Church of the Customer: March 2004 archives
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March 19, 2004
Business Blog Tour Update
The Business Blog Tour continues over at What's Your Brand Mantra with Jennifer Rice.
She's focusing on how the six tenets of customer evangelism can work to build evangelists for your blog.
Come visit us there!
March 18, 2004
Donald does dance music
The new "Apprentice" music video needs to be fired!
A B2B do-not-call list?
Jackie's Nov. 21 post about cold-calling sales people and her vision of a B2B do-not-call list has provoked several reactions from... sales people, one of whom encourages Jackie to get a life. Rest assured, she has one, and it's quite busy.
Which is exactly the point: Jackie's work requires intense focus. Cold-calling sales people waste her time trying to sell her stuff she would rather research on her own time, and on her own terms. What do you think: Do cold-calling B2B sales people steal your time?
Blog tour update
Today, Jon at the Business Evolutionist blog is hosting our Business Blog Book Tour stop. One of his questions was how a new semi-professional sports team would focus on customer evangelism. Part of the answer is to understand the Mark Cuban model of sports marketing.
March 16, 2004
Autopsy tour - update
Our Business Book Blog Tour takes us to the Brand Autopsy blog today, where hosts John Moore and Paul Williams have assembled a terrific program for a deeper understanding of customer evangelism.
Update: I see that our blog tour has incoming links from Japan, too. For our Japanese friends, I say:
こんにちは! 大きい会うこと!
Tomorrow, the BBBT takes us to Jeremy Wright's home at Ensight.
March 15, 2004
The value of Napsterizing knowledge...
Lee Gomes has a good column today in the Wall Street Journal about the value of non-proprietary public encryption keys, such as RSA.
Proprietary systems for upcoming elections are virtually guaranteed to be a disaster, Gomes argues, because they have not been Napsterized -- held up for widespread scrutiny and review. Even the smartest people make mistakes. "Someone very clever will create a cypher, buthen someone even cleverer will come along and find a flaw in it," says David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers. Therein lies the value of making knowledge transparent, even for cryptography.
As Gomes writes, "If it's good enough for eBay, isn't it good enough for the ballot box?"
Gone bloggin'
Today marks the start of another book tour for us... via blogs.
We begin at the BusinessPundit blog -- Rob has some great questions about Napsterizing your knowledge and the process of encouraging companies to share its intellectual capital.
March 12, 2004
Truly remarkable service
My Phonex Wireless Jack for Modems arrived the other day. This little beauty turns any electrical outlet into a phone line.
For me, it created an instant phone jack for TiVo, which dials in each night to download show schedules.
Set-up was mostly straightforward, but it didn't work. At 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, I called Phonex tech support on a whim and, whoa! Someone answered the phone on the second ring!
Jason from Phonex was polite, helpful and solved my problem in two minutes.
Talk about remarkable: 24/7 technical support from a 30-person company in Midvale, Utah. Now that's service worth evangelizing.
Buzz-building furniture
La-Z-Boy has just been "Target-ized."
Ultra-hip designer Todd Oldham has been hired to remake La-Z-Boy's stodgy furniture line into something the Friends crowd would buy.
Check out the new Oldham line of La-Z-Boy sofas, tables, rugs, and yes, recliners.
La-Z-Boy hip? Whowouldathunk? Defy expectations and watch the word of mouth grow. Todd Oldham's recliners are definitely not your father's recliners.
March 11, 2004
Rallying customers to support your cause
It looks like Viacom won its brief, but interesting dust-up with EchoStar.
Although it won't say, EchoStar probably lost a goodly batch of customers over its decision to drop Viacom programming during tangled negotiations over programming fees. Carriage fees are often a culprit in over-the-top rate increases we customers pay for cable and satellite services.
What leverage, other than dropping programs, do providers like EchoStar have to keep carriage fees in check?
Customers!
Weeks ago, EchoStar could have explained the situation to customers in an email and enlisted their aid in a grassroots campaign. It didn't (although it did post an uninspiring note on its website). Viacom responded to the Dish drop with its own campaign featuring SpongeBob Square Pants (a Viacom program), which Jon Stewart hilariously mocked on "The Daily Show" (alas, a Viacom product, too).
Says alert reader Jennifer M. Schaerer of Legacy Learning (who inspired this post), "Dish missed big time in trying to enlist its subscriber base to leverage the negotiation by blocking out the affected channels and then giving subscribers all the contact information to pester the devil out of Viacom and CBS affiliates. The best defense is a good offense."
A weeks-long, online grassroots campaign to "Keep rates reasonable!" by reaching out to EchoStar's networks of customers could have been quite effective. This would have involved petition-signing, letter-writing to Viacom honcho Sumner Redstone, etc.
In a cause-based campaign that's meaningful to the big picture, loyal customers will volunteer their help.
