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Articles filed in: Strategy
The Noisy Bell And Napkin Worthiness
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
John Lydgate was right, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”
And yet a huge part of our job as business leaders, entrepreneurs and product creators is to meet a standard that pleases most of the people we serve, most of the time.
Feedback—the information and reactions we receive about our products or performance is the basis for improvement, but feedback comes in different forms. It’s often what’s unsaid, the complaint that isn’t voiced or the praise that isn’t overt that’s most valuable to our businesses. The clean plate, the return visit, the website address scribbled on a lunch companion’s napkin, leave valuable clues about what’s working and what’s not.
Customer satisfaction and customer support are very different from customer awareness and customer care.
Your business needs both.
You can wear yourself down by constantly reacting to the noisy bell, or you can find more ways to pay attention to the people who think you are napkin-worthy, then work harder to create more of them.
Image by C.Foulger.
How Do You Know?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
How do you know which product to launch next?
How do you know which packaging works best?
How do you know what it feels like for someone to encounter your brand?
How do you know what story your customer will tell tomorrow about the experience he had today?
What we know (or perhaps don’t yet know), about our customers should be the thing that impacts what we do now and next.
How are you getting better at knowing?
Image by Glen Scott.
The Thing About That List You’re Making
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Take a look at the Top 20 Book Lists of All Time on Amazon. This is what most people bought and reviewed—the books that succeeded wildly, beyond expectations. Could anyone have predicted that these would be the books that the majority embraced? Can anyone explain why?
Despite their outstanding success you probably haven’t read or even heard of some of them.
Now consider the books not listed, maybe they too got under someone’s skin, changed a life, sparked a great idea or launched a career.
As you set out on this brand new year you’re probably making a list of your own. You have things you want to plan for, milestones you want to reach, targets you want to hit and perhaps even a list or two you want to get on.
Remember that success is not what you read in a well-crafted bio, or see on a carefully curated Instagram feed and it may never be recognised with awards or witnessed on a list.
Success is a feeling, not a fact. You get to choose what it should feel like.
Image by Colin Knowles.
A Reputation That Precedes You
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s 5pm, still thirty minutes to go before Mr Wong opens its doors for dinner. The line snakes down the street and around the corner. A few people have bookings for tables of six or more, but not many, most are walk-ins who know that if you’re not dining with a bigger group and have no reservation (house rules), then you need to get there early. Mr Wong’s reputation precedes it.
There is clearly no time for the management to worry about what the dozen other restaurants within walking distance are doing and no urgency to allocate resources to traditional marketing campaigns.
Like the Mr Wong team every one of us has a choice. We can spend the majority of our time either managing our reputation or keeping pace with our competitors or we can deliberately create the reputation that precedes us.
What’s the story you want customers to tell about your brand? [Take time to write it down].
How will you make that happen?
Image by deepstereo.
The Three Marketing Superpowers—Judgement, Empathy And Timing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Just two days before Christmas while every other retailer was happily dealing with long lines, the outdoor clothing and travel equipment store was empty. Not a customer in sight. They should have been doing a brisk trade in torches, camping accessories and stocking fillers, yet the assistants had plenty of time to finesse the ‘Boxing Day Sale’ window display. Large red signs announcing that in just three days things might be cheaper filled every window, reminding passers-by about buyer’s remorse right when they were in the mindset to make a purchase.
This error in judgement, empathy and timing led to a slew of operational decisions, the impact of which couldn’t be undone. The ability to stand in the customer’s shoes and to see the world as they do is the most underrated marketing tool we have.
Image by Gerard Stolk.
When The Marketing Works
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
We spend so much of our time in ‘push mode’ that we can forget to celebrate what went well or to evaluate why. When you make the sale it’s natural to begin working out how to make the next one.
We make the next one by working out why we made the first.
It’s important to spend as much time questioning why the story resonated, as you do working out how to tell it.
Image by Baptiste Pond.
What Are Your Rules Designed To Do?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s never a good sign when a flight doesn’t board on time. When the ground staff make announcements about ‘engineering faults’ and begin handing out meal vouchers you know you’re in trouble. And so it went last month for flight 029 to Hong Kong. Three hours after the first announcement the flight was cancelled, leaving the ground staff with five hundred customer service issues to deal with in one hit. No wonder few airlines do this well.
There were a few options for me to choose from—accept a downgrade to a different flight class taking, one of the last remaining seats on a partner airline’s flight that was departing later that day, wait to fly on the ‘next available’ (no more flights today and not sure when there will be any in that class tomorrow), or cancel the trip. The first rule of flying is, always go on the flight that’s going, so it was a no brainer, and besides this was a work trip and there was no way I would let this client down even if I had to swim to Hong Kong.
There was a rush to get a couple of us ticketed and boarded and no mention about how the airline would compensate passengers for the inconvenience and the downgrade, that would be sorted out later. Much later.
Six weeks on I’ve repeated this story to three of the airline’s ‘customer care’ representatives and one supervisor, after they asked if I had kept my new boarding pass (even though they could see I had boarded and travelled).
Initially I was offered Frequent Flyer Points (and no refund) “as a gesture of goodwill”. I was told that because of the ‘fare rules’ the difference between the fares could not be refunded in cold hard cash. When I tried to dig deeper about those rules I was informed that rep number three hadn’t been “trained in the fare rules”.
And there’s what’s at the heart of the problem.
If your rules are so complex that staff can’t understand them, what hope is there for customers? What are those rules designed to do? Are they there to protect customers and staff, to ensure that everyone is treated well and fairly, to empower the delivery of surprise and delight? Or are they designed to enable the organisation to maximise its return on investment in the short term, thus forsaking things that matter?
If your rules are not designed to make customers happy or to empower staff to make that happen, then what are they designed for?
Seven weeks and another conversation with the supervisor later it seems I might get a partial refund. The customer care representative who is handling my case was due to email me about the decision late last week. I’m still waiting to hear if the rules are designed to be broken and fair.
Image by Jonathan Cohen.
What To Question
The comedian doesn’t think about how he to be funnier, he tries to understand what makes people laugh and why.
The shoe designer doesn’t simply consider what will look good, she obsesses over what will make a woman feel good.
The architect doesn’t just consider the orientation of the building, he cares about how people will go about their day inside it.
What do you spend your days questioning and caring about? Is it the things that truly matter?
Image by Steve Spangler
Double Your Business
Greg opened his diary and booked the new client in. It was a small electrical job, hardly worth going out of his way for the call out fee of $120—the kind of job that most of his competitors wouldn’t have dreamed of booking this close to Christmas when everyone wanted everything yesterday.
He turned up on time and replaced the power outlet in less that 20 minutes. The call out fee was secured in a third of the time allocated and Greg could have been on his way, his competitors would certainly have made use of those extra forty minutes that he now had up his sleeve, not Greg.
He stayed to chat to the customer, getting to know him, admiring the space and the decor and suggesting ways that the lighting could be improved in ways that would save electricity and enhance the appearance and functionality of the room. Before the hour was up without pushing or coercion Greg had secured this second job that was worth ten times the initial call out charge. He would be back to fit the new lights in January.
We spend a lot of time trying to work out how to get people to notice us. It turns out that we have a far greater chance of success when we notice them first. If you want to double your business try doubling your service. Opportunities for growth might be closer than you think.
Image by compacflt.
The Value Of Unknowns
Will the new product launch be successful?
Is this really what customers want?
Will the digital marketing initiative drive enough sales?
Is this the right person to hire?
Will the redesign improve engagement?
Is the timing perfect?
The truth is that we can’t know for sure. That doesn’t stop us trying to act as if we do.
There’s nothing more seductive than confirmation and validation.
We actively seek them out, and yet we will do anything to avoid what we don’t know about our customers, the marketplace or the difference we hope to create.
The only way to know if we’ve done enough is to stop hiding from what we don’t know.
The act of digging into the unknowns is more useful than reaffirming what’s certain.
Image by Bob Vondereau.