Posts from — October 2008

I just spent two days offline. It wasn’t by choice. My cable and Internet were down for two days. But this story isn’t about that. It’s about how Time Warner, my cable company, handled the situation.

Shortly after I lost service, I called to report the problem, and find out how long it would take to fix. The rep’s questions were clueless and some were clearly read from a script, rather than natural responses. After I’d given him my name and address, he wanted to know what time it was and whether it was AM or PM. Huh? He kept calling me m’am, and telling me that they needed my “cooperation” in order to serve me better and bring me better service. Er, do I have a choice?

He thought it would take 3 hours to fix. The time passes, no service. I call again. The first thing the rep does is to ask me to remind him to tell me about their digital phone service. OK, I have no cable and no internet… do I really want to be completely cut off from the outside world?? Nope. Still no ETA on the fix.

The next morning, I call again. Get the same dumb phone question. Still no answer, but they say I’ll get credit. OK, but the credit isn’t the issue as much as the complete lack of communication or meaningful answers to my questions (not to mention the lack of service).

I call again around noon. I’m told again that I’m entitled to a credit..but I’ll have to call and ask for it! Why? Because, “we can’t monitor your account continually.” The notion that the system can’t be programmed to recognize an outage and automatically credit an account, or trigger a message to a human, is nonsense. It’s not that they can’t. They don’t want to!

Now, why not communicate with the workers in the field so they can get better estimates? And why not give an automatic credit? Or even better, a free movie channel for a month, or even a letter apologizing?

This was a large corporation, but it applies to small businesses too. Are you treating your customers this way?

Seth Godin’s post today, “ How to Lose“, reminded me of my own recent shopping trip. I walked into a store and asked for a 32. They tried to sell me a 34. I remember thinking, “If I wanted size 8 shoes, would they offer me a size 10 instead?” Seemed crazy at the time, but I guess it wasn’t.

The point is, offer your customers what helps them, not what helps you. If you don’t have it, send them to a store that does. You’ll build trust and make a connection.

In the 1970s, I was volunteered by my mom to help hand out voting literature for The League of Women Voters. I don’t have exact figures, but I noticed that more people took the materials when we asked “Are you going to vote?” than when we said, “Do you want some literature? ”

What does this have to do with marketing?

Making a public commitment increases the chances that someone will do something. In fact, according to a recent Marketing Sherpa article (October 14, 2008), a social scientist named Anthony Greennwald conducted a scientific survey of this phenomenon in 1987. He found that if he asked potential voters on the eve of the election whether they would vote (and why or why not), they all said they would, and 86.7% of them actually did, compared to 61.5% of the general populace.

If you want people to donate to your cause, have them stand up and say so. If you use an order form in your direct marketing package, put a big “YES!, I want to order” at the top.

We’ve all had it happen. We need to “be creative” and our brains get stuck. Here’s a question to help jump start the process.

What can you do with a garden hose?

(thanks to Bernd for the original idea).

You can:

1. coil it tightly and make a trivet

2. paint it gray and use it as an elephant’s trunk for a Halloween costume

3. roll it in sequins and make a tiara

Another trick (thanks to Mary Louise, who got this idea from Michael Michalko) is to write as if you were someone else. Write like:

1. Donald Trump

2. a comedian

3. The Penguin

4. Humphrey Bogart

5. a New York taxi driver

7. Ernest Hemingway

8. Frodo

9. Yoda

Well, you get the idea. Try on a different persona and the ideas and the words will come more easily.

Share your ideas below.

Photo: grafixer

I’m in a book! Two actually. I’m on the inside cover (along with 1,399 other people) of Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes, and a contributor to the Tribes casebook live on his blog today.

Tribes (the book) is Seth’s latest, just released today. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy, and was struck by several things (after I finished looking for my picture!).

He talks about how in the old days, the money, and the power, and the reach was all concentrated in a few hands. If you weren’t a big corporation or didn’t have lots of money, you couldn’t get access to the microphone, the newspaper, or a TV ad. Now, we all have the same tools. We have blogs, we have YouTube, we have Twitter. Anyone with an idea can spread it. We can all be leaders, we just have to be brave enough to lean into the wind (even if it’s blowing in our faces).

We don’t have to sell “average things to average people”, or try to appeal to a “mass market” (selling to everyone doesn’t work anyway, especially if you’re a small business), just those who want something remarkable. More about Seth’s book.

The e-book, the Tribes casebook, grew out of a project on Triiibes (Seth’s online social network). We all pitched in and contributed. There are studies of how companies can build their own “tribe” (followers who passionately believe in what they do), such as Apple, and also what happens when a company treats its employees, and customers badly (destroying their tribe). How tribes are built, stay together, form their own “languages”, even succeed in the midst of a terrible war.

You can get the Tribes casebook for free by clicking on the picture of the fire.