Empathy

I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the radio last night on Harvard Community Radio.  The show, The Creative Life with Erin Denk, is a show about creativity in all walks of life.

In our discussion, the host and I were talking about marketing, and what makes for good marketing.  "Empathy," I said tersely.  Terseness does not make for good radio.

Erin pushed back initially at my answer.  She has a therapy background and has a different view of empathy AND of marketing.

Empathy, I explained, is the ability to view things from another's perspective.  If marketing is primarily about developing and maintaining relationships (an assertion I had made earlier) then it makes sense that being able to view the product or service from the prospect's perspective will make for stronger marketing.  With empathy, you can make value propositions that address the needs and desires of the prospective customer.

Empathy, I would argue, is a more important skill than the ability to write, design, produce or edit.  Empathy is were all the great marketing messages start.

Can you see my perspective?      

The Creative Life with Erin Denk can be found on Harvard Community Radio at www.harvardcommunityradio.com or at AM1610 or 

on TuneIn Radio and serch for Harvard Community Radio.   

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Changing Paradigms

There are some industries that have been around for a long time that haven't really changed.  The secretaries may have computers on their desks instead of typewriters, but the basic way that business is conducted hasn't changed

Rethinking how to you do your business takes courage and foresight.  If you succeed, you are seen as a visionary and a leader.  If you fail, well, you are not.

To change the paradigm of an industry takes an ability to not confuse interim goals with end goals.  That visionary leader will be able to remember that the ultimate goal is not more sales, but more profits.  If the company can make more profits in a way that doesn't require so many sales, it is worth consideration.

Take for instance the company profiled in the video that is linked below.  CFS II is a collection agency in Tulsa, OK.  Sorta.  Its owner, Bill Barman, is a visionary leader.

You see, Mr. Bartman realized that the end goal of his company is to collect on past due debts.  He could do it like all of his competitors, by browbeating the people in debt until they forked over a little bit.  Or he could act on his realization that "people in debt don't have money."

So instead, CFS II and its leader changed the paradigm.  Instead of usual collection agency tactics, CFS II helps debtors to consolidate debts, to find jobs, to secure housing and government assistance. All for free. Mr. Bartman doesn't hire debt collectors, he hires customer service professionals. They help people get out of debt.  Because, as Mr. Barman points out, when they are out of debt, they can pay him back.

His results are very positive.  I encourage you to watch the video.  As you do, I encourage you to think about what your organization's ultimate goal is and what are the paradigms that can be changed regarding reaching THOSE goals!

http://youtu.be/SrON4uh6T1k

The Final Say

"Don't let it end like this.  Tell them I said something."
Pancho Villa, last words 1877 - 1923

Endings are important.  When it comes to customer service, endings are perhaps the most important time in the customer interaction, primarily because it is your last chance to leave the customer with a good impression, the last chance to correct any mistakes or missteps and the last chance to make things exceptional.

I was once eating lunch with a colleague at a restaurant that was part of a national chain.  During the course of lunch, a cockroach crawled across our table.  Neither of us at the table were happy about that, but neither of us freaked out either.  It did put a certain pallor on our lunch, which ended sooner than we had expected because of the unexpected visitor.  When I mentioned what had happened to our server, she expressed appropriate dismay and asked us to wait to talk with the manager.

My first response was that this was good.  They were taking our experience seriously and wanted restaurant management to know and have a chance to apologize.  But as my colleague and I waited for more than 15 minutes to talk with the manager (we kept being told he would be right there) our anger at the situation grew.
By making us wait for so long (this was a business day and we both had to get back to work), the manager took what would have been a minor situation and escalated it.  Instead of giving us the impression that they took the cleanliness of the restaurant and the quality of our experience seriously, the absent manager highlighted the fact that we just weren't that important.

We had more than 15 minutes to think about the little creature that crawled across our table and what that probably meant about how many of his siblings were crawling around other parts of the restaurant.  As we had more than 15 minutes to wait, we thought about the meals that we didn't finish due to this incident, the time this was costing us waiting for the manager and the poor attitude of the staff (actually only the manager, but anger has a way of painting with a broad brush.)

When the manager finally decided to attend to us, he immediately went into a rather lengthy and detailed description of all the pest control measures that the restaurant engaged in, which is now and forevermore the first thing I think of when I think of this chain.  I am sure their advertising agency will be pleased to know that.  It also seemed as if the manager was saying that we couldn't possibly have seen a cockroach because they invest a small fortune on chemicals and exterminators to keep them at bay.  In the end, the manager spent another 10 or 15 minutes blathering on about restaurant pest management as if he were preparing for the test on that chapter of the manager's manual.

When I finally interrupted him and told him that we needed to be going he asked us to wait just a minute more and scurried off (somewhat like a cockroach I was thinking at this point.)  When he returned he proudly handed us each certificates for a free dessert, next time we returned and purchased a meal.  He then charged us for the full meal we were unable to finish.  We shook our heads, paid our bill and left.  It took me and my family more than 10 years to go back to any store in that chain.

The manager missed an opportunity by a mile.  By ignoring us and our situation, he ended the situation poorly.  A little sympathy would have made us go away satisfied and we probably would have forgotten it after a few retellings around the office.  A discount of our bill or waiving the bill altogether would have made a bold statement and probably would have had us leaving the restaurant feeling pretty good about the place.  A bold action like that would have said to us that they cared about our experience and since our experience wasn't great, they wanted to do something about it.  I suspect it also would have helped us feel that it didn't happen very often because they couldn't afford to waive everyone's lunch receipt.

YOU have the final say on what type of experience your customers have.  YOU have control over the last impression you and your organization makes before your customer walks out or logs off.  Especially when a customer has a poor or less than excellent experience, YOU have the chance to turn it around into something positive.

YOU have the final say!  Make it count!

**********
Everything is Marketing will not be published this Friday as I will be out of state attending a memorial service for my father-in-law.  Please take the time you would normally spend reading my blog to call or write to a loved one and tell them what they mean to you.  See you again on Monday.
Bill

Egg Baskets

When I was young, I had a best friend, Jimmy.  I spent most of my time playing with Jimmy.  We'd catch grasshoppers in the vacant lot, build forts in the strangest places, and and ride our bikes everywhere we could and a few places we couldn't.

Then one summer, something changed.  I didn't realize something had changed until Jimmy stood me up at the bus to go to the city pool for the third time. It bothered me when I realized that Jimmy just didn't show up instead of telling me that he didn't want to go to the pool.

While it hurt a little that Jimmy had found other friends, the larger problem was that I spent most of my time hanging out with Jimmy.  I really didn't have that many other friends.  It was a long and lonely summer.

A lot of businesses, particularly small businesses, have the same problem.  They have one or a few customers who make up the bulk of their business.  All (or most) of their revenue eggs are in that basket.

This creates a difficult situation for those companies, especially if they are small or medium-sized. Company A cannot afford NOT to focus on #1 Customer.  They can't divert precious resources (at least very many) to finding and cultivating new customers because they need to keep #1 Customer happy because without #1 Customer, Company A will have little or no revenue and they will be done as a business.  On the other hand, Company A needs other customers to make up the revenue if #1 Customer ever moves on to another supplier, for whatever reason.

When your company finds itself with most of its revenue eggs in one basket, there are two primary things you need to do:

1. Take care of the basket with all of the eggs!  First and foremost, keep that #1 customer happy.  Make sure they don't have a reason to move on.  Obviously, to this point the company has been geared to serving this customer or small collection of customers.  Keep that focus on specialized customer service as strong as possible.  Innovation and new services, to the extent that you are able to offer them, should be geared toward addressing the needs of your current customers.  Meanwhile...
2. Put a few eggs in other baskets...just in case.  Whenever possible, cultivate additional customers.  For small companies, this most likely will be a small move at first.  But if done with regularity, you will be able to build up a more diverse client list, which will mean more relationships for the company and, more importantly, more diverse sources of revenues.  The services and innovation you introduce to keep and grow your relationship with the #1 customer is bound to address the needs of other potential customers.  It is important to do this because you never know when you might drop your main egg basket!

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Taking the Pulse

They say that you are supposed to survey your customers to find out what they think about your organization.   You tell yourself, "My customers ARE NOT shy about sharing their complaints opinions, especially when they perceive something is wrong.  Why should I spend time and resources asking for more?"

They say that it is important to understand your customers' motivations, interests and feelings.  You think to yourself, "I know when they make a purchase.  Why do I care about anything else?"

They say they can tell you within one standard deviation how your customers will respond to your new product or ad campaign or store location.  You wonder to yourself, "What the heck is a standard deviation?"

Market research is often the most neglected tool in the marketing tool box.  There are many reasons for that.  First of all, many business people who understand a lot about marketing don't really understand the processes or the terminology of research.  Second, market research often seems to gum up the works and slow things down.  We just want to get started and research seems to delay things with no tangible payoff.  With research, not only do you have to take time for the survey, but you have to analyze the results and hope that the results don't indicate a change in plans.  It seems easier to avoid it.  Kind of like the dentist.

But ultimately, I think the primary reason that market research is so often skipped is that marketers don't see the value. They have a view of the world that they are comfortable with and they don't want to risk disrupting that view with research.  As Nate Silver says in his book The Signal and the Noise, "[w]e focus on the signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is.  We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure, even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being.  We make approximations and assumptions about the world that are much cruder than we realize."  Well-crafted research can help refine those approximations and assumptions.

Marketing is primarily about building and nurturing relationships.  Those relationships are with customers, staff, suppliers, board members, media, the industry, the public, politicians, the local community, the international community, regulators and the competition.  The degree that you develop relationships with any group on that list depends in part on your industry, in part on your product or service and in part on your marketing strategy.

Regardless of your industry, product or strategy, understanding those whom you seek to market to gives you an advantage.  Understanding their views and feelings about your organization and your product can help you take shortcuts to providing a product or service that exceeds their demands and expectations.  A simple, well crafted survey of your customers, prospective customers, or staff can help you break through the myopia that Nate Silver was writing about and see the world, and your product, as your customer sees it.

Ultimately, you do market research because you need to know what "they" say: about your organization, about your product and about their needs.

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Too much of a good thing

I made a mistake a while back.  I contributed to a political party.  The reason that was a mistake is now they will not stop calling me.   On a recent weekend (not during an election mind you), I got four calls asking for donations.  I have asked to be taken off of their call list.

(Photo credit: :: Wendy ::)

In a similar mistake, I signed up for something online that is supposed to support my high school alma mater. Very soon I was getting emails every day trying to sell me something.  I have stopped even looking at those emails.  They now get deleted as soon as they show up in my inbox.  I haven't yet taken myself off of the distribution list out of some sort of alumni guilt.  That is probably going to change soon.

With the cost of reaching out to customers and prospective customers falling to almost nothing, it is more important than ever that companies and organizations remember who bears the greatest cost every time they reach out to a contact.  The contact does.

Even with permission marketing, you can reach out too much.  Even with those who are already your fans or supporters or customers, if you call four times in one weekend, you are going to annoy them.

Organizations need to understand that there is a cost of time and attention every time they call or email someone.  They need to be sensitive to the fact that both time and attention are in short supply for most people.  IF they are going to contact you frequently, they should provide you something of value with that contact.  IF they are going to contact you frequently, they should recognize that it is easy to cross the line into annoyance and get put on the don't call list.

In the best of situations, organizations create reasons for their customers and supporters to reach out to them!  It's hard to overdo it when you have your customers contacting you!

They Just Don't Care About Apathy

I know many fine people that I greatly respect who work for the United States Post Office.  I marvel regularly at what they are able to do for the cost of one little stamp.  I sincerely hope that the Post Office will prove all the demise-predicting pundits wrong because I think it is an important institution for our society.

If the US Post Office ceases to exist in the next 10 years, it is my opinion its demise will not be brought about by Saturday deliveries or federal oversight that requires onerous pension payments and restricts its ability to compete with private firms.  It will not be brought about by budget shortfalls or cost overruns.

Rather, the US Post Office will be brought down by the most insidious problem an organization ever has to deal with.  Apathy.

I find myself frequently dealing with mailings of between several hundred and a couple thousand pieces.  This is the type of mailing that is often too small to send out to a full service printer but too large to be done internally without a fair amount of effort and time.  One of my practices, in order to streamline things as much as possible, has been to take a prototype of the mailing to the Post Office to make sure that there won't be any problems.

The problem has been that for almost 50% of the mailings I have done over the last few years, what I am told when I take in the prototype and what I am told when I bring in what I thought was a final mailing is different.  Sometimes VERY different.  It often results in a significant delay in my mailing and a loathsome amount of rework.  Just recently, I brought a mailing in to get the cost of postage.  I was told one amount by the clerk behind the counter.  The next day, I brought in the mailing stamped and ready to mail and was told by the same guy that I had the wrong amount of postage on the mailing.  The same guy.  One day later.

I understand that everyone makes mistakes.  It is a part of being human.

I also understand that one of any organization's best chances to provide excellent customers service that is remembered by a customer is when a mistake has been made.  When a mistake has been made and identified, how your organization responds will have a huge impact on whether the customer walks away for good or not.

How your organization steps up to or runs away from problems has almost everything to do with whether the customer experiencing the problem feels that they are important to you, that you care about them as an individual customer, or whether they are "just a sale."  How much customers feel respected by the offending organization has a direct correlation on positive or negative word of mouth, active antagonism or even law suits.

When I told the Post Office employee that he had told me a significantly different postage rate just they day before, that I had asked him twice if he was sure because I "didn't want to have to do this a second time" and showed him where he had written the wrong amount down for me, he just said "sorry."  When I asked him and the other clerk who was present at the time what my options were, they just shrugged their shoulders with a slight smirk on their faces.  It was obviously not their problem.  They were apathetic to my issue.

I know that the Post Office, as a pseudo-governmental agency, might have limited options.  I know that they weren't going to be able to let me mail my mailings with insufficient postage.  But I also know that neither of the clerks who were confronted with this issue took this on as their concern.  I know that neither of the people I was dealing with cared if they had cost me a weeks worth of work and significant amount of money and a deadline I was pushing to make.  

Perhaps the Post Office can afford apathy.  No one else at the moment can send a letter across the country for 46 cents (except email which can do it for free.)   No one else can deliver bills and magazines and personal messages right to your mailbox for pennies (except for the internet which delivers it to your computer, in the house, for free.)

Perhaps the Post Office can afford apathy but no one else can.  Including their customers and former customers! 

Please let me know of experiences you have had with excellent, and not so excellent, customer service in the comments below!  Thanks!

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Make 'em Laugh, Make 'em Cry...

"I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."  Maya Angelou

Marketing is a business of feelings and emotions because people are driven by emotions and feelings.

To be successful, a marketer must connect with the customer on an emotional level.  Actually, to be successful, a business must connect with the customer on an emotional level; it is, however,  typically the job of the marketers to establish that connection.

All of our decisions are driven by emotions.  You buy the same soap as you have for years because it is a safe decision and no one at home will complain about it.  You covet a sports car because it will make you look successful, or sexy, or at least not quite so middle-aged.  You hire an assistant because you like him, he reminds us of yourself when you were his age, or he will bring skills to the team that will cover your backside.

Emotions can swing both ways.  I won't go into a certain store because the person behind the counter was rude to me.  I don't stop at Dairy Queen because my wife will chide me for not sticking to my diet.  I found a different mechanic because the technicians were not honest with me the last time I asked questions about my car repair.  I won't hire that accountant because I heard my neighbor got ripped off by him.

This is one of the reasons it is so important to address bad customer experiences as quickly and completely as possible.  When people have a bad experience, and it isn't addressed quickly and sincerely, the tell people.  When people hear bad things about a product or service, they tend to take it seriously.  Fearing a bad experience themselves, they stay away or at least think twice before making a purchase.

The bottom line is that when you connect with a customer's emotions, you connect with them.  Good or bad.  Make them laugh.  Make them cry.  Make them feel something.  But do it deliberately and with a strategy.

Otherwise, you may be the one crying.

An Inside Job: The Importance of Internal Marketing

A friend of mine recently spent a lot of time and money developing a very good marketing campaign. He was very excited about the project and had seemingly done everything by the numbers.  He even tested the campaign before launching it, scoring very well with the test audience.

A few weeks after the launch he was dismayed.  The beautiful (and expensive) campaign had not yielded the results he had hoped.  Sales hadn't really increased.  Testing showed that even his reputation and similar scores weren't changing.

It wasn't until a customer cornered him and told him about the negative things that she had heard an employee saying about the company that my friend realized that he HAD NOT done everything by the numbers.  He had forgotten to market to his internal customers.  While he was sending out positive, marketing-focused messages out the front door, his staff (or at least some of them) were sending out negative complaint-focused messages out the back.  Any marketing who has been working in this field for 30 minutes can tell you that negative word-of-mouth trumps positive word-of-mouth almost every time.

My friend tinkered with his campaign to make it appropriate for his internal audience and shared it with his staff.  Slowly but surely, as his staff understood and bought into his campaign, sales started to improve.

In my blog It's All About Relationships, I talk about the value of developing good relationships with your customers.  The same holds true with your employees.  You not only have to treat them well as a "boss," but you need to keep them informed and up-to-date as potential spokespeople.  An informed employee is an extension of your marketing efforts.  A misinformed or uninformed employee is the worst enemy to your marketing efforts, often unintentionally.

Readers, please share any stories or tips you have on marketing to the internal audience!  Thanks!

After Midnight

After Midnight.
Patsy Cline goes walking.  Eric Clapton lets it all hang out.  And retailers turn out the lights and lock the doors.  Or at least they used to.

In the new internet-based, global economy it makes sense to be open 24/7.  Your customers are getting used the the "always there" nature of the internet.  Who among us hasn't, at least once,browsed the virtual aisles of Amazon or Macy's at 2 am?

But it is not just on the internet.  More and more bricks and mortar establishments, including fast food restaurants and big box discount retailers are staying open 24/7.  They are realizing that we are no longer a 9 to 5 economy.

There are many reasons for this.  Fewer and fewer jobs are the types that you can "punch out" at a certain time and head home.  Work hours are getting longer (the average work day is 8.7 hours long according to some sources) and commutes to and from work are getting longer (26 miles each way is the average work commute in the US.)  More families have both parents working at least one job.  That means that people are looking for the convenience of a quick dinner or the ability to do their personal shopping when it is convenient to them.

Successful businesses are open when their customers are looking for them.  More often than not that is after midnight.

Could I have a few moments of your time?

The other evening, I got a call asking me to participate in a survey.  As I am a marketer and a communicator, I know the value survey feedback can provide and I am usually an easy mark when it comes to surveys.  I agreed after being told that the survey would only take "a few minutes."  15 minutes into the survey, with no signs of things slowing down, I was reminded of how a recent AP article reported that people are getting tired of being asked for feedback.  The article indicated that people in general are feeling fatigue when it comes to surveys.

Undoubtedly it is a good thing to ask your customers and other stakeholders for their input.  Without question, a company should consider customer feedback when evaluating new or changing product features.  And it is so easy these days!  Google the phrase "free survey tools" and you will get pages of options that let you send out quick little electronic surveys that look good and automatically tabulate the results for you.  You can generate charts and graphs of the results in seconds.  It is a beautiful thing!

Nevertheless, cheap and easy survey capabilities may actually be doing marketers a disservice.  When it costs thousands of dollars to even think about doing a survey, those hosting a survey have to carefully consider the questions they are asking and the value of the answers that they will get back.  Questions that yield answers that are not actionable are (usually) eliminated.  Redundant questions are culled.  Heck, some companies even pre-test their surveys!  Companies who pay to have their surveys done professionally have a financial incentive to make sure their surveys were tight and targeted and purposeful.

With the preponderance of cheap and easy to implement survey tools (Survey Monkey I'm talking about you!) it has been too easy to just dash off a quick survey without giving a lot of thought as to what the question is really asking, or what the results of the question will provide as far as usable and actionable data.  This means not only do we get approached to take more surveys on the computer or the phone, but the surveys themselves are more and more frequently confusing, inane, highly biased or just plain no fun to take!

So, if you are a marketer who is surveying your audience, my advice is to act as if you are paying thousands of dollars to have each question asked.  If you aren't going to get at least thousands of dollars of value from the answers, don't ask the question.

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After Midnight

The thing is our expectations have changed.

We have gotten used to an Internet that is always there, McDonald's that are always open, and banks (a few) that answer the phone with a live person 24/7.

So when I encounter the dreaded "office hours" message, indicating that the organization I am trying to do business with isn't there because it is after their "normal business hours" I get wanderlust.  I don't know that I want to wait until 8 am Eastern on Monday to do business with company A, when Company B will let me spend my money with them after midnight on Sunday.

Graduations

I have had the opportunity recently to attend a couple of high school graduations, including my daughter's.  The ceremonies are almost always similar with short (hopefully!) speeches reminiscent of the glorious four years just past or philosophical about the years coming up.  High School, at graduation ceremonies, is portrayed as a great incubator of young men and women; a soft-focus frolic through four years with crazy but lovable teachers and mischievous but lovable classmates.  Triumphs are remembered.  Defeats and failures are not.  Everyone leaves graduation feeling good about their their past and hopeful about their future.

I am convinced that graduation ceremonies are one of the reasons so many people generally remember their high school experience as positive.

Some business have seemingly picked up on the transformative power of a closing celebration.  There are car dealers who will take your picture and have the whole sales team applaud when you pick up your brand new car.  Realtors give you a housewarming present at the closing.  A few high end barbers offer a short neck and shoulder massage after your hair cut.  You get the idea.  They are all going for that same positive capstone experience as high school graduation.

I wonder what it would do for our customer relations if we had a "graduation" after every customer interaction.