So what? Well, I think it’s a fantastic illustration of the impact of progress on our lives and of course on business and the way we do it. Massively reduced costs, technological advances, ever increasing ease of use and a need for total flexibility are all things we face – they pose both opportunities and threats.

Are you embracing ‘progress’ to your advantage?

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• 2Billion videos watched each day!
• 24 hours of video uploaded every minute!

This short video tells the story – well worth 2 minutes of your time:

2 Questions:

• What does all that mean to you and your business?
• What are you doing about it?

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There are lots and lots of bus ‘tours’ around Dublin – and they all seem very similar. So similar in fact, it’s hard to differentiate one from another. At least that’s what I thought until I saw a yellow bus drive past full of people with viking hats on and cheering at us pedestrians as they drove past! We couldn’t help but cheer and wave back!

We asked around and were told that it was the Viking Splash Tour - not just the ‘same old’ drive around the roads of Dublin, but a participative and fun experience that also included a journey across the waters of Dublin too, courtesy of the World War 2 amphibious vehicles they use! Of course we signed up!

The whole experience was ‘Dramatically Different’ – from the viking helmets we had to wear, the cheers we had to rehearse and then shout out ‘on command’ at pedestrians, the interactive and irreverant commentary from our great driver, to the launch into and the sail round the canal basin in Dublin!

Everyone loved it, and it was a great example of 3D ‘in action’:

• Their ‘Dramatic Difference’ is ‘Demonstrated’ in everything that they do (to customers and potential customers).
• They’ve completely ‘broken the pattern’
• They’ve created something that gets people talking – word of mouth in action!

If you’re ever in Dublin, you have to ‘make a splash’ with Viking Splash!

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No, this is not a ‘political’ rant on behalf of one party or another. It’s an attempt to see what we as businesses can learn from the politicians, and maybe more importantly, what they can learn from businesses (not actually sure that they are listening though, which in itself would be agood first lesson – successful businesses ‘listen’ to their customers’!)

I use a model when working with clients that demonstrates the relationship between customer expectations and customer experience as follows:

Creating 'Devoted' Customers

Customers with ‘low’ or ‘no’ expectations who have a ‘great’  experience are ‘delighted’! It was far better than they expected. It’s a great start and should be the aim for any business. Perhaps Nick Clegg ‘delighted’ his customers (or ‘potential customers’) because they had low / no expectations of him? That’s not a criticism of him, it’s just the situation he is in (and many businesses are too!).

The  challenge is clearly to build on this, and that what Nick Clegg has to do. By definition, ‘expectations’ will be higher for the next debate – if he ‘delivers’, then that becomes more impressive, and perhaps, impactful for the Lib Dems.

My ‘gut feel’ is that Brown did ok, because again, expectations were relatively low? Expectations for Cameron on the other hand were reasonably ‘high’ and perhaps he ‘disappointed’ because the ‘experience’ was not seen to be as ‘good’?

By definition, this model is very ‘subjective’, and I’m not here to say ‘who won’. I’m trying to illustrate the model and help people perhaps relate it to their business and their customers.

‘Delight’ is a good start, but has to be built on. ‘Devotion’ is built through consistency and takes time.  ’Disappointment’ has to be dealt with quickly and proactively if ‘Disaffection’ is to be avoided. Disaffected customers are difficult (impossible?) to win back. I can’t help but feel that there are lots and lots of  the politicians’  ‘customers’ (regardless of the party) out there who are ‘disaffected’ because of consistently low expectations and ‘poor’ experiences in recent years. 

As a result, they won’t even have watched the Debate. Just like we ‘switch off’ from the marketing messages sent to us by businesses we’re ‘disaffected’ from, many people have done the same with politicians. Getting  ‘customers’ to even watch the next Leadership Debates is a challenge for all of them.

What they actually ‘deliver’ will always be judged by our ‘expectations’ of them. Expectations of Nick Clegg are going to be higher. Just a like in the ‘real world’, if he gives us another ‘great experience’, he could be ‘in business’!

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I think it’s a great example of ‘adding value’ – not ‘look at us, we’re brilliant!‘ There are some great examples in there that really help stimulate thoughts and ideas. The booklet only has the first 25 Thoughts – there are more to come and you can ‘sign up’ for them to be sent as they are published (nice way to ‘engage’ with people that!).

Anyway, do let me know what you think – and thanks HSBC, looking forward to the next 75 Thoughts…..

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At the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner last night (Thanks Yorkshire Forward for the kind invitation), a great keynote presentation from ex Dragon’s Den man Doug Richard suggested that rather than ‘trains’, maybe we should be getting a  bit more excited by the ’Superfast’ Broadband we’re getting through the Digital Region initiative - guaranteed speeds of 25Mb/sec in our homes and offices. That, he explained, will significantly increase our opportunities and help our competitiveness, not trains, which did revolutionise things back in the last century.

It’s so easy to get stuck on the same track, and sometimes it’s the wrong one! What do you need to do to get on the right track?

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I’ve just come across a nice profile of Paul English of Kayak, on Inc.com. Kayak is the highly successful travel website comparison site and the article highlights the role of Paul as a leader when it comes to creating a real customer focus across his business.

In what can often be seen as the ‘faceless’ sector of web business, he seems to very much try to ‘humanise’ the business, and does it by ‘leading from the front’.

Here’s an extract from the article:

About a year ago, I bought a red telephone with a really loud ringer for the office. Whenever a customer calls the help number on our website, that phone rings. The engineers initially complained about it. They said, “That’s so friggin’ annoying!” And I’d say, “There’s a really simple solution: Answer the friggin’ phone and do whatever it takes to make that customer happy. Then hang up, unplug the phone, walk it down to the other end of the office, and plug it in down there.”

 It’s like hot potato. Except I take it seriously. When the phone rings, I literally jump over the desks just so I can get to the phone before anyone else. I love talking to customers, even angry ones. I learn a lot from them about how to make the site easier to use. When the call’s over, I’ll say, “If you have any follow-up questions, my name is Paul English; I’m the co-founder of the company.” I’ll give out my personal cell-phone number. Only one out of 20 people might actually call, but they’re blown away when I do that…….

The article highlights some really great examples of what I see in totally customer focused businesses:

• They’re easy to buy from and deal with
• They get ‘customers’ on the agenda…. and keep them there
• They hire for attitude, not just skill
• Leaders act as role models – they ‘walk the talk’

You can read the article here…… and after you have, ask yourself:

 ’How do we measure up against those 4 factors?’

 And then maybe work out what you need to do to ‘walk the talk’!

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I think you should avoid the ‘tick boxes’ and ‘score out of 10′ questions and ask:

“Were you COMPLETELY happy with our service?” with a YES / NO answer and a follow up ‘Why / Why Not?’

Here are a few more follow up questions worth considering.  My personal view is that they should ‘stretch’ customers to commit to answers, so things like:

• Was there anything / anyone that particularly ‘impressed’ you about our service?
• Was there anything / anyone that particularly ‘disappointed’ you about our service?
• If we could improve just one thing what should it be?
• Please sum up our business / service in just a few words.

The idea is to ‘provoke’ people to give an answer. For example, there is an arguement that if they don’t give an answer for the first or second questions, then things are ‘ok’, but as you know ‘ok’ is not the stuff that people tell others about. It’s not a ‘bad’ rating, but it’s not exceptional or ‘dramatically different’!

They are tough questions, but we are in ‘tough times’!

What questions do you ask?

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I just thought it was a great, simple example of building in ‘personalisation’ into the core offer. I don’t suppose that many people buy a big luxury car just because you can heat the seats up before you set off, but it’s one of those little things that

a) is ‘dramatically different’

b) (I suspect) relatively ‘cheap’ in the overall costs

c) helps customers ‘tailor’ the product to their needs

In the world of huge choice and ‘same as’, ‘personalisation’ is a great way to ‘differentiate’ your business, your products and your services and create ‘delighted’ customers.

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