Customer Experience Crossroads

This just in: fun promotions, good cross-selling, and investor genetics

ZenDesk launches clever promotion for their software

ZenDesk, a maker of help desk support software, is running a fun promotion. They are suggesting all customer support people take December 8 off.  

The  promotion is called Love Your  Help Desk, and it's really cute. A hilarious video shows management making a big deal of appreciating the help desk for about 30 seconds then disappearing (too true!). There is a funny top-ten list for why you should give the help desk the day off. Number 4 is my favorite: "the best customer service is crowd-sourced. Customers only need each other." One thing they ARE right about is that a lot of the customer experience is on the support desk now. No question. 

Even better than their promotion is their fun ambient sound generator.

One little bone to pick -- when I go to their site to check out their stuff, they assume I understand the category already. "Professional grade support service" is supposed to tell me all I need to know. Except there's one little problem. When your pricing plans are for 1 agent, 3 agents and 5 agents, it's a safe bet you're not talking to megasoft or megabank or any other megacorp. You're selling to an introductory market, and you're talking to them like they are IT staff.

I feel like I run into this all the time when I am exploring cool new tools. But hey, it's still a fun promotion, and I still love their ambient sound generator. 

TechSmith has devilishly effective cross-selling plan - at least I think so

I recently installed the trial version of Snag-It, a nice little utility to help capture screen shots. Capturing screen shots seems to be a big part of my professional work for some reason, and the cropping and annotating is time consuming. Snag-It makes these things simple. It seemed expensive, but it's starting to become indispensable, and I have the feeling I'll be buying it when the trial runs out.

So that's how they found me. [I think. I do remember filling in a form telling them I work as a marketing researcher.] This week, the trial version of Morae showed up in the mail. Morae appears to be software designed to support usability studies by marketing researchers. This is by far the most relevant piece of direct mail I've received in weeks, maybe months. And I will surely look into the software, and likely run the trial. [Heck, I'm already blogging about it. They're already ahead.]

Imagine if the companies you deal with started this kind of intelligent direct marketing effort? Wouldn't it be nice? We'd all find things that are relevant. We'd look forward to our direct mail. Smart companies would sell more stuff. Everyone would be happy. What a wonderful world it would be...

Dear TechSmith - if you just happened to find me by mailing to a list of researchers, what a shame. Maybe you should launch the program I just described. It would be very cool, and I bet it would work.

You know what's really scary? I've been thinking about Camtasia. I don't really have a business need yet, I just want it. Turns out it's a TechSmith product.

Investor Genetics

There's a new study out that says investor behavior is almost determined by genetic factors. Twins who were raised apart were compared to twins raised together, in terms of their investing preferences.

This suggests to me that personality type preferences, and learning style preferences, which are both rooted in early childhood -- are at work in many forms of human behavior. And that this now includes investing behavior. This totally makes sense to me, however there are few organizations that utilize this kind of information to really help their customers. Sadly, "Know Your Client" is a form, not a philosophy.

The Finextra summary is here.

Barnea, Amir, Cronqvist, Henrik and Siegel, Stephan, Nature or Nurture: What Determines Investor Behavior? (September 15, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1467088

You can download the full study (free) here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1467088 

(A version of the above was also posted on my Finextra Blog)

Something’s happening in travel culture: friendly customs and security people

Now here is a trend that is long overdue. Friendliness among customs and security people at airports.

I know this may be hard to believe but I've seen it with my own eyes. Brief glimmers have been witnessed in other places, but several clear instances of cheery, friendly border people were in evidence on a recent trip through LAX to and from Baja. [Perhaps this group deals more with holiday travelers and business travelers; perhaps we are less snarky; but gosh they were friendly.] One guy made some jokes, I could hardly believe it. He was joking about the length of the lineup, and that yes, we did need to go through this even if we were just connecting to an outbound flight.

One of the security screening people hinted that we could spend less time with them if we followed all the rules. Also laughing.

I'm not sure what's happening, but I suspect that people are cluing in to the fact that none of this stuff is going to go away. How horrible must it be to work in an environment where you are expected to be a sourpuss all day. [To say nothing of all that smelly footwear.] Goodness knows it's horrible for travelers to deal with hostility in every airport. So I think we are witnessing a culture shift among the security staff and among customs and immigration staff, and boy is it ever welcome.

No one is minimizing the security risks or the need for countries to control who comes into their borders. But the vast majority of us are simply tax payers, not threats. It's nice to be treated with some simple humanity.

Related

The US agency responsible for airport security, the TSA, has started a blog. It's actually fairly amusing, and has attracted a number of comments.

I found a surprising number of blogs referencing the who area of security screening. This is one of the common experiences of our time, and is universally hated. Check out a few of these stories.

"We're all porn stars now thanks to airport security", Current.com - wonderful picture of how we will look when the next x-ray tech arrives

What happens when a filmmaker packs prop explosives in his luggage, Home Away From Home blog

Buffalo Blood Donor on how to improve the experience: add some color.

Germs on your feet at airport security. And yes, there's a company selling a solution for that.

Frustration with priority line-hoppers, on Textually Promiscuous blog.

Kiosk retail: RedBox, BestBuy, Sony, etc.

Kiosk retail is starting to really change things. The photos above are of a Sony kiosk in an airport (this one is at LAX). When you buy something, such as the headphones we picked up prior to boarding, a wonderful servo mechanism goes across and down to collect your selection, then drop it into the chute. [It was so cute, I wanted to buy more stuff just to see it whirr and operate!]  Sony launched the first of these in 2006.

Interesting that the same headphones were for sale at a traditional retail outlet right across the hall, for about $10 more. That premium may be sustainable now, while the machines are relatively new. You can't pick up and read the box -- although you can see product information on the touch-screen visible on the machine at the right.

Best Buy also has similar machines at airports. [They could have sold me a Flip video, but there weren't any in the machines I saw. Dang!]

RedBox, the DVD movie rental operation, may have started this trend when they launched circa 2003. They are now reporting rentals of more than 200 million DVDs through their 17,000+ kiosks. They have connections with some 300 different retailers, such as Walgreens and Walmart.

Senior vice-president of marketing and customer experience, Gary Cohen, told Marketing News that RedBox "drives traffic to their stores and we also provide [the retailer] a revenue share."

RedBox is using technology to make things simple for the consumer by giving them fast, easy access to what they want. They use the internet to stay connected to some 12 million loyal users who receive weekly e-mails.

Consultant Michael Krauss, author of the Marketing News article, summed up the value proposition nicely: "Simple, powerful business models that yield value to customers will succeed, whether they are online or off".

My take

Meeting people's wants. Leveraging technology to make it faster, cheaper, better. It doesn't get much better than that.

One of the challenges that service businesses have, constantly and never-ending, is that the cost of human services tends to rise every year. Automation is one answer to this challenge. And the kiosk is one very interesting solution. By leveraging really great back-end systems and computer-powered machines, you can provide local storefronts with a tiny footprint. 

You may remember the cigarette machine, a ubiquitous installation in the bars of my youth. Soft-drink machines have never left.

What's your take?

Have you used these machines? Are there others that you have seen / liked / disliked? 

PS - I thought it was truly brilliant for Sony to have one of their artists - Celine Dion -- singing on the video playing at the top of the machine. Great cross-marketing!

Resources:

How RedBox is changing retail, by Michale Krauss. Marketing News, Nov 15, 2009. (subscription required)

How RedBox is disrupting the movie rental industry, by David Weinfeld, Digital Signage Insights, July 1, 2009.

RedBox expands into video games, by Andre Yoskowitz, afterdawn.com, June 1, 2009.

Airport vending machines dispense bullion at a premium. PSFK June 25, 2009

Pets are people, too: how animals humanize spaces

OK, I know this is going to sound odd, but pets are a humanizing influence in public and commercial spaces.

Here's a good example. Passing through LAX recently, I noticed this lovely little dog park. It has a water bowl with a spigot, a small grassy area [OK, artificial turf], and even a fake fire hydrant. It's a nice little spot where pet parents can take their canine for a bio break during travel.

This space is actually nicer than the space designed for human smokers.

I really loved seeing this, I thought it was a brilliant addition on the part of the airport planners. Not travelling with a dog myself, I have no idea how functional something like this really is for a panicked canine that's been tranquilized for air travel. But it seemed like a real effort in the right direction and it made me smile.

Loyalty? Or Loyalty Program? There’s a difference

 

So much time is spent talking about loyalty and loyalty programs that you might be confused and think they're the same thing. They are not.

Actual loyalty is when your customers choose you because they really have a strong preference for your products or services. Loyalty points that they may earn as a result of that choice are just extra bonus.

Let me give you an example. There are two airlines that I am on most often -- Air Canada and WestJet. I love WestJet for their efficiency, their ability to move the line, their wonderful staff who are always friendly and cheerful, and their leather seats. Until fairly recently WestJet did not have a points program. In addition, you couldn't book seat assignments well in advance of a trip, a problem when flying on business IMHO. There never was any food on WestJet flights. [I guess they were a leader on this trend ...] These factors tended to make me choose Air Canada when I had the option, even though I loved the WestJet service and value.

Now that WestJet does have a loyalty program, I still don't fly them that often because I have so many more points invested in Air Canada. Air Canada may well think of me as a loyal customer. I don't generally think of myself as loyal to them.

On a recent flight I was thinking about this and surprised myself to realize there are some things I really do like about Air Canada.  There is definitely more legroom on their standard flight configuration, even in cattle-class. I love their seat-back entertainment system that lets me choose if, what and when I want to watch. And of course there are the points. [Although it's become quite difficult to get upgrades because every flight is now stuffed to bursting. And the points required to go anywhere seem to keep rising.] Still, the possibility exists of that free trip to Europe someday, so I carry on accumulating.

My take

If you need loyalty points to get repeat purchase you may have a great loyalty program, but you might not have much true loyalty. Loyalty programs work best when it's difficult to actually build and maintain a real competitive advantage. Or, when you can shift purchasing at the margin, the way a grocery store or drugstore might try to do with their loyalty program.

It's a mistake to confuse consumer commitment to your loyalty program with the true preference for your service offering. We just love the points. 

Legal agreements: how simple systems evolve into nightmares

When I'm not blogging, I actually run a research + consulting enterprise. One time some years ago we bid on -- and landed -- a contract for a large municipality. They required us to have insurance. And so it began.

Somewhere in the distant past, insurance had its origins as a way of pooling risk. Everyone pays a little, and then if your ship sinks or your house burns down, you have that major loss covered. Absolutely brilliant idea.

I like to imagine that these early contracts were pretty straightforward. Then some fool or crook set fire to their own house, and the first exclusion clause was created. 

You can see how these things work, really. First, a few simple exclusions. Then some contracts are disputed in court, so the language becomes more precise. Then other things happen and more exclusions are needed.

After a few hundred years of this dance, we now have insurance agreements no-one can understand. My commercial policy has a printout of dozens of pages, and this is the short form! Even the summary document is mystifying.

It might as well be Latin

We pretty much have to take it on faith that there's something there for us if disaster strikes.  And it's not just insurance contracts. I feel the same way when I click the "Agree" button with every application or online service. Not to forget the waiver you sign whenever you go skiing or rent a canoe. Then there are the multi-page confidentiality agreements that large clients insist we sign. 

Like parishioners before the reformation, we know there's some important message in the service, but we never learned to speak Latin.

And it's just as well. Because when you do know what it means, it can scare the heck out of you. I've seen a few of these that are pretty onerous. I told one client something like this: "If you don't like what I do, you don't have to pay me. But you can't take my house." Thank goodness they agreed to remove the offending clause, because we wanted the work.

There's an opportunity here

This year, another massive policy increase has us shopping around.

All of the forms and questionnaires seem to have been created for people that drive dozers around, build bridges, and otherwise do concrete STUFF.  When you work in the airy-fairy world of ideas, which is pretty much our stock-in-trade, it's hard to connect.

I think there is a huge opportunity here for some innovative organization to clean up in this industry. Hire us, and we'll help you figure it out. And I'll be first in line to sign up for the policy.