The Common Uncommonly

I’m over at Eli Rose Social Media today wondering whether I should behave more like my two year old or my utility company.  Drop on by!

Guest blogging at Eli Rose. Come visit!

Steve Jobs. Henry Ford. Tom Logue.  One of these things is not even close to the others.

I was in Birmingham recently giving a presentation about market research to the local Ad Fed.  In the Q&A afterwards, an attendee graciously offered me the opportunity to disagree with Steve Jobs and Henry Ford, two innovators who rejected the idea of asking customers for their opinions.

Hmmm.  No thanks.  To quote the Eurythmics, who am I to disagree?

And why would I, anyway?  Jobs and Ford are right.  Their philosophy was simply that innovation isn’t the customer’s job.  I can’t argue with that.

We already ask our customers to give us their money, their feedback, their referrals.  We shouldn’t ask them to tell us where to go next, what products to invent, what technologies to embrace.  It’s not their job.  That’s something I believe both as a marketer and a researcher.

But that doesn’t mean customers shouldn’t play a role in innovation, nor does it mean that research is irrelevant.  It simply means we need to be careful about what questions we ask and how we ask them.

- – - – - – - – - -

When dinnertime rolls around in the Logue household, it starts with a question to the two-year-old: apple juice or milk?  It’s a simple question, although not always an easy one for him.  But the more I thought about that audience question in Birmingham, the more I realized that it’s the same issue we face every night with our toddler.  It’s about asking the right question to fit the problem.

We can ask “are you thirsty?” — and get a yes or a no.  Which just proves that there’s a problem waiting to be solved. 

We can ask “what do you want to drink?” — and probably get a blank stare.  Which proves the kid doesn’t have a clue what his options are. 

We can ask “do you want a Capri-Sun?” (the Holy Grail of drinks in our house, distributed sparsely) – and get excited head-nodding.  Which just confirms that he really likes what we already know he really likes.

Or we can ask “do you want apple juice or milk?” — and get a concrete and actionable answer based on realistic options that he’s familiar with.  Which is probably what we want if we’re ever going to have dinner.

Each of these questions is a legitimate one depending on the objective, with answers that can take us in very different directions.  You’ve got to pick the right question for the circumstance.

The same holds true when you’re applying research to innovation.  Your customers won’t hand you The Next Big Thing on a silver platter.  But they can help you identify problems with the status quo, and they can help you understand what they do and don’t like, and they can make educated decisions about specific features and benefits if you give them enough information.

The other thing your customers can do?  They can find an alternative to you if you fail to meet their needs.  Which is another good reason to talk to them, isn’t it?

How did YOU get the chicken pox?

I’ll tell you how I got it.  When I was in first grade, my grandmother gave in to my pleas for strawberry soda.  I’d never had the red stuff before, and within a day of my first sip… the red dots started popping up.   All thanks to the pox juice.

No, I’m not being serious. 

But let’s say I didn’t know about the whole “contagious disease” thing.  I’d look at the red soda, look at the chicken pox, and probably connect those dots (ha!).  Coincidental timing turns into cause and effect.

Timing is a tricky thing.  Take our lawn service.  Three months after we prepaid for a year of weed treatments, the company hasn’t shown up once.  It’s a stark contrast to the responsiveness we came to expect from them last year.  So are they taking us for granted now that we prepaid?  Maybe, maybe not.  But it sure feels that way, and after two calls to complain, we’re about to cancel.

This is a good example of how a seemingly minor service glitch can redefine a relationship.  It’s something I see all too frequently when conducting customer loyalty studies. 

There are a couple factors at work here.  First, it’s human nature to look for patterns.  Second, it’s easy for people to take things personally.  Put those two tendencies together, and there’s no such thing as a coincidence in the customer’s mind. 

Did the airline send your bags to a different city?  Must have been that snarky comment you made to the ticketing agent. 

When you were getting nowhere with your cable company’s service rep and asked to be transferred to a manager, did your call accidentally get disconnected… or did you get hung up on?

When you complained about that nurse’s responsiveness and it took longer than ever for her to bring you some pain meds, was she making a point?

Whatever your industry is, whoever your customers are, it’s worth remembering that your molehill might be someone else’s mountain.  And until you really understand your customers and see the relationship through their eyes, you never know what dots they might connect… or what picture they’ll end up with when they are finished.

I’m over at Eli Rose Social Media today wondering why I wasn’t happier about Kentucky’s national championship.  The reason matters, even if you don’t care about sports.  Come visit!

Guest blogging at Eli Rose. Come visit!

March has been an exercise in silver linings.

My wife’s herniated disc and spinal block?  A good way to get her deductible out of the way early this year!

The rusty hole in the bathtub?  Good opportunity to remodel!

The vicious bug that sidelined me for 4 days?  Good way to shed a few pounds!

The mustard algae in the pool?  Good time to brush up on remedial chemistry! 

(Bonus trivia: did you know that when a municipal water supply adds phosphates to prevent pipe corrosion, algae populations explode and pool stores make tons of money?  Hooray!)

So in keeping with that line of thinking…

Recent events have made me appreciate even more what good research can do for companies.

Like web interface testing.  We’re now in the market for a tub, and we have four criteria: a budget, a drain position, a length, and a width.  So ideally, we’d be able to filter by those things and find the tub we want.  Right?  Well, Home Depot agrees, but Lowe’s doesn’t.  Lowe’s just lets us filter by budget, and we’re left browsing hundreds of tubs looking for the right dimensions.  I’m pretty sure that if Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock ever tried to buy a bathtub off his company’s website, heads would roll.  It shouldn’t be this hard for customers to buy something!

Or customer satisfaction studies.  Like the one that would tell a healthcare provider how maddeningly frustrating it is to schedule an 8:30 appointment, arrive 15 minutes before the appointment time as required, then wait for over an hour to be seen… for a 10-minute procedure.  How are you already running an hour late when you just opened half an hour ago?  And more importantly, why doesn’t anyone acknowledge this?  I’ve lost more time waiting for delinquent doctors than I have waiting for Comcast to show up and fix their mistakes.  And that’s saying something.

Or lost customer studies.  Like the one that would tell our old pool store why my wife quietly walked out the door a couple weeks ago and is never coming back.  Too many companies put the onus on the customer to identify problems, but guess what… it’s not the customer’s job to come forward and tell us when we’re underperforming.  We have to meet them at least halfway.

So right now, I’m feeling pretty good about what I do for a living.  Because bad customer experiences are a problem with a silver lining.  It’s an opportunity to improve, to mend a relationship, to foster loyalty … at least for those companies who are willing to do the research, find out where they are dropping the ball, and then do something about it.

My son loooooves garbage trucks.

He’s 2, and he’s all boy.  Anything big and loud is fine by him, and the more flashing lights the better.  But he has a real soft spot for garbage trucks. 

So part of the morning routine around our house is this conversation…

Us: So what did you dream about last night?

Him: Garbage trucks!

Us: Really? Anything else?

Him: Garbage trucks! Pick up the can put it down go boom!  Garbage truck go boom!

Every day the same thing.  It’s an automatic response.  What did you dream about?  Garbage trucks. 

Meanwhile, my day job isn’t much different.  We’re currently in the midst of an annual study that we conduct for a business-to-business client.  Due to the type of respondent (executives at Fortune 500 companies) and the nature of the survey (open-ended, lots of probing and followups, lots of technical jargon), we handle all the data collection in-house.  It’s a busy few weeks of phone calls for most of our leadership team, including me.

Every year we conduct hundreds of these interviews, which our client uses to figure out how to improve its service offerings and keep its customers happy.  And for the most part, when you ask one of these executives what can be done to increase their satisfaction, the first thing out of their mouths is… lower prices.

Like my son and his garbage trucks, it’s an automatic response.  What can we do better?  Lower your prices.

Of course, our job is to get beyond that, to uncover the other issues that really matter in these complex business relationships.  Once you get beyond the kneejerk “lower prices” answer, there’s usually a lot more to talk about.  And those are the things that make the relationships tick.  

That’s why this client hires us instead of just throwing a survey up on SurveyMonkey. 

Just a little something to keep in mind the next time you ask your customers how you can improve.  Low prices are rarely the reason for lasting loyalty, and high prices are rarely the impetus to defect.  If you want to find out what really makes your customers tick, you’ll have to dig deeper.

I’m over at Eli Rose Social Media today talking about customer education.  Gas stations and hospitals do it… so should you!

Guest blogging at Eli Rose. Come visit!

Last week I saw 300 PowerPoint slides in under 2 hours.

Sounds hellish, doesn’t it?  Normally it would be.  But this was Ignite Memphis, a highly structured yet highly entertaining exchange of ideas. 

The motto: Enlighten us, but make it quick.

The challenge for the 15 participating speakers: 20 slides in 5 minutes (and more specifically, one slide every 15 seconds).

Some presentations were silly, some were serious, but all were educational in one way or another.  And the overall experience was downright inspirational.  I’m sure everyone in the audience took at least one new idea away from the event.  I know I did.

And good ideas need to be shared.  Whether you attended the event or not, there’s lessons for everyone.  So here goes… my takeaways from Ignite Memphis 4, as an attendee and a speaker.

One: When you’re creating, pay attention to detail. Why?  Because passionate people care about details.  When your ideas and creations resonate with people, expect your fans to put as much thought into examining your work as you did making it.  Like a stanza-by-stanza dissection of a love song (props to James Youngblood**) or a multi-point defense of Batman as the greatest superhero (hat tip to Cole Hawkins).  Whatever you do — whether you’re creating an app, writing a marketing plan, developing an ad campaign, whatever — remember the power of details.  Good ideas spark interest… but details fuel passion.

Two: Open your eyes to the world around you. When Kenn Gibbs gave a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into creating a video game, the parallels to the real world were powerful.  The average gamer just cares where those grenades are coming from, but the developer who creates the game has to worry about 3,600 updates per minute to every aspect of the game environment.  In other words, there’s a whooooole lotta stuff going on that we don’t ever notice because we’re so fixated on ourselves and where we’re going next. 

Need proof?  Cue Josh Spickler** talking about helping rehabilitated criminals return to society, or Ryan Dalton** speaking on protecting the victims of human trafficking. 

The point is this: there are so many worlds out there that are invisible to us.  It doesn’t take much effort — maybe it’s attending a live local event like Ignite or TED, or subscribing to an alternative local news source, or even just stopping to talk to someone we wouldn’t normally engage with – to get a valuable new perspective on life.  We just have to open our eyes and ears.

Three: Challenge yourself. This takeaway comes not from attending Ignite, but from being a presenter there.  The Ignite format is tough, a lot tougher than it sounds.  I’m used to public speaking, but generally I’m called upon to fill an hour, or at least 45 minutes… not five minutes.  It sounds counterintuitive, but shorter is much harder.  Going through the exercise of focusing my message to fit into twenty 15-second snippets really made me reassess both the content and the objectives of my talk.  That process – something I never would have done if the Ignite format hadn’t forced me – has already helped me improve some of my other presentations.

It wasn’t skydiving or bungee jumping.  There were no death-defying stunts involved.  I likely won’t get an Ignite tattoo to commemorate my first time.  But that’s not the point.  Challenges don’t have to be big or scary to keep you on your toes — they just have to disrupt the status quo.

Sp there you have it. 15 presentations, 300 slides, and a lot of inspiration, all thanks to the fine organizers at LaunchMemphis and a group of people willing to sweat it out onstage to share their ideas.  Do yourself a favor — when Ignite comes to your town, don’t miss it.

——-

**UPDATED 3/6/12: Congrats to Josh Spickler, James Youngblood, and Ryan Dalton for winning the People’s Choice vote!

UPDATED 3/26/12: See my presentation on YouTube!

I’ve been thinking a lot about fundraising lately.  Mostly because I’m surrounded by it.  Phone calls from the Fraternal Order of So-and-So … piles of mailing labels with hummingbirds and flowers … heart-wrenching images of abused animals in pop-up ads … and soon, girls standing outside grocery stores pushing cookies.  You get the drift.

That’s a lot of competition for an ever-shrinking pool of dollars.

Of course, that sounds a lot like the business world these days too.  So as a marketing guy, I’m always interested in seeing how organizations position themselves as worthwhile recipients.  And some are much better than others.

Not that persuasiveness always matters.  Like many families, we have a list of causes – education, environment, poverty, animal protection, etc. – that receive regular donations.  We’ve researched these tried-and-true organizations and we know they are aligned with our values and interests, so we don’t shake up that list very often.  But we also do some discretionary giving when we find a deserving target, and that’s where we are as susceptible to good fundraising strategies as anyone else.

What I have noticed – only speaking for myself here – is that the old “tug at the heartstrings” approach is becoming less effective.  Not that I’m predisposed to melt at the sight of a fluffy little kitten anyway, but I’m increasingly pragmatic about what happens with my money when it becomes their money.  After all, when times are tough we all take a closer look at our own bottom lines… why wouldn’t we do the same when it comes to the organizations we support?

After thinking about what pitches make me likely to reach for my wallet, I’ve realized a pattern.  I tend to be more receptive to a funding request when I can answer “yes” to all of the following questions:

1. Do I agree with their mission?  Does it resonate with me somehow, whether it’s practical or emotional?  Is it communicated well? 
2. Do I know what my money will do?  Is there some sense of how my contribution helps the organization succeed?  Am I funding a cause or a back office?
3. Are they making a reasonable request?  Is it easy for me to give, in terms of amounts, payment methods, and timeframes? 

That’s it.  That’s the trifecta.  It doesn’t have to be some world-changing initiative.  It doesn’t have to try to make me weep.  It can be serious or kitschy or bizarre.  Just as long as it does those three things. 

Of course, not everyone does.  For instance…

One out of three doesn’t cut the mustard for me.  Take the National Mustard Museum (yes, it’s real, and yes, it needs money).  I’m a big fan of mustard and think a museum is a great idea, mainly because I have a soft spot for trivia in all its wonderful forms.  But they’re fairly vague on their website about where the money goes, and the minimum donation to the museum is $25… Nope.

Two out of three might get you a cookie.  Like, say, the Girl Scouts.  Do I agree with their mission?  Absolutely.  Do I know what my money will do?  Not really, since the allocation of proceeds is apparently decided by local councils.  Is the request reasonable?  Those Thin Mints are pretty darn good, even at four bucks a pop.  So yeah, I’ll buy a box or two.

The challenge is making it three out of three.  Take a look at Lemonade: Detroit.  They’re documenting the resurgence of a great American city, a mission I can certainly get behind.  They are remarkably communicative when it comes to how funds get used.  And a $1 minimum donation is about as reasonable as you can get, especially when that buys you a frame of the film and a producer credit on IMDB.  Sign me up.

Now, I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with my criteria.  But that’s not the point.  The point is, there’s very little that distinguishes fundraising from regular old marketing.  You have to understand your customers’ motivations and you have to “sell” them something they want, whether it’s a warm fuzzy feeling or a box of cookies or a frame of a movie.

It’s a good learning opportunity. 

Marketers: you can learn a thing or two from fundraisers about selling intangibles.  People buy what makes them feel good.

Fundraisers: you should take a lesson from marketers when it comes to managing customer relationships.  Communication, transparency, innovation… these things get rewarded.

And everyone: next time you find a handful of change in your couch cushions or a buck in your back pocket — some money you didn’t miss when you didn’t have it — find a deserving cause and make someone’s day a little better.

A Doberman was robbed last night.  At least that’s my opinion.

Malachy the Pekingese won Best in Show at Westminster.  No doubt a deserving dog, Malachy beat out my favorite (a Doberman) and several other gorgeous dogs to win it all.

Yet for some reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, the decision bugged me.  

It’s not because I felt Malachy was undeserving.  I’m no expert, but I know enough to recognize that each of the dogs in contention was at the top of its class.

It’s not because I felt the judge was unfairly biased toward certain breeds or sizes.  With a constituency as rabid (heh heh) as Westminster, you couldn’t get away with that.  This is waaaay more serious than the Olympics and their “Soviet judge gives her a 7″ nonsense. 

And it’s not my predisposition toward specific sizes or breeds (I’m more a herding dog guy usually, but this Doberman… wow). 

After a while, it dawned on me.  It was two things. 

One, I couldn’t tease out the specific subjective elements that led the judge to make her decision.  What standards did she emphasize and why? 

And two, even if I’d known the standards… the Pekingese was an unknown quantity.  A big ball of fluff.  You could look at the Doberman or the Dalmatian and see every contour, really appreciate posture and gait.  The Shepherd and Setter were almost as easy to get a read on.  But the Pekingese?  The judge reached and poked and squeezed under that floppy coat, but we viewers at home were clueless.

Why does this bother me?  Because of my job.  Every day I work with my clients to demystify these types of decisions.  Except it’s not a judge, it’s a customer.  And it’s not a dog, it’s a product. 

Clients come to us with questions like… 

• Why aren’t people picking my products? 
• Why are they choosing a competitor? 
• What’s going through their heads? 
• What can we do about it?

These are big questions, and the answers can be make-or-break for companies struggling to retain and attract customers.  Fortunately, unlike the opaqueness of the Westminster judging process, we’re able to help our clients understand what’s driving customer decisions. 

If you don’t know the standards that customers use to judge your products, or how you perform on those standards, you’re in trouble.  And if it stings a little to watch a Pekingese waddle off with Best in Show honors, it hurts a heckuva lot more to watch your competition walk off with your business.

Especially when you can do something about it.