Observations

What is it Like to be Your own Customer?

By Bill Freedman

Häagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream. Ecco shoes. The New York Times. WordPress blogging software. We all have our favorite companies, products and services. Products that deliver exceptional value, services that are reliably great, and companies that are easy to business with.

haagen dazs strawerry ice cream

Photo credit: Haagen Dazs

Now look in the mirror: is your business as consistently excellent as your favorites? If you’re not sure, then you probably have work to do. After only a brief glance in the mirror, I buckled down and got to work.

Benchmarking Customer Experience

I started by taking stock of what I deliver, my uniqueness and the promise I offer. This was the easy part, because I get to define the playing field. Just as you can’t play tennis without lines and a net, you can’t benchmark your business without a measure of capabilities.

The next step was also easy. I examined my “first impression” touch points: my email footer, my voicemail greeting and my home page. Did they match the benchmark I set for my business? I made a few small adjustments to be more consistent, clear and customer-aware.

Finally I talked to customers, prospects and partners. I asked two direct questions:

  • How did our project improve your business?
  • Would you recommend my company to others?

I listened. I wanted to hear about numerical results. Was there more revenue, more leads, repeatable campaigns? I wanted to hear about problems that are now behind them and a clear path toward their exceeding their goals. And finally, I wanted to hear that they’d recommend me to colleagues and friends.

I got exactly the answers I wanted to hear. Honest answers about what we’d accomplished together. In addition to the good things I wanted to hear, I learned about rough spots and frustrations. In other words, I learned that the core value is solid, but there is room for improvement in multiple areas, as there are many popular business areas now a days like casino games, as sites like woo casino 2 specialize in this.

For me, the greatest take-away from this exercise is that I learned I need to be consistent at everything, not just at my core advantage. My customers want excellence everywhere, from an initial proposal to a final invoice, and from a second campaign to ad hoc phone advice. This makes a lot of sense. My favorite companies have a level of consistency and quality across multiple processes and multiple employees. My goals are not just helping customers succeed, but improving my business across all dimensions.

Walking the Walk

Let me be clear. I’m not advocating for perfect products or over-the-top money-losing service levels. I’m merely suggesting that it’s worth benchmarking customer experience and see if it meets your standards. Creating value is the core of what I do very well. By upping my game, I make my business one that my customers respect, rely on and recommend to others.

Ideas in the Social Media Era: I’ll Get It Right the 5th Time

By Bill Freedman

I love this chart. Not only is it funny, it gets to the core of how the social media era is disrupting creativity.

The chart puts its focus on article length (and perhaps the quantity of postings and/or impressions). The chart is silent on quality.

Great ideas have always been distilled to their essence through pity catchphrases. With social media, any idea, even before it’s refined (let alone great) is distilled for social network impact. The network for disseminating ideas is becoming more powerful than ideas themselves.

This is a new challenge for the creator and innovator. When is an idea ready to be published? What are readers’ expectations for quality and accuracy of new ideas? Does it help or hurt your reputation to publish many unrefined ideas? Is your idea sharing risk tolerance dependent on the size and nature of your social network? Are facts and accuracy destined to become endangered species during the social media era?

I don’t know, but I’m going to publish this now and refine it later. My sense of optimism suggests that we’ll muddle through.

It’s a Great Time to Be a Professional Marketer

By Bill Freedman

I just read an inspiring blog post by Megan Heuer at Sirius Decisions called Five B2B Marketing Surprises From 2009. It inspired me to reflect on what I learned in 2009.

The biggest take-away for me is how great the marketing tools and techniques are today compared to just a few years ago. Consider:

  • Twitter (free) to quickly inform and inspire your network
  • WordPress (free) to quickly publish blogs and websites. Additional shout-outs to the vibrant community of WordPress developers contributing plug-ins and themes.
  • Marketo (pricey, but valuable) which teases out the marketing automation functions and processes from general CRM/sales force automation
  • Salesforce.com (pricey, but valuable) for providing an easy to deploy, easy to manage and sales-rep-friendly tool for automating corporate processes for managing customer relationships and the sales process.
  • Microsoft Office (not free), especially Word and Excel, for creating content and managing campaigns. I certainly enjoy using many of the newer tools, but, let’s face it, most of us document the bulk of our original thinking and planning using these tools.
  • Google Analytics (free) to measure and analyze your web traffic and visitor trends.

Not as neat as the tools listed above is the emergence of multi-media publishing. The web is no longer just a medium of the written word. Podcasts, videos, photos, illustrations–even animations and web apps are increasing in popularity among prospects and customers. More on this topic at a later date…

Improved tools are important, but only when combined with a solid foundation of marketing professionalism. Great results are equally dependent on your sound (and stable) strategy, enduring processes and measurements.

The bottleneck in marketing continues to be the pace of creation of relevant, timely and persuasive content. I guess this means that the pace of marketing is limited by the imagination and creativity of the marketing team….a very nice thought.

Google: the Local Business that Permeates My Life

By Bill Freedman

Many of you know that I’m a big supporter of local businesses. Recently I’ve noticed I’m doing a lot of business with a company that is fifteen miles from my home. That company is Google.

Google has a number of great products and employs many of my neighbors. They are also a pre-eminent global business with users and customers in every corner of cyberspace and the globe.

As I upgraded my Grand Central account to Google Voice, I took inventory of the Google Products I use every day. They include:

  • Google Adsensegoogle_logo
  • Google AdWords
  • Google Alerts
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Chrome
  • Google Mail
  • Google Maps
  • Google Reader
  • Google Search
  • Google Talk
  • Google Toolbar
  • Google Voice
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • 800-GOOG-411

The interesting thing about my relationship with Google is that I pay them for one product (Google AdWords) they pay me for one product (Google Adsense). Everything else is no charge. Privacy advocates point out that I’m “paying” for these services by disclosing personal information about myself. My position is a bit different. I’ve accepted that there is no meaningful privacy on the Internet.  Everything we do on the Internet is closely monitored and analyzed so that someone can make an incremental buck.

In most parts of America and the world, Google is not a local business. It is a global competitor that is out-competing local institutions from newspapers to software companies with a unique business model. I’m able to reconcile my buy local bias with heavy usage of Google technology. Their products are good, they feed the local economy and they inspire innovation and excellence. I guess I’m comfortable living in a very competitive neighborhood.

Creating (Healthy) Workplace Conflict

By Bill Freedman

A recent study by Psychometrics Canada of 350 human resources professionals confirms that workplace conflict is ubiquitous. The study reports that the “most common causes of conflict are warring egos and personality clashes (86%), poor leadership (73%), lack of honesty (67%), stress (64%), and clashing values (59%).”

Violations of norms of civility and respect are negative forms of conflict that beg for immediate corrective action. The report suggests that leaders should quickly address toxic behavior by increasing supervision of problem personnel, providing additional clarity about expectations and modeling appropriate behavior. These findings are obvious but not always given sufficient management attention.

Healthy Workplace Conflicts Contributes to Improved Outcomes

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Even more interesting was that 87% of survey respondents believe that conflict can lead to positive outcomes such as

  • Better understanding of others
  • Better solutions to problems
  • Improved working relationships
  • Higher performance in teams
  • Increased motivation
  • Major innovations

I can’t agree more. When there is clear evidence to multiple people in the organization that things are off course or sub-optimal, conflict is a powerful tool to focus collective attention on the root cause and inspire improvements. The key is to focus on the evidence and potential solutions, not the personalities or behaviors.

While it’s easy to talk about the benefits of conflict, leading teams to embrace conflict, generate positive outcomes and avoid personal attacks is extremely difficult. The report concludes with several useful techniques for managing conflict such as understanding the situation in detail before acting and remaining positive amidst problems.

Thanks to the team at Psychometrics Canada for it’s insightful research on the beneficial aspects of conflict.

Volatility is the New Equilibrium

By Bill Freedman

Cognitive and biological science has demonstrated that our animal instincts replace human reasoning in the face of mortal threats. When individual survival is at stake, Charles Darwin trumps Adam Smith.

Instincts are powerful. They are put into practice without training or thought. But they aren’t always “right.” Those of us who’ve lived a little know that some threats are real while others are illusions of our imperfect ability to perceive the world around us. A noise in the dark will awaken a deep sleeper, even if it’s from the wind knocking over a trashcan rather than a lion preparing to pounce.

I started with a biology lesson because I believe that collectively, our imperfect instincts have distracted us from reality when it comes to the current economic crisis. Let me explain why.

The past twenty years of improving American prosperity have conditioned us that there is a single economic reality: consistent and predictable quarter-over-quarter growth. In the past year this perception has been challenged by sharp declines in prices for stocks, homes and labor. We’ve weathered other declines in financial markets, specifically in 1987 and 2001. The difference is that the current decline is broader-based and steeper than those other declines. No question about it, these changes are frightening.

With regard to the economy, I believe its time to turn decision-making back to human reasoning. The sense of mortal threat needs to be eliminated before reason can take over. Have you noticed:

  • The sun has come up every day
  • Your family still loves you
  • Police patrol our streets and teachers teach our children
  • Innovators are still looking for the next big idea
  • Entrepreneurs are still looking for the next opportunity
  • Lions didn’t pounce in my neighborhood last night

Volatility: It’s Not that Bad

The main lesson I’m learning from the crisis is that volatility is greater today then my comfort level allows. Yes, housing prices have fallen and markets are disorderly. Some individuals are facing “gambler’s ruin” which will severely impact their lives.

On the positive side, social services are available to soften the economic blow for many (though not all). I’m making the choice to accept the higher levels of volatility. Asset values will rise sometime in the future as certainly as the sun will rise tomorrow. Price volatility will remain high for some time and I need to deal with that.

Volatility is the new equilibrium. Purple is the new black. Democrat is the new Republican. Green energy is the new biotech. I’m ready to tackle volatility with my intellect and humanity.

Are you?