What’s the Value in Customer Experience?
Posted on 22. Feb, 2010 by jtheim
Why have frequent travelers – those who’ve worked for years to earn miles and build status – walked away from United, Delta, American, etc. to stand in line with the average Joe at Southwest? How is it that Zappos is growing and extending its product portfolio in the midst of a global recession? What is it about Nixon (the watch company, not the former president) that has allowed it created a cultish following amongst its customers? The answer to all of these: customer experience.
Customer experience isn’t defined top-down or implemented through policy manuals. It’s the product of a different way of looking at company, employee and customer relationships – a perspective shaped by common interests vs. conflicting interests. It’s about opening communications channels, listening, eliminating friction, trusting your employees and trusting your customers.
Great customer experience simply doesn’t work in an old economy model. Average products (or services), mass produced for average people and largely differentiated through advertising spin, simply cannot afford this kind of relationship with employees or customers.
Though it may be difficult to quantify return in the short run, delivering great customer experience is the weapon by which you can make your old economy competitors irrelevant.
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Shifting Leverage
Posted on 09. Feb, 2010 by jtheim
One 
reality of the new economy – new media delivers more leverage to individuals and small businesses than it does to big brands.
The amount of effort (and cost) required for big brands to realize any measurable gains in recognition, sales or brand affinity is significant and will likely deliver little or no near-term advantage vs. traditional media buys. But, if you’re the little guy – largely invisible in the old media world – your leverage is now enormous. You can use blogging, social networks and search to gain previously unimaginable attention, sales growth and brand affinity. For smaller businesses, passion and brains are the new marketing currency.
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Rich Corinthian Leather
Posted on 08. Feb, 2010 by jtheim
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán Merino died last year at the age of 88. In spite of his many successful roles on TV and in film, part of his legacy will always be his “Rich Corinthian Leather” ads for Chrysler.
Did you know that Corinthian leather does not actually come from Corinth? In fact, Corinthian leather never existed before an ad guy thought it up. First appearing in a 1974 ad for the Chrysler Imperial, the phrase really hit its stride when spokesman Ricardo Montalbán used it in 1976 to describe the leather interior of the new Chrysler Cordoba. This remarkable phrase, that means absolutely nothing, is forever etched in the minds of an entire generation. Why do you suppose Chrysler felt compelled to ‘invent’ a new type of leather? It’s simple really: there was no meaningful difference between the Chrysler product and everyone else’s. They needed to cloak the ordinary and uninspired in a faux veneer of something special. How many ads have we seen where otherwise ho-hum products have been made to sound truly special….unbelievably special?
In the new economy, if you want attention your leather better in fact be from Corinth and it better be exceptional. The new economy has a way of quickly filtering disingenuous claims and less than remarkable products. Fancy marketing speak simply can’t hold up to the scrutiny of a savvy and well connected consumer. It’s not the talk, it’s the walk that gets attention.
Ricardo Montalbán may you rest in peace. And so too may the era of the fancy pitchman, fancy ad phrases and less than remarkable products.
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Site vs. Blog
Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by jtheim
In one of my professional networks, a question recently came up: should you build a blog or build a site? And, the argument was made that a blog is chronological (time and date stamped) and therefore not as valuable as navigable site content.
First, I think we need some clarity on what a website is.It can be pages, it can be a blog, or it can be both. When referring to a website, we want to consider two categories of content – ‘page content’ and ‘updateable content’. A good website should have both. As a rule, page content doesn’t get updated much. This is core site content that sets the baseline for the brand and the value it delivers. ‘About Us’, ‘Products’, ‘Solutions’, ‘Contact Us’ are clearly page content. You can have many layers of page content and it can become a significant amount of content, and number of pages, on the site. Page content is largely navigable via site navigation tools. Page content can also be found directly via search.
Blogs, news, events, polls, and status updates are site elements that are intended to represent a moment in time and are updated regularly. This content is less formal than page content and is largely being driven by circumstances in the environment. It is inspired, not planned (well not completely anyway). This post, for example, was inspired by a response to a question in a business meeting. In this context, updateable content is dynamic – adapting to a changing environment. Though these posts are organized chronologically, they can be found through tags as well as on-site and search engine queries. Lastly, blogs and other updateable content communicate expertise, personality and action. Page content simply cannot “color in” the brand the way updateable content can. This is very powerful in building and conveying your brand story.
In my opinion, one of the flaws in the site vs. blog argument is the assumption that site visitors are beginning their site experience on the home page, or that they need to navigate somewhere. The reality is, Google (or Bing) has become the universal home page and search has become the quickest path to virtually everything.
Let me explain. Our search queries are getting longer and longer. This is because we’re learning – learning that if we enter exactly what we are looking for in a search query, there’s a good chance we will find it, quickly. The point is, we are now living in a ‘long-tail’ world. You can’t plan for all the long-tail possibilities. Updateable content allows you to address relevant topics as they emerge. Once you’ve addressed a topic and published, it’s searchable forever. This is not to say you shouldn’t continue to add to your navigable page content. But, page content, because it is more formal and planed, will be dwarfed by the volume of blog, news, event, and status update content on most successful sites. Updateable content is more likely to engage site visitors (blog commenting, polls, event registration, etc.) and to be linked to by other sites.
So, where are we with this? A good site includes a healthy mix of both page content and updateable content. Navigable pages are important, and can really delivery against those search queries you know are coming – if you can manage to ‘rank’ on them. The problem is, everyone wants to rank on those high value phrases. In applying a healthy dose of the less formal, easy to publish, updateable content, your site will actually rank better across the board. But, it is the updateable content that you will build your long-tail rankings on. It is also this content that will give you the greatest number of backlinks to your site (helping overall site ranking) and convey the real personality and expertise of your company.
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What’s In A Reputation?
Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by jtheim
As I sit sipping my cup of Dunkin Donuts Coffee, I ponder….why is it, with all the coffee brands to choose from, I chose Dunkin Donuts coffee? I’ve never had it, or even personally known anyone who has. Dunkin Donuts doesn’t have any stores in Denver and they don’t advertise here. So, why did I choose Dunkin Donuts instead of something more familiar?
Answer: Reputation. Two thousand miles from Boston, and without seeing a dollar’s worth of their advertising, I trusted Dunkin Donuts to deliver a great cup of coffee. (I was not disappointed.) To be honest, I’m not quite sure how I acquired that trust. But, my guess is, over time I was exposed to enough news, blog posts, FB status updates and/or tweets, referencing Dunkin Donuts Coffee, that it sunk in.
Don’t underestimate the power of a great reputation.
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The Paradox of Choice
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by jtheim
Choice is good. So, more choice is better, right?
…Not long ago, my wife suggested we try The Counter, a new gourmet burger joint in the neighborhood. She told me it was a roll-your-own kind of place – with a huge selection of raw goods to build with. (at that moment, I realized just how much I love my wife).
We couldn’t get there fast enough. When we were seated, I was handed a golf pencil and a clipboard holding a stack of checkbox menus. Wow, this was gonna be fun.
Six waded up order forms later, I felt like screaming, “curse you blasted burger tormentors”….but I didn’t. I bit my lip and pushed onward in my quest to build the world’s most perfect burger. But, I had only one shot to get it right. Get it wrong and I would forever second guess every crumpled menu…every checkbox checked.
On my seventh try, encouraged by the piercing glare from across the table, I did it. I committed. As I handed my order to the waitress, I probed for some affirmation that I had chosen well. To which I received an utterly indifferent “ sounds good”.
You know how this ends. Disappointment. The burger was actually good. Darn good. Just not good enough. Here’s the thing, given the angst in the labor and the dreams this burger was wrought from, it could never have been good enough. I should never have been given such power. I should never have been given so many choices.
We’ve been back to The Counter a couple of times since that evening. My order these days, “cheese burger, please”.
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Better, Faster, Cheaper…..Education?
Posted on 17. Oct, 2009 by jtheim
As I read Jason Kincaid’s post on GarageBand Lesson Store, I was impressed with what GarageBand Lesson Store has done for guitar and piano lessons. But it made me think, there’s more to this story than just great guitar lessons.
What happens when passion, brains and technology come together to deliver micro targeted and, dare I say, better education on everything form baking a cake to astrophysics? There is no reason to believe, what can be done for guitar or piano lessons, can’t be done for almost any subject. Simply take one passion-driven individual, get him/her connected to other like minded people, develop a curriculum, deliver it through web applications and let the market decide.
Change is comming faster than you might think. For those of you entrenched in institutional education, it may soon be time to brush up on your guitar skills. I believe GarageBand Lesson Store can help.
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Change
Posted on 18. Sep, 2009 by jtheim
In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, made the assertion that the computing power in the integrated circuit was growing exponentially, doubling every two years. The now famous “Moore’s Law” has held for more than 40 years.
Moore’s Law has been effective in illuminating the speed of change in technology. But, the way we do business hasn’t moved as fast. Technology, initially very task oriented, brought a wide range of point-solutions to make people more efficient. Then came the enterprise-class technologies of the 90s. These solutions where and still are about re-engineering business processes and workflows, and leveraging internal data to drive continuous improvement. Enterprise solutions have had an enormous impact on productivity – driving exponential gains across virtually all industries. However powerful, enterprise technologies primarily drive efficiency into existing, intra-organizational business processes.
Enter the connected economy. New web-centric technologies are driving organizational and social change at a dizzying pace. Application development has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Extra-organizational integration and automation are increasing everyday and many aspects of business are being outsourced to other companies with niche specializations. These technologies are bringing about the biggest transformation in the way business gets done ever seen – and this change is accelerating every day.
Today you might have a very small company in Luxemburg develop a simple web app, that disrupts an entire industry. This small company (Skype) sold to eBay for more than the entire GDP of Luxemburg. On the consumer side, high profile companies like Amazon, eBay, Skype, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have certainly made an impact on the way we conduct our lives. But, much less heralded, are the thousands and thousands of technology companies developing specific technology solutions – from development tools to complete web applications – that are disrupting the way business gets done.
If you’re a layperson, you may not recognize the enormity of what is happening right now in both large and small development environments around the world. But, the web applications they are developing today will make business work differently tomorrow. Companies today must be equipped to deal with, even embrace this change – because , over the next decade, we will likely see more disruptive change than our predecessors faced in a century. Are you ready?
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Connected Economy vs. Traditional Advertising
Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by jtheim
Though I’ve had internet and email on my mobile for some time, I’ve recently purchased a new Android phone. It’s got everything I need – Gmail, email, shared calendaring, web browser, Google talk, MP3 player, multi-band internet connectivity, camera, video camera, GPS & maps, accelerometer, barcode scanner, etc. All this power in my shirt pocket got me thinking….When I have access to anything I want to know, exactly when I want to know it, how does this bode for traditional ‘push’ marketing?
In my opinion, not so well in the long term. As we become accustom to immediate gratification for all our information needs, we’ll be less inclined to pay attention to information that’s not important right now. It used to be, we relied on advertising, delivered over scarce and tightly controlled media, to get the information we needed to make purchase decisions. Today, if it doesn’t matter right now, at this exact moment, it get’s filtered out. In fact, we have all kinds of clever new ways to make sure we are never exposed to it in the first place (Tivo, caller ID, subscription radio, No call lists, etc.)
As buyers, we’ve become much more sophisticated in our relationship with sellers. We’re increasingly cynical of advertising claims and “act now before it’s gone” offers. We intuitively know that if and when a product or service does matter, we can find the info we need and the best deal in an instant. In today’s world, everything we need or want is searchable. And, we know it.
Sure, big brands still permeate our consciousness. But does that brand recognition necessarily translate into sales? Sure, but the walls of those castles are being breached. At no time in human history have ‘builders of better mouse traps’ been so advantaged in competing against their much larger, better funded, but less passionate mass market rivals.
But you say, “we don’t always know what we want or what we can have until we’ve seen an ad for it – you know… ‘demand stimulation’?”. Ahhh yes, but that was when we didn’t have ‘connectedness’. Connectedness is created through networks and virtual communities that we trust. With the proliferation of social media, word spreads fast. If someone ‘discovers’ a great product, service or experience, they can tell their friends in an instant. Friends can tell friends and so on. This is how demand is stimulated in a connected world.
The bottom line is this: we are rapidly growing to trust our networks to guide us in what we think, what we like, what we do, what we watch, how we behave and what we buy. These networks are becoming far more influential than paid corporate advertising.
It will take time, but as I look forward I see traditional advertising’s continued decline. People adapt to value and often quicker than the market expects. There is real value in a connected and searchable economy. We might all be surprised by just how quickly the impact is felt.
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Why Aren’t You blogging?
Posted on 09. Jul, 2009 by jtheim
I came across Liz Ratcliff’s blog yesterday. Liz’s blog is a great example of how to have fun (in the way you communicate), be authentic (vulnerably so) and get your message out. I’m certain that she is building a solid fan base – a fan base that grew by at least one yesterday.
Liz isn’t a professional writer. She didn’t pay her dues working the ‘harvest beat’ and then work her way up to her current position. She just started writing. No one told her she could. She just did. And, while Wine Spectator may hate it, her readers love it. And, guess what? She’s having an impact in the industry and building valuable relationships – all because she had something to say and decided to say it.
To say that Liz is in good company would be an understatement. There are many, many wine industry bloggers. Blog styles and content are as diverse as the people creating them. Some use text, some use audio and still others choose video (one of my favorites is Deborah Gee, “The Toasted Hostess” and her “Corkscrew Diary” video blog). Some talk about their own wines, some about others, some talk about the industry and some just talk about the weather. The point here: these people have a voice and have an audience. If you’re not blogging, you don’t.
Okay, so why aren’t you blogging? You don’t have anything to say? Well then, don’t blog (a forced blog post is about as interesting as watching dust settle). But, if you don’t have anything to say, why are you in business in the first place? How can you possibly expect to compete against those who believe in and are excited about what they do? In case you hadn’t noticed, the world has changed – average is out, remarkable is in. If you’re not remarkable to somebody, you don’t have a customer.
My guess is, you do have a story, a great story – one that you’re telling all the time, but through less effective channels. Think about it for a second….I’m right, right? Why not get your story out where it will get noticed? It’s easier than you think. And, for all practical purposes, it’s free.
A blog is an extremely easy to use personal publishing platform. Unlike the printed newsletter of yesterday, blogs can give your story a life of its own and allow your voice to be heard around the world (well at least among those who want to listen). Posts can be tagged, searched, commented on, and linked to. Because blog posts are searchable by relevance, across the entire net, you don’t have to please everyone. The right audience will find you. The great thing about blogs – blogs make it possible for anyone to find his or her own niche, his or her own voice, and connect with an audience.
Now a blog doesn’t have to be Pulitzer prize material (take this one as a case in point). A blog can be very informal and content can be created as pure text, text with images, audio, video or any combination of these. The important thing is to communicate what matters to you, in a style and media that you are comfortable with. If you do this authentically and with passion, over time you will build a solid following. Your readers will begin participating in your story through comments and they’ll help spread your story through links. (All of this will help your search ranking as well. But I’ll address search in another post.)
As industries go, the wine industry is about as good as it gets for having your voice heard. Outside of religion, politics and sex, there are few subjects that inspire as much enthusiasm, investment of time and energy, and free opinions as wine. Let’s face it, wine enthusiasts are, well, enthusiastic. Capitalize on this enthusiasm through your own blog. The sooner you start, the sooner you will begin connecting with readers and influencing your industry.
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