Mon Dieu! It’s The Line To the Lord!

Customer friendly organisations are ‘easy to do business with’. Even his Holiness ‘On High’ has apparently taken this message on board!  Just when you thought that call centres had taken over every part of our world, they’ve ‘moved upstairs’!

News comes of The Line To the Lord where you can confess your sins ‘virtually’! Callers are advised “For advice on confessing, press one. To confess, press two. to listen to soome confessions, press three.”

What is interesting however, is that there is a limit. Like all good customer foicused businesses, they focus on a niche market – the service will apparently only help deal with small, everyday sins.

Callers are advised to contact a priest if they wish to confess a ‘mortal sin’!

We’ve Got ‘Linked-In’!

We’ve got ‘Linked In’! We’ve set up a group on ‘Linked in’ for likeminded entrepreneurs and business leaders, and it’s called ‘Compete Or Get Beat!’

It’s got a simple aim: ‘to encourage the exchange of ideas, engagement and connections between like-minded thinkers on improving competitiveness, leadership and profitability’. If you regularly read this blog, then that probably means you! 

To be honest, it’s a learning exercise for me – not quite sure how it will all work, but I thought it’s worth a go.

Feel free to join, and if you do, please ‘contribute’ and ‘add value’ to it…..oh, and please tell other ‘like-minded’ people too!

Mixed Messages – An Arresting Situation!

Here’s an interesting example of the ‘new world we live in’. A man has been arrested for jokingly tweeting that he was going to blow Doncaster Airport up! The snow looked like delaying his flight plans to Ireland so he joked to his friends “Robin Hood Airport is closed – You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”

According to The Telegraph he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and banned from the airport for life! Apparently he had to explain to the police who came to his house to arrest him what Twitter was as they’d never heard of it!

I know, it’s all about context, and on the surface, it looks very ‘funny’, but there is a lesson there. What you send out there isn’t always heard in the way you say it! I’m not just talking about Twitter and all this ‘new fangled stuff’. I’m talking about core marketing messages – do your customers (and potential customers) ‘understand’ what you’re saying and how you’re saying it?

Thinking in 3D – A New Slideshare Presentation

Here’s a new Slideshare presentation for you to kick off your New Year – a few thoughts and ideas in a quick and easy ‘digestible’ format.

Do let me know what you think.

Free ebook – (Re)Thinking in 3D…..

I’ve written a new book! It’s all about Thinking in 3D – That means creating a business that’s 

‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different‘! 

Basically, it’s a short set of ’rants’, raves and ideas aimed at engaging, stimulating and challenging you. 

If you enjoy the blog, I’d like to think that you’ll enjoy this too. The main reason being that there will be a few bits and bobs you’ve read before here on the site – see it as ‘going back to the gym’ – you still need to work those muscles!

I’ve called it:

(re)thinking in ‘3D‘….. and the best bit is it’s FREE!

 

If you like it please send it on to others….. and let me know what you think about it too please!

You can

download it here!

Hope You Have a ’Delightful’ Christmas!

Marketing in 2010 – What Does It Mean For You?

What does 2010 hold for you when it comes to sales and marketing? Any ideas? Of course, with such rapid change, it’s a difficult one to predict, but there is some great stuff here from some of the leading ’social media’ gurus around the world, curtesy of Joe Pulizzi’s Blog.

OK, there is an argument that some of these guys are so far ahead of the game, and are, no doubt, so ‘enthusiastic’ about this stuff, that they may be ‘running’ before many of us are even ‘walking’ (crawling?)!

That may well be the case and that means that for a lot of us, if these guys are ‘leading the way’ and we don’t get ‘running quickly’, we might well get left behind.

For what it’s worth, my conclusions from reading it all are:

• It’s getting more crowded out there
• It’s not just the method, its the message – what is it you’re trying to say?
• It’s about creating something worth talking about
• Its’ about ‘engagement’!

I’m sure you’ll draw your own conclusions that reflect your own situation.

The key question is clearly ‘What are you going to do about it?’

MBA – Master of Blagging Andy’s Stuff?

Did you know that the Bulgarian for ‘Customer Delight’ is  ”доволните” ? Or that in Italian, ‘delight’ is ‘deliziati’?  How do I know? Well, my Slideshare presentation ‘How To Create Devoted Customers’ has been translated and used by others. I actually produced it a couple of years ago and it’s been up there and downloaded thousands of times. Here it is if you missed it:

 

What’s really interesting to me though is the different ways it’s been ‘used’ seems to highlight the opportunities and threats that the ‘world wide web’ provides for us:

I was more than happy to say yes to a chinese student who emailed me and asked for permission to translate it into Chinese, and here’s the mexican version by Juan Carlos Fernandez!

The Italian version, nicely done to the tune of ‘Keep The Customer Satisfied’ by Simon & Garfunkel credits me and is available on YouTube. OK, it’s not been viewed by thousands, but in principle, it introduces me to some ‘potential’ Italian customers who I would not normally reach, so I’m grateful.

The Bulgarian version, which is available on Slideshare, however has been ’nicked’ by someone called Ivaylo Kunev who has passed himself off as the designer and doesn’t mention me at all! OK, so it’s one individual, and it’s not really a big deal as he doesn’t seem to ‘promote’ himself on it. I guess we all use other people’s stuff in one form or another, but to totally copy the style, text type and colours is an interesting approach.

A third version is even more interesting. Again, it’s on Slideshare and it’s been done in Albania by Nathan Ronen MBA (no less!) who is part of the Albanian Centre For Management Services, which is clearly a commercial enterprise. He actually claims it’s a practical guide designed by him!! Again, he’s used my style, type and colourings, and there’s no mention of me - do hope that this wasn’t part of his MBA dissertation and I’ve now ‘exposed’ him!! 

I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe MBA stands for ‘Master of Blagging Andy’s stuff (and not telling him!)’.

They say ‘immitation is the best form of flattery’ and I’m sure that the Albanian market wasn’t perhaps on the top of my priority list. It’s not a major issue for me, but it’s brought home to me that there are ‘MBA’ers all over the world hurting people genuinely working hard to make a living – any thoughts on how to deal with them?

Get Ready For Some ‘(F)luxury!

‘Urbany’, ‘(f)luxury’, ‘mass mingling’ and ‘embedded generosity’ are just some of the consumer trends predicted for 2010. Of course they’ve not been predicted by me (who as you know had never heard of Peppa Pig!), but by the fabulous guys at Trendwatching. As ever, they’ve produced a fascinating insight into the world of consumers in 2010 - as they see it. It’s called ‘10 Crucial Consumer Trends For 2010′. You can download the report here.

I’m particularly interested in their view that we’ll be ‘networking’ offline and back in the real world much much more – of course, social media will be used to maximise its effectiveness – they’ve called it ‘mass mingling’. They also predict an upsurge in ‘Tracking and Alerting’ – that’s all about consumers obtaining regularly updated information on what they are buying or looking to buy – a thrust  of even more power to the customer.

If you don’t already subscribe to Trendwatchings’ monthly briefings, I really think you should. They’re free and you can do that here.

What are your predictions for marketing, customers and competitiveness in 2010?

A Fresh Approach To Social Media

The ‘new’ world of social media is exciting for many, and a bit scary for others. The danger for the latter is that they ignore it or that they ‘play’ at it. Potentially for many (all?) of us, it’s a massive opportunity – the challenge is to find ways to maximise this opportunity.   

I do remember coming back from a Fast Company Conference in San Diego California 11 years ago this month all excited and enthusiastic shouting ‘We’ve GOT to have a website!!’. No real idea why, but everyone in the US was getting them, and it seemed like the right thing to do. I’m sure that down the years previously people have run into their offices and shouted enthusuastically to their colleagues ‘We must have an advert on TV!’ or ‘We’ve got to get a brochure!’

Perhaps, that’s what’s happening in many businesses today about social media. Anybody come dashing into your office exclaiming ‘We just so need to ‘Twitter’”?

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. The challenge as with any marketing channel and activity is to establish:

• What do we want it to do for us?

I also think it might be well worth finding out before that

• What can it do for us (if we get it right)?

These articles on Getting Started in Social Media by Social Media expert Matt Rhodes and his team at Fresh Networks are well worth looking at. They provide a useful framework and some good ideas. Importantly, I feel, they get you to consider some key questions about  what you want and need to do before you actually get started.

Have a look – it’s good practical and stimulating stuff.

Brand New World? Same Old Story

A great new survey of UK online customers carried out on behalf of Tealeaf Technology by Harris Interactive has revealed that some things never change.

The key issues of customer service and customer experience are still critical when it comes to winning and keeping customers in the ‘online world’.

Of the UK customers surveyed:

77% have experienced an issue while conducting transactions online and 83% felt frustrated or angry when they experienced such a problem. Crucially, 78% share their experience with others.

This is where it gets really interesting:

51% of customers said Social Media has influenced their online transactions and 74% said negative comments read online have an influence on whether they will do business with a particular business.  

What does this mean in ‘real life’?

56% of people avoided a particular vendor after reading bad news, and crucially 52% used a particular vendor after reading good reviews.

 In other words, customers still get frustrated when they get bad service, and tell lots of other people. As ever ’Word of Mouth’, and of course, ‘Word of Mouse’ has a real influence in our purchasing decisions. ‘Good’ works well for us, ‘bad’ clearly doesn’t!

 In fact, it’s quite clear that things haven’t really changed apart from the fact that they appear even more critical now as it’s easier to spread the word – good and bad. So the principles that I regularly ‘rant’ about still apply:

• Be easy to deal with and buy from
• Go the extra mile to delight your customers
• Do it consistently to create devoted customers
• Do stuff that’s ‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different’ – stuff worth talking about (‘good’ stuff please!)

and I’d really emphasise this one

• Encourage your delighted and devoted customers to ’spread that word’.

 In many cases all it takes is the click of a button! 

By the way, you can download the report here – it’s well worth a read. (That’s what you call positive ‘word of mouse’ by the way!)

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