Church of the Customer: June 2005 archives
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June 15, 2005
Continental's community
Yesterday's New York Times tells the story of Dean Burri, a loyal customer of Continental Airlines who emailed CEO Lawrence Kellen late one night with some feedback. The executive responded in 20 minutes. An email correspondence between the two ensued and turned into the occasional dinner.
Burri is a frequent poster on FlyerTalk, an online community for frequent travelers. In discussing the power of the community with Kellen, Burri recalls the conversation:
"Larry and I were having a disagreement about the power of a site like FlyerTalk.... I was telling him that I think it's very important that travel companies watch these sites, for the good and the bad, because rumors get blown out of proportion. He said there's not more than 60 people on FlyerTalk who fly Continental on a regular basis. I told him he was crazy, so a wager ensued."
The bet? If Burro could get more than 60 FlyerTalk members to fly to Houston, paying for their own airfare and hotels, Continental would provide a behind-the-scenes airport tour, dinner, and a talk from CEO Kellen with Q&A.
274 people actually showed up. Why? Customer evangelists want access to insiders to share their feedback.
Take Starwood Hotels, for example. The "Starwood Lurker" is a company employee well known on FlyerTalk site for solving problems with Starwood frequent traveler programs and has built a following, including people who swear they devote their business to Starwood because of the Lurker. [We've blogged about the Lurker here.] The Lurker is an insider who listens well and gets things done.
Regular feedback is a hallmark trait of customer evangelists. Companies who embrace these customers as valuable inputs, not whiners, reap their potential rewards.
June 13, 2005
Build-A-Bear Workshop's hot growth
Build-a-Bear Workshop, one of the case studies of "Creating Customer Evangelists," is number 25 on Businessweek's Hot Growth list America's fastest-growing small companies.
In a special online report, the magazine profiles the company and features a Q&A with Chief Executive Bear Maxine Clark.
PR's new golden rules
Steve Rubel today give us the 10 Commandments for the Era of Participatory Public Relations.
Read them, my child, and then go forth and involve customers in your business!
June 12, 2005
Blog workshop in Boston
If you're new to blogs or want to learn more about blogging's relationship to marketing, the American Marketing Association is hosting another full-day blog workshop on June 24, this time in Boston.
I'll be joining some terrific colleagues for this comprehensive session. Take a look at the workshop program here.
June 08, 2005
When competitors set customer expectations
The Evil Dr. Porkchop puts Linens N Things on the grill for his experience with the retail chain's "buy-on-the-web-and-pick-up-at-the-store" service that's customer-unfriendly due to days of "processing time".
When you introduce a service similar to one your customers already use with someone else, the someone else is managing the customer expectations for that service.
An excellent observation from the Good Doctor.
June 07, 2005
New bands get discovered via word-of-blog
Chalk another one up to the power of blogs: It's how some bands are being discovered.
A new band called the Hysterics had a song posted on the Music for Robots blog, which led to their discovery by an MTV producer. The music network played the group's video recently even though the band has never played a gig outside of their parents' bedroom. The thing is, The Hysterics is a band of 10th graders.
Hua Hsu, who writes about music for the online magazine Slate, sums it up nicely how blogs create word of mouth:
"If everyone else is putting out horrible CD's," he said, "why not buy something from people with taste you more or less trust?"
NYT link: Little-Known Bands Get Lift Through Word-of-Blog
June 05, 2005
Don't blame the metrics
Some eye-opening statistics from the June 2005 Harvard Business Review (subscription req'd) on the effectiveness of 500 various consumer and B2B marketing programs:
* 84% resulted in less market share, not more
* Most customer acquisition efforts did not break even
* Fewer than 10% of new products succeeded
* Most sales promotions were unprofitable
* Advertising ROI was below 4%
* Doubling advertising expenditures for established products increased sales just 1% - 2%
While the article does not tell us explicitly, chances are many of the 500 programs were designed to goose quarterly results. It's the siren's call of immediate customer traffic that steers so many marketers toward one-way advertising programs; as the results show, this usually leads you straight to the rocky shores of poor ROI.
Good benchmarks. Poor results.
June 02, 2005
Are you ready for good customers?
Peter Davidson over at the BeConnected blog writes of Eight Ways to Be a Good Customer:
1. Participate in Customer Intuition Systems - Be sure you are on the company's mailing list. Make sure that they have accurate contact information for you. Subscribe to their email newsletter.
2. Speak Up - If you are a satisfied customer let them know. Write an old fashioned letter. It's hard to pass around copies of a voicemail or recorded call center call.
3. Offer Constructive Criticism - If there is a way they can improve a product, service or experience offer them constructive criticism. Even great companies have many areas that can stand improvement.
4. Link To Them - Of course, I'll assume you have a e-newsletter or a blog. If you like a company or product say so by linking to them and talking about why you like them.
5. Comment on Their Corporate Blog - show your support for a company or product you like by being active in the community and conversations they are fostering on their blogs and newsletters.
6. Respond to Surveys and Questionnaires - If a business you value asks for your input give it to them. Yes, we're all busy these days but your input might make or break a new initiative that you would value or conversely it might save you pain and loss of time in the future.
7. Refer a Friend or Colleague - Share your good experiences with your network. What goes around comes around. This is a pathway to discovering new great people to do business with.
8. Buy Their Product, Service or Experience - Continue to support the businesses you value by being a repeat customer.
Wouldn't it be great if all of your customers were this good? But it begs the question, are you ready for good customers?
To correspond with Peter's list, I've composed eight ways to prepare for good customers:
1. Have a customer communication system - Allow customers to update their contact information easily on your website. Send a regular email newsletter to your customer list, no less than once a month.
2. Acknowledge customer correspondence - Send handwritten notes to customers thanking them for their letter. No one wins points for form letters with <name inserted here>.
3. Reward constructive criticism - Encourage customers to provide constructive feedback. Make your contact information (phone number, email address, etc.) easy to find on your website. Send customers a small gift for taking the time to send their suggestions.
4. Profile complimentary customers - Include customer testimonials on your website and in your newsletters. Link to customers' blog posts that mention you.
5. Publish a blog - 'Nuff said.
6. Gather feedback often - Instead of the once-a-year lengthy customer satisfaction survey, send short, 5-question surveys via email to various customer segments once per quarter. Tell customers how you are incorporating their feedback to improve your product or service.
7. Track referrals - Ask every new customer or even newsletter subscriber "how did you hear about us?" Use tools like Technorati and PubSub to track what people are saying online about you.
8. Reward loyal customers - Track the purchase history of your customers. Take care of frequent purchasers not with points or discounts but with a gift product. Or an invitation to a customer advisory board. If you know the customer personally, give them something you know they'll really like.
[Thanks to Chuck for the heads up on Peter's blog post.]
June 01, 2005
Evangelists for Connecticut
Connecticut is launching a tourism program that encourages residents to become "ambassadors" for the state.
From a recent Brandweek email newsletter (sorry, couldn't find a link):
"Over 40% of visitors to Connecticut are visiting friends or family, and we'd like residents to continue to encourage this by sharing all that Connecticut has to offer," Edward Dombroskas, division director of the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, Norwalk, said in a statement....
To help recruit "ambassadors," June 11 has been declared "Connecticut Open House Day," with more than 120 businesses participating. Ambassadors for Connecticut will get a kit including pins and postcards to send to friends and relatives, and will receive updates via e-mail about upcoming local events.
It seems more governments are using a customer evangelism philosophy by making it easier for residents to recruit new visitors and residents. Pittsburgh's Regional Champions program enrolls local volunteers to entice people to move to the Steel City.
[Hat tip to Andrea Learned.]
