Service, the new …Marketing?

There’s buzz lately about service as the new sales. This makes sense. In a cost sensitive, competitive economy, you’ll retain customers with exceptional service and off-set some of the expense of that service through cross and up selling promotions.

Relevancy and tact are paramount to pulling this off. If a customer has contacted you in a frustrated state of mind, pushing them toward spending more will likely put the kibosh on any chance of doing business with them again.

But if you are able to make the offer relevant and timely, you’ve done your brand a triple favor by:

1. Off-setting the cost of the service transaction
2. Helping your customer meet their immediate needs
3. Increasing the propensity for future transactions while creating an unpaid brand ambassador

As easy as it is to justify an up-sell, I believe a brand’s reputation is more valuable. This brings me back to relevancy and tact. If your up-sell strategy is to throw offers out there and see what sticks, you may make your call center metrics look better, but you’re setting the rest of the organization up to fail.

I guarantee that tacked-on offers irritate more customers than they convert. If you think the worst that can happen is they say no, think again. They can say yes…to your competition.

I just purchased an appliance I normally would have paid cash for but I was offered 0% financing. I like free money, so I took the offer. A week later, I got the first call thanking me for my business and asking if I need to borrow more money.

“Nope, I’m all set.”

“How about to pay off other bills?”

“No.”

“How about to buy a new car or take a vacation?”

Lady, you just mispronounced my name. You don’t know me. You want to give me travel advice? Where do you think I should go? Let me guess, someplace expensive?

OK, they tried and failed. But a few weeks later, I got another call, and then another. I terminated that relationship and will go out of my way to never do business with that lender again.

Here’s another example, I bought a digital camera from butterflyphoto.com as a Christmas gift. I was new to the digital camera world and didn’t know what size memory card to add. I called customer service. They didn’t recommend the most expensive memory card; they asked how I thought the camera would be used and sold me the right one.

For a birthday present for someone else, guess who I bought another camera from? And then when it came time to buy myself a camera, I bought from them again. They could have gotten an extra $20 on the first transaction, instead, they got an additional two camera purchases.

As consumers, we are becoming more comfortable with the shift in the balance of power to our side of the equation, and in the process, we’re loosing our tolerance for poor service. In the age of the social web, your company’s reputation defines your brand. In fact, you might even say that reputation building is the new marketing.

Social Experience is about to Cross the Chasm

In 1991 Geoffrey Moore published the book, Crossing the Chasm. The title is drawn from his addition to the Diffusion of Innovations theory popularized by Everett Rogers in his 1962 book and expressed by Roger’s Bell Curve. Confused yet? Here’s where visual aids help.

Rogers’ Bell Curve:



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DiffusionOfInnovation.png


Rogers’ Bell Curve illustrates how innovation spreads through markets. Those of us in innovation driven industries, like software, can appreciate how important it is to understand the difference between an Early Adopter and the Majority when we think about how to sell and market to people.

Since the Diffusion of Innovations theory is often expressed in the context of technology, it’s also referred to as the Technology Adoption Lifecycle. Whatever you call it, the bell curve makes sense. Moore’s addition is a gap, or chasm, dividing the early adoption stage. There is, however, an important distinction determining whether a chasm exists in the lifecycle. The distinction depends upon whether the innovation is continuous or discontinuous .




Source: Craig Chelius

Continuous innovation is an incremental advancement on a previous innovation. There’s no chasm here because there is no barrier to adoption. In the case of continuous innovation, adoption is a given, it just might take some time.

Discontinuous innovation is disruptive, that is to say, it forces a change in people’s behavior. This is the kind of innovation that might not catch on. In other words, it might not cross the chasm, it might instead, perpetually linger at the low end of the early adopters or fall into the chasm.

A discontinuous innovation might also cross the chasm and change the world as we know it. Examples abound; refrigeration, air travel, personal computers, cell phones and the internet, to name a few.

A recent example of a discontinuous technological innovation that has crossed the chasm is the social web. Not only are blogs, wikis, social networking websites, and forums being used by the early majority, the rate of adoption was unusually fast. It seems like Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter appeared just about everywhere overnight.

The social web didn’t have a problem crossing the chasm because it had velocity. Like Evel Knievel jumping a mere half-dozen cars on his motorcycle, the social web had both speed and lots of horsepower. The speed of diffusion came from the medium, the internet. The horsepower came from lots of happy users. Great idea, easily spread, largely adopted, chasm crossed.

What has taken longer is understanding how to apply the social web to business. For the past couple of years, many of us have been asking, how do you make money on a technology that you give away and that contains user generated content?

This question has kept business largely at the chasm’s edge, wondering if the future holds the sunny peak of majority adoption or the abyss. Should we slowly, methodically, build a bridge? Should we take a running leap and hope for the best? Or should we wait for someone to show up with a motorcycle? Not a Segway, a motorcycle.

The conundrum has been that the social web wasn’t built by business for use by consumers like innovations of old. It was built by consumers for consumers. Business wasn’t invited to the party and nobody likes a party crasher.

So that’s the chasm and the social part of Social Experience, now on to the experience.

My company is a customer experience software and services provider. We help make brands easy to do business with so they attract and retain lots of happy customers. If you provide great service to lots of people year after year, you’ll earn a reputation for it. Nordstrom’s is the classic example. Over time, stories about great customer service at the department store spread, and their reputation was built.

But that was the old days, when word of mouth, literally, came from people’s mouths. Now, word of mouth comes from the social web, and businesses reputations are built and destroyed overnight. The negative examples getting the most attention lately because it’s interesting to see the mighty fall. But the social web can spread the reputation of positive experiences with a brand as well.

Reputation spreading is one of the components of what I call Social Experience. The other component is the social web actually enabling the creation of the customer experience.

Here’s an example of a social experience I just had. I was shopping for a new tent on REI.com. There was a particular brand and model I was interested in. Fortunately for me, REI has a tool on their site that allows for user reviews. Every customer review for this tent was negative. They all said it was hard to put up and poorly designed. This tool, a collaboration facilitated by REI with content created by its customers, saved me time, money and aggravation.

But in the short term, having these user reviews on their site is not in REI’s best interest. If they have a shelf in a distribution center piled high with these tents, their website is not helping to unload them. REI is demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice short term profit for long-term customer loyalty. And for me, it’s working. They continue to earn my business.

On-line user reviews are nothing new. They’ve certainly been around longer than Twitter. But they demonstrate how the wisdom of the crowd can help both consumers and businesses. And how, if a brand demonstrates a commitment to its customer’s long term satisfaction, that business will find itself invited to the consumer party.

Business is learning that you can’t capitalize on the social web by charging for the medium or the content as the media industry did in the 20th Century. But you can use the social web to add value to the transactions you have with your customers, increasing their lifetime value, while building a stellar brand reputation.

We’re putting on our red, white and blue jumpsuit, gassing up the bike and getting ready to make the jump. Majority adoption of Social Experience is just a chasm crossing away.

The Art of War Metaphor

The first time I heard about Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, I was 18 and watching the video for the Oliver Stone film Wall Street at my girlfriend’s house. In the film, Michael Douglas plays Gordon Gecko, a Wall Street raider instructing his protégé Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen.

Early in the story, Gecko paraphrases The Art of War, “I don’t throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things. Read Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Every battle is won before it is ever fought.”

Later in the film, Bud demonstrates he is catching on by paraphrasing Sun-Tzu back to Gecko, “If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not, split and reevaluate.”

Those lines stuck with me. But at 18, I wasn’t about to read a book on Chinese philosophy. I was more interested in the things the movie showed me success could buy, like a cell phone the size of a loaf of bread that allowed Gecko to call Bud from the beach and deliver the line, “money never sleeps, pal.”

Ten years later, I was working the phones selling commodities in Denver and my sales manager and mentor, quoted Sun Tzu. That was it, I went out and bought the book.

Why is this ancient text so "sticky" in business today? The Art of War is an instruction manual, each of its 13 chapters are independent lesson. The title is a memorable and elegant paradox. The word "art" evokes sophistication and beauty. The word "war" evokes brutality. Yet somehow these conflicting ideas complement each other in this context.

My CEO uses war metaphors all the time. When I first met him, he talked about our core product as the “sharpest point of our spear.” He defines our growth strategy as “land and expand” where we first have to establish a “beachhead.” New tools for our business become “arrows in our quiver.”

I am attracted to the war metaphor in business. I'm inspired me to work harder and longer on a project if I think of myself as being “in the trenches” shoulder to shoulder with my “brothers in arms” fighting for something great.

Business may be like war, in that success depends upon a great strategy, tactical execution and camaraderie but fortunately, it’s not life or death. As much as war metaphors stir and inspire me to action, I do occasionally remind myself that people at war are fighting for their lives. I’m fighting for a paycheck.

Hello, I love you: CRM and Advertising

Seth Godin wrote that marketing is like dating. It’s a sensible analogy; the trust building, making a good impression, each side giving and taking. I’m not sure how I feel about extending it to closing the deal. You can use your imagination there.

If marketing is like dating, then advertising is the first time you say hello. It matters what you’re wearing, what you say and how your breath smells. A first impression is a lasting one.

We know CRM helps convert prospects into customers and keep those customers but the question is, can CRM help make them love us at first sight? If you’re synchronizing your advertising to your CRM process, the answer is yes. Just keep these four requirements in mind:

-Market an advertising asset
-Place it in the right media
-Allow prospects to access it after filling out a form
-Follow up

Cover your Assets
Godin also wrote that if you want to build trust, you should give away something of value. This free offer can be a product or service but it can also be a bit of knowledge. Since we’ve moved from the information age into the information overload age, I like concise, entertaining documents covering a specific area of business.

To develop a new advertising asset, the first thing I do is interview the people who talk to our prospects and customers every day. I find out what kinds of information our prospects are asking for and what research they’ve done before they found us. Then, I collect and organize what I can find on that topic and condense it into a consumable document.

The advertising asset needs to be many things. It needs to entice the prospect into an initial engagement, make them want more, and be an honest representation of who you are and what you do. Even if they aren’t buying what you are selling today, if you build and maintain a reputation for giving away good stuff, you’re going to get a lot of dates.

Looking for love in all the right places
I stay close to our business development and sales groups. After all, I’m filling the top of their funnel and I don’t want to give them garbage. I’m kind of a matchmaker. I want to make both our prospects and our salespeople happy with the union.

Nobody wants to go trolling the bars just before closing time. That’s why I never rent or buy mailing lists. I look for leads where the highest quality prospects are likely to be, which is usually in communities where experts are engaging in conversations about our industry and the media is covering it. Buying and selling requires a commitment and investment from both sides, so improve your odds by focusing on attracting quality. Go where the odds are good, not where the goods are odd.

Can I call you sometime?
You’ve got the perfect assets in the right locations, now what?

Prospects who do research on-line understand there will be a form they’ll need to fill out in order to download a premium asset. The length of your form should depend on the minimum amount of information you need that can’t be automated. You’ll need a name and contact information of course, and maybe the size of the business. You can also include other questions but I wouldn’t make them mandatory fields.

When they hit submit, send them the asset immediately. This is where the right CRM tools and processes come in. The lead should be routed to the appropriate person on your biz dev team. Your routing rules can be built around geography or subject matter.

Smooth Operator
Besides the basics like contact information, it’s nice to know which asset the prospect downloaded and from where. This will help your biz dev team start the follow up conversation. You ought to be able to set up your campaign URL so it tells your CRM tool which asset and media it represents. The URL should also include the date of the advertisement.

Timing the follow-up call is critical. There should be a mechanism for your biz dev team to prioritize their in-bound leads. Like getting a phone number at a party, you don’t want to call as soon as you get home, but you don’t want to wait a week either.

From Click to Contact
We’ve known for a while that the right CRM application is critical to turning prospects into customers and customers into repeat business and advocates but it’s also imperative that your CRM is tuned into your advertising which, after all, is feeding the top of your sales funnel.

Turn a click into a connection and you’ll have customer chemistry.

Born to Brand and Manage Demand

I was born a brand guy. In the 1970s, I distressed my father with how much TV I watched. What he didn’t understand was that I wasn’t just watching Chips, BJ and The Bear, Gilligan’s Island and The Dukes of Hazard. I was also watching the commercials. I loved them.

To me, a good commercial is better than a half hour show. To be able to tell a humorous story in less than thirty seconds and at the same time convince someone to buy something appealed to my budding sense of both storytelling and capitalism.

In college, I studied PR, but during a summer internship at an ad agency, fell in love with writing commercials. After graduation, I worked for an agency in Cincinnati writing TV spots and running focus groups. Then I moved to the west coast. It seemed to me that the best creative in the early to mid nineties was coming out of Seattle. But instead of getting back into agency work, I happened into a position with a start-up wakeboard manufacturer and became their customer service manager.

It was natural for me to use my marketing and PR experience to handle service issues. Converting complaints into sales opportunities was my specialty and it got me noticed. One year in, I was asked to manage our international sales efforts.

PR to Advertising then Service to Sales may sound all over the place but the transition from one to the other seems natural to me. I view these disciplines as more connected than not.

I spent the next ten years in sales and became an advocate of the technology and processes around Customer Relationship Management (CRM.) Some of my peers thought that being a successful salesman meant having a winning personality and being able to dodge or counter objections. My opinion is that what really matters is understanding customer needs, following up when you say you're going to, and tracking your progress.

Today, I’m doing advertising again and thanks to digital media, my ads are lead generation focused. There is a direct and measurable correlation between my ad work and the top of the sales funnel. For the past five years I've done demand generation for RightNow, a cloud based CRM software provider. Here, all of the brand disciplines I’ve learned have intersected.

I think that Service, Sales, Advertising, PR, CRM, Customer Experience Management and Lead Generation can all be considered what I call Demand Management, so that’s what this blog is about.