It’s Too Expensive Not to Understand Your Customers

If you’re in business, every time customers or potential customers interact with you, they make an assessment of the quality of the service or product you provide. This is true regardless of whether you compete with others or are in an industry with seemingly no competition.

During an economic slump or crisis, customer research is often one of the first items on the chopping block. This, though, is short-sighted. One small element of actionable information can have significant financial implications and can critically impact the success or failure of a business. It’s just too expensive not to know what your customers think.

Customers have an internal set of criteria for judging an enterprise. This criteria may include how quickly a service is rendered, how much a product or service costs, what happens when something unexpected happens (the car accelerates dangerously all by itself, the flight is canceled, the merchandise is “out of stock.”) Research sets a solid foundation for performance benchmarking, allowing companies, like yours, to track trends in customer satisfaction.

One of the best ways to avoid costly mistakes is to develop a philosophy of “asking your customers.” What do they need? How satisfied are they with the services you provide? What can you do to improve? How quickly do you provide service? Is this fast enough? How do your customers evaluate your company in terms of safety and reliability? How much do they trust your explanation and solution when a problem occurs? How does what you offer measure up to competitive offerings?

Obtaining benchmark customer information is an essential first step. Knowing what customers think and want provides the foundation for developing and prioritizing operational improvement plans. Which items need major retooling? Which just require minor adjustments? What strengths do we have that we can leverage to achieve other desired outcomes?

This data should also become the foundation of your strategic communication plan targeted to reach your key constituencies: customers, community leaders, employees, regulators and the media. What did you learn about the needs and wants of your customers that can be translated into enhanced satisfaction levels. Collecting information is only the first stop on the road to success; putting the information to use and developing loyal customers is the destination.

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Which are You?

My parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression and their experiences during those turbulent and troubling years greatly influenced how they managed the rest of their lives. Hearing stories about how they coped – moving in with family, living off savings that had been put aside for a rainy day, stretching every food dollar, taking whatever work was available no matter how dangerous or difficult – also profoundly affected me. I am who I am partly because of what I heard.

Today, we are in the midst of what might be termed the Great Recession. I got to thinking about how these times will influence all of us in the years ahead. Apparently many others – particularly marketers – are also wondering what the long-lasting effects might be. Will frivolity and the good-times return or will many remain cautious and frugal?

A segmentation study recently completed by Decitica Marketing Strategy & Research, a New Jersey research company (http://decitica.com/) concludes that:

1. The effects of the this recession on consumer behavior are so profound that many of the assumptions underpinning consumer segmentation are no longer valid; and

2. Marketing strategies that do not fully recognize the diversity of consumers’ recession experiences won’t have the desired potency in the post-recession world.

The study identified four consumer types that they believe will emerge from the recession, each posing its own challenges for marketers.

Steadfast Frugalists – comprising 20% of the population, this group (of whom I am a member) are committed to self-restraint, engaging in prudence with unequivocal enthusiasm (Wow! Look how much I saved in coupons today!) Six in ten (60%) are women, and while the group is comprised of individuals from all age groups, fewer are from Gen X and Gen Y.

Involuntary Penny-Pinchers – for the 29% in this group, the recession has been especially challenging. Over-represented by people in their 30s and 40s, frugality for the most part has been forced upon them. Half have not saved any money for emergencies and 87% are more worried about the future than other groups.

Pragmatic Spenders – also 29% of the population, these consumers have blunted the effects of the recession. Over-represented by people in their 60s, and from the Northeast and West, more than a third of the people with greater than $75,000 household income are in this group.

Apathetic Materialists – this group (22% of respondents) seem least changed by the recession. Over-represented by Gen Yers, they are the least changed in terms of their spending habits and future intentions. Only about 6% of this group find price comparison satisfying, compared to 85% of the steadfast frugalists.

Do you see yourself in any of these types? What about your customers? Are you prepared to confront the new reality of the marketplace?

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How Big?

When I was a child, my mother used to laugh because I used the word ‘million” to express everything from how much homework I had (a “million pages”) to how many birds were sitting on a wire. It was a number that meant, “too big to count.”

Recently I’ve been reading I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away (http://tinyurl.com/yaqnuae) by Bill Bryson (author of A Walk in the Woods). Published in 1999, it’s a compilation of a series of articles he wrote for Night & Day magazine, the Sunday supplement to London’s Mail on Sunday.

In his chapter called “The Numbers Game” he talks about how big numbers are simply beyond what we are capable of grasping. He uses the federal deficit as a way of explaining how large a trillion is. In 1999, the deficit was $4.5 trillion (today it’s roughly $12 trillion).

Bryson says “Imagine you were in a vault filled with dollar bills and that you were told you could keep each one you initialed. Say, too, for the sake of argument that you could initial one dollar bill per second and that you worked straight through without ever stopping. How long do you think it would take to count a trillion dollars?…You would make $1,000 every 17 minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. Thus it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1,200 days – something over three years – to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years you would be a billionaire…But not until after 31,709.8 years would you count your trillionth dollar (and even then you’d be less than one-fourth of the way through the pile of money representing America’s debt.”)

Now, my commentary is not meant to be a political statement. It’s only meant to demonstrate how much a trillion is. Initialing dollar bills as Bryson suggests would take a person more than 120,000 years to get through our national debt. Or, by my calculations 2,000 people could each spend 60 years nonstop.

In fact, a trillion pieces of paper laid end-to-end would stretch from the earth to the sun … and back … with a lot of paper to spare. One trillion seconds is much, much longer than recorded history. A million minutes ago was just under two years. A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.

One trillion is literally a 1 with 12 zeros. Scientists estimate that the Milky Way has somewhere between 100 and 400 billion. Imagine that you could see all of them and then realize how many more a trillion would be!  

Talk about being too big to count or wrap your head around!

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A Good Idea or Just Free Advice?

Finding a job has never been more difficult. Simply applying seems equally challenging.

I’ve been on both sides of the hiring desk – sometimes the applicant and sometimes the employer. And, yes, for some jobs, I gave a test. When I was hiring a research analyst, I would narrow my field of candidates down to the top five or so and then give the finalists a set of data to see what they would do with it. In an hour, could they separate the wheat from the chafe? Could they make sense of the numbers, draw conclusions and express them in well-crafted and thoughtful language?

While I gave this test to only the best of the bunch, not as part of my initial screening criteria, I am hearing from colleagues today that they’re being asked to submit marketing or business plans, develop strategy or design a website from the ground-up – all before even getting the first interview!

Fellow blogger, Matthew E. Berger at Sphere, writes about Hannah Reed, 22, who applied for a part-time administrative position with The New Teacher Project in Oakland, CA. She was asked to answer mock e-mails from potential clients, which required research into the organization, and to create a plan for an educational event. Was she hired? No.

As Berger notes, “Reed’s experience highlights a new fact of life for those on the losing end of a labor market where every ‘help wanted’ ad can draw a flood of interest, and fewer people wait on the other end to read all the resumes. More and more, recruiters and hiring managers are asking prospective employees to complete lengthy assignments before they will even be considered for an interview.”

It’s true such screening techniques illuminate those with poor writing or critical thinking skills and perhaps reduce the number of resumes to a more manageable number. It’s also true that applicants are given the opportunity to showcase their talents and business or scientific acumen.

However, for someone looking for a job and who knows that it will take hundreds of applications to even snag an interview, these prerequisites are undoubtedly daunting. Spend 20 or 30 hours on an assignment and then still not get an interview?

Are these exercises really meant to screen candidates or are they just a repository of free advice? How many of the submitted ideas will become part of the hiring organization’s marketing plan or training curriculum or web content? Makes one wonder.

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Learning from the Planet’s Teachers

Consider Velcro, passive cooling and Speedo’s Fastskin FSII swimsuits. What do these items have in common? Give up? All were inspired by the natural world. In fact, so many recent inventions have occurred from observing how nature operates that a new term has been coined. Biomimicry is literally the science and art of emulating nature’s best biological aspects to solve human problems.

For example, George de Mestral noted how burrs stuck tenaciously to his dog’s fur. Using a microscope, he observed that the tiny hooks on the end of the burr’s spines caught anything with a loop – such as clothing, hair or animal fur. The result was his two-part Velcro fastener system.

And, African tower-building termites helped teach us about passive cooling. These insects construct their mounds to maintain a constant temperature by continuously opening and closing vents, allowing cooler air to be drawn in from open lower sections while hot air escapes through chimneys. An example of this stack ventilation system is employed by a wastewater treatment facility in Carlsbad, CA.

How to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels is another lesson we can learn from nature. As the Biomimicry Institute notes (http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/), “One of the best ways to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is to achieve more efficient use of the energy we do consume. Inspired by the evolved ability of shark’s skin to reduce drag by manipulating the boundary layer flow as the fish swims, researchers are developing coatings for ship’s hulls, submarines, aircraft fuselage, and even swimwear for humans. Based on the varying shape and texture of shark’s skin over its body, Speedo’s Fastskin FSII swimsuits made their appearance at the Beijing Olympics and may have helped US swimmer Michael Phelps to his record eight gold medals in that competition, and the rest of the team as well.”

And, perhaps, green plants can ultimately teach us about how to make clean fuel using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, much like they use chlorophyll to convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and oxygen. If we could master this process, we could make hydrogen fuel cells an efficient way to create and store energy applicable in home and industrial systems.

Everyday, scientists and inventors are exploring new ways to improve our world through biomimicry. Non-toxic adhesives inspired by geckos, resistance-free antibiotics inspired by red seaweed and improved wind turbine blades mimicking the flippers of humpback whales are just a few examples. If you pay attention, you can see biomimetically inspired products in nearly every corner of the marketplace, from medicine to transportation.

According to the advocates and practitioners studied by the Biomimicry Institute, the greatest potential impacts for this emerging field, however, is in changing the way we think about our man-made environment—not only in designing individual building products, but in conceiving of entire communities as biomimetic systems, not to mention businesses, government bodies and other “systems.” Now that’s something to anticipate!

photo courtesy of jonrawlinson, used under this Creative Commons license

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Into a Quiet Place

My regular readers may have noticed that I did not post last week. That’s because I was camping on the desert in Anza Borrego. For those who do not know this place, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is the largest state park in California. Named for the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and the Spanish name borrego, or bighorn sheep, this area with five-hundred miles of dirt roads, 12 wilderness areas and miles of hiking trails provides visitors with a chance to see wildflowers (after spring rains), palm groves, sweeping vistas, and all manner of wildlife.

For me, the desert, with its spectacular sunrises and sunsets, is a very quiet place. This particular visit, my husband and I were the sole campers in the area of Palm Canyon where we chose to set up. The stillness was broken only by the sound of a covey of quail warning of the approach of a pair of coyotes and the scurrying footfalls of two kangaroo mice and their brood of quadruplets.

I tend not to write about religious themes, but in the quiet, God, Yahweh, the Creator is very close. I understand why the Israelites needed to wander in the desert for 40 years, why Jesus sought solace there and why Native Americans consider it a sacred place.  

Some people are frightened by the idea of absolute quiet. We live in a world of noise – of cell phones ringing, TVs and radios blaring, cars honking, heavy machinery toiling to build roads and highways, dogs barking, children crying, people arguing.

Mo Rocca recently did a piece about noise (http://tinyurl.com/njsueh). He noted how the world keeps getting noisier; how we’re simply drowning in the din and ruckus of everyday life; and how the noise drowns out our power to listen to ourselves, simply making it impossible for us to hear ourselves think above the din.

Are you looking for a bit of quiet and solitude? Perhaps you can’t go to the desert today. But you can find everyday moments of peace and stillness. Take a walk in a nearby park or beach without your iPod; silence all your tech gadgets for an hour or two, watch the sun come up…or go down, work in the garden, sit in a comfortable chair and read a book.

How do you feel about being quiet? Where do you go?

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A Potpourri of Links to Educate, Amuse or Fatten Your Wallet

I’m of a certain age and, perhaps, like you, remember days before the Internet – when, if I wanted to know something, I’d look it up in some type of bound volume, make a call or perhaps ask a friend.

Art by Sarah Sammis

No more. Now, I “google” everything.  And, I mean everything! I haven’t phoned anyone to request information or opened a dictionary in years.

My behavior got me to wondering how many websites there are and naturally, I googled to find out. According to www.answer.com, there are more than 109.5 million sites, consisting of at least 25 billion pages. Wow!

I thought it might be fun to highlight a few of the sites I use regularly, as well as some that have been recommended to me. (Particular thanks to John Cox of SourceSolution for his suggestions.) I’m not going to mention common online retailer or auction houses like Amazon and eBay or obvious choices like Craigslist, Wikipedia, Expedia or WebMD. Here’s my list, in alphabetical order, for lack of some more clever way of organizing this material:

http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_current – Those of us living in California understand the danger we face from wildfires. This site is updated frequently and links to more detailed information about any current fire. It’s one of those sites we hope we never have to refer to, but know we will

www.etsy.com – Etsy is a community of buyers and sellers of handmade items from more than 150 countries. If you’re looking for a unique gift or an outlet for your handcrafts, this site is for you.

www.familysearch.org – Are you working on your family tree or trying to find out more about a particular ancestor? FamilySearch is a service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is the largest genealogy organization in the world.

http://flightaware.com – Wondering whether it’s time to leave for the airport to pick up someone? This is my favorite site for tracking where any plane is at any point in time. FlightAware provides live flight data, airport information, weather maps, flight planning, and navigation charts for U.S. flights. In the 24 hours prior to this post, FlightAware tracked 43,521 arrivals.

www.hubspot.com – Go here for cool SEO. HubSpot® is an inbound marketing system to help your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers for maximum marketing ROI.

www.infoworld.com – If you write about or are interested in IT topics, this blog and news site is very useful. Recent articles that caught my eye included a review of Windows 7, the future of mainframes in data centers, and how private clouds are gaining traction.

http://www.kayak.com – For travel and monitoring trends in pricing, nothing beats this site. KAYAK lets you compare options, and when you find something that fits your budget and tastes, you book it where you want: at the airline site, from the hotel, or from a travel agent. It’s completely free and different from most travel sites because they don’t actually sell plane tickets, hotel rooms, or anything else.

www.marketingsherpa.com – This organization researches what works in marketing via exclusive case studies, surveys, results data analysis and lab tests. Then they publish what they learn so their community of marketers and weekly readers can improve their results and train their teams. One recent “how to” covered reformatting, reusing and recycling strategies to stretch marketing content.

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam – Ok, I admit it. From the birth of Hua Mei, the first baby panda born in the U.S., I have been addicted to pandacam. With a new baby in the den, and about to get a name, I’m as hooked as ever.

http://tinyurl.com – I began to see tiny URLs and wondered how they were created. Googling, of course, led me to this site. By entering in a URL in the text field provided, a tiny (short) version is created that will not break in email postings and never expires.

www.travelzoo.com – Another travel site that publishes offers from more than 600 advertisers and highlights the best deals anywhere!

http://www.youngestround.blogspot.com – Want to follow a real-life adventure story? Jessica Watson left her home in Australia last week and is attempting to become the youngest person to sail solo, nonstop and unassisted around the world.

www.zazzle.com – Like Etsy, Zazzle makes quality custom products, designed by “you.” Through its innovative on-demand retail and technology platform, users can instantly create, customize to fit their personal style, purchase and sell a near infinite array of products online. As an example, check out more of Sarah’s art: http://www.zazzle.com/pussreboots.

Do you have a favorite site that educates, amuses, or fattens your wallet? Post a comment and tell us about it.

www.thecapstonegrp.com

Importance of a Strong Foundation

We have a place in the mountains and, for some time now, part of our deck had been in imminent danger of collapse. This past weekend, our son John offered to repair the damaged portion. It quickly became apparent that much of the trouble was due to the foundation having been poorly constructed when the deck was originally built. After carefully considering how the weight should be distributed, John built a substantial sub-structure that will support the newly laid decking for years to come.

As I watched him work, while schlepping boards to and fro, it occurred to me that success in most endeavors requires a firm foundation. High school students who are having trouble with math often did not learn the basic building blocks of computation – addition, subtraction, and times tables. Ask a struggling freshman what 9×8 is.. and you will probably see what I mean.

Or the adult who cannot read. Were phonics taught? Can he or she sound out words? Most likely, the answer is “no.”

A strong foundation is especially important in today’s uncertain business environment. Whether you are the owner of a small start-up company or an executive in an established enterprise, nothing is more important than strategic business planning to both build and maintain the structure of your organization.

A strategic business plan is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that guide:

• What an organization is
• What it does
• Why and how it does it

Strategic planning is about having the right people in the room, working on the right (often difficult) issues. Planning is not something you do every 5 years. It should be a continuous process that you update every year. And, there is no time more important for planning than when times are tough.

I believe that strategic planning should be collaborative and iterative. Typical steps involve:

• Planning to plan – identifying a core planning team, the length of the plan (3 years, 5 years) and determining how decisions will be made (consensus, other)
• Creating the future state – developing core values, vision and mission statements
• Defining the roadmap for how the vision and mission will be achieved – the goals and strategies
• Developing critical success indicators (or key performance indicators) – quantifiable measures of success in achieving the organization’s vision, mission, and values on a year-by-year basis, and the dashboard that will report progress

These critical success indicators should be translated into the performance metrics for every employee in the organization. Without employees understanding exactly how they contribute to the strength and health of the enterprise, the results are likely to mirror those of my previously constructed deck – imminently subject to collapse. Construct a strong foundation and you’ll have the building blocks of success.

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Those Annoying Words and Phrases

Are there certain expressions that are beginning to drive you crazy? Ones that are being used to death by everyone and his brother? Ones that you wish would just drop out of the lexicon? Well, you’re not alone.

A telephone survey conducted in August by Marist College of Poughkeepsie, NY and reported on by Michael Hill of the AP, (http://tinyurl.com/ycy66rr) asked 938 U.S. adults to indicate which, among five popular words or phrases, was most annoying. The results released last Wednesday revealed that “whatever” (pronounced “WHAT’-ehv-errr” when exasperated) won the dubious distinction of being most aggravating. As Hill notes, it can be an all-purpose argument-ender or a signal of apathy and is consistently disliked by Americans regardless of their race, gender, age, income or where they live.

Personally, I find a number of phrases to be particularly noxious. For example, “No problem.”  When did everyone stop saying “You’re welcome” or “My pleasure” in response to my “Thank you?” Were they anticipating that serving me WOULD be a problem in some way and mercifully it wasn’t?

Or, “out of the box.” Once upon a time, I really liked this phrase. It created a vivid mental picture. Now, it’s so overused that I vote we just throw the box away so that we don’t have to worry whether we’re in or out.

“In harm’s way” is another phrase jarring to my ears. This set of words, which comes from John Paul Jones, Revolutionary War naval hero (‘I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail FAST; for I intend to go in harm’s way”) is so overused by the media and such a watered down expression that we gloss over the fact that people really are in a dangerous place or situation and facing an imminent threat of death or maiming.

While I could go on and on about words that should be banned, I’d much rather share what some of you have said. Last week on Facebook, I asked friends and colleagues for their list of phrases that should be struck from our vocabulary. Here’s what they had to say in their own words:

Kelly – “It is, what it is” – My boss always says that and it bugs the heck out me.

Amanda – “It must have been meant to be.” As if we have no responsibility over our lives.

Sarah – I hate “pro-active” with a fiery passion.

David P. - “KUDOS!” I hate that word and it is over-used. I know someone who uses “It is what it is” to death. “I need to process this” is another annoying one. Oh, and “irregardless.” It’s used all the time and the word doesn’t exist.

Letel  - “Wrap our arms around it” eeeeee-gads!!!!

Bob – “Bring your dancing shoes” – Does every event advertising music, have to say this?

Tony – “Very unique” or “God never gives you more than you can handle” except for the people who died in the Holocaust or any other tragedy…

David K. – Very few things are truly “revolutionary,” “cutting edge,” or “state-of-the-art.” And yet they pop up in advertising constantly. Also annoying, a little, is the abbreviation, “LOL” which is used to death. ROTFL and LMAO at least have better imagery.

Scott – “That’s an excellent question.” It’s said in every interview.

Diane – “Been there, done that” really bugs me…. Especially when it is said in a snotty tone and an erratic movement of the person’s head!!!!!  Oh!! I forgot this one….”Believe You Me!!” What the hell does that mean anyway!!!

Want to weigh in with your “favorites?” Post a comment and let me know what drives YOU crazy.

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Completely Random Musings

Generally I write about a single topic – typically something about communication, change, strategic business planning or corporate culture. A few times I have provided commentary, such as last week’s post about drowning in clutter or the series “Who’s Counting” and “Throw ‘Em a Bone.” 

This week has no theme. I’ll be filing it under commentary. But truly, it’s just a set of random thoughts, links, and recommendations.

Websites – I’m new to designing sites, but I’m an advanced user and know what I like. I want to be able to easily read the text. I may be a baby boomer, but I’m one of those rare ones who can still easily read 6 pt type. So, I’m not personally concerned about that as much as the color choices for background and fonts. Please make sure the text is actually visible on the color background you have chosen. Oh, and those embedded flourishes…they obscure the text. You do want me to see it, don’t you? Other pet peeves: broken links, overused stock images and auto-played music.

For a perspective about the most used and abused web design trends of all time, you might want to check out this post http://bit.ly/BSfQ7 by Jacqueline Thomas. 

$60,000 Jobs Going Unfilled – Several times in recent days I have heard or read about high paying jobs that are going unfilled. According to economists quoted by http://tinyurl.com/ye68pz8, “the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering…It’s become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say.”

Really? I agree that one can’t become a nurse or an electrical engineer over night. But I know dozens of highly educated, intensely qualified individuals who are currently out of work and whose skills would be easily transferred to other positions or industries. Come on employers. Be creative. Adjust your thinking. You won’t be disappointed.

Can’t Wait to Taste that Pumpkin Pie? – You may have to. Did you know there is a pumpkin shortage? Oh, no, Charlie Brown! Bad weather ruined many patches this year. About 1/3, in fact. Some places like Indiana and Iowa don’t have any canned pumpkin on their shelves and few of the big orange globes either. If you haven’t already purchased your supplies for Thanksgiving, you might want to do so soon. And for that carved Jack O’ Lantern, be prepared in some locations to pay more.

Need Some Inspiration? – Every morning after I check Facebook and Twitter, I click on Jack’s Winning Words (http://jackswinningwords.blogspot.com/). This retired minister posts a quote each day and adds a few thoughts of his own. A few of my favorites: “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” (Elizabeth Taylor); “Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.” (Hugh MacLeod); “Never insult an alligator until you’ve crossed the river.” (Oriental Proverb); “The future has a way of arriving unannounced.” (George Will); and my favorite, “Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded.” (Jess Lair)

A Fabulous and Cheap Discovery – Have you tried Swai? What the heck is it, you ask? Swai is a tasty fish, with a delicate texture and nice white flesh that is native to Southeast Asia – Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Beyond being delicious by itself, it is the perfect foundation for any number of sauces and toppings. It holds up under baking, frying, broiling and remains moist throughout. And, besides being incredibly versatile, it is dirt cheap. I find it in my local Henry’s and Ralph’s all the time for less than $3/lb. Last night, I first dredged two fillets in a combination of seasoned flour and grated parmesan, lightly browned in a little butter, then placed in a baking dish. To the leftover butter and topping in the pan, I added the juice of two lemons and 2 Tbs. of capers.  Once heated, I poured over the fish and baked for 20 minutes at 350. Delicious!   

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