Customer Retention - Seafood

Two nights ago, a friend brought a couple of us to this little coffeeshop that sold seafood in Serangoon. The food was pretty good and to our surprise, the owner gave us a free dish (fish head curry, to be precise) for us to try. The owner made an intentional effort to come out twice during the night (although he also cooks the food) to make sure everything was fine.

Over dinner, I made the point to my friends (both business graduates) that this really is the way businesses should market themselves.

Why spend all that money on the bus ad or print ad that people see and forget in an instant, with the hope that it will serve as an acquisition strategy and bring in new customers? Instead why not delight your customers who have already voted with their wallets to buy from you and encourage to come back time and time again?

Needless to say, in the two days since then I’ve told four other people about it and will soon be bringing my family to check it out.

So what are you doing to get your customers to come back? Or are you letting your competition put in that little bit of extra effort to enhance the customer experience and win them over?

Ps: The idea of using retention isn’t new (nor mine) and you can read Joseph Jaffe’s new book Flip The Funnel to find out more, but I thought this was a great case study to practically illustrate how it can be done.

Pps: The address of said coffeeshop is Blk 153 Serangoon North Ave 1 #01-512 (and no, I was absolutely not incentivised by the store to share this with you.)

[image credit: jensen_chua on Flickr]

An ex-colleague sent me this last week and it’s probably the best example of augmented reality to date, demonstrated at TED in 2009 (though it never quite refers to itself in that way).

I think it addresses a really good point: we have all this meta data about everyday objects, companies, products and services hanging around online, but have yet to find a way to successfully merge that with what we do offline.

It’s important to think not just as a consumer, but as a business person for a minute: What if you could “see” the top (and bottom) rated items on a menu? Or who thought which starter went will with the steak? Perhaps a little more scarily, what if they’re checking out your printer at the store, but notice that a significant number of people feel a competitor’s brand prints better images?

We’ll probably only begin to see widespread adoption of such technology in the next 10-20 years, but the implications are going to be huge and it wouldn’t hurt to think about them now.

I got a call from an organisation, the details of which I won’t go into, but because I wasn’t terribly familiar with the company, I decided to Google their name. Usually I don’t notice, but this time the suggested search terms by Google caught my attention:

When you see that the word “scam” is highly associated with an organisation, it makes you think twice about doing business with them or working for them.  (On a side note, clearly brand managers don’t know how to Google their partner organisations because this particular organisation boasts pretty big partners).

What makes this worse is that many of the content creators are ex-employees of the company. While it isn’t surprising to have disgruntled employees, when so many of them around the globe band together to share similar negative experiences, readers tend to take it a little more seriously than one random guy ranting. Also, the company doesn’t seem to think that this negative publicity is hurting them because they haven’t commented on any of the blog sites to set the record straight.

While the actual name is blanked out, don’t kid yourself into thinking this will never happen to you. Think of how the suggested keywords Google throws up for Toyota changed overnight. It can happen to you and if it does you need to own it and be present to at least get your side of the story out there.

On a side note: Just as we’re doing our research on companies, they’re doing it on us as job applicants – all the more reason to be conscious of what you put out there.

I’ve been on an intentional hiatus the last week or so (yes, it was also Chinese New Year here in Singapore so it’s been busy with public holidays and visiting and all that), but also to take some down time to think.

Something that I keep thinking about (partially influenced by Seth Godin’s Linchpin) is wondering who matters.

Why do we chase digital business from the huge corporations who say they want digital but time and time again the end result is “go peddle your social media stuff somewhere else” and buy a TV ad.

Because the big organisations look better on a company portfolio than the mom and pop shop who really does want to embrace digital and probably will pay you less?

Why do we spend hours on decks and creative for an audience that isn’t receptive?

Aren’t they the equivalent of your whining customers that we always tell ourselves (or our clients) to sacrifice and go after those who love you, your business, your service instead?

So who matters?

[image credit: LINE architecture]

I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody by the brilliant Clay Shirky and in one chapter he writes:

“The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolution cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the existing society.

As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are altered, replaced or destroyed.

The increase in the power of both individuals and groups, outside traditional structures is unprecedented. Many institutions we rely on today will not survive this change without significant alteration…”

Let’s make no mistake about it. We’re currently living in a time of revolution.

Perhaps it’s not the same kind of revolution as the printing press or the Industrial Revolution, but it is one that is more subtle and yet pervasive. It is one that is increasingly changing our perceptions of what is “normal”.

And existing organisations are not ready for that. Look at the Toyota fiasco this year or Dominos last year (or any other brand in between). They only reacted to the revolution when they needed to – and by then, arguably it could be too late. What if Toyota embraced the need for communication and transparency and had acted from the first defect instead of waiting for it to kill someone before acting? Would that have mitigated some of the PR nightmare that they’re facing now? I think so.

So here’s the question: Are you embracing the revolution or are you going to be caught unaware – and maybe destroyed – by it?

I don’t think there’s a middle ground. The way we live, interact and communicate as individuals and businesses is fundamentally changing and every day you delay the choice to embrace this new (and scary) way of life, is a day you’re heading towards extinction.

[image credits: Chris Corwin]

Gary Vaynerchuk - Crush It!

I remember the first time I watched a Gary Vee video – his website had been hacked and he was explaining what happened and how he was resolving it and his character and passion just jumped off the screen (you can watch the video at the end of this post).

That same character comes through right off the page in Crush It! as well. This book is not for those who are afraid of change. What Gary presents is a roadmap to understanding yourself, tapping in on your passion and building a brand around yourself to get the job done.

While the book is aimed at the entrepreneur, there’s a lot of takeaway for big and small businesses alike. The 13 step plan he highlights in the book can be applicable to anyone but one thing he emphasises is that while monetary cost may be low, this is going to require a heck of a lot of hours. “Just Do It” isn’t a strategy that’s going to work here unless you’re prepared to put in those hours.

Crush It! is as much about knowing yourself as knowing your audience. Gary Vee makes you think hard about what you think your “passion” is, whether you’re an audio, visual or text person and what medium is best for you and if you’re really going to make it work.

At the end of the day, what Gary Vee encourages is building your personal brand first (not pushing your product in front of people’s face!) and letting that passion energise your audience, grab their attention which then you can monetise later. If you’re willing to do this, for free – it can pay back big time later.

Who should read this book?

If I had to pass this book to someone, I’d pass it to someone still in school or a fresh grad. Never before has having a personal brand and standing for something been so important. Maybe it’ll work against you in some cases – but when you connect with the people who are genuinely interested in you for who you are and what you stand for, you’ll be Crushing It.

So you hear the good news that your boss/client wants to get started with a social media strategy. Before you start jumping for joy, does the conversation sound anything like this?

Boss: Let’s get on social media – let’s start with Twitter
You: Why? What’s the objective?
Boss: We’ll think about that later, just do it

If that’s what it sounds like, I can almost guarantee in 6 to 12 months that very person is going to be asking you “so how have we done on Twitter?” and you’re going to say “err but we didn’t specify any goals” and it’s going to be a one way ticket to hell. And you know what? In all likelihood if you’re doing it for the sake of “just doing it”, it’s probably not going to be work you’re going to be proud of anyway.

Instead, the conversation should go something like this:

Boss: Let’s get on social media – let’s start with Twitter
You: Why? What’s the objective?
Boss: I want to use it to improve customer service
You: So we’re going to monitor all mentions of our brand and respond to complaints and rectify them?
Boss: Yes

Replace “Twitter” with “Facebook” or “blog”, replace “improve customer service” with “increase lead generation” or “decrease costs’ and you get the gist.

Ideally it should go even further than this to identify whose time will be allocated to this, how much time and how the initiative will be measured.

You need to do this from the get go. Set the expectation early that social media efforts – while free/cheap – take time. Don’t let your desire to do some social media work/please your boss/please your client get in the way of this. It’ll save you a world of hurt later.

How do you deal with “just do it” requests? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

[image credits: themachobox]

Blog Birthdays

This past Wednesday was Pat’s third anniversary party for Blankanvas (we all need to have blog birthday parties) and needless to say, the woman knows how to throw a party!

I also belatedly realised that January is this blog’s birthday and looking back on my very first “serious” blog post that was posted the day of my first Digital Media Across Asia class and a lot of that wonder and excitement is still there. The unfortunate thing is there hasn’t been a whole lot of opportunities for me to put what I know into practice. That’s something I really hope to change in 2010.

I think 2009 was a great year for the blog. The focus on local content has been working out well and although my blogging frequency has gone down, I’m still pretty happy with the content I’m putting out. I’m very much experimenting with my writing style (you might have noticed some of my more recent posts are much shorter than usual) and it’s something I’ll continue to be doing in 2010.

So embarking on the third year of the blog, I really hope by the time it “turns three” there’ll be a lot more real world case studies and organisations that can be featured here (and in many company’s case study books) as successes we can take into 2011.

[image via Laughing Squid]

Ignore

Two days ago I posted about people being a big danger of social media marketing because of what they might say on various channels without thinking about the consequences.

But on a more personal (though it can be corporate) level, inaction is equally damning.

When someone adds you (the communication professional of the company) on, say, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and you wait a week before replying – what does that say about you as an individual, and as a representative as a company?

They add you and you accept it two weeks later – they’re not important.

They ask a question and you never answer it - they’re beneath you.

You ask your community a question but then don’t respond to the answers – you’re disinterested and insincere.

In the above cases you’d be better off not being involved in the social space at all.

I have to admit this is something I struggle with personally. Sometimes people I meet once at conferences want to connect on Facebook and that might be a little too personal for me so I procrastinate and before long it’s a month and by then, accepting the invitation lets the other party know I metaphorically sat on it for a month, thus conveying the message they weren’t important enough to accept within a few days.

There’s no easy answer to this question. Some people will be comfortable accepting every invitation, others will be more selective. It’s not so much the style that matters, but being aware that whichever route you choose to take (or not take) communicates something to that person or group of people.

How do you deal with the many requests you get on social channels? Do you ignore some? Ask them to add you on a less personal channel like Twitter instead of Facebook? I’d love to hear from you.

[image from Spraytint]

Assuming you’ve got your product sorted out and implementing a social media programme won’t be a one way ticket to exposing all your product’s weaknesses, the next thing you need to worry about is the people who will be engaging in the social space.

Early this month there was an article in the Straits Times titled “Social networking at the workplace” where 2,008 employees were interviewed. Here’s a scan of the paper (click for larger image, pardon the poor quality, newspaper doesn’t keep very well).

Dangers of Social Media Marketing: Social Network Research

A quick glance at the statistics shows a few alarming statistics:

22% of companies have formal policies that dictate how social networking can be used – This means about 3 in 4 companies will invariably have an employee saying something inappropriate online because there are no guidelines to guard against it.

Only 40% of people “always” considers what their bosses might think when posting something online – So about 1 in 2 employees will run their mouth on channels like Facebook and Twitter to other members of your staff, your clients and maybe even your competition.

And to round it all off, only 17% of companies have a monitoring programme to manage social networking risks – 4 in 5 companies are letting these conversations go on unnoticed, and more importantly, unchecked. By the time they realise this, it will be too late.

The social space is not the place for untrained staff to “play” in. If no one is monitoring internal chatter about your brand and no one is actively educating staff how to behave on social channels, your biggest threats may ironically come from within – your own staff.

What measures would you put in place to prevent something nasty from happening?