax, it’s FedEx is the slogan. And they do deliver. I cannot remember a day when there was no FedEx -- what did we do with packages that had to get there?
Wal-Mart promises (and delivers) low prices. $18,036,870,062.49 and growing. This is the amount of money Wal-Mart has saved American families since January 1, 2008.
Apple promises something, too, but it's not explicit: coolness. If you look at all the touch points with customers -- the packaging, the product design, the web site layout and architecture, the little manuals included with the products, down to the white apple stickers included in the box. It all says you are cool. And so you are.
We’ve been trained to speak the language of advertising and we are sticklers for following up with you on your promises. Do you keep them?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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