Delighting Your Customers

During these economic times, its critical for companies to maintain, if not grow their customer base. The question is, how?

If we look at examples of companies that are successful at doing this, it seems like it boils down to one simple thing: they "delight" their customers.

What does that mean, really? Well, it means that the brand recall is positive, really. To make that happen, its all about leaving your customers a wonderful impression through your products and services. We all heard about the die-hard Apple and Nordstrom fans. Here's a company delighted me recently, Comcast.

During the past weekend, I called the customer support for Cable issues. After informing me about the unusual long wait in the phone queue, the IVR asked me if I am interested in a call back. Not only would I keep my place in the "line", I don't have to listen to droning commercials.

So I did. Less than 5 minutes later, I got a callback and resolved my issue. If only more companies chose such an option. Yes, there is a cost to this technology, but just think about all the phone costs saved! Not to mention the opportunity to delight, and thereby retain your customers.

Hats off to the cable giant in listening to its customers.

For additional reading materials, check out this article from American Express.

Jumping on the bandwagon

For the past 3 months, I have been fielding LinkedIn's questions on Internet Marketing and Business Operations. What's interesting was the palpable fear and confusion regarding digital media. Every week, there is one person who asks if he or she should get into digital media, what's the best way to go about it, etc.

While it is true that digital media is "in" right now, it doesn't mean that its right for everybody, or every company. Regardless of the hype, you need to think about the basics of marketing. Is the hype a fit for you or your company?

The answer to that question lies in one simple fact. If, and only if your target segment is involved in the hype, then you may consider getting on the bandwagon. However, you have to be very clear about the purpose of your involvement. Are you there to build customer engagement, sell your products or build brand recognition?

Some purposes are easier to achieve than others, while some may just not work given the channel in question. Remember, its not just about adding another channel to reach your customers. You also have to think about how to integrate this new channel into your existing channels, and how to make sure your message is seamless across this spectrum.

Bottom line. It all comes down to your customers, and your objective for that new hype. Hopefully there's a fit between the two.

Lessones learned from managing 8 volunteers

In the past four weeks, I have been moonlighting as a general manager for a production company that is producing two events in the upcoming weeks. Although my title is "Marketing Manager", I am doing everything from recruiting, sponsorships, project management, the works. I have a couple takeaways from this, and they are as follows.

• Making the best out of what you have: As a former consultant with a type A personality, I push myself to produce my best. I have beat myself up for things out of my control. Since I am managing seven volunteers across two continents, there are things I just have to do what I can given my resources
  
  
• Bucking up: Because of the exposure of this position, I am having to work with clients, teammates, you name it, most of whom I don't know. This allowed me to be bold in calling up cold contacts for my job search efforts, which I was dancing around with before
  
  

Since I am working with a team of 8 volunteers, I spend more time than I normally would in a professional environment in getting them to deliver. There are two things that are essential in making this relationship work: commitment, and communication. Everything else is icing on the cake. I am happy to support you, as long as you are committed to the production. And I will work with you to make you successful, even though you may be new to this game. For instance, one of our sponsorship team members scored an advertising deal, thanks to the prospect materials we put together, might I say, I am a newbie too.

I will be passing on the torch in two weeks, but, am definitely grateful for this experience.

Helpful, and the Not So Much Job Search Features

Since I am hunting for jobs, I come across many so-called job sites. What was interesting to me was that not one site had all the most user-friendly features to job seekers. What do I mean by that? Some might ask. Well, a feature that would help the job seeker in economizing his time, and provide helpful info. Below is a list that I whipped up, along with the site that provides it.


THE GOOD

• Aggregated job search results: Most of you have more than one job agent set up with one job site. But, Monster is the only one that combines all your results, broken down by different search criteria, in ONE single email
  
  
• Sneak peek at competition: Careerbuilder shows you how much competition do you have per suggested job requisition graphically, along with its interpretation of how good of a fit is it between you and this position. Its an awesome way to gauge your chances for the position
  
  
• De-duped results: Although aggregator sites are great, its even better when they hide similar job titles as the ones shown... meaning you don't have comb through 300 job listings, only to find out that half of them are the same. For that reason, SimplyHired is a step up from the rest
  
  
• Full job details included: I also set up job agents with the companies that I am interested in working for. Its great when I get announcements of new job postings fitting my search criteria, that the full job req is included. Kaiser Permanente is great at doing that
  

THE BAD (For obvious reasons, I have omitted the job site names)

• Magnifying glasses required: I have gotten some job notification emails that are not readable to the human eye. The fonts sizes are tiny, or that the entire job posting is one long run-on sentence. Although I understand that's helpful to the web spiders, its not helpful to us humans
  
  
• A song and dance without a "skip" option: I like a good video when I want to be entertained, but I am not looking to be entertained while applying for jobs. Yes, this means that I prefer to bypass your video, and just get to the good stuff... the jobs themselves
  
  
• A fragile search feature: I like a site that I can slice and dice the jobs to my heart's content, within reason of course. That means that I have useful filters, i.e. dates, job sources, etc. within my command. A note of suggestion, it will be great if I can filter out specific job sources

That's all for now. Hope this helps.

What is business excellence?

Business excellence is a business management technique that drives company performance by leveraging systematic process management, relentless customer focus and innovation principles.

So, below are the key to achieving business excellence.

• All for one, one for all: The company's strategies, people, technology, processes are aligned to obtain company's objectives. Executive support is key in making this happen. Apple comes to mind. Its no wonder that once you are an Apple customer, you are forever in the family
  
  
• Its all about the customers: The company is relentless in the pursuit of its customer's happiness. Customer profile, and target persona are key in making strategic decisions. Trader Joe's Flyer recent "Save Some Money" meal guide showed that its customers that it is with them every step of the way
  
  
• Change is good: Continuous process improvement, and test-and-learn culture are key to innovation and growth for companies, regardless of their size. A great process improvement example comes to mind. Thanks to the project, a CEO is no longer signing checks for invoices over $25
  

Too much data, too little time

Companies have tons of data. How do executives know what data is valuable, and frankly, what to do with that data. Well, it all depends on what type of data it is, and what's the objective. Typically, customer and product performance data are priceless, especially when you can figure out what customers respond to in terms of business drivers, and what will make them convert, or buy. That, is priceless.

This does not mean other data is not valuable. In fact, operational information such as procedural guidelines can yield key information that are easily overlooked. Here's what I mean. Do you know what happens from the time someone in sales contacts a lead, to the time the customer calls the company's post-sales support? Information such as time durations, roles and responsibility and departments involved are especially helpful.

Why is this helpful, one might ask. By seeing the process from beginning to end, one understands the underlying issues and their root cause. For example, I mapped out an Internet company's customer process, from the first sales call to the customer's tech support call. Then, came the aha moment. Because the company lacked a centralized customer data solution, each department kept its own version of customer information. Which meant that the poor customer was receiving calls from different departments asking for the same information, sometimes within the same day.

What did this mean for the company? This particular company had much to gain by implementing a centralized customer data storage system accessible to all the departments. Not to mention a much better customer experience for the customer. In fact, I would venture to say that most credit card and retail companies can profit from a centralized customer data storage solution. After all, how many times do you have to repeat the same information to different departments of the same company in one call? More than one, right?

Bottom line: Not all data are created equal, and their usefulness depend on the company's objective. But, don't overlook the procedural data, because it very well may contain the root cause to the issue outlined in the data, not to mention savings for your company.

Its all in the numbers

With the current economical climate, most companies are scaling back on their marketing operations to weather the storm. Although this may seem logical, my questions to these companies would be as follows:

• Are you reducing your marketing budget strategically?
• Do you know which customers are contribute the most and the least to your company's profitability?
• Do you know which part of the marketing program to downsize?
  

These questions are illustrative to understand the reasons behind the decisions. 80% of the company's profits are typically generated by its top 20% of customers. This is the well-known aspect of the 80:20 principle. However, here's the second part of that famous principle: 50% of the company's profits are eaten away by the bottom 30% of its customers.

What does that mean? Unless you know what your customers mean to you in terms of profitability, you would not know which one to keep or toss, not to mention allocate your resources accordingly especially in times of economic downturn. Where's all this information coming from? Your most valuable asset: customer and performance data. With some purposeful digging, you can find out who should you focus your resources on, not to mention who you should cater to in terms of your products. For example, after examining a company's marketing efforts and their dollars generated, I realized that the most taxing efforts realized the least returns. So we balanced things out according to their perceived rewards.

Bottom line: Your marketing budget should be strategically driven by insights from your data.