Making It Look Easy

This afternoon, after seeing for the first time the bean-shaped, beating blob which will grow into my second child, I observed two services marketing initiatives which, while embarrassingly simple, were incredibly smart moves.

Preemptive Complaining

As my wife, daughter and I checked out of our OB-GYN’s office this afternoon, I noticed a small, nonassuming sign on the counter which read, “We are currently updating our computer systems. Thank you for your patience.” Beyond a mere apology (i.e. “Excuse our mess”), this sign provided a quick explanation, a hint of good things to come, and an implied apology—all before I ever had a chance to complain to my wife. Customer service issue, solved. Thankfully, this is not so uncommon. But I wouldn’t mind seeing the same type of thing when businesses are temporarily short-staffed (and slow) for reasons other than poor scheduling, or when, ironically, I am unable to connect with my cell phone service staff due to internal systems problems. As much as I love to complain, I like even more the idea of smartly snatching the opportunity right out my hands before I ever have the chance.

Making Appropriate Introductions

As I headed back to my place of intern-ment (that’s a little joke), I saw on the Applebee’s sign just south of I-44 a message which introduced the restaurant’s cook by name. At first, I thought it was a strange way to use the highly visible signage. (Why aren’t they advertising their latest promotion?) But then, I thought about how it made me feel. At first, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed that this oft-maligned mass-produced neighborhood grill had enough pride in its cook to go through the trouble to introduce him to all passers by. But the feeling it left me with was that of familiarity. We (almost) always know the names of our servers, sometimes the names of our managers, and occasionally our hostesses. But rarely do we know the name of the person who actually puts his hands all over our food! The introduction established a relationship with the restaurant that would last much longer then their $9.99 sirloin special. In light of this guy’s role in the success of my evening out, I would like to know his name-even when it’s just at Applebee’s or Cheddar’s or Chili’s. And, like the placement of the explanatory sign at our baby-doctor’s office, the gesture was very incredibly simple.

I would be interested to know of more of these simple, effective, less-than-five-dollar gestures that enable the service industry to build community with its clients and customers.

Five Ways Services Marketing Will Help Brick and Mortar Gain Ground

Clearly over the past decade, brick-and-mortar establishments have taken a beating from competing e-shops. And while I am not opposed to online shopping, I can hardly to stand to watch the institution (yes, I said institution) of the physical storefront continue to dwindle. The solution: services marketing (or as Ted Mininni so aptly calls it, marketing to employees). I believe that, through services marketing, B&M shops have an exclusive advantage over click-shops. I propose 5 advantages that brick and mortar establishments have that are direct results of service marketing initiatives:

1. Recognition

Amazon may know my name, but it can’t recognize me from across the room by my bald spot which is becoming more and more prominent each year (sorry Dad for making fun of you for this-I’m getting my payback). Cookies are handy, but many people disable them within their browsers. Many others simply choose not to have them installed. And cookies never greet me and shake my hand.

2. Initiative

I used to work regularly with a salesman at a shop here in Tulsa. Whenever a desired (or potentially desired) item would come in, he would give me a call. Because of this initiative, I spent way too much money in his shop during his tenure there. E-mails are fine (usually), but I am only aware of them when I take the initiative to check and open my e-mail (which many times, I don’t, even if the e-mail is from one of my favorite shops). Many people opt out of e-notification. Many spam blockers prevent potentially valuable e-ads from ever reaching their intended recipients. And many people (like me) simply don’t feel like reading through them and categorically delete them. I personally have multiple e-mail accounts, and I only read one or two regularly. The others, I have deemed my “spam accounts.” Sometimes I check/read them; sometimes I don’t. And when I miss a sales-oriented e-mail or two, I never get a call.

3. Empathy

Recently at Cold Stone Creamery (one of my favorite branded-service establishments), I ordered a couple of Original Creations for myself and my wife. When I got to the counter to pay, the guy working the cash register told me he was only going to charge me for one. I looked at him, puzzled. He said, “I know you’re a teacher, and things are tough for you guys.” While I was a little surprised at how bad it must seem a teacher’s life must be, I gladly took the discount and left. Now, when I say “empathy,” I don’t mean pity, I mean a holistic sense of who your customer is. The guy at CSC had embraced this, and had been empowered to act upon it. And I’ve been back multiple times since then.

4. Relationship

This one’s a no-brainer.

5. Personality

Yep, I like it. It’s what differentiates an experience from a task.

Of course, just as there are benefits to real-life, tangible consumerism, there are also potential drawbacks.

1. Inconsistency

Outside of the size monitor I happen to be viewing at the time of a purchase, most of my online buys are incredibly consistent. This provides a measure of security-especially when I’m giving my credit card numbers.

2. Attitude

I’ve blogged before about how sometimes, it seems FLSA’s are really put out by the fact that I am troubling them to buy something from them (thus, consequently, paying their salary). But the transaction systems in place at golfsmith.com always seem to be perfectly fine with the fact that I want to spend money there.

3. Availability

Who’s going to be the one to open the 24-hour shopping mall? Is there already one out there somewhere? (And I mean a true shopping mall–not Wal-Mart-although they may be on to something here.) It may be a necessary next step in competing with the web.

Of course, each of these problems could be addressed by “marketing to your employees.” (Well, the availability problem may also require some creative scheduling .) Ultimately, B&M can win back ground. Services marketing and the branding of the service employee can be a powerful weapon in one’s arsenal. I know this list (actually, both lists) is incomplete. I’m interested to know what you think is missing.

Mininni’s “Marketing to Employees”

I love the concept of “marketing to employees,” recently posted by Marketing Profs: Daily Fix contributor Ted Mininni. The concept is based on a Business Week article posted online last week addressing a McDonald’s commercial which shows a McDonald’s employee’s evolution from FLSE (yes, I’ll think of a catchier name for that soon) to regional President. I particularly enjoyed Mininni’s response, “If Human Resources at McDonald’s and other entry-level employers can’t make frontline staff believe their jobs are rewarding and fun, perhaps marketing departments can.” You have to admit, HR has a very challenging job in dealing with entry-level employees. So I without further ado, here are 5 tips that I believe can help in this situation.

1. Introduce Marketing to HR.

I mean this literally. Small businesses are fortunate in that the Marketing and HR people may be close enough to share YouTube videos all day, but in larger corporations, these departments may never cross paths. And while a company’s mission should not be constantly changing, its clients (and consequently, the company’s methods of outreach) should be. This should be a regular topic of discussion between these two departments in order to make strategic hiring, training, and (employee) maintenance decisions.

2. Educate site managers. 

Many times, the goal of a site manager is simply to get a new hire on the floor. I understand this, but as Helm and Arndt observe in their article, companies that are implementing a branding focus in their human resources are seeing less turnover and a greater sense of pride among FLSE’s. Perhaps by taking the time to brand service employees, site managers will find themselves less often in the throes of shorthanded desperation.

3. Implement a marketing presence in individual branches/stores/restaurants.

OK, perhaps a marketing rep in every store may be a little much, but companies would do well to pepper their operations with regional reps. (Note: “regional rep” does not equal “tattle-tale.”) The purpose of these reps should simply be that of observing local processes, particularly those involving customer touchpoints, and having an exchange with local employees, top down, about the presence of the company’s mission (ore lack thereof) in all they do, as well as a reminder of their importance to the company (more about that in #5).

4. Implement an adaptive training model that focuses on the company’s mission.

We could spend hours on this. In a nutshell, cookie-cutter training may not be doing the trick. At first, this seems to run counter to another essential branding principle: be consistent. Clearly, consistency is absolutely essential, but somehow, training must implement the most effective method of reaching a location’s micro-environment (wow, how’s that for archaic, academic terminology?). Doing so adds intimacy which often translates into loyalty. Incorporating the company’s mission then gives satisfied customers something ”tangibly symbolic” (to coin an oxymoronic phrase) to take home with them. Again, volumes can be (and have been) written about this topic. I’ll leave it at that for now.

5. Empower employees.

Thank you Dr. Tom Brown (Oklahoma State U.) for reinforcing this concept as much as you did. Let’s be honest here-of all of the employees in a company, you have to admit that the ones who probably receive the least respect, love, empowerment, etc. are the FLSE’s. But these employees are incredibly valuable to the success of a company! Rarely do I refuse to go to a particular restaurant or store because I had a bad experience with the company’s CFO. And I never give a company’s regional sales manager a little extra cash for taking good care of me. The nature of an FLSE’s relationship with a company’s customers absolutely warrants respect. These employees must be given the right and the education to be successful. Sure, it’s a little scary for managers to relinquish control, but rigid, arbitrary micromanagement (which differs significantly from the enforcing of brand-building principles) kills employee loyalty, which truly does hurt customer loyalty. Again, so much more can be said about this. I think that for now, enough has been said.

Now, I have no crazy misconception that these steps are the be-all end-all (what does that saying really mean, and how did it come about anyway?) of effectively branding front-line service employees. I am definitely interested in what the community has to say about this. And I’m sure the topic will come up again in this writer’s blog.

A Real Life Example

I love Cold Stone Creamery. But it’s not just the delicious ice cream that keeps me paying over $4 per small “Creation” almost once a week. It is the combination of a high quality product with a staff of employees who live the company’s brand. My wife, my best friend, and I made our near-weekly visit to the Creamery this evening. In the middle of our experience, (a word I use very intentionally here), I leaned over to my wife and said, “I have to blog about this.” Below is an outline of the events of our visit.

1. Upon entering the shop, we were greeted immediately (and happily).
2. The line started getting long because the workers had to “re-ice the stone.” As we waited, workers passed out samples of ice cream cake to and chatted casually and comfortably with waiting patrons.
3. Employees who were icing the stone were also having conversations with the waiting patrons.
4. Once the stone was iced, employees had conversations with customers about ice cream selections, new offerings, etc.
5. At the cash register, employees asked customers open-ended questions about their day and responded sincerely and cheerfully.

Now, I’ll admit, the passing out of samples is simply an aspect of good service as opposed to branded service (although I’ve seen many other restaurants fall short even on this simple gesture). But you’ll notice one thing common to all 5 points above: employees (who probably earn little more than minimum wage) had meaningful exchanges with ther customers. And while I know that this sort of behavior is mandated to some extent, the genuineness of the willing conversation and the consistency of employee behavior comes as a result of empowered employees who believe in the company’s mission-and the entire package is what makes the Cold Stone brand what it is.

 And by the way, the new French Toast Extravaganza is awesome!

Active Branding

MBA complete, I am now able to go back and read all of those books and magazines I have been wanting to read, but have had to forego for the past 2½ years. (Strangely, this sounded so exciting around finals-time last Spring; yet now, I instead find myself watching DVR’ed episodes of Star Wars for hours at a time during my free time, refusing interruptions from even my wife and my daughter.) So today, I read an article entitled “Revitalize With Customer-Centric Branding” from the Nov/Dec 2006 issue (I told you I was behind) of 1 to 1 Magazine, a product of the so-named (sans “Magazine”) division of the Peppers and Rogers Group whose blog, Think Customers: The 1 to 1 Blog, is one of my favorites in the Blogroll you see to the right.

In the article, John Gaffney reports on Washington DC-based, National Cooperative Bank SVP and Director of Customer Strategy Innovation (what a cool job), Rebecca Coder, and her strategy with regard to her company’s brand:

In Coder’s world, branding is not the design of funny TV commercials or offbeat print ads. “For us branding is how we behave,” she says. “And how we behave is what dictates the customer experience.” (11)

I’m already wishing I could go through NCB’s internal education effort, “Cross-Selling Can Happen in the Strangest Places.”

Gaffney continues:

The brand’s differentiator became the employees, from the contact center to the branches….In the end, the program transformed customer-facing employees into NCB “advocates.”…By grounding the rebranding effort in its employee training and using its customers as its research platform, NCB took a different approach than companies that look first toward creative executions. (11, emphasis added)

Interestingly, Gaffney suggests that the branding of service employees (a.k.a. FLSE’s) is considered to be a “different” marketing strategy. Sadly, I must agree with him that on a broad scale, it is indeed pretty uncommon. Yet I do believe that this different form of branding will enable companies (particularly the beaten-up brick-and-mortar types) to harvest the level of customer loyalty that leads to significant organic growth (which is nice).

And wouldn’t you know it, NCB even has an RSS feed, which makes the bank’s press releases readily available to people like me and you?

The Job Search Engine Who Cried Wolf

This morning, I was reading a post by Mark Willaman at HRmarketer about Jobster’s latest advertising push in which they use what Mr. Willaman refers to as “risky” methods. I attempted to comment on the blog, but in characteristic Blogspot fashion, technical problems prevented me from successfully doing so (hence, my aforementioned move to WordPress). Therefore, I have decided to post my comment on my blog instead. (Note: read Mr. Willaman’s post here before reading my comment below.)

Great post. I received the same e-mail note last week. I think the folks at Jobster were a little exploitative, using what should have been an otherwise nonassuming, client-assisting tool for commercial use, when they knew that many of their customers were waiting by their Inboxes, just hoping for some good news. It would be like a company’s sales manager calling in an applicant for a job interview for the purposes of trying to sell his product to the interviewee rather than of offering a job (or at best, telling the interviwee about how wonderful his company is, with no mention of a job whatsoever). Jobster could probably have at least done its clients the courtesy of labeling the e-mail “Advertisement,” in order to keep from giving them false hopes.

True customer advocacy fosters loyalty-building trust between marketers and consumers. Abusing venues which should be in place for the benefit of your customers causes future apprehension on their part. Mr. Willaman articulates the effects of this sentiment perfectly:

As for me, I am less likely to respond to any future Jobster emails that tell me I have a “note in my profile” - and some may be genuine.

Me too.

Technorati Tags: customer advocacy, loyalty

Here I Am

If you’re following from my Blogspot blog, thank you. I will be taking up permanent residence (well, at least until my internship ends) here at WordPress. Just too many annoying little things over at Blogspot.

This Job Would Be Great if it Weren’t for Those Pesky Customers

Recent posts on a couple of blogs I read regularly have roused my ire against marketing professionals; to wit, Dustin Staiger’s transcript of a grocery store’s holiday weekend ball-drop and Mike Wagner’s hotel toothbrush fiasco. These posts expose a service provider mindset that is becoming more and more commonplace these days: front line service employees (let’s just call them FLSE’s from here on out, you know, to keep things simple) are not only occasionally lazy and incompetent, they are sometimes actually indignant that customers would ask something of them—that money-spenders would have the gall to interfere with their otherwise pleasant shift. (I know, you’re saying, “But you said you were mad at marketing professionals. It sounds like you’re really mad at FLSE’s.” Just keep reading.) My first question is, how and when did this sort of behavior become acceptable? (OK, that’s actually two questions.) Of course, the answer to that question(s) doesn’t matter nearly as much as Dustin and Mike’s question: how can this issue be resolved? Sure, there are a few spot treatments: retrain, or perhaps even fire the perpetrators (on very shaky grounds). On a slightly broader scale, one might work with managers to help them observe, identify and correct this sort of behavior. But honestly, I think the scrutiny should go deeper into the organization. (Here comes the part about marketing professionals.) I see these problems as marketing problems-as issues brand managers and CMO’s need to address. I would ask, have the marketing managers/execs truly caught the vision of the company? Do they wholeheartedly ascribe to it or are they simply making a paycheck, as are the previously mentioned FLSE’s? (And if the latter is indeed the case, how can we blame the FLSE’s?) Have marketing managers/execs implemented the company’s top-down vision into every aspect of their marketing plan including service provision? What tangible, daily-practicable initiatives have managers and execs clearly stated in their service provision processes? What initiatives have they defined clearly enough in their FLSE job requirements that “failure to perform” said initiatives could safely become grounds for firing an employee without reserve? (When is the last time your CMO and your VP of HR had a company-changing discussion?)

In past posts, I have made reference to the May 2005 Harvard Business Review article entitled “Creating the Living Brand,” by Neeli and Venkat Bendapudi. Take a moment and put down your copy of insert latest popular marketing book title here and read this article! The concept of the branded service employee is still not quite catching on with many marketing execs (and authors). Ultimately, it’s not just about the final product, nor is it just about the idea. It is the FLSE’s who translate these things into felt value. They are the implementers. Put more concretely, they make dollar bills appear in cash drawers. It is their branded service provision (which is completely different from “good” service provision) that makes me want to go to back to QuikTrip for gas rather than any other convenience store (read: “commodity”) in town, using the only store credit card I have in my wallet, driving past 2 or 3 other convenience stores on the way, even if I don’t have to deal with an FLSE face-to-face on that particular trip. Branded service provision is what keeps me coming back to Cold Stone Creamery every time my wife and I decide to take our 1-year old out for dessert. (Well, that, and the Mud Pie Mojo.) And, call me a dreamer, but I believe it is one of the most significant ways for brick-and-mortar businesses to win back customers from the Web. More on that later.

Technorati Tags: brand, brand manager, CMO, services marketing

Hello Again

My mother loves Neil Diamond (how is it I made it my entire life thinking that really was his true family name until just now??); hence, the title of today’s post. My 9-month hiatus is over. Back at the same company in the same internship, again with high hopes of making a transfer, I will be eeking out the same, incredibly riveting information this summer that kept my 2-person readership glued to their computer screens last summer.