Archives for category: Customers
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Virgin Interinactive

July 27, 2016 //
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I was staying at my Mum’s the other day and she was complaining about her rather flaky digital TV service. She maintains a pathological avoidance of all things Murdochian, so has never embraced the world of Sky. For her broadband and TV, therefore, she’s opted for Virgin Interactive.

The broadband seems to be very reliable. I’m round at hers and it always seems extremely reliable. Less so the TV, however. The Virgin Interactive isn’t very interactive. It’s rather interinactive.

The system navigation is crude and clumsy. The operating system is slow to the point of Windowsian. The catch up and on demand functions fail regularly, and don’t get fixed by a restart of both the television and the Virgin unit. When you call customer service at unsociable hours you get an automated service advising you to un-plug and restart…

The remote is hard to fathom and clunky, meaning you mis-navigate frequently. I couldn’t get it to work and I’m relatively tech savvy. My Mum of a generation further removed from tech savviness, so for her the usability is key and the frustration palpable.

This is rather unsatisfactory and disappointing for a company that prides – and prices – itself on customer service and is headed up by one of the world’s most respected and inspirational entrepreneurs.

When you boil everything down to the lowest common denominator, stuff has to work and be simple to operate. And when there are no or few viable alternatives, the incumbents can afford to be lazy and take liberties with the consumer.

 

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Categories Customers, Technology

Moving People

July 18, 2016 //
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I was at a music concert the other day. Popular music. It was the main act of the gig and featured a band who were not stellar or globally known but have a few hits under the belt that you would recognise.

I couldn’t name any of their songs while we were driving to the gig, but when they came on you knew them, and could sing along. There were 2 or 3 thousand at the gig, most of whom, I would guess, were fans.

Like a lot of bands, they had a new album coming out and so played a lot of new stuff. Whenever they played one of their big songs, however, the reaction of the audience was immediate and immense, visceral really.

It got me thinking, saddo that I am, about B2B marketing. This connection, this way of moving people, this level of engagement in a band/brand is something that B2B marketers can only dream about. After all, when you hear your favourite song come on, from your favourite band, the song that evokes a great holiday or time in your life, a song that you named your first child after, it inspires a feeling that you’re unlikely to see replicated when you come into work on the Monday and fire up the software that you couldn’t do your job without.

Both things, work and play, are interactions on a 1:1 basis, and even though B2B is selling to a business not a consumer, you’re still selling to an individual, or more likely a collection of individuals, each with a degree of influence and power, but individuals nonetheless, with their own set of likes, dislikes, preferences, reasons for deciding one way or the other.

Perhaps it’s wrong of us as B2B marketers to even think about trying to emulate the kind of engagement that brands strive for with people when they’re out of business, away from work.

Then again, perhaps moving people as consumers and moving people in work is not so different after all.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Strategy

Missed Opportunities

July 11, 2016 //
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Nothing rankles more and is harder to dismiss than a missed opportunity, I find. More than that, to have had the chance to do something, and to have passed it up, is hard to take.

Years and years ago, I was attending the British Open golf event (is there any better value sporting event than the first 2 days of the Open, over 12 hours of sport where you can get out for a walk, see some amazing shots, savour the atmosphere and get close enough to see what the guys are thinking and feeling?) as a spectator and wandering amongst the masses when my mate pointed out someone famous to me that has just walked past us. ‘Look’, he said, ‘there’s Ian Baker-Finch.’ I turned round to look behind me, as I walked, at this legend who had won the event a few years before, and bumped into a bloke who was much larger than me, but who, for some reason, came off from the contretemps in a worse state, one of those kind of knee-to-knee bump situations where one person can be unscathed and another in a bit of pain.

As it turned out, the chap I had bumped into was none other than fellow fan Ieuan Evans, who was a British Lion at the time and arguably much more famous than Mr Baker-Finch. I apologised and that was that.

Years later, I was invited to a corporate hospitality event by a mate of mine who was himself a guest of a logistics company. The event was the Ireland-Wales 6 Nations rugby clash in Dublin. One of the pundits who was booked to provide pre-show analysis and mingle among the guests was Mr Evans. I met him briefly, and was working up to telling him my golfing anecdote when our little enclave was joined by the event host, Keith Wood, himself no slouch on the rugger field. Mr Wood is a very charismatic individual, pronounced the group he had joined a follically challenged one – which was true, me and Mr Evans included, and proceeded to lead the conversation. During this, Ieuan left our group and went to mingle elsewhere. I didn’t get another chance to catch up with him.

Missed opportunities. To have failed to take the chance is far worse than to have taken it and failed.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Stansted-Standsted

July 8, 2016 //
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I had the misfortune of flying to London Stansted a while ago. It’s not my normal choice of airport; in fact, I hadn’t flown to it in a long time.

It looks a little bit tired. I flew in on a spectacularly normal Saturday, and landed on time, in fact a little early. For some reason we landed about a county away from the terminal, so we got a bus into the complex, passed through non-existent passport control and into the baggage area.

Where we waited, along with hundreds of other passengers, for our flight to be shown. The baggage area is organised in a way that from some positions you can only see a small fraction of all the baggage belts. The signs for each belt are too small, and the belts themselves are configured in a way that makes it hard to find your belt. I know, 1 should be next to 2, and so on, but not here, at last as far as I could see.

There wasn’t a member of staff anywhere to be seen on the concourse, who we could ask to chase our bags. I went to the Ryanair service desk after 25 minutes, who peddled the line that they’d only just been told of the problem. Really? Do I look like I came in on the last flight?

All you could do was stand around, so stand we did. We finally got our bags after a 45 minute wait. Unacceptable.

Come on Ryanair, you can do better, you practically own Stansted.  It’s all very well claiming the most punctual, on-time service and ringing your precious trumpet when we land on time or early, but if your punters have to wait an hour landing to get their bags and exit the building, it’s not really on time, now is it?

I suppose I shouldn’t have decided to bring enough stuff for a checked-in bag…

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Three Times a Day

July 6, 2016 //
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Whenever we want to improve at something, or fix something, we devise a plan – or an expert helps us do so. Then we have to commit to the plan. This is true for almost any change management exercise in business, which is another way of saying anything worth doing in business. Change is a constant after all.

This also applies to diet, exercise and health of course. It I want to get fitter, stronger or faster, I get a training program. If I’ve had an injury, an operation or an illness, I get a rehabilitation or recovery programme.

Let’s say you have a bad back, and you want to strengthen the lumbar region, improve your posture, or avoid slouching in your seat. You get some exercises.

But what’s the point of exercises that advise you to do them three times a day? We’re busy people and unless we do this stuff for a living it’s hard enough making time to do them once a day. Three times a day is too much of an ask.

I’ve had a few calf strains the last few years, and I’m advised to do sets of balancing and hopping exercises, three times a day. I’m usually good the first day or two, then I settle at one a day, then 3 times a week when I remember, for a few weeks until I decide I have recovered. Then I reoffend. My point is, I could probably spare 40-60 mins first thing in the morning and get it all over with in one go, but I can’t spare 20-30 mins spread over 3 instances in a 24-hour period. As George Herbert Walker Bush used to say, not gonna do it.

I know, if I was more organised, and maybe set my phone to remind me several times during the day, that I might increase my chances of success. I also know that there is a purpose to doing the exercises a few hours apart on a regular basis. What I don’t know is how you stay with the regime in a non-life threatening situation when you’re a busy person with demands on your time.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Initiative

July 4, 2016 //
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It’s always good to see people taking the initiative. It doesn’t happen anywhere near as often as it should. Having initiative and taking the initiative is a bit like putting ‘self-starter’ on your CV. Everyone feels it should be on there but few generally do it, at least not early in their careers.

I remember being on a train in London Paddington, about to head west, during the evening rush hour about a decade ago during the time when intercity trains were not just full, they were packed, in a Japanese commuting-style. This particular train was bound for south Wales, but stopped off at Reading, the first major stop 25 mins away and a city that was served by a train every 15 minutes or so. The train was packed, dangerously so.

Many of the travellers were heading for Reading, perhaps 40% of them in my very unscientific estimation. I happened to be standing wedged in a corner of one of the carriages when I overheard the conductor talking to a couple of colleagues. ‘I know what we can do,’ he said. Two minutes later, the conductor came onto the intercom, apologised for the schedule change and announced that the service would not be stopping at Reading.

There was a degree of huffing and puffing, the rain emptied to the point where everyone could just about get a seat, and we took off a few minutes late.

The conductor was probably not authorised to do what he did, but he got the train away, 500 passengers where able to get to their long distance destination on time, and 200 commuters to Reading were delayed 15 minutes getting home.

We need people to take the initiative and shoulder the consequences. That’s how we get stuff done.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

Prime Now, Prime Not

July 1, 2016 //
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I did a stupid thing the other day.

I packed for a trip to the UK from Ireland, and forgot the power pack for my MacBook Air. Realising the error of my ways, and with an hour’s juice left, I went online to see if I could get one delivered to me the same day. I had heard that with Amazon Prime Now you can get stuff delivered in big cities like London within the hour, which was perfect.

I couldn’t see any Prime Now offers for the charger I needed. Then someone told me that Prime Now was a mobile thing, so I needed to download the app. I couldn’t find the app, which was when that same someone told me I probably couldn’t see the app because I lived in Ireland where Prime Now was not available. No problem, I’ll change my country to the UK in my Amazon settings. Except that it’s not straightforward and you have to jump through a lot of hoops to do it.

No problem said that same someone, I’ll order it for you with my Prime Now app and get it delivered here to the office. Great, except that the app wouldn’t allow him to change the delivery address from his home to the office. Not a good first impression…

We gave up. I walked 3 minutes to a local electrical store, they had the power pack I needed, which I bought, and I was back in the office in 15 minutes.

You see, when your ecommerce technology fails your customers, they leave you and go back to good old bricks and mortar.

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Categories Customers, Sales, Technology

Reinvent

June 29, 2016 //
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The key to keeping your relevance and your message fresh to your target audience is to not be afraid of reinventing yourself and your company.

All the greats do it. Look at Madonna, who has undergone several transformations in a career that defies the average life span of music performers at the top of their profession.

From a corporate sense, it makes perfect sense too. If you position yourself as leaders in a certain field and you see the trends and developments in your industry moving to a new and fast-growing category that is allied to what you already do, of course you should reinvent yourself.

Certain things need to pre-exist for you to be successful. You need to have been a credible player in the previous industry. It needs to be a credible stretch from the old company to the new one. You also need to be credible in that new space. If the belief’s not there, the success won’t be either, and chances are you’ll flounder.

I used to work with a company whose boss positioned his company a certain way, and proclaimed it to be his 3rd global business. He then reinvented the company, rebranded it, and relaunched it as a new entity, with a new mission. It was also now his 4th global business. Same company, reinvented.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Strategy

What is a Product Roadmap?

June 27, 2016 //
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What do you understand by the term ‘product roadmap’? There are lots of definitions, some narrow and some broad, some internally focused and some market- or customer-focused. And how detailed should a product roadmap be? Should it pin your detailed colours to the mast, or should it be high level, allowing you room for manoeuvre?

I think that over time B2B customers have become somewhat desensitised towards product roadmaps. This is especially true in the software industry where the sheer complexity and number of moving parts, combined with the influences of individual customers, conspire to make roadmap projections aspirational at best and at worst downright misleading and fictional.

The pressures on the business in a dynamic landscape are changing all the time, and I’ve seen businesses where products or product enhancements have arrived 2 or 3 years after they were advertised to come on stream.

But back to product roadmap definitions. The one I use when asked this question defines a product roadmap as a plan of product or platform developments, delivered through a release mechanism – which could be a few or several times a year – through properly managed projects and programmes. After all, you’ve got to be sure that all the parts of the business can fulfil their element of the whole product solution. In other words, the roadmap should really be about when new releases are delivery ready, not sales ready. By all means seed the market, and build the demand to allow for the natural lag of a sales cycle, but publish your roadmap based around genuine availability.

Customers love to see detailed roadmaps, but only if you actually can commit to the associated timings, otherwise the trust quickly evaporates. Just like in sales, you’re only as good as your last quarter. Software development never seems to build in any buffer for the inevitable bumps in the road – probably because the front of the business is pushing for the earliest possible delivery date – and when those bumps occur, it’s very hard to get back on track. That’s why I fall back on the principle of under-promise and over-deliver to customers, and pushing back to the business. The customer comes first, so I’m in favour of high level roadmap pronouncements that strike the right balance between demonstrating progress and allowing wiggle room, so you can be on time, on brief, and maybe even on budget.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Breaking the Mould

June 24, 2016 //
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Breaking the mould is one of the most underrated achievements I can think of. We’re so conditioned to conforming to the norms and adapting what’s already there to create something ‘new’. Which isn’t new, really. Then, when someone comes up with a truly different musical genre, device or way of doing something, you’ll hear people say, ‘well, that’s obvious, I could have done that.’

Yeah, but it wasn’t, and you didn’t! Maybe it was hiding in plain sight, but it’s only obvious in hindsight.

Have you been to Gloucester Motorway Services? It’s not like other motorway services. At all in fact. The building and landscaping is great, the decor is not at all what you expect, and the seating is comfortable. The toilets are clean and well kept. The food is lovely and reasonably priced. I’ve been in twice for a short break – it wasn’t there when I lived in Gloucester and I probably wouldn’t have gone since it was so close to home – and their decaff latte is probably among the top 3 cups of coffee I’ve ever had.

It’s got a farmhouse theme going on and sells some really nice products. It is, in fact, the complete opposite of a motorway services place. It’s genuinely breaking the mould. You’ll never look at one the same way again.

It takes an approach like this to make you realise that all motorway establishments don’t have to look like grimy monstrosities with toilets that resemble a war zone.

Oh, and it’s been awarded an architectural honour as well. A motorway services establishment! Awesome stuff.

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Categories Customers, General, Strategy
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