Remember the days when after your flight landed, you could walk out of airport gate and straight into the arms of smiling and welcoming family members? Well, security measures have made that impossible in this day and age. And if that was even possible, last weekend, those family members awaiting your arrival were likely to have been taking naps in uncomfortable terminal chairs, waiting hours upon hours for you to arrive. Flight delays and cancellations due to weather woes, made easy pick-ups from the airport virtually impossible.
Passengers wait for a delayed flight to Seattle at Los Angeles International Airport.
Analysis indicates that this was the worst holiday travel season in years. Today, airline performance watchdog FlightStats.com, released numbers indicating that nearly 8,800 flights were canceled between Friday, December 19th and Sunday afternoon on December 28. A week ago Friday, winter weather conditions led to airline delays up to 10 hours. Flights across the country were canceled and the entire Milwaukee airport closed due to incessent snow fall.
I experienced this chaos firsthand last Friday as my flight home for the holidays from Newark to Kansas City, connecting in Milwaukee, was canceled. I wasn’t able to fly out until Monday night — and still experienced delays on top of that. Despite the misfortune, I was home in time for Christmas, which is what really mattered. And, I surprisingly had very good experiences with my airline’s customer service hot line. Sure, I had to wait up to an hour when calling, but once an agent got on the line, I was greeted with a friendly, helpful, and understanding representative. I must have called the reservations line eight or ten times over the course of the week. And really, each time, I talked to an informed and understanding person. Read on… »
And here you were thinking you had to be dirt cheap to be successful in this economy.
Predictions that only Walmart would be this holiday’s only victor were soon shattered when we woke up on a brisk Friday morning, the day after Christmas, to reports that this holiday season was Amazon’s “best ever.” Ah, lucky number 14.
The company’s press release uses nary a hyperbole as it illustrated just how much stuff consumers purchased:
- Twilight Series’s “Breaking Dawn” books: “stacked end to end they would reach the summit of Mt. Everest eight times”; - GPS devices: “…combined weight of 151 Mini Coopers”; - High-performance headphones: “…everyone attending the last three Super Bowls could grab a set and rock out”;and, perhaps a favorite for many in our office – Coffee: “…enough to give each resident of the highly caffeinated city of Seattle a cup per day for two months.” (Metropolitan area population of 3,263,497, according to Wikipedia)
If you think about it, the news is not so surprising considering Amazon’s track record of consistently being the retailer of all retailers. In a conversation I had with Richard Owen, chief executive officer of Satmetrix, Amazon, and its neighbor Starbucks, have focused on the customer experience to drive their business — and especially since the economy depends on the (happy) customer, that’s not such a bad model to have.
He adds that Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com has been “relentless” in his assertion that the company will grow because “[its] customers have good experiences and they will call [their] friends. You [rarely] see Amazon commercials on TV,” as they focus instead on word of mouth economics as a mechanism for growing their business. Though Amazon’s initial investments suffered criticism from financial analysts in the beginning, Owen says, suffice to say they made some smart choices.
Still, we can probably count on a few companies that will continue to have a slightly skewed version of what creating a good customer experience really means. Companies, perhaps, that think like Dwight Schrute,who may strike a few wins, but for how long?
I scoured the article looking for a really juicy secret. Unfortunately, or fortunately, illicit gossip could not be found in these pages. All the tips and tricks were ones that are already jam-packed into marketing conference agendas (and our inboxes! here at CRM).
Here they are:
1. Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
2. Give consumers a reason to participate.
3. Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
4. Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
5. Don’t control, let it go.
6. Find a ‘marketing technopologist’ (defined as “a person who brings together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction”).
7. Embrace experimentation.
While these points have not lost their validity by any means, is it old news? Or, does the fact that they keep having to get restated mean that not enough people know? To draw a comparison, Self magazine must publish some version of “how to get the best abs EVER” for what seems like at least 10 times a year. You’d think one perfect solution would be enough if it really were “the best EVER,” but nope. There are still many of us who have yet to get those perfectly air-brushed abs.
I’ve spoken to countless vendors and industry pundits who consistently reiterate the fact that, sure, this marketing best pratice may seem intuitive but the greater majority of businesses don’t know how to adjust to a highly consumer-driven playing field. The fact that the world’s moved to digital is only making it all a bit more difficult. Sure, everyone’s got a Web site now, but it was just a little under two years ago, before coming to CRM, that a company I was interested in had an About Me page that was ‘Under Construction’ — deal breaker. Now, you not only have to have a Web site, but there are social networks to consider, mobile platforms apply for, and the list goes on.
Reading the comments to the WSJ article,I found my initial thoughts were echoed:
“These are secrets? Maybe 5 or 6 years ago.”
“I think that the only “new” thing about this article is the audience.”
And it’s true, the audience may be new, and even if they are “old,” these are practices that are critical if you don’t already have them in place. As the adage goes, when it comes to implementing these strategies, it’s often easier said than done.
Aside from these, are there marketing 2.0 secrets you’re dying to get out? Spread the holiday cheer to marketers everywhere!
‘Tis the season for charitable giving, right? Despite the recession, nonprofit organizations and other charities still have a job to do — even if it will be harder to get many to give the same amount, if any, as years past according to a New York Times article.
In order to do my small part, I decided last night to donate to a particular charity — which shall remain nameless — this holiday season. (As an aside, an excellent online resource to determine which ones are legit as opposed to others that will take virtually all of your money to fulfill operation costs is Charity Navigator.)
Instead of calling up and donating over the phone, or mailing a check that could get lost in the mail, I wanted to go onto the organization’s Web site and use my credit card to instantly submit my contribution. I have high-speed Internet; this should take about two minutes, right? Wrong.
The Web site was extremely difficult to navigate, and actually rejected my submission three times by bouncing me back to the homepage or flashing an error screen.
First time, sure, maybe I made a mistake. I decided to double check all the information I had to enter and click all the proper buttons. The second time it failed, I started to simmer but decided that maybe, just maybe, I did something wrong.
By the third time I was absolutely furious, and actually closed out the window, refusing to try again. A charity should be like any other organization, right? If it cannot get its process working properly then they don’t deserve my business. I know I’m not alone in this, virtually every story I did this year about customer service touched on, in varying depth, just how increasingly demanding consumers are when it comes to being serviced properly.
My conscience got the best of me, though, and eventually I found a back-end way to submit the donation and actually have it go through.
While I decided to stick with it, albeit begrudgingly, I wonder how many individuals did not. Unless your last name is Gates, money is tight for everyone and most people are assessing their potential expenditures with much more scrutiny. All companies — especially charities — must ensure their Web sites are optimized and running smoothly in order to cull the most business as possible.
For either vendors or end-customers, have you run into the same issues? If you are a nonprofit organization, have you found your donations dwindling or staying the same during this time? While many media organizations can only hypothesize right now, it’s always better to get first-hand accounts to sense where the market is at this time.
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With that said, this will be my last post until after the New Year. I’m heading back to New York State for the holidays, not unlike the commute I used to make before moving to Jersey City. I’d like to thank all of you, the readers, for your support — I hope you all have a fantastic holiday.
Maybe it’s lazy of me, but I’m going meta with this blogpost. There’s a great post by Denis Pombriant addressing some of 2008′s trends and looking forward to some of 2009′s possibilities. Denis is always insightful, and I think he really nailed some things. Examples:
“Marketing is becoming more important to sales than ever as companies grapple with finding efficient ways to capture customer needs.” Don’t I know it—more and more of our sales coverage is about how marketing is becoming the driver and the innovator. We’re all about breaking down silos here at CRM, but it’s hard to tag stories meaningfully if everything is cross-disciplinary.
“After the debacle on Wall Street fed by too little governance I think we’ll see a great uptick in GRC’s [governance, risk, and compliance] attractiveness.” In the words of David Alan Grier, oh hell to the yes. Maybe it’s my liberal roots showing, but deregulation and laissez-faire market policies are only valuable up to a point, and we passed that point several years ago.
Denis has a lot more to add, and I won’t do him the disservice of quoting and commenting any more than I already have. Go read what he has to say for yourself, and add your thoughts to the discussion.
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