Bacon and egg

A chicken and a pig were walking down the road one day discussing what they might do with the rest of their lives.

‘I know’ said the chicken, ‘let’s go into business together and set up a breakfast diner serving up bacon and eggs and all day breakfasts’.

‘No way’, said the pig, ‘that’s a really dumb idea’.

‘Why?’

‘Because’, said the pig, ‘if we do that me and my relatives are committed while you would only be involved. You might be well motivated to make this a goer but we would be the only ones with skin in the game….quite literally.’’

In today’s modern world, the motivation word is somewhat overused and overhyped. We will all have been subject to  ‘motivational speeches’ that get everybody fired up for a few hours then, when they go back into their normal world, nothing different really happens.

I recently read this passage from a world leading psychologist.

"MOTIVATION is simply the desire for something. All people are motivated. And most individuals are motivated to perform better at whatever they do in love, work and play. However, far FEWER people are actually COMMITTED to doing the things necessary to perform better. COMMITMENT is demonstrated when one regularly and consistently demonstrates the SPECIFIC behaviours and activities that are LIKELY to DIRECTLY result in optimal performance”.

This is the difference between thinking about doing (as we all do) and just doing (as very few do).

That got me thinking.

As Benjamin Franklin once said ‘tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember but involve me and I will learn’.

I am also reminded from my readings of behavioural economics that we are more likely to change behaviour if we are involved and are able to take a participatory approach to behavioural change. Commitment devices can help us overcome our self-will weaknesses. Making our commitments public leads to reputational damage should we break our commitments. Even the very act of writing a commitment can increase the likelihood of it being fulfilled.

So what does this mean for improving our level of commitment to the brand, the businesses, we all work with?

We are all motivated to do well but are we really and truly committed to the processes necessary to be the best and to improve ourselves? Are we really committed to do what it takes to achieve our personal and/or professional goals? And we shouldn’t be looking for our managers or anyone else to help us here. This is down to us.

Last week I came across the story of a world class golfer who had lost the winning habit. He was still motivated to win but his family, his coach, his friends and his fans wondered if he had the commitment to still win.

So he wrote out a plan of action and he made a series of specific commitments not to his coach, his family or friends, but to himself to take the specific behaviours and activities that were likely to result in optimum performance.

This is not the place to talk about golf but needless to say off the back of these quite public and written down commitments he has won 3 times. He is back! He had recovered the habit that is borne out of commitment.

And he had done so by involving himself in the process. Not by listening to a motivation tapes, speeches or talks. As Mr Franklin implied-these words would soon be forgotten.

We can all learn from this.

Commitment isn’t about ‘positive thinking’ or a ‘great attitude’, it is about doing what needs to be done. It’s about being focused on the task at hand despite your mind telling you that you don’t feel like it or you are too tired. It is about getting things done.

Are you committed to whatever you want to achieve or do in life or are you just motivated?

Are you a pig or a chicken?

Let's talk shoes

How long could you talk on the telephone with a stranger? 5 minutes? Half an hour? One hour? More?

What about if the conversation was about shoes?

How about 10 hours 29 minutes?

This was the 'world record' set for the longest customer service phone call by Zappos, the online shoe retailer with a very unique definition of good customer service. And they are so proud of this record as its spokesperson was delighted to explain,

' Zappos first core value is to deliver wow through service and allowing team members to stay on the phone with a customer for as long as they need is a crucial measure of fulfilling this value'.

I am not sure what was talked about for 10 and half hours though I believe that one pair of Ugg boots was in fact sold. However it does demonstrate Zappos legendary dedication to its customers.

Now this example might be a tad excessive. And the business case for this call might not be  financially sustainable. But it does raise one important question in my mind-how effective are call handling metrics and targets?

Too often call centres target average call handling times. In other words the average length of the call, or conversation with a customer or prospect, must not exceed say 90 seconds. And colleagues whose average exceeds this target will be subject to 're-education'.

So what happens in this environment-colleagues on the phone rush to finish the call as soon as possible to avoid breach. It must be like watching the Countdown Clock. The priority is to finish the call, not resolve the customer problem. Is this good for business? Is this good for the customer? No and most definitely no.

Last week I heard of a utility company, though I'm sure this tale is equally applicable to banks and anyone else with a large and even small call centre operation, whose rate of efficiency as measured by average call handling was amazingly high yet whose C-Sat scores were depressingly low. And there is a correlation.

For to keep down call handling times call centre colleagues were rushing through the calls with a high tendency to action single requests for service even though the customer might want to do more than one service action. And so this led to unhappy customers and the customer needing to call back. And so the number of calls into the call centre increased too. And you call this efficient?

This is a lose lose. It's not a great customer experience. Nor an efficient business model.

Now I am not advocating that 10 hour conversations about shoes should become the norm in our call centres. But I do say that by allowing our call centre colleagues to take the time necessary to help customers without the need to watch the clock, our call centre conversations will be more rewarding, more fruitful, more engaging, more customer focused and yes more productive and efficient.

If Zappos have found this out surely it is time that everyone out there with a call centre which imposes time limits on calls found this out too.

Trust me-talking about shoes can make for happy smiley customers and happy face accountants too.

The dumbest question in the world...ever.

In all my years in business, and there have been quite a few of these, I have heard businesses say many dumb things and ask many stupid questions.

Like 'your call is important to us so please don't hang up'. If it means that much to you why don't you have more people on the phones then!

Or how about 'our Marketing Director doesn't speak to customers'. Of course he or she doesn't, he or she is far too important to speak to the one person who pays his or her wages.

But the one question that takes the title of the 'Stupidest Question in the World Ever' is this-who owns the customer?

This is a question normally asked by a channel or product unit keen to 'own' the customer that they might sell to them. And I have known businesses tie themselves in organisation knots of Gordian complexity in an attempt to provide an answer to the question in neat pigeon-hole fashion. In essence businesses with this approach see customers as targets to be allocated neatly across the business.

It never seems to occur to people to ask whether or not customers want to be owned.

And I always like to work off the premise that no customer wants to be owned. Indeed any brand or business only borrows the customer’s attention for a limited amount of time and if you are really lucky they just might get added to their repertoire.

You might be able to influence their brand choice but in no sense do you own the customer and indeed most customers would run away from you if they ever thought they were owned or were part of some corporate tug of war between competing and internal arms of the same business. Indeed most customers won't even appreciate the subtleties of internal structures and politics. They just see the name over the door.

So that is one reason why it is the dumbest question ever-it is fatuous.

But there is a second reason-it is the wrong question.

The right question to ask is not who owns the customer but who owns the customer experience. And this is where it starts to get fascinating.

For it is my observation that businesses which will expend significant amounts of effort to determine customer ownership will glibly respond to the proper question by saying 'we all do'.

Really?

If everyone owns something then no one does and in this situation the customer loses through a sub optimal customer experience. No business would say we all own the P&L and hope to remain solvent; or say we all own health and safety and hope colleagues avoid a paper cut; or say everyone is responsible for setting our own conditions of employment and hope to remain competitive.

Yet it seems rather foolish to me that in those businesses where everyone is accountable, they assume that this will be a good thing for its customers. It won't be. So get a grip.

And so there you have it, my nomination for the dumbest thing ever said by a business. Unless of course you know better.

Message in a (wee) bottle

Those of you of a certain age, and I count myself in this cohort, will be aware that the first signs that the ageing process has begun are diminishing eyesight and the addition of Specsavers to our retail repertoire.

And this is a problem when staying in hotels.

Last week I had occasion to stay in quite a few hotels while travelling. And in each of these hotels I encountered the same problem.

( Those of you of a younger generation will not know what I am going to talk about now so you can skip the new few paragraphs but please come back before the end to learn the moral of this tale and its application to marketing practice).

And it is quite a simple problem.

In a hotel room where is the last place you are likely to wear your glasses? In the shower, of course.

And yet the writing is so minuscule on the wee bottles that anyone with less than 20:20 vision must surely struggle to work out if they are putting shampoo or conditioner or even perfumed hand lotion on their tresses. It never seems to occur to anyone in the hospitality industry that this might be an issue for the ageing who are becoming visually challenged

I mentioned this insight first to the woman in the corridor with the trolley who makes up the rooms and then to the reception staff and was informed that everyone says the same thing; that they are sick and tired of flagging this up through line management, staff suggestions schemes and the like; but 'they ' just don't listen.

And here is the paradox-those closest to the customer have no influence or ability to make things happen; and those with most influence in any business are the furthest away from the customer. I call this the Customer Experience Paradox. And it is a puzzle that all businesses should be looking to resolve.

Sure businesses will listen to the customer by conducting large scale customer research programmes and no doubt the hotel chain mentioned above will have some sort of C-Sat tracking, though curiously I have not yet come across this. Maybe this is a business that isn't after all interested in hearing what its customers think.

In any event I doubt that such studies will pick up the small but irritating critical non essentials like the size of writing on the shampoo bottles. But it is by paying attention to the small details, the small irritations, the small delights that can set a brand apart.

And to do this it must find ways to solve the Customer Experience Paradox. Perhaps by paying more attention to the collective wisdom of its staff and finds ways to ensure that their wisdom is collected and shared. And I don't mean the usual Staff Suggestion Scheme but a channel where those closest to the customer are brought face to face with those with the ability to bring about change.

Alternatively those at the top of the organisation commit a day per month to spend on the shop floor, working with colleagues who deal with customers and even with customers themselves. Nothing could do more to help 'them' understand the frustrations, needs and emotions of their customers. Walking in the customers’ shoes is a very powerful catalyst for chance.

Hopefully someone in the hotel industry is listening and when I next stay in a hotel I might be able to wash my hair without fearing I am putting the wrong substance on my locks and that my hair might fall out.

Stairway to heaven

A few weeks back I walked into a very tall building in the heart of London. I was only going up 2 flights and to save waiting for a lift, and to get some much needed exercise, I thought I would change my default setting and go by stairs. One problem-I couldn’t find them. And so despite my best and well-meaning intentions, my default setting continued as my default.

We know climbing stairs is good for us-it’s a good workout and can even save time.

And yet few office buildings do anything meaningful to encourage stair climbing beyond maybe the odd notice or two trying to encourage people to stair not lift and which I suspect has only a very limited effect.

What is the first thing we normally see when we enter a building? It’s the lifts not the stairs.

And indeed when we do find the stairs we will usually find some grim, fluorescent-lit, concrete passage hidden away behind fire doors. I have even been known to end up locked out when moving between floors by stairs because I didn’t have the correct key card access.

It can be very difficult to change our default settings as every marketer will attest.

Maybe we should hide the lifts and make the stairs more prominent. Give them a lick of paint, put carpet on the stairs and framed prints on the walls. And while we’re at it consider making lift access dependent on key card.

That should do it.

But this kind of thinking is as relevant to marketers as it is to the designers and architects of buildings. We may not be designing buildings but as marketers we are architects of consumer choices. And the actions we take can help make it easy or difficult for consumers to choose.

We already pay great attention to how our products and services get noticed when the consumer is shopping. Supermarkets place great store on the location of certain products to optimise yield. And online we all battle for Google to promote us high on the rankings.

But there are many other places where we can influence customer choice through making certain choices more or less attractive, and this is not just about price incentives or penalties.

We may for example be required to influence channel choice. And just like the choice between stairs and lifts, it will be our responsibility to change the consumer default through priming customer choice by ensuring one choice looks and feels more attractive.

Perhaps at a more tactical level we are prompting customers to opt in rather than opt out. Or to consider and adopt our brand’s CSR programme.

There are lots of opportunities for us to think how to edit and design the consumer choice menu. Maybe we should stop being marketers and start to become choice architects and designers.

Be objective

Would you make a TV ad without having a clear objective?

Of course you wouldn’t.

 I don’t know anyone who spends money on a marketing campaign without knowing why you and what aiming to achieve. Sometimes I might quibble about the robustness of the measures of success and the extent to which these measures are aligned with the strategy and broader objectives of the business but in the main most marketing teams have some form of idea of why they are doing what they are doing.

It might be to build brand awareness and brand preference.

Or to drive sales.

Or to recruit new customers.

Sometimes it might just be to inspire and engage colleagues.

No matter there is a purpose behind the activity.

And yet often I see marketers who have no clear idea why they want to be on Facebook or have a Twitter feed. It is as if when it comes to social media we lose sight of the need to have purpose, an objective, a reason for doing what we are doing.

Some businesses however will measure their presence by the number of followers or friends they might have.

Is this valid? What is the value of a friend or a follower? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? Has anyone done the analysis on this?

Remember in the early days Hitler had millions of followers, Jesus had 12. Numbers can be misleading.

And if you are The Acme Screw Company, why would anyone want to be your friend or follow you. And I think there is nothing worse for any brand if it has a low number of friends or followers. What does that say?

So instead of just trying to amass as many Facebook Friends or Followers as possible, let me suggest that any brand’s social media activity should set out with a more clear purpose and role.

Maybe it’s to provide an enhanced customer service. Travel businesses for examples use their Twitter feed to provide a steady stream of updated information on travel conditions, delays and the like.

Maybe it’s to use social media to reach out and engage with key influencers as part of an enhanced PR approach. Not all Friends and Followers are equal and as marketers we should not be chasing everyone but influencers and building a social media approach around these people. These are the ones who will re-tweet, endorse and otherwise build engagement with your brand. I am convinced that many brands will be really disappointed when they see what percentage of their followers or friends are genuinely influential.

Or maybe your social media presence can be used to support your brand campaign and encourage customers and prospects to participate in the campaign through a competition, a cause or to build participation in the brand story and its characters. And thereby extend the reach of the TV ad spot and maybe even build up a database of prospects and customers. Few brands and few ad campaigns are strong enough to carry this off to good effect however.

I don’t mind brands being hugely social but we do need to be objective about this and have a meaningful commercial objective about why.

As someone once said ‘social media is like parenthood-you can read all the books you like but until you have a child, you just won’t get it’.

All I ask that we stay objective.

In God we trust

Over the last few weeks I have been involved in a couple of discussions about trust. 

Not surprisingly a lot of businesses have trust in their values and have aspirations to be a ‘trusted adviser’, ‘a most trusted brand’ or ‘a partner you can trust’.

Now I always think that trust is something you earn and never claim. Instinctively when someone says ‘trust me’, you know not to.

But more fundamentally what is trust and how does one earn it?

And when you ask that question few can answer.

To quote the famous American Supreme Court Judge when asked to define hard core pornography, ‘it is hard to define but I will know it when I see it’.

So is it possible to define trust?

A wise man once introduced me to the Trust Equation and I think that anyone wanting to be a trusted brand should consider their performance on the dimensions of this Equation as set out below:

T= (Ex+R+Em)/S

Where

T=Trust

Ex=Expertise, a high level of subject matter knowledge and expertise

R=Reliability, the brand/business/individuals do exactly what it promises to do every time

Em=Empathy, the ability to relate to people, to understand and share their emotions

S=self-interest, a perception that the brand/business/individual is acting out of their own self-interest will seriously undermine trust.

In short trust can only be earned by performing consistently to a high standard on the attributes of expertise, reliability and empathy, and by minimising the extent to which the brand or the business  and its people is seen to be acting in their own self-interest.

When you put it like this it is easy and pretty straightforward to understand what we mean by trust. Of course saying it and understanding what it means is one thing. Putting such understanding into action is altogether another kettle of fish.

But here’s an idea to consider.

If your brand or your business has the T word in its values, its mission statement or it vision, remove it.

And instead replace it with the attributes of the Trust Equation.

Make your values more about being empathetic, reliable, expert and acting in the customers’ interest not ours. In other words earn trust through behaviours, don’t just claim it.

And while we are at it, values should have a pain attached. They must stress and stretch the organisation otherwise what is the point.

Nothing is to be gained by just having values that talk about empathy, expertise, et al. Name any business that wouldn’t want to be empathetic, expert and reliable.

Try having a value that talks about showing real understanding how our customers feel; doing what we say we are going to do every time; showing real subject matter expertise; and doing the right things for our customers even when it costs us money.

Now I think we’re talking.

Now we have values with bite, with meaning, with edge. Now we can be a trusted brand.