Archives / August 2006

In any competitive market, in the long run, the company with the best customer experience wins.

Guess what's happening to phone and cable companies now that there's competition afoot.

From Learning to Love a Cable Guy - New York Times:

For years, service was an afterthought for these companies because customers had little choice but to get their phone and cable services from what were effectively monopolies. The litany of complaints is well known: long waits for repair visits, unresponsive call centers, high-priced and inflexible service plans. On customer satisfaction surveys, phone and cable companies often rank even below the airlines. But service has improved slowly as satellite providers, upstart phone carriers and cellphone companies have provided attractive alternatives.

Remember: the brand is the customer experience - not a collection of slogans and graphic design guidelines.

Also see: Study in Comcast branding

Heading to Copenhagen - the euroGel 2006 conference is this Thursday and Friday, August 31 - September 1, 2006.

This Tuesday, August 29, is the last day to sign up.

See you there! (Or if you can't make it, get a taste of the Gel experience by watching these Gel videos.)

(Also see: the Danish experience, and who's coming to euroGel.)

Gel speaker Charlie Todd (Gel '05, :'06:) ran another prank in Manhattan recently - this time instructing his army of agents to walk in slow motion through the 23rd Street Home Depot. (Anyone at Gel :'06: will note a similarity to Cathy Salit's talk... see clips of Charlie and Cathy both on the Gel videos page.)

As usual, Charlie posted a well-written summary of the planning and execution of his prank - including several videos taken in the store. From Improv Everywhere Mission: Slo-Mo Home Depot:

If spoken to by an employee or customer, agents responded in slow motion speak (slow and low), and denied anything unusual was happening. Freezing in place was much more impressive. In every aisle and corner of the store there were people frozen mid-shopping.

Nice mention in the great Manhattan User's Guide today:

Email and ToDo lists are the most difficult to keep organized in my life. I recommend you look at Gootodo. This site is low cost and simple. He has some great thoughts on keeping your inbox in control, too.

One of my favorite stories concerning traditional marketing is about tuna. It's almost certainly apocryphal (see [1] below), but it teaches a useful lesson about customer experience.

Years ago, the Acme Tuna brand had fallen on hard times. Sales were down, new competitors were entering the market, and Acme had a marketing challenge: no one was buying its new product. Most tuna on the market was gray, but Acme had begun selling cans of white tuna. White and gray were the same in taste and nutrition; nothing was different except the color.

Acme's transformation finally came from its clever marketing director, who created the slogan that conquered the tuna market for Acme:

"Acme tuna: it never turns gray."

Seeing this slogan, customers turned away from gray tuna, believing that the white tuna was fresher and safer to eat. The slogan - while technically truthful - cleverly deceived customers into believing in the superiority of Acme's product.

In other words, Acme played a game with perception and changed the reality of the market.

Whether or not it's taught explicitly in marketing training today, it often seems that the Acme case study is guiding many companies' marketing plans. Spinning a message, "positioning the brand", launching a shiny new logo and no other improvements - all of these are just playing games with perception, rather than improving the company itself.

And here's the thing: it does sometimes work. There is money to be made by shining things up, painting a rosy picture, even sometimes bending the truth (just a tad, of course!, and only with technically truthful statements). Especially in the short term, one can do quite well with the spin on "white tuna".

I want to state, however, that as profitable as that strategy might be (in the short term), I have very little interest in exploring it, teaching it, or practicing it. There are probably some very good resources out there for learning these "tips and tricks", but they're not here. Creating a good customer experience generally doesn't have much to do with changing the superficial perception about a product.

Instead, good experience means focusing on what really matters to customers, in the long run - offering genuinely useful, effective, or healthy products and services - and marketing them in a way that is honest and transparent at every step. It requires a long-term view, and a good deal of patience, especially as competitors might win short-term gains with less customer-centered strategies.

Of course, the customer experience approach is more appropriate for companies that offer some substantive experience. For a soda company (selling fizzy sugar water), or perhaps even a tuna company, there's not much to do with the experience except play with the label, the slogan, and the location in the grocery store. (I wish them luck.)

However, companies offering an experience where there's something at stake - banks, hospitals, schools, hotels, airlines, retailers, e-commerce sites, technology firms, informational websites, nonprofits and socially responsible companies, and on and on - should invest in the customer experience, not the new tuna slogan.

Best of all, the customer experience approach really works - there are plenty of case studies, on this site and elsewhere, proving it. Besides, it feels good to treat customers right. Why would you want to spend your career doing business any other way?

- - -

[1] The ever-useful debunker of myths, Snopes, shows that the story has never been reliably sourced but has popped up in a number of places: Link

I'll announce this more formally on the e-mail newsletter later, but to those reading the blog, you get the news first: we've removed the credit card requirement on the Gootodo trial account.

Here's the latest testimonial from a Gootodo user - Paul in Vancouver:

A to-do list sounds outdated and old school but you won't understand or realize the true power of gootodo.com until you start using it, until you start seeing your email inbox is empty and that you are actually accomplishing more in your day. That's a powerful feeling to get from a little application.

Try the new trial account: Gootodo.com

When I saw this article, I breathed a sigh of relief - thank goodness for one space without incoming e-mail!

Boeing to End Its Service for Using Internet Aloft - New York Times:

Boeing announced on Thursday that it planned to scrap its in-flight Internet service, saying there was not enough demand.

But then I saw Geler Marcel Reichart quoted with a good point...

"I will be extremely sad if this service ends," said Marcel Reichart, a managing director for strategy in Munich at Hubert Burda Media who flies frequently and used the service nearly a dozen times while flying to the United States. "There is a stable connection that allows me to get a full day of work done while speaking over Skype, sending e-mails and everything."

Ahh, tradeoffs.

Google promises some upcoming improvement to photo-searching... from Official Google Blog: A better way to organize photos?:

It's not always easy to search through your personal photos, and it's certainly a lot harder than searching the web. Unless you take the time to label and organize all your pictures (and I'll freely admit that I don't), chances are it can be pretty hard to find that photo you just know is hidden somewhere deep inside your computer... [but] we've been working to make Picasa (Google's free photo-organizing software) even better...

Automated searches will be helpful, no doubt. But in the end, users still will have to take some responsibility for their bits. I have a simple system - it takes a tiny amount of discipline - that allows me to find my desired photo within seconds, almost every time. And I have thousands of photos going back over five years.

Don't confuse an improved technology with one that solves everything. Such a tool doesn't exist. Bit-literate users will always be more productive than others, no matter what the technology can do.

Dutch artist Theo Jansen, one of our all-time most popular Gel speakers, made a phenomenal U.S. debut last year at Gel 2005 (find the video clip on the Gel videos page).

He's so clearly a genius that I couldn't figure out why no one was banging his door down.. I interviewed Theo in the newsletter, put him on stage at Gel, and Andrew had him at PopTech, but not much else seemed to happen.

Thus I'm delighted, and so proud, to see Theo featured in this new BMW commercial.

Another full-length Gel video is now online - enjoy:
Jimmy Wales at Gel 2005 - Google Video

(See also: Seth Godin at Gel 2006, and all Gel video clips)

Continuing the theme of yesterday's entry, Jimmy Wales (Gel Gel '05, euroGel speaker) is on a roll. Stephen Colbert recently asked viewers to edit Wikipedia with some wishful thinking on african elephants, to create "a reality we can all agree on." He called it "wikiality."

Wikipedia locked the article on african elephants as a result of viewers following Colbert's instructions. (That's right: a fake news show got people to write fake facts in an online encyclopedia. Welcome to today's media environment!)

(Thanks, Jerry Michalski)

A double mention of Gel speakers in the Sunday Times yesterday: Jimmy Wales (speaking at euroGel in a couple of weeks and previously at Gel Gel '05) and Barry Schwartz Gel '05.

See video clips of both on the Gel videos page.

From Industrial Art Illuminates Life - New York Times

Mr. Wales, the founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, who has become an unlikely lightning rod for the quality-versus-quantity debate over information on the Internet, is a figure out of a 1930's Frank Capra film, a likable guy with a Southern twang whose simple social experiment has run away with him.

So Mr. Wales works at keeping it simple and staying dedicated to the Wikipedia ideal of information that is helpful, more or less accurate and "good enough," to borrow a term from Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice

P.S. Wikipedians, please help expand the Gel conference entry at Wikipedia.

Just in this morning from Gootodo user Lisa Dabkowski:

I just started using Gootodo, and I already see improvements in my organization and efficiency.

I'm a PhD student and I also work full-time in IT. Being organized and staying on top of things is key. I'm using Gootodo mostly to keep track of readings and research ideas for school. Often during the day I'll come across something that is applicable to my schoolwork and I'd like to look into further, but I can't devote the time to it until the evening. I tried various methods to remind myself to do these tasks, everything from emailing links and notes to myself, entering them in my google calendar, and writing them on little scraps of paper. Now I use Gootodo, and I find it so easy to manage these tasks when I'm ready to. I can prioritize them, and re-date the tasks that I didn't have a chance to get to. The new semester starts in a few weeks, and I'm eager to use Gootodo to manage my course assignments.

I'm studying information science and I find your discussion on bit literacy very interesting. I agree with you that knowledge workers need better tools... One of my research interests is in knowledge management, and I've read about companies integrating large-scale KM solutions that are clunky, not user friendly, and not used. I think that Gootodo is a great KM tool.

David Pogue gets it right, as usual, about Macs and PC's. From Getting Hung Up on the Apple-Microsoft War:

It makes no difference how superior Mac OS X or Linux may be; the world's I.T. staffs will switch their entire companies away from Windows the day Rush Limbaugh votes for Hillary Clinton. After all, the I.T. people know where their bread is buttered. If Macs are indeed less trouble-prone and complex than Windows PC's, they're doomed in corporations; the last thing the I.T. guys want to do is obsolete themselves.

We've started posting post Gel presentations in their entirety.

First up, from 2006, Seth Godin. Here's his full Gel 2006 talk, diagnosing the kinds of "broken" things all around us:
Seth Godin at Gel 2006 - Google Video

Coming soon, several speakers from Gel 2005... meantime, we have 2-minute video excerpts of every speaker from Gel '05 and '06 on the Gel video clips page.

If you haven't come to Gel before, you have to be there to really "get" the experience. Our next event is the Friday before Labor Day in Copenhagen: euroGel 2006.

Simplicity isn't easy, but it's often powerful.

From Seymour Cray - An Appreciation:

"My guiding principle was simplicity", he said, and throughout his career this remained the focus of his design philosophy. ... In 1957, Cray and some others left to start Control Data Corporation... At CDC, Cray's legendary dislike of bureaucracy soon became apparent. Asked to write a five-year plan for the company, his response was: 'Five year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One-year goal: Achieve one-fifth of the above.'"

Cray, dedicated to simplicity, created the most powerful computers of his time.

(via bb)

David Pogue writes a good review of customer-centric technology vendor Crutchfield, which surprised him with its great customer experience, starting with the arrival of the product:

[W]hen the package arrived, there was Crutchfield’s installation manual, with the company’s “we’re here to help you” toll-free number printed in 60-point type on the first page. What are they, nuts!? They are actually *inviting* people to call them for free technical support? Don’t they have any idea how that idea will kill their revenue stream? ...this hyper-service-oriented approach has succeeded; the company has essentially cornered its market and generated a massive audience of rabid and repeat customers.

Yes, Crutchfield is onto something - invest in providing a good customer experience, and customers will not only buy again but will refer others, removing the need for wasteful and expensive advertising investments. It's a great long-term business model, and it's determining the winners in industries from stereo equipment to movie rentals to airlines to consumer banking. Invest in the customer experience. This is practically the entire message of this blog, and my consulting firm Creative Good.

My only complaint with Pogue's post is that the title - "A New Business Model" - implies that this is a new idea. Granted, Pogue may not have written the title, but this is hardly a new idea to Good Experience readers. Crutchfield was one of seventeen 2006 Copernican Award finalists - in fact, the founder, Bill Crutchfield, was present at our awards ceremony this past May.

Add the 2006 finalists to the twelve 2005 Copernican Award finalists, Good Experience readers can name 29 companies that are doing business in this "new" way - focusing the entire company on the customer experience.

Link: Pogue's Posts - A New Business Model

Fast Company reports: Farewell, Esther Snyder, Founder Of In-N-Out Burger:

Esther Snyder, the founder of In-N-Out Burger, passed away Friday. She was 86. ... In-N-Out always did things a little differently, focusing ruthlessly on the customer and adopting a slow-growth strategy that's the very antithesis of McDonald's and virtually all the other burger chains.

It's true. In-N-Out is the one fast food chain that I'd mark as a good experience. I wish them continued success...

The Times today has an interesting profile of a tintype photographer living in a log cabin in upstate New York. He teaches classes on this 19th-century method of photography; the samples in the article (by a NYT photographer who has taken his class) are good.

Coffer sounds like an interesting character. He likes his "back to basics" lifestyle... a lot. This is a guy who drives a horse and buggy for eight hours to get to the Civil War reenactment. From Born 150 Years Too Late - New York Times:

His wife had wanted adventure, but after a while she said she'd leave if they didn't settle down. In 1985, they came to Yates County, where land was $300 an acre and an Amish community provided a support system for horse-drawn conveyances. Mr. Coffer's wife stuck around for the building of the cabin. Then came her demands for the car and the phone, he said. Then, he said, after two years in the cabin, she ran off with Mr. Coffer's assistant for the bright lights of Ithaca.

OK, just one Fun Stuff for today. (Though you can get a bunch more by subscribing to the e-mail newsletter:

Darth Vader being a smartass and working the day shift. (OK, so that's two.)

(via bb)

The New York Times reported yesterday that focus groups have now arrived in the theater business. Focus groups are a popular research method; companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on them, generally run by one moderator asking questions to a panel of strangers. Group dynamics among the respondents, and (often) leading questions from the moderator, make focus groups a poor choice for understanding the customer experience.

But now traditional market research is invading Broadway, tempting producers to take artistic direction from surveys, highly directed group interviews, and a worldview that gave us elevator music, Garfield movie sequels, and other masterpieces in blandness.

What really caught my eye in the article was the case study of one recent project. The research giant Nielsen (they of consumer TV ratings) analyzed the audience makeup of a performance of "Wicked," a popular Broadway musical. It's a good example of a poor research investment.

From Nielsen Brings a New Marketing Strategy to Broadway - New York Times:

[T]he arrival of a market research powerhouse like Nielsen is a long-awaited development. Which brings us back to "Wicked." At six performances in March, the Live Theatrical Events staff covered the 1,933-seat Gershwin Theater with questionnaires, getting about 6,100 back. That assumption about all the adolescent girls, as it turns out, was false. In a report that ran 30 pages, Mr. Craig said that "in line with typical theatergoers, audience members were slightly more apt to be 35 and older."

There's an error here. Can you spot it?

Unless they failed to mention some other key data, the conclusion is baseless, very possibly false. They covered roughly 12,000 seats with questionnaires, and about 50% came back, a good response rate. After analyzing the data, the consultants found the unexpected: instead of being mostly adolescents, "audience members were slightly more apt to be 35 and older." Please tell me this isn't the level of data analysis theater producers are paying for. Obviously, the data could be affected by self-selection on the part of the attendees. Adolescents may have ignored the surveys on their chairs, and thirty-somethings may have filled in the surveys at a much higher rate; so even if adolescents filled most of the seats, the surveys still could have come back with a majority of thirty-something responses.

There's an easier way to get the data on audience makeup: watch who comes in. It's not like the people are hard to count - they're sitting in the theater for two hours! Companies often resist direct customer observation - it's decidedly low-tech, for one thing - yet here it would have offered a more accurate data sample, quicker and cheaper.

Also note that the article seems to praise the analyst for creating "a report that ran 30 pages." Is 30 pages good in itself, just because of the "plop factor"? The bigger the sound when the report hits the desk, the more impressive it is? Of course not. Executives investing in research should be looking for understanding, not reams of data.

Thankfully, there was a good counterpoint - or voice of reason, I'd call it - included in the article.

Jeffrey Seller, a producer of "Rent" and "Avenue Q," said his one experience with focus groups a few years ago had been enough to convince him that market research is, on the whole, worthless. A focus group indicated that "Rent," six months after its New York opening, had no brand recognition in Chicago - an indication that was proved wrong when the show sold half a million dollars in tickets the first day they were on sale there. ... "'Chorus Line,' 'Annie,' 'Hair,' 'Les Misérables,' 'Rent,'" Mr. Seller added. "Were any of those shows built by focus groups?"

One month from today - on Friday, 1st September, the first-ever euroGel conference will arrive in Copenhagen.

Our speakers represent eight different European countries - Denmark, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Britain, France, and Slovenia - and the US - and include designers, artists, performers, businesspeople, and activists. See the full speaker list.

Or take a peek at a partial attendee list.

euroGel will be unlike any other conference you've ever attended, creating a Europe-wide conversation about "good experience in all its forms". Given current world events, I'd say it's more important than ever for us to gel this community. This is our chance to lay the groundwork for a European community of people who are creating good in the world - in business, technology, and the arts.

There are two ways you can attend euroGel:

1. Buy a ticket (the earlier, the better so I know my catering head-count!)

2. Become a volunteer - we still need several people who can be available either Thursday 31 Aug, Friday 1 Sept, or both in exchange for attendance at part of euroGel. E-mail Cat (cat at goodexperience dot com) if you're interested.

If you can't make it, post a link to euroGel on your blog, newsletter, mailing list, or otherwise "spread it" to your community. We could still use lots more exposure. Forward this link, the euroGel homepage: http://gelconference.com/c/eurogel06.php

I hope you'll make the effort to be with us in a month!

P.S. The venue is really special: it's Copenhagen's Royal Library, on the islet of Slotsholmen. There are layers and layers of experience and history to explore. From Slotsholmen | Travel Story:

Originally the site of Christianborg Slot, a palace for the Danish royal family, Slotsholmen, literally 'the palace island', was separated from the rest of Copenhagen by a canal running around it. Nowadays, it is easy to cross into the island by one of the many bridges spanning the canal. The palace has been turned into the seat of government, and now houses the national parliament, Supreme Court, and Folketinget, or parliamentary chamber. Its royal grandeur cannot be missed. In front of the palace, in the courtyard, under the watchful eye of Christian IX seated on a horse, horsemen still train in their royal uniforms... Walking through a throughfare brings you to a garden in front of the royal library.

Link: euroGel 2006 conference

(Also see my pictures from the venue, and around Copenhagen, this past June.)