Are You Insane?

You know the old addage: "If you always do what you have always done..." ...but people do!

I recently worked with a team to answer an RFP. I asked if the potential client wanted to research the reasons why people in their target market were not buying, despite obvious benefits to them and to others. The answerf was , "No." How can this client grow market share unless and until they do something different? Shouldn't we at least check to make sure we have all the reasons for rejection? Without changing, expecting to grow the business is insane!

We recently presented to the annual meeting of the Public Relations Society of America, and to a ProVisors group. The "Popcorn Story" worked well with both groups, as it always does. I started thinking, why is it so difficult for people to think of customer needs when they are in a business frame of mind? The example always works. People almost never think of the customer when they are thinking of business metrics. And yet, when they are asked to think of their own needs with respect to a movie theater, they can come up with an extensive list immediately. Why do we have these two separate parts of our brain? Can they be brought together? Are we insane, with two completely separate personalities, the "business" person and the customer?

Do me a favor. Talk to a few of your customers or potential customers. Really concentrate on listening to them talk about their business and their future. Listen for opportunities. Listen for pains or problems. Listen for budget issues. If you need a few questions to get started, look in the front of Pain Killer Marketing: How do you see your business or market changing in the future? How does doing business with us cost you money? How do we help you make money? Who is your best supplier, of all types, and why? How do you choose whom to enlist as a business partner or supplier? Listen. Listen without judgment. Listen without an agenda. But listen.

After you have spoken to a few customers or potential customers, contact us here and let us know how things went. What did you learn? Were you able to solve your insanity and bring your two minds together: the business person and the customer?

This blog posting was inspired by an article written by Stacy Karacostas a few weeks ago on Biznik.com: "Is Temporary Insanity Keeping You From Growing Your Small Business?"

Your thoughts are always welcomed and appreciated!

How Can You "Listen" to Blogs?

Many companies are debating whether to create a blog or not, whether to participate in any form of social networking or not. One of the key questions is: Is it worth it?

As most of you know, besides being consultants, we both teach at UCSD Extension. Many of our students come from local businesses. The class projects of these students have convinced us the some companies could really benefit from listening to and participating in some blogging activity. Blogging is not for everyone, but some companies have set aside hours for executives to respond to bloggers, with success.

Has your company developed a formal program for monitoring, listening and organizing data from blogs about your products or services? If not, why not? Lack of interest? Lack of time? Not knowing the value?

Think about the person who blogs: they are passionate, interested and vocal with their opinions. If you have read Pain Killer Marketing, this describes an ideal subject for qualitative research! Learn which blogs to follow. Occasionally steer the conversation to a topic of interest to you. You may find an incredible source of detailed information on customer pains or Voice of the Customer attributes!

What do you think?

If you want to see the slides from our presentation at Dine America! in Atlanta in September, visit Chris Stiehl's page on LinkedIn for access.

Be sure to see us at our Public Relations Society of America presentation on November 10th in San Diego (convention center) in the morning.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet: Is that the question?

Many companies have wondered how much "Tweeting" to allow their employees to do, if any at all. One employee inadvertently shared a proprietary cooking process while engaged in social networking. He was fired! Other companies have had executives engage with social networkers for an hour a day, just to stay in touch with the customer base. This raises several key issues:

Should employees be allowed to engage in social networking at work?

How can the social networking tools be used to engage and listen to customers?

What are the dangers? What are the potential benefits?

I have written here in the past about the new world of customer service: a woman who had unanswered questions about a flight after her children were on board. She tweeted her network to get answers from the airline. She had a personal phone call from the airline's customer service department in less than 5 minutes! Impressive use of social networking on both ends: she had a large network; someone at the airline was listening.

Check out this article on the four dangers of social networking and let me know your thoughts below. Reading the article should take less than 5 minutes.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24703.asp

How much should we be monitoring, restricting or limiting employees' use of the scoial networks at work?

Customer Service = Social Networking?

If you read our last post, you know what we think about social networking: we think we are in the process of revolutionizing customer service and customer expectations. In a world where many products and services are being thought of as commodities, customer service is becoming even more of a differentiator than it was before. Of course, you will still need to service your customers by telephone, and in some cases in person, but more and more transactions are taking place via social networking.

Last time we talked about the woman in JFK airport and her experience: getting explicit personal help in less than 5 minutes from her airline, using Twitter and her 10,000 followers. Rather than the exception, such experiences are rapidly becoming the rule.

In an article by Aaron Strout that appeared in MultiChannel Merchant yesterday (http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/0810-social-marketing-customer-service/), the author discusses how embracing social networks has enhanced customer loyalty and differentiated customer service for several companies (Intuit, Comcast, Zappos). What is social networking doing for you and your company?

Mr. Strout suggests that you begin your social networking efforts by listening (sound familiar?). As "The Listening Coach," I couldn't agree more! The book that I wrote with Henry DeVries gives you a structured way to accomplish this (Pain Killer Marketing).

The second step is to engage your customers. Stimulate their passions to help to create loyalty. The author cites Fred Reichheld's assertion that increasing loyalty by as little as 5% can increase the bottom line by between 25% and 85% (Leading with Loyalty)! Again, this agrees with the assertion that Henry and I made in our book: tap into the customers' passions (often, their pains).

The third and final step is to measure. You must develop and deploy predictive internal business metrics. This will enable you to show the ROI for your efforts and predict future success.
Have you engaged in social networking as a corporate entity? Are you wondering what the cost/benefit calculations show for your investment of time?

Many of the companies who have engaged their customers and potential customers in this way have greatly reduced their need for call centers and reduced their time to service. In some cases, customers help each other solve problems! Talk about establishing a community of loyalty! Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, has more than 1,000,000 followers! What would it be worth to your company to have direct access to a million customers, instantaneously, who want to hear from you? As a market researcher, I would say that is a lot of people to tap into for their ideas and opinions about your product.

As you move into this realm, whether as a marketing effort or as a customer service program, please keep in mind that it begins with listening. Have a structured way to capture and use the Voice of the Customer. If we can help in any way, please call.

Great Customer Service is Really a Tweet!

There is an interesting customer service story making the rounds these days, on CNN, WOMMA and elsewhere. Jessica Gottlieb was an active blogger on her iPhone. She watched helplessly as her children sat for 60 minutes on the tarmac at JFK, waiting to take off. Jessica immediately got on her iPhone and twittered about her problem to Virgin Air.

In 140 characters, she indicated her situation to Virgin Air: plane delayed, kids onboard, waiting for an hour, her gate at JFK, asking her followers to "retweet" her message to Virgin Air and/or their networks of followers.

She had nearly 10,000 followers. Who knows how many followers they had! Within minutes, Virgin Air called Gottlieb to reassure her that her kids would be OK. They contacted the gate agent and explained the weather problem, indicating that this information should be shared with Gottlieb. Within 20 minutes, the plane took off.

How does this scenario compare with customer service at your company? Are you listening that well, so you would know within minutes if an individual problem had occured and be able to generate a cogent and meaningful response? This is not the customer service challenge of tomorrow, but today!

As "The Listening Coach," I cannot encourage you enough to embrace the new technologies and be prepared to listen and respond. Your competition will do that, if they have not done so already.

The listening technologies have changed. There used to be just a few ways to report a problem: telephones, face-to-face and US Mail, pre-Internet. Social networks came along, but American businesses were not responding to them, not quickly, if at all. Now, Facebook and Twitter are everywhere. Many companies have thousands of followers. JetBlue, for example, has 700,000+ followers. Social networking is rapidly becoming a business necessity, at least for customer service, if not market research.

Are you listening? What is being "tweeted" about your company? How quickly can you respond? Are your customer service agents equipped and authorized to respond? What's next? Google Wave will allow text, photos and other information to be shared in real time later this year. Are you ready for that? Is your customer service organization ready? What will the marketing research issues be? Is marketing ready?

What are your thoughts? If we can help you understand your customers' needs or your own with respect to any of these issues, please call (619-516-2864).

Local CFOs Say Recovery May Take 2 Years

FEI and IMA recently surveyed their membership (these are CFOs from local Southern California businesses). While many were cutting costs, through renegotiating with vendors and the like, most were looking forward to a better future. They were investing in improving processes. They were training their management and staff on ways to cut costs and perform better. Almost half of them were launching new products in the next few months and continuing to invest in Research and Development, at least, not cutting there. Many of their businesses, particularly in service industries, have flattened out and are just starting to see the hints of recovery. The business is nowhere near as good as 12 months ago, but it may be turning up. Many of these excutives felt that the road to full recovery may take a while, up to two years. What do you think?

Penn Post, Bob Eberlein and Chris Stiehl conducted this research. It will be available as a white paper soon. Please let me know if you want to be able to obtain a copy.

Are You a Good Web Conversationalist? Companies better be!

The great benefit to Web 2.0 is the conversation. Normally, you advertise or do your PR work, and it is all about talking to customers (the target market, etc.), telling them your benefits, then measuring the impact and response. LinkedIn and other social networks allow a conversation between the company and its customers - not just listening, but interacting. How well suited are you to having a conversation with your customers? How do you listen and generate a response, without sending it through legal, etc.?

In my experience, many companies have no mechanism for this. At one company, getting a communication through legal could take a month or more - not practical for the Web. The companies that can design the system for having a conversation with customers online will have a tremendous advantage over their competitors.

The interactive nature of the conversations provides opportunities for market research, particularly for creating a Voice of the Internet Customer. What are the demographics? Do they mirror your target market for your product or service? A well-trained researcher can use the opportunity to ask generic questions, with sincerity, and collect ideas and attributes for analysis. The techniques outlined in our book are applicable here, with a few modifications.

How are you using the interactive nature of the Web? Are you taking advantage of the conversation, or just listening?