October 18, 2007
06:50 am | 0 recommendations | 12 comments
Tell the truth, do you look forward to filling out and responding to surveys? They are one of the most invasive forms of one-way communication. From the exit interview to the “how did we do?” after your car has been serviced, surveys seem to be the only time a company explicitly requests your opinion – when you’re on your way out.
What if instead of having surveys we had conversations? Would the attrition rate improve?
I was raised in a family with four women and I can tell you that it can be done. You can have multiple conversations, even at the same time. And your customers soon will begin to be of that generation used to Twitter as they answer email and text messages.
What is lacking in the traditional survey is one very important component – the feedback loop. Do your customers know that you’re listening? “Thank you for your feedback” is the bare-bone minimum and possibly an excuse for not taking the time to have a conversation. Have you ever performed on stage with a band? It is nearly impossible to play without receiving the proper sound feedback.
Plus, with a conversation, you can learn so much more. If customers are not talking with you about how you can improve your service and product, you can rest assured that they will be talking to everyone they know about it. Often that is bad news as unhappy customers tend to speak to more people about their misadventure.
Do you take the time to fill out the survey when you have a bad experience? Chances are you don’t, you just walk away quietly and never come back. If you do, then the company better contact you relatively fast. We do live in an instant world, yet we will understand things when explained. Remember -- there’s nothing worse than asking someone to tell you how you did, then provide no feedback loop, especially when they’re telling you need to fix something. The floor is littered with companies that did not even try, and now is the blogosphere.
Your customers’ time is becoming their most precious asset; use it judiciously by conveying you value it. Here are other reasons why a conversation is a much better format to capture feedback:
1. People might have a hard time understanding your questions.
2. People with negative comments may not take the time to articulate it well enough so you can take action.
3. Paper and phone do not capture non verbals and behavior is mostly not verbalized, it’s just done.
4. It’s more natural, people will not tell you what they think you want to hear if they do not realize you are asking. They will just talk.
There is a time and place for surveys. However, we find more and more that raw information that has not been guided by us may yield greater opportunity for insights – and insights lead to action. What’s your take?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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October 11, 2007
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Quickly, where do you go to learn more before making a major purchase? Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of U.S. News & World Report, is betting the publication's survival that it's online. Most Americans do research online before making a major purchase reported The New Your Times in a recent conversation with Zuckerman.
As the story in the NYT details, Zuckerman had brought to life his vision of a deeper level of analysis and practical "how to" advice in the pages of the periodical. Now he's back to reinvent the format for online consumption. Is it too little, too late?
The question of reinvention for traditional media and print publications going online is not one to be trifled with – it's become a necessity. Yet, many are joining an already crowded space. In the case of U.S. News & World Report, they have some major catching up to do in one main measurement that drives online traffic – authority.
To be successful, U.S. News has to find a broad audience that is not comfortable with magazines aimed at enthusiasts, and wants some of the nuts-and-bolts practicality of Consumer Reports, but without the online subscription charges.
Maybe that is not all there is to it. To succeed, they will also need to show differentiation from successful publications that already work really hard *with* consumers to deliver that very "how to" advice and "news you can use". I recently published an interview with Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani. The biggest aha moment she shared:
The one big evolution we had at Lifehacker was moving from an editor post-only format, to enabling users to post comments on stories. When that happened, the site just came alive!
The biggest challenge I see for U.S. News is to reach the kind of authority and traffic levels it needs to be a sustainable and successful online publication. The strategy it is pursuing will need to be followed by strong execution – they are hiring quite a few staff to move forward the online publication. It will also need to aim its advertising sales at the right audience.
According to their online media kit, the audience profile is very broad
· 11,000 (000) + total readers, of which 55% is 25-54. This is their true circulation.
· Median age is 47. That means the unseen reader bubble is on the older end.
· Readers are mostly male, but women make the majority of all car purchase decisions.
If what they’re after is to beat the subscription model that Consumer Report uses, they might need to work really hard to sell ads to pay for those reports themselves. Will their strategy pay off? Would you go to U.S. News & World Report for consumer purchasing tips? How much (online) authority will they need to pull it off?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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October 4, 2007
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There are some experiences that are so ordinary that they could make excellent material for a Seinfeld episode. In other words, it's about the little things that can make or break your day. Take dry cleaning.
Last week after I picked up my clothes from the local store, I noticed that my blouse was wrapped in the same style they use for men's shirts. I need to make an aside here – have you noticed that even here women are treated differently? Compare dry cleaning costs between quite similar garments like shirts and you will see that we shell out twice the money to cover the expense.
There it was, a name written in ink on the inside of the back collar instead of the stapled number I usually find on my garments. Yet the price told me they knew it was a woman's garment. Having a name written on the collar reminded me of summer camp and made me look harder at the laundering job. The collar could have definitely used better cleaning. I took the blouse back to the store.
After a very short demonstration of my problem with the job and a request to also take care to delete the black ink while at it, the owner agreed to redo the work so none of it would show and in fact volunteered that it was a bad mistake. On my way I passed another dry cleaner, a big discount store that opened a couple of years ago and is widely used because of its rock bottom prices. Would they have been so accommodating, I wondered?
The garment was ready for my pick up one day later and it was perfect – not a trace on the collar and freshly cleaned at no additional cost. Accidents and mistakes do happen in business – the way you handle what happens afterwards can make the difference between retaining your customers, even when they spend a little more, and seeing them go to the competitor.
Today, there are enough people doing what you do and offering you kind of service. Customers can choose to walk across the street (literally) and take their business elsewhere. Have you been available to a conversation with them? Do you stick to their meaning of service?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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September 27, 2007
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It’s months until the first primary, and they’re everywhere.
Campaign ads. You’ve probably already seen them: On TV, in newspapers, and plastered across your favorite websites. Thanks to the rise of social media, you’ll even have to wade through snarky political ads while you’re searching for that video of the Britney Guy.
2008 is likely to be the biggest-spending election yet. Why would the candidates be spending so much, so far in advance of the first vote? Money is going to talk in 2008. According to this article by The Washington Post, at the tune of hundreds of millions, well beyond the cap imposed for accepting public funding. And thus the current race and ad spending spree.
The good citizens of Ohio are getting an eyeful and earful of political ads. According to USA Today, Iowa Leads in 2008 Campaign Ads. The ads pitches may vary; the purpose is one and only one – to raise greater amounts of funds for the respective candidates campaign war chests. The ads competing for the public attention may be many, the audience for the ads is just one at the moment – campaign contributors, donors, and paying supporters.
The ultimate purpose may well be to demonstrate the candidate’s viability and earn the party endorsement for the final run. Positioning and branding are at work here. Just like what happens inside organizations.
There are entire advertising campaigns run for the benefit of the company employees; they are the prime customers. Talent retention, internal realignment, consolidation of business lines after a merger or an acquisition, or restoring confidence in the company’s leadership – those are some examples of why it’s done.
External brand awareness and publicity are nice added benefits as may be an improvement in customer service due to greater happiness and fulfillment on the job. Granted, these are necessary ingredients for the success of your business. Until you fix the money part you need to complete the race – in this case the juice/human energy -- you may have no race at all against your competition.
Next time you hear or see an ad, ask yourself – who benefits?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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September 20, 2007
06:35 am | 0 recommendations | 6 comments
It’s 2004 you are Dell computers and you’re king of the world. But to be frank, you were also a bit boring. A year ago, Dells had the reputation as the cheap, utilitarian PC that you buy when price is everything. Dell was the ultimate commodity brand – serviceable, cost-effective, and a little dull. Along comes HP. In the course of a couple of years, HP using superior retail channels muscled past Dell to capture the number one position in the consumer PC marketplace.
So how does Dell react?
With a change in leadership – Michael Dell taking the rains of the company again and he is talking about taking a long term view of the business he helped launch. One response was to begin selling Dell through traditional retail channels. Another was to start listening to what customers are really saying about their products.
That’s when Dell turned to social media.
My conversation with Dell began after the publication of the Top Ten Reasons why your customer service fails in early July. Richard Binhammer in the corporate communications group at Dell sent me an email to volunteer his experience in using social media.
If you recall, one of my points, #7 to be exact, was that your product needs help. And I know that many have felt Dell computers and support have not lived up to their promises. That is certainly a great place to start – build something that customers want and need.
A bit of background --
With the creation of Direct2Dell a year ago Richard and colleague John Pope also embarked on an "outreach" initiative to have conversations with bloggers.
a) On one side, the conversations were about Dell the company, products, business model, and corporate reputation – often drawing assistance from "subject matter experts"
b) They used a "swat" team of “the best and brightest” tech support folks to solve technical and customer service issues as they learned about them on the other.
Here’s an example of one of the very complicated consumer conversations which Richard entered on behalf of Dell. It has since ended in a direct exchange between the unhappy customer and Dell. This is an example of a company using social media in its purest sense.
In an interview with The Buzz Bin writer Geoff Livingston, chief Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca talked about what’s next. In it he stated:
Much of the content [in Direct2Dell] is Dell-centric because many people in the community want to know what Dell is doing on certain fronts. They sometimes relate to larger industry issues, but from a Dell perspective. It really depends how the community and conversations evolve.
My experience with Richard has given me reason to believe that at least on the social media side, Dell is quite serious about its efforts. The last exchange we had was on a Sunday as I was writing this post. How many work emails do you reply to on a weekend? As for the company’s future plans, we’re starting to see Michael Dell making good on his promise to rethink the way the company does business.
Where there is conversation, there is an opportunity for meeting of the minds and forward movement on action. Dell is embracing social media in all its messiness. It’s a brave experiment, which may pay off in significant improvements to their product and thus their market position in the future.
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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September 20, 2007
06:35 am | 0 recommendations | 6 comments
It’s 2004 you are Dell computers and you’re king of the world. But to be frank, you were also a bit boring. A year ago, Dells had the reputation as the cheap, utilitarian PC that you buy when price is everything. Dell was the ultimate commodity brand – serviceable, cost-effective, and a little dull. Along comes HP. In the course of a couple of years, HP using superior retail channels muscled past Dell to capture the number one position in the consumer PC marketplace.
So how does Dell react?
With a change in leadership – Michael Dell taking the rains of the company again and he is talking about taking a long term view of the business he helped launch. One response was to begin selling Dell through traditional retail channels. Another was to start listening to what customers are really saying about their products.
That’s when Dell turned to social media.
My conversation with Dell began after the publication of the Top Ten Reasons why your customer service fails in early July. Richard Binhammer in the corporate communications group at Dell sent me an email to volunteer his experience in using social media.
If you recall, one of my points, #7 to be exact, was that your product needs help. And I know that many have felt Dell computers and support have not lived up to their promises. That is certainly a great place to start – build something that customers want and need.
A bit of background --
With the creation of Direct2Dell a year ago Richard and colleague John Pope also embarked on an "outreach" initiative to have conversations with bloggers.
a) On one side, the conversations were about Dell the company, products, business model, and corporate reputation – often drawing assistance from "subject matter experts"
b) They used a "swat" team of “the best and brightest” tech support folks to solve technical and customer service issues as they learned about them on the other.
Here’s an example of one of the very complicated consumer conversations which Richard entered on behalf of Dell. It has since ended in a direct exchange between the unhappy customer and Dell. This is an example of a company using social media in its purest sense.
In an interview with The Buzz Bin writer Geoff Livingston, chief Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca talked about what’s next. In it he stated:
Much of the content [in Direct2Dell] is Dell-centric because many people in the community want to know what Dell is doing on certain fronts. They sometimes relate to larger industry issues, but from a Dell perspective. It really depends how the community and conversations evolve.
My experience with Richard has given me reason to believe that at least on the social media side, Dell is quite serious about its efforts. The last exchange we had was on a Sunday as I was writing this post. How many work emails do you reply to on a weekend? As for the company’s future plans, we’re starting to see Michael Dell making good on his promise to rethink the way the company does business.
Where there is conversation, there is an opportunity for meeting of the minds and forward movement on action. Dell is embracing social media in all its messiness. It’s a brave experiment, which may pay off in significant improvements to their product and thus their market position in the future.
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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September 13, 2007
06:42 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
Anita Roddick died this week, leaving a tremendous legacy -- the creation and establishment of a small brand that reshaped cosmetic retailing, firstly in the UK and then globally. She anticipated the values of her customers, super served them and never wavered. Her success followed naturally.
The Body Shop grew from one store to 1,980 serving over 77 million customers in 50 different markets, 25 languages and 12 time zones. In the process, the stores offered fun, novelty and excitement. The business became an example of responsible and ethical trading and, through Ms. Roddick, gained and developed a voice.
The message was heard not only in the beauty columns and glossy magazines but all the way to the major business and financial institutions around the world after the company went public in 1984. Ms. Roddick believed in the power to do good and communicated that commitment in The Body Shop's mission statement, "To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change."
She had the reputation of a fearless and challenging businesswoman who believed in putting forth solutions. One of the vehicles for those conversations on environmental concerns is The Body Shop Community Trade initiatives, which made fair or community trade relationships more mainstream with 42 projects in 26 countries and aiming to develop more.
"How can I bring values into an industry that is certainly not values-laden?" That is the question she posed in her biography. She inspired many to do something. Her business transparency in the sourcing of the products' ingredients was a smart move and her insight as to corporations needing to open their doors to consumer power voluntarily were both ahead of the times.
Maybe that belief came from being an entrepreneur at heart. Dame Roddick, as she was called, talked about how that is something you cannot teach – how do you teach to be an outsider and "march to a different drumbeat"? However, there are certain qualities common to entrepreneurs; among them is the ability to be a great storyteller.
The Body Shop has been defining the customer experience by telling a different story – one of vision, responsibility, and care. By doing that, they have turned an idea into reality; people and customers come first. Here's to the hope that The New Academy of Business, a masters degree course at Bath University, which she helped launch in 1997 with the aim of reforming business education for the new century will contribute to carrying on those ideals.
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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September 6, 2007
06:50 am | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
My last post here at Fast Company stated that customers should be in charge of their data. Two days ago, I discovered that someone with a lot of time of their hands had scraped information about me from different sources and posted it behind a password on a site posing as a social network.
Peek You is apparently building a lot of profiles that way. They must be. They advertise 50,397,199 profiles online – I do wonder if the owners of that data even know that their information is in there. From many of the inquiries I made, it seems that others had found their profiles also scraped from entries in places like MySpace.
I sent an inquiry to the only contact I could find at the site, asking how my information came to appear there. So far I have received no response. The disturbing news on the site is that anyone can add or edit a profile for someone else. This is the worse kind of social network; the one someone else joins you in without your knowing.
It was bound to happen. We’ve all been focusing on the little pieces of paper from banks and other institutions spelling out their commitment to our privacy and all of a sudden, social networks are opening their doors to search engines and we cannot remember if we saw any privacy settings on the site we signed up for. Facebook will be opening the doors to search engines in what is a further step of erosion in personal privacy.
Stefanie Olsen has a pretty extensive and sobering article at ZD Net on Rapleaf. According to Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, "The sites appear to be cool, but what lurks underneath is a powerful force designed to stealthily observe and collect data about you, and develop a marketing campaign to get you to behave the way they want."
To the concerns posed about people's privacy rights, Rapleaf's Web 2.0 investor Jeff Clavier says: get over it. The information is already out there -- the site is just aggregating it. To me that is the wrong answer, especially in an age where consumers are becoming more and more sensitized to identity theft and security issues.
I was glad to see that at least one company decided against using a service such as Rapleaf/TrustFuse to cross reference users’ data. iLike CEO Ali Partovi was quoted to say that "One of the reasons we decided not to work with them is because it would violate our privacy policy. Our privacy policy wouldn't allow us to give a third party access to our e-mail database."
We live in the age of conversation, in an era were transparency and authenticity have become more than buzz words – they are an ambition and a yearning. Your customers have been pushing back on interruption marketing for years by deleting those spam emails and the newsletters they did not sign up to receive.
Now you make them police their own online profiles. Is that how you plan to begin building relationships? Let me go way out on a limb here and declare it for everyone to read – your customers’ privacy is non negotiable. You lose that trust, you’re done.
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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August 30, 2007
06:42 am | 0 recommendations | 6 comments
Yesterday, Plaxo launched its new online data aggregator. Pulse let’s you move your data from one platform to another. Joseph Smarr and John McCrea of Plaxo talked about the technology and portability on the Scoble Show v/blog (25’+ minutes). While the technical speak and passion around microformating eluded me, one immediate benefit is that with this product the person in charge of you data is, well you.
The idea behind Plaxo is so obvious you'd think someone would have done it long ago. Plaxo helps you round up all that data you've been entering in your various social networks move it around as you wish. Why should you be forced to keep each of these updated on their own? In other words, you can move your contacts, calendar information, and other data out of Outlook for example, onto other platforms like Google, Yahoo, even your cell phone, and other applications like social networks.
This may sound a bit too advanced for you from the technical side. It is for me. Philosophically this is a giant step in the right direction – the one pointing to the customer being in charge. Let’s look at an example to bring the concept home. Farhad Manjoo on the Machinist Tech Blog writes the reason why he’s not moving from Netflix to Blockbuster, even though he’s been quite sold on the latter:
But the main reason I'm sticking with Netflix is much simpler: I can't leave. Over the years at Netflix, I've built up a queue of 360 movies, and I've rated nearly 700. These ratings are important to me; they represent a history of my movie watching, and I've spent many cumulative hours compiling them. I've long thought of these ratings as my own data -- data that I have the rights over -- but according to Netflix, I'm not allowed to take them with me when I leave. The only way to transfer my queue and my ratings from Netflix to Blockbuster -- and from Blockbuster to Netflix -- is by hand: I've got to manually redo everything, representatives of both services told me.
In other words, his data is not his; it’s locked inside the company’s Web site. “The data that people put into Netflix is ‘proprietary’ information,” says Steve Swasey, a spokesman for Netflix. Later in his post, Manjoo shares that Blockbuster shares the same practice. The idea is that you’ve enjoyed the ride, so to speak, so why would you want your money back?
Help me understand here, the logic seems to escape me. You paid for the movies; all you did was offer the company a review gratis. You, the customer, helped them, the company, rank its movies by writing a comment. What if the company decided to trust its customers with their own data? What do you think would happen? What would you like to happen?
This is an important point to continue the trend towards a true conversation with customers. Who owns your data?
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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August 23, 2007
06:29 am | 0 recommendations | 4 comments
It may sound simplistic and inefficient, especially in an age when we’d like to eliminate people from the equation, at least the high cost factor of having people involved. Yet, all the enrollment programs will not work if once your new customers are in they find no reason to stay. And there is eventually a finite number of customers to woo.
I worked alongside customer service professionals I wanted to have as friends – courteous, prompt, and with seemingly an over abundant reservoir of smarts and empathy. In B2B, customer service may either be a key component of your supply chain --- taking orders and following up with your customers when billing -- or an important team that supports your ongoing sales efforts -- making sure people know about current programs they may need and want.
What about B2C? At least one company is bucking the trend towards automation and email by placing importance on talk. As The New York Times reported recently, Netflix has set out to provide its customers a friendly and personal experience by phone and gain loyalty while staunching potential defections. In this case, service representatives have the ability to reach out and help retain that customer.
“Autumn Daste, 30, who has worked at the call center for two months, managed to halt one potential defection recently when a call was routed to her from a polite but unhappy woman in New Jersey who had not received any movies recently.
Ms. Daste called up the member’s account information on her screen, including the type of service to which she subscribed, the frequency with which the member ordered movies, the number of months she had been a member, the number of times she had contacted Netflix in the past and a brief description of what those calls had been about.
Ms. Daste pointed out, ever so politely, that no movies had been sent to her because the woman’s queue was empty. “There’s nothing on your list that’s of interest to me,” said the caller, referring to the 80,000 movies Netflix carries.
Undeterred, Ms. Daste suggested they find a movie together. The woman mentioned one she had been wanting to see for a while, an Indian film titled “Fire.” Within seconds, Ms. Daste had it on her screen. She added it to the customer’s queue and told her she would be receiving it shortly. Customer pleased. Disaster averted.”
This story highlights the fact that the real reason for dissatisfaction may remain unknown to a company until it’s too late. If you’re on the phone with a customer, you have the opportunity to figure out what’s really going on and in Netflix’s case, the ability to do something about it.
With the competition from Blockbuster heating up, the differentiating point cannot be price alone. It has to be service. So it is, and having a real person on the other end of a phone line may well be the most delightful news of your day. Where people may quit indifferent to bad experiences easily, it might be a bit harder to walk away from a friendly person who is trying to help you.
Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com
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