Amid the Noise and Haste

Team Building

When it comes to companies with many different deparments the unfortunate downside is silos.  Each department can become so focused on their own tasks at hand that the other departments become secondary in priority.  There are two key things I have seen when this happens:

1. Departments are made up of people (the people part usually gets lost); and
2. Departments need to work together as a team to keep the machine running

The Reforming Project Management Blog had a great list of questions to ask when dealing with "Team Communication and Health."  Asking these questions can help identify gaps in communication that can then be addressed with team building exercises, lessons in communication and development.

• To what extent is the team positive?
• To what extent is honesty and trust evident?
• To what extent is the team learning and improving?
• Is morale improving, steady or declining?
• To what extent are team members being open and honest with each other?
• Are there barriers between trades and professions and if so How high are the silo walls?
• How long or short are tempers?
• To what extent are team members collaborating?

On customer service...

From the November 26th edition of DMNews:

"Whoever touches the consumer's experience needs to contribute to the experience."

       - Bobbi Merkel, director of convergence, TPN

on Customers

From Julie Fleischer at Forrester's Marketing Blog:

"I keep hearing people ask how much control we should give our customers.
What they don't realize is our customers have already taken control and
we'll never have it back"

So true!

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So true!

Is Price Your Only Differentiator?

John Jantsch over at the Duct Tape Marketing Blog points out a key flaw in many business descriptions - and how to break out of that mold!  Here is the exercise he suggestes

Go to the web site of your four biggest competitors, copy the
introductory paragraph from their home page and paste each on a
document. Now add the same from your own web site. Lastly, black out
any mention of the names of the firms and pass this page around the
office or to anyone familiar with your business.

Now what can this show?  Can you even pick your company's description out from the competitors?  As John points out, "what is usually painfully obvious is that each of the companies is saying essentially the same thing."

Can your customers really read the difference, the reason why they should pick you instead of their customers?  If not, all they can do is choose by price.

Instead of dollar signs as a differentiator, I suggest that you describe your company with the most simple words - no jargon!  Amid the noise and haste of business-speak and language, filter the noise and simply tell your customers what you do.


Technorati Tags: marketing

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Test Your Company's Customer Focus

From the department of common sense:

Shannon Holman over at If You See Something Say Something points us to A Three-Question Test of Your Company's Customer Focus from John Hagel of Edge Perspectives.  As yourselves this:

1. Who in the organization holds real decision-making power? Is it the organization that manages relationships with the customer or is it some other group?
2. What are the primary measures of performance for the firm?
3. What is the primary focus of the brand promise of the company?

From John:  "The companies that really succeed in the customer relationship business will have no trouble meeting this test.  All the rest had better decide which of the other two businesses they really want to focus on."

Are You Engaged?

Forrester has released the results of a new survey on engagement (this is a product).  Not the kind that leads to marriage, but the kind that keeps you in touch with your clients.  As they defined it, engagement is the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence an individual has with a brand over time.

As they see it, these four components of engagement - involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence - can help you learn how to make better marketing decisions.  Their argument is the following:

...that companies need to start tying these metrics together to make sense of how engaged their customers actually are—and then make product and marketing decisions based on that knowledge.

Now, there's no clean and beautiful equation like e = mc². But as we continue this research on the topic and gather feedback (we've already seen some extremely polarizing reviews of the report), we'd love to get your take on the matter.

Sifting through the noise and haste, can you see how to better engage your customers?  If you don't have definitive metrics, I suggest open conversation with your customers.  Talk to them, or better yet listen.

 

Now that's Service!

I use Netflix. I don't have a lot of time to rent videos at the store between work and my MBA program. The videos I get are my little two-hour escapes. Imagine my surprise when I received an email with the following notice:

They actually lowered my subscription price.  I did nothing.  Have to do nothing.  That's it.  Lower price.

That's a great way to compete.  Blockbuster has one service advantage over Netflix right now in that you can return the videos you rent at the store or through the mail.  But I don't have a Blockbuster near me, so I use Netflix.

How can you give back to your customers to show them that you appreciate their business?

Seth Godin wrote a while ago about Buy One Get One Free. Tom's Shoes donates a pair of shoes to  a child in a developing country for every pair you buy. As Seth says, "I like several things about this approach. The simplicity of the offer, first of all."

Ideas, marketing campaigns - they don't need to be overly complicated. Make it easy for your customers to see what they are getting, without needing the small print, just like Netflix did. I don't have to do anything:  the next time my bill comes, it will be lower. Done deal.

Customer Service: A Continuous Cycle

I like to post about customer service because I think it is encompassed in every aspect of a business, from marketing to sales to IT.  Customer service is internal and external.  If your customer service isn't up to par well then your business suffers.

But customer service I think is cyclical pattern.  Coming in is customer feedback, good and bad.  Going out is not just the services provided but the partnership that is formed when customers and business work together to develop the best possible products and services that not only serve the customers but make the business better.

Jim Hasset speaks to this on his blog post, "How to turn customers into partners."  One of the points made here is that this cycle must be continuous because businesses are going global and changing constantly.  I hand the mic to Jim:

Clients must grow into partners. Partners expect solutions, trust and value-added service – exactly what David Maister described in his classic book, The Trusted Advisor. Wilson warns that any relationship – whether a marriage, a friendship, or a business partnership – is dynamic and always changing. You’d better plan to keep working at it, so that the change is in the positive direction.

What changes is your business making?  How are you working with your clients to turn them into partners?  A few key questions Jim Hassett provides come from Larry Wilson’s book Stop Selling, Start Partnering:  The New Thinking About Finding and Keeping Customers (p.96):

“What are your [client’s] goals?
How do they make money?
What can you do to help them expand their business?
Who are your [client’s] customers?
How can you help add value to your [client’s] customer?”

Notice most of the questions are about your clients, not about your business.  But asking questions like these help you to look internally to help develop solutions which will help grow your business.  The cycle continues.

Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work - New York Times

Shannon from If You See Something Say Something blog points us to an article in the NY Times about Usability Professionals.  I hand the mic to Shannon:

From the Department of Understatement:

SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it.

Link: Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work - New York Times.

But it's great to see usability and user experience design getting ink, especially in the Money section of the Times.

A lot of times, it is hard, amid the noise and haste of product development and user experience, to see the disconnect between form and function.  It seems though, according to the article, that the fog may be clearing a bit.  This is definitely good news.

From the Department of Understatement:

SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it.

Link: Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work - New York Times.

But it's great to see usability and user experience design getting ink, especially in the Money section of the Times.

A lot of times, it is hard, amid the noise and haste of product development and user experience, to see the disconnect between form and function.  It seems though, according to the article, that the fog may be clearing a bit.  This is definitely good news.

What Makes You So Different?

So you offer the same products/services as your competitor(s).  What makes you so different?  It could be price.  But wouldn't you spend just a little more for better service?  I would.  And I think that's what makes people more "brand loyal."

On Forrester's Marketing Blog Peter Kim talks about the keynote session Bruce Temkin gave at Forrester's Finance Forum.  The reference here is to banking, but I think this theme crosses all business boundaries.  The example given is this:

Successful firms practice "experienced-based differentiation" based on three key areas.

1. Obsess about customer needs, not product features.
2. Reinforce brands with every interaction, not just communications.  I.e. make promises and keep promises.
3. Treat customer experience as a competence, not a function.

Take a look at Peter Kim's post for example of each of these areas and also for the experience-based differentiation self-test (note: content is not free).