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Good Customer Service Enables Structured Thinking
Recently, my wife and I have been having discussions about critical thinking and the ability to chose words and responses. Our discussions started after a dinner at Chick-fil-A. We noticed all employees at this fast food restaurant respond to a customer’s “thank you” in the same way by saying “My pleasure.”
“My pleasure” is a response that doesn’t elicit a feeling of favor from the receiver. This makes all the difference in customer service and enables their employees to learn why it is so important to chose words carefully. Now people who learn this may not understand immediately, but having the knowledge that it is possible and justified to spend time thinking about what words to chose provides the ground work for structuring the thinking of a person.
Then this morning, I woke up to find an email from a co-worker with the following quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically… Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
The first time I heard the words “structure” and “thinking” in the same sentence was via a finance professor who provided two semesters worth of my education at Miami University. Thus, with my collegiate experience and this quote, I couldnt agree more with the purpose Dr. King provides for education.
My experiences and discussions with friends and coworkers are continually challenging me to structure my thinking – because as I have learned, it is just as valuable to learn how others think as it is to learn what others think.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Those Pesky Legal Disclaimers Are Useless
I got an email today that said the following:
Note: For internal use only and not for distribution outside the company. The information contained in this message is private and confidential, is the property of [THE COMPANY], and is solely for the use of its intended recipient. If you are not the person to whom this email is addressed, or if it has been sent to you in error, please notify the sender immediately. If you are not the intended recipient, please note that permission to use, copy, disclose, alter or distribute this message, and any attachments, is expressly denied.
Last time I checked, putting this at the bottom of an email doesn’t render my copy/paste or email forwarding button useless. Why do we bother with such pointless language? (and because I copied the anti send along info, does that mean passing along this end of email note is “expressly denied”?
Unless some legal department makes you put this on your email, take it out. Its time to trust everyone! If you don’t trust them, just don’t send the email.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Facebook’s Huge Learning Opportunity: The Burger King Snafu
Facebook didn’t just Blow A Whopper Of An Opportunity by shutting down Burger King’s amazing marketing plan that lets you sacrifice 10 of your friends for a free whopper sandwich, they found a way to generate revenue.
TechCrunch made a huge deal about how Facebook is acting evil in the name of “user privacy.” Facebook did make a huge snafu. They went all web 1.0 on Burger King when Facebook is supposedly the poster child for Web 2.0 and the marketing with meaning that has derived from it.
It is my hope that Facebook didn’t quash this because of user privacy, but because they found a business model. Offering creative development of marketing with meaning applications. Facebook should buy an interactive marketing firm and go to town with using the data they have as a backbone to create specialized marketing applications a la Burger King’s masterpiece.
There is a take home lesson for Facebook here: This is a revenue model.
Will Facebook invest in the new marketing? I don’t know. But what I do know is that they still struggle to find additions to that top line especially with the declining trend in ad rates and they are now officaily ”put on notice”.
I would hate to waste such a great learning opportunity! Perhaps they need to use this opportunity to learn how to respond to negative feedback.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Relationship Revolution: Relationship Focused Businesses
Over the past couple weeks I have been monitoring the Relationship Media space where the relationships around content drive traffic and revenue growth. But as I have viewed the marketing world through a relationship media lens, I have found that you can view businesses through the same lens.
- A newspaper or a CD does not, by themselves, create a relationship, where as an MP3 downloaded from myspace can create a bond between the artist and the consumer though direct interactions. Moreover, musicians typically make most of their money via concerts and merchandise, not the actual content they produce. This is exactly why the Hannah Montana brand is rolling in dough.
- Another story that helps illustrate the relationship revolution outside of the media space is credit cards. Credit card co’s earn revenues by having the merchant pay a percent of the charge consumers make. I am a 24 year old guy who has solid credit. Yesterday I was charged a 60 dollar annual service fee on my United frequent flier credit card with Chase. I calculated it out and I think I currently bring them around 1500 dollars of revenue a year.
In the relationship media world, they would know these things and realize that they could create a loyal card holder at age 24, and watch my income go up (hopefully) and my expenditures go up (with out a doubt) as I have kids or increase the amount I spend. The only way they would remove the fee was to change my credit card to a one that earns less miles with a whole new number and a ton of hastle to get my automatic payments changed.
Chase/United lost a customer, and a new card company found a new one. It is sad that they will lose so much revenue, and future revenue because customer service was not empowered to understand the future value of a relationship all for 60 bucks. It is just another real life example of the plummeting value of airline miles programs.
- One final example is at Wright-Patterson Credit Union. They just gave a 3 million dollar special dividend to its members in the midst of a credit crunch. Relationship building? Yes! Cheaper than running commercials and more effective and targeted? Yes!
This is a revolution. The relationship revolution.
Have you seen any other examples of companies who are leading the relationship revolution?
Popularity: 12% [?]
Three Market Trends to Watch in 2009
- Agile – they are able and willing and have proved to change strategies when necessary.
- Information Focused – These companies use information, not hardware or goods, to power their next generation of innovations and revenues.
- Relationship focused – The new trend in the media industry, which i believe will transition to all businesses, is the focus on relationships. Information is presented, retained, and engaged with most effeciently when relationships link the message and the reciepient. (social media tools are the basis for these interactions to occur and be measured.)
I think the first two points are quite clear, but I will expand on the third, Relationship focused business in my next post!
Popularity: 11% [?]
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