Archives / October 2006

From DMNews, Embed marketing in products:

The future of advertising is that there isn't any. Yes, that's coming from an agency, which created memorable ads for clients like Burger King, Volkswagen and Miller Brewing. "We think the future of advertising is great products that have marketing embedded in them," Mr. Hicks said.

Maybe they've been reading past columns saying just that.

(Thanks, Scott)

A fun, all-out rant in the Times today about kids' snacks at suburban soccer games. From Will Play for Food:

Do our kids need yet another bag of Doritos and a juice box with enough sugar to coat a Honda Odyssey? Can't they just finish playing and have some water?

Why not some 12%-fat premium ice cream?

Who will emerge as "the Starbucks of ice cream"? The New York Times reports on the three competitors. Apparently "the experience" is central to selling frozen butter and sugar:

From Slabs Are Joining Scoops in Ice Cream Retailing:

The companies, Marble Slab Creamery, Cold Stone Creamery and MaggieMoo's International, sell various flavors of premium ice cream, which is defined by the industry as having more than 12 percent butterfat. Moreover, they allow customers to choose from an assortment of "mix-ins" like crumbled cookies, candies, fruits and nuts. Employees then blend the ingredients into the ice cream on a cold granite or marble slab before packing it into a cup or freshly baked waffle cone. The cost escalates with the number of mix-ins and can easily top $5 for a medium serving.

..."It's entertainment," Ms. Barry said. "I myself get intrigued by what other people order," like peanut butter ice cream with bananas, marshmallows and brownie chunks.

Maybe I'm a purist, but I'm more interested in eating authentically good ice cream than listening to other customers' orders and seeing a stage show. Oh, a granite slab? I'd rather just get the ice cream scooped and handed over, thanks. Getting the real thing often costs less, too - not unlike the coffee business.

Finally, here are two places in New York City for people who actually like actual ice cream, not a marketer's "experience design" of the simulation of an ice cream shop:

• Il Laboratorio del Gelato

• Chinatown Ice Cream Factory

The New York Times reported on a study of the cleanliness of major US passenger airlines. It's instructive, though not surprising, that the two most customer-centered airlines, JetBlue and Southwest, are also the cleanest. From Beware of the Squish Behind the Jet Seat:

One reason that JetBlue and Southwest, two low-cost carriers, won high marks is that their planes are newer. Also, though they tend to have fewer ground employees than long-established airlines like United Airlines and American Airlines, they have company cultures that encourage flights attendants, gate agents and, at JetBlue, even pilots to tidy up.

The article misses one other group that helps clean up JetBlue planes: the customers. Near the end of every JetBlue flight, the flight attendant gets on the intercom and tells customers that JetBlue prices are kept low by customers cleaning up after themselves. At this moment on every single JetBlue flight I've taken, I've seen customers all around me reach to collect their trash... with never a single grumble or complaint.

At least on JetBlue, customers are willing to do some of the work themselves, when (a) they're treated with respect and (b) they can see and experience the effects of their help.

On the other hand, there's always the model of some less highly rated airlines: treat customers poorly, wonder why the business is failing, apply for bankruptcy, reduce pensions, increase layoffs, and outsource plane-cleaning to the lowest bidder.

Which makes a better business: a short-term focus on quarterly results, or a long-term commitment to treating customers with decency and respect?

I remember last year getting on the plane, sitting down in my seat, and overhearing the conversation of two people in the row behind me. One was telling the other how great JetBlue was: its service, its perks, its prices, and so on. The twist was that this was on an American Airlines flight. When a competitor provides the environment for word-of-mouth marketing for your company, you know you have something special.

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P.S. It was no surprise that our Customer Experience Council members last year presented JetBlue with a Copernican Award, given to the most customer-centric companies and organizations in the world. At our fall Council meetings last week, we took nominations for next year's winners, so watch this space...

See also:

• From this past April, "Who's doing it better?"

• 2005 Copernican Award winners

• 2006 Copernican Award winners

The New York Times last week became the latest periodical to publish an enthusiastic piece about the new trend of customer-led marketing. This trend, so the thinking goes, allows customers to "own" a brand by creating their own uses and extensions of it. The article gives a typical example, a case study from a car manufacturer.

From Letting Consumers Control Marketing: Priceless:

At Mini USA, part of BMW of North America, the fact that so many customers choose to customize their cars showed executives that "we'd never have complete control over the brand," said James L. McDowell, managing director at Mini USA. About 60 percent of the estimated 40,000 Minis the company sells each year are customized.

For instance, Mr. McDowell said, some Mini owners dress their cars in naughty costumes for Halloween, and two investment bankers mounted mock shark fins atop the roofs of their Minis.

Brand managers are right to pay attention to this trend. In the age of the Internet, because customers are much more able to communicate with one another, they likewise demand a higher (perceived) degree of authenticity from any companies they hear from. If any company wants to join the conversation, they have to get real - and one way to do that is to let the customers lead.

This is hardly news to Internet veterans - we heard the same message - "markets are conversations" - back in 1999 when The Cluetrain Manifesto was published. If you missed it, it's now online, and you can read the book in its entirety at cluetrain.com/book.

My only concern about the "customer-led" trend is that it still focuses on the brand - brand exposure, brand impressions, brand messaging - all traditional, if not somewhat dated, concerns for many customer-facing companies and services today. I don't hear much in the media coverage of this trend about the simple, basic customer experience that most customers want, most of the time, from most of the companies they deal with. The trend is all well and fine, but it overlooks the "elephant in the living room": most companies can make a much smarter investment in their marketing by simply delivering a better experience.

Take the Mini example. I agree with the BMW executives that it's interesting, and surely exciting for them, that 60% of their tens of thousands of customers are customizing their cars. But that's an recent trend for a niche brand. What about the "rest of us" - millions of consumers who buy cars other than the Mini - and the people who manage those companies?

There is something real at work in this trend, but it's not about customized commercials on YouTube or Halloween outfits for cars. Instead, customized products - allowing customers to choose their own products at the point of purchase - are a much more real-world, real-numbers, and real-customer-centric trend. Customized greeting cards and T-shirts are increasingly popular in the retail world; in the business-to-business world, we know at least one company that is wildly successful with customized safety signs. (No flash or gimmicks - just offering customers the customization they want.)

Trend-watching marketers might also learn a lesson from the former Song Airlines. Spotting a trend of low-cost but friendly airlines, Song invested in fashionable outfits for the flight attendants; a cute logo in a hipster shade of green; and a boutique temporary pop-up store in SoHo (following yet another trend). The only major thing Song forgot was to build a viable business serving customers. They copied the superficial elements of the trend without executing the deeply rooted commitment to customer experience delivered by successful brands in the space like Southwest and JetBlue. Song flew its last flight in April.

The customer-led trend is interesting, exciting, and limited in its scope and value - if viewed just as a "brand play". Like all quick-hit trends, it's as delicious as the maraschino cherry on top of a sundae; and about as nutritious, too. Taste it, perhaps, but don't forget the "meal", no matter how everyday or unglamorous it may seem: providing a simple, basic customer experience.

If you suffer from e-mail overload, and if you trust my judgement from having read this blog for any length of time, please try this out. I've created this to help solve your overload.

I've written previously about my online todo list, Gootodo.com, but now I've made it easier to try out. You can now create a trial account in a few seconds just by entering your e-mail address and clicking on the confirmation mail.

Create your account here: https://www.gootodo.com

Once you've done so, you can get started clearing your e-mail overload right away, with one click of the Forward button.

The trick is to forward any big todos in your e-mail inbox to your Gootodo list, depending on what day - today or any future day in the next year - you want it to show up.

Three steps to clear your overload:

1. Only forward to today's list what you can accomplish today; forward others as far as you can into the future.

2. Delete any e-mails after you've forwarded them.

3. Complete any small, sub-two-minute todos right away, and delete those e-mails.

Done: you now have an empty inbox and a manageable todo list to get through today..

Forwarding is easy. For example, forward an e-mail to today@gootodo.com and it will show up on today's list. (Then, of course, delete the e-mail from your inbox.)

Forward an e-mail to tomorrow@gootodo.com and it will *not* show up on today's list - but will appear tomorrow.

Forward an e-mail to 2d@gootodo.com (or 2days@gootodo.com) and it will show up in two days. Or forward it to monday@gootodo.com and it will show up on Monday. You can even e-mail a specific date - like 14nov@gootodo.com or nov14@gootodo.com, to create a todo on November 14.

I can almost guarantee that if you try this out, using the method I've described, you will feel less stressed, work more productively, and have more time for things that really matter - family, friends, and creative pursuits. If you achieve all those benefits, after the first month I'll ask for three bucks a month for an ongoing account.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think: https://www.gootodo.com

Three Gel speakers in the news this week:

Congratulations to David Bodanis (Gel Gel '04 and euroGel '06 speaker) on the U.S. publication of his latest book, Passionate Minds (Subtitle: "The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and the Birth of the Modern World.") Recommended, as are all of his books.

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Congrats to Mickey and Dan Dubno (Gel speaker at Gel '04, Gel '05, and :'06:) for a mention in the New Yorker's Talk of the Town section this week for their recent Gadgetoff event in New York City.

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Finally, nice work to Jimmy Wales (Gel Gel '05 and euroGel '06 speaker - click to watch his full-length Gel 2005 presentation). BoingBoing reports that China has stopped censoring Wikipedia - link to article.

Last week I told the story of an unfortunate customer experience I had with my bank of ten years, which gave me several reasons to close my account. (If you missed it, you can read it here.)

And now, the flip side of the experience. Starting from where I left off in the previous column... "Later that same day I opened a new account at a new bank. It was as good an experience as this had been bad."

Here's what happened.

I went to a nearby branch of a bank known for its good customer experiences and asked to open an account. I felt especially good about going through the process, because it was past 6:00 p.m. and would stay open until 8:00 p.m. - in other words, it was open during exactly the hours I'd want to conduct banking. My old bank was generally open only during "bankers' hours", closing around 4 p.m., when the bankers wanted to go home. (Bankers' hours, indeed.)

My new account rep, who I'll call Jenny, was professional and friendly, and as we went through the steps to open the account (identification, signature card, etc.), we struck up a conversation about how she came to work for this bank.

"I was so fed up with [big national bank]", she said. "They were nice at first, but then they started charging new fees, and messing up my account, and claiming it was my mistake. So I closed my account there and decided to try this bank out. The person who signed me up for my account here was so good, so friendly, I thought, 'This is so much better', and decided I wanted to work here."

Jenny told me that because of her initial customer experience with her present bank, she actually changed her college major to finance, later applied for a job at the bank, and was hired. She's been there ever since and continues to sing the bank's praises.

"I go into [mega-corporate global bank] sometimes just to see what it's like," she says. "People who work there don't smile. They hardly even want to look at you."

I'll grant that this is early in my time as a customer of this bank, though I have no reason to doubt that it will continue to be good. But my main takeaways from this initial experience are two facts:

1. The hours - open during evenings and weekends - were an immediate flag that this is a bank that does things differently. Bankers' hours have been transformed into customers' hours. Note that this isn't any flashy, faddy, cutesy feature or come-on - rather, it's a basic delivery of a key unmet customer need: better hours. Basics like these are the true innovations in customer experience.

2. The customer experience was delivered by someone who understood it because she had experienced it directly herself. In fact, she joined the company because of her customer experience there. This - "recruiting through customer experience" - is one of the best signs of a customer-centric organization.

Any company, any executive, can make use of these takeaways: the basics are often all customers want, and hiring good, enthusiastic people is an excellent way of delivering them.

Moreover, it's best to create the customer experience after having been through it yourself, either directly or through observation of customers. Try opening your own account; or watch some customers go through it, without any direction on your part, and listen to their open-ended feedback. Once again, the basics - simple, old-fashioned watching and listening - are the most effective tools we have as practitioners.

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See also: Part 1 of A bank customer experience

Worth a read... fascinating story in the NYT about the culture of PC games - and its leagues, star players, tournaments, and fans - in Korea.

Things there are different from when I grew up (in the US), playing Space Invaders and Combat on our Atari 2600. One high school senior studies until his parents drag him away from his studies to play PC games.

From The Land of the Video Geek - New York Times:

But no matter how hard he studies, Mr. Cho tries to get in just a little gaming, and with his parents' encouragement. "They are at school all the time, and then they have additional study classes," said his mother, Kim Eun Kyung, "so games are the best way to get rid of their stress."

His father, Cho Duck Koo, a photographer, added: "Certainly the games can be a distraction, and now that he is studying for the university exam he plays much less, but in general gaming helps the children with strategic thinking and to learn to multitask. We've told him if he goes to university we will get him the best PC possible."

Makes me want to play some Good Experience Games...

Worth a read - interview of a professor at Stanford's Institute of Design. From EETimes.com - For best design, it takes a village

This new methodology is all about getting designers out in the field to shadow their prospective customers, unearth their hidden needs and get them to try one prototype after another until designers get the product right.

P.S. Amazingly, the word "innovation" appears in the article only twice - imagine! :)

(Thanks, Phil S!)

I recently received an unforgettable fax from my bank. The bank's logo was in the upper-left of the page, visible and clear, but that was just about the only thing on the page that I understood.

Just below the logo, in bold letters - the only bold text on the page - read the following:

I was surprised. I've been a good customer of this bank for over 10 years, and I wondered what I did, or forgot to do, that would result in a fine. Reading on, I saw several lines of notifications, transaction numbers, and IDs, all in a mix of digits and cryptic, all-capital abbrevations. Fortunately I spotted a number to call "for questions". I hoped it might yield some answers, too. Unfortunately, it was a long-distance number, as though for miscreants like myself they couldn't spare a 1-800 line. I called anyway.

"Hello, [bank name]," the voice said. Right away I could sense that this person was busy with her day, and I was a potential distraction.

"Hi there, I have a fax here that says I might get fined, but I have no idea why. Could you help?"

"Sure, what's the zlarby-glarb on that?" (She asked for an abbrevation that didn't appear on the page.)

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Do you see some numbers on the fax that say something like 3, 5, 8,..." and here she read off a string of digits that did appear on the page.

"Yes, I see those... what do they mean?"

"Hold on a second..." (typing, typing) "...oh, I see. You'll have to change your TRN because we're transferring our branches to [global corporate bank]." Her affect, while not rude, was fairly blunt, as though this was as obvious as the time or the weather; something I probably should have known already.

"Wait, you just said two things," I replied. "There's a number I have to change, but also, did you say something about [global corporate bank]?" I thought I had heard her right, but this was no time for assumptions.

"Yeah. All our branches are moving to [global corporate bank], and their TRN is different from ours, so you have to change it." Again, a matter-of-fact manner, as though I should have known all this.

"OK, that's news," I said, making a mental note to close my account as soon as I could. "And this TRN, what does that have to do with it?"

"Any money deposited in your account goes through a TRN, and so if you have the wrong number, it won't get to you."

Finally I understood what was going on.

"Ahhh," I said. "I think I know what this means. You've just sold all your branches to [global corporate bank], which needs a different code for the direct deposit of my salary. So my employer, not I, but my employer has to change where it direct-deposits my salary. Is that right?"

"Yeah," she said, with a tone that said "Duh! Of course." She wasn't being rude - in fact she was trying to be helpful - but I could tell that she was a little puzzled why I was so slow to pick up on these elementary terms that she knew so well.

"I've got it now," I said. "Thanks again for your help."

"You're welcome." Click.

Later that same day I opened a new account at a new bank. It was as good an experience as this had been bad, and I plan to write about it in a future column. [Update 10/11: I have written this as Part 2 of the story. -mh]

For now, consider how this transaction - the fax, the call, and other data surrounding it - might be interpreted inside the bank.

An executive concerned only with usability might consider the transaction a success, since my "task success" was 100%. I got the information I needed, and I went ahead and changed the appropriate routing number. (This was before I got the routing number from my new bank.)

A branding executive might also feel OK about the transaction, since the bank's logo was clearly printed, according to the corporate style guide, in the upper-left corner of the page, with the correct dimensions. And the person who answered the phone clearly said the name of the bank.

The mass-marketer in the bank is probably satisfied with the bank's work, because two days later I received a glossy brochure in the postal mail. "Coming Soon: More convenience for you," the headline gushes, just next to the stock graphic of a man dancing with a delighted mid-air child (the graphic designer must be pretty happy, too).

It's only the person who's really concerned with the customer experience who might have a different perspective. The transaction was a complete failure, because it gave me, a loyal customer of over ten years, several reasons to close my account. The fax was confusing and threatening, the long-distance phone call was flawed, and the glossy brochure, which arrived after the fax, is the kind of corporate happy-speak that I'd expect from the mega-bank that bought their branches.

The reality of business is the customer's reality. But seeing things from the customer's perspective, and then acting on it, requires something outside the realm of traditional usability, marketing, branding, and graphic design. It requires listening to, and empathy for, the customer. It requires reaching beyond one's narrow discipline and learning, sometimes painfully, that things have to change.

When is the last time you let a customer speak freely about their experience with your organization?

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See also: The rest of the story, in Part 2: A bank customer experience.