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Posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 by Michel Hogan

Your customers and you - Part 2

Listen to the interview podcast here.

From my recent interview with customer service guru Cindy Solomon, here’s a summary of the four things you need to know to deliver on customer expectations - because that’s what customer service is all about.

1. Make it easy for customers to do business with you. Policies and procedures that let the customer not only give you their money with minimum of fuss, but also help when they have an issue.

2. You can’t have great service if you don’t have great people. That is people who are well trained, who are sincerely interested in serving the customer, people who know about the products and services they are selling.

3. Show your customers you not only recognise them and appreciate their business, but that you know a little bit about them and their preferences - that you have a relationship with them. Don’t make them repeat themselves just because they happen to get different people when they call you.
This isn’t rocket science. Do these three things with consistency and efficiency even most of the time, and you have a great start over your competition when it comes to service.

And last, but most importantly,

4. Understand that customer service is NOT about exceeding expectations every time, it is about knowing what you are good at, setting the expectation and MEETING that expectation every time.

Not everyone can be Zappos when it comes to customer service - making it your mission in life. Some of you will be Ryan Air - not even pretending to deliver any customer service. However, by being deliberate and throwing some time and attention at it, your customer service can become a “bottom line revenue generator” for your company.

In closing here is my favourite story from the interview - it’s from Zappos, and while for most these levels of customer service are (rightly) nothing but a pipe dream, there’s nothing wrong with having something to aspire to!

“Another example that everyone is going gaga for in US is Zappos. They are one of the best examples of having a customer service philosophy that flows through every part of the business.”

“A CEO friend shared this story with me. He was sitting on a panel with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh at a conference recently and they had finished up and decided they were going to order pizza seeing it was late and they didn’t feel like going to the formal dinner. This was the CEO of a five star hotel chain, CEO of Zappos and CEO of UPS (I think). And they were giving Tony a hard time about all the great press he’s been getting about customer service at Zappos. So he said “let’s test it out, call Zappos,” which is a company that sells shoes and other things online, “and tell them you want to order a pizza and see what happens.”

“The hotel CEO asked if he was sure he wanted to do it and Tony said to go ahead. So the hotel CEO made the call and put it on speaker phone. When the customer service person answered he said “I am here in Cleveland Ohio and I would like to order a pizza.” And the woman said, “Ok, where are you specifically,” and he told her and she said “can you hold on just a minute.” She got off the phone and when she came back, not only gave them the names of three pizza places that delivered to his location but had also called to ensure that they were still open.”

Posted in Alignment, Cindy Solomon, Ideas that matter, Management. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , .

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Posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 by Michel Hogan

Your Customers and You

The topic of customer service is an increasingly important one for every company. As I mentioned last week the rise of social media, as a way for customers to talk about their experiences, has laid open the cracks and exposed the fallacy of the promises many companies make.

However, customer service, like pretty much everything about your business, is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. What works for the widget company down the block will be a disaster for the service firm around the corner.

So how do you figure out what is the right level of customer service for YOUR customers AND your brand? Here is a short list of things to think about to get your started.

1. Each time you sell your customer something you are making a promise. Customer service is about making sure that promise is met, so make sure you know what promises you’re making and work up from there.

2. Your brand is also about a promise, so while you are looking at the promise to the customer, make sure that promise the organisation is making to itself is also being honoured. For example, Apple keeps its eye firmly on delivering great innovative products and user experience, that’s the promise they make and keep first. Not every brand is founded around customer service.

3. All customers are not created equal. Some will be great supporters of your brand, keep coming back and never give you a single days grief. Others will be the bane of your existence, for relatively little return. Do you treat them the same? Does the squeaky wheel get more attention? In other words, are you encouraging “bad” behavior instead of rewarding “good” behavior?

If you really think through these things you will be on the way to delivering customer service that works for you AND for your customers. After all there are two sides to every interaction.

And make sure to check in next week for my interview with Cindy Solomon when I will have a lot more customer service goodness to share with everyone.

Posted in Alignment, Brand Think, Ideas that matter, Management. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , .

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Posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 by Michel Hogan

Do you have an extreme Brand?

The great ones do it really well. Their brand shows up all over the place, (and I’m not talking ads and billboards here). They can seem down right cultish about it. But, at the end of the day you KNOW what that brand is and you BELIEVE it.You could almost call it “extreme brand” - the “go 100% or go home” companies. They just seem to have that extra something, a zing, an “it” factor that attracts people like flies. Customers want to buy what they are selling, employees want to work there, investors want to put their money into it.

So what is the difference between these guys and you? Maybe nothing, maybe you are one of the competitors in the extreme brand games. But, chances are you are one of the “go 50% and that will do” others.

I call it taking your brand to the corners.

The central stuff is easy (and often the fun sexy part). It’s the view of brand that nearly everyone has. The marketing view, the customer facing view, the slap on coat of paint and tidy up the garden view. That’s the 50%.

The extreme brands, the ones we remember and love, have a habit of taking it much further. They stuff their brands into every nook and cranny of their organisation. Infuse it into HR, build it into finance, use it to drive operations. CEO, shipping person, front desk, back office, R&D, manufacturing, sales, customer service, shop floor, warehouse. It’s in the sales pitch and the sales follow up. It’s in product design and the packaging. It’s in the marketing and the delivery.

Walmart is notorious for it - even their employee schedule and pay systems are optimised to keep prices low.

Apple regularly shoots another “too cool for school” product off the racks.

Jurlique is so obsessed about what they put in their skin care products they grow it themselves.

Nordstroms legendary service is not only about having great clothes in their stores, they have free personal shoppers to help you pick them out.

And, not a day goes by when another type of information falls to Google’s relentless thirst to make it accessible to everyone.

However, an extreme brand doesn’t have to be a big name company. It can be a second-hand car dealer like my dad was.

Husbands came to dad to buy a car, then came back for one for their wife, then one for the kids when they turned 18 because they knew they would get a good solid car at a fair price and that dad would stand behind what he sold.

If there was something specific you had in mind, he would go to the auctions to find it for you if he could, and if he couldn’t then you knew it wasn’t to be found. He could gab with the best of them, but when it came to his cars he was a straight-talker. From the no frills look of the car yard, to the loud voice and personal attention to everyone who walked in the door, the town knew the “Hoges” brand - honest cars.

Watching dad day in and out was my original school of brand, and as those things go I can’t think of a better one! I miss him everyday and I think maybe the town does too.

So make your brand an extreme brand and go find that other 50%.

Posted in Alignment, Brand Think, Ideas that matter, Personal Brand. Tagged with , , , , , , , , .

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Posted on Saturday, May 15th, 2010 by Michel Hogan

Your Brand and Social Media

I had coffee with Trevor Young from Park Young last week and along the path of our interesting and winding conversation the role of brand and social media reared its head. We both agreed that the “should I be on Twitter?” question ranks up there with the most annoying we both get asked.So what’s the right question? Well that depends. In reality there is no one question because despite the way most companies approach it, social media is not a tactic but an ethos. And as an ethos it is simply not something that will work for everyone.

This is not a do and don’t list for social media - there are lots of people far more qualified than I am to do that for you. My questions and interest in the role of social media is more of a strategic one.

The fact is, if you are not willing to embrace the corporate and cultural ideals of transparency, openness and engagement then you will struggle to make social media work no matter how much time and money you throw at it.

It is not a given for every organisation and I know that flies in the face of much that passes for marketing wisdom.

Not every organisation has a customer base that wants to be engaged with in that way. One of my favorite articles on this topic is titled “I don’t want to be friends with my butter” and I couldn’t agree more.

Not every organisation has a culture of communications that will lend itself to social media tools. If you don’t like to share the workings of your organisation with people outside now, the chances that social media will magically instill that are slim to none.

Not every organisation has relationships that can translate into a conversation - because first and foremost social media is a conversation between you and someone else.

Not every organisation has products and services that lend themselves to ongoing engagement - see earlier article reference on butter.

By now you get the idea.

Just as true is that some organisations are custom-made and hard-wired for social media. And truth be told, even if you are not actively engaging in social media you might be a passive participant as your customers or other stakeholders talk about you with each other and no one in particular.

That doesn’t mean you have to jump into the fray and try and control the conversation, you can have an impact just by delivering on your promises every time.

So, back to the question that started this blog - how to know whether social media is for you? Start with the same question that drives every other aspect of your business. Who are we and why are we here?

If social media fits into the answer then great. If not, don’t worry, it doesn’t make you a bad company, a bad brand or a behind the times. The bottom of the cliff is crowded with companies who blindly followed everyone else.

Don’t be afraid to be true to who you are. It is always the best idea.

Posted in Alignment, Brand Think. Tagged with , , , , , , .

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Posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 by Michel Hogan

Personal Brand Part 1

The idea of Brand as something that individuals should be thinking about for themselves probably first entered the broader consciousness via Tom Peters in around 1997. He revisted the idea a decade later in a Fast Company magazine article, and in the last couple of years it seems you can’t turn around without people talking about “Personal Brand”.

Seems there is just as much hype and spin around Personal Brand as exists around company or product Brand defiitions and theory. Makes it pretty hard to know what you should be doing or not doing to build your own.

To my way of thinking, Personal Brand is really not all that different to an organisation’s Brand (we’ll leave product Brand out of it for today as I’m not sure inanimate objects and ever truly have their own brands…). Whether you are one or many a brand is still the result of what you believe and what your actions show (all your actions, not just the deliberate marketingy ones!)

So for all you struggling out there to figure out whether you need a Personal Brand my message to you is – YOU ALREADY HAVE ONE! You might not know what it is. You are probably not using it or doing anything to consciously construct it. But you have one - the very act of being a certain way, of holding certain values and combining them with your day-to-day actions means you have a Brand.

You might never need it, or want to use it and that’s just fine. I don’t subscribe to the idea that everyone has to be out there competing for their 5 minutes in the marketplace. But even if you are the quiet retiring type - a little Brand knowledge can be a good thing.

Are you looking for a job? Promoting your endeavours? Figuring out who to partner with? Deciding if social networking is for you and how to use it? Pitching new business? Working for yourself? Looking for office space? Sending an email rather than making a phone call? Deciding what product or service to buy (or not)? Writing your “elevator” pitch?

This list could go on through the myriad of decisions and actions that we take in our personal and professional lives. How we respond to them are all pieces of our Brands.

For many people the question right now is what’s next? It’s a great question full of possibilities and different options. And also completely overwhelming for nearly everyone. So if Personal Brand can help make these types of decisions less daunting, how do you figure out what yours is?

Coming next is some Brand You 101.

Posted in Alignment, Brand Think, Ideas that matter, Personal Brand. Tagged with , , .

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Posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 by Michel Hogan

The (other) Brand Checklist

It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me, that the constant discussion of brand from a marketing-centric standpoint drives me around the twist. So in a small attempt to provide some balance, and show how brand can be a central operating principle, here are some questions you may not be thinking about when you think about your brand - but should be.

1. Do you know what your core values are (I mean the authentic ones that show up in how your organisation acts, not the all star list you use for show)?

2. Have you found your promise - that reason your company exists (beyond making money - which if you are a for-profit enterprise, is a given!)?

3. Does everyone in the company from the CEO to the person in shipping know what they are and what they mean for their jobs?

4. Do you know what the meaning of the words you use - what defines them (for your organisation not the Oxford dictionary)? A short selection: quality, service, innovation…

5. Is your brand represented in the way you hire (beyond the words in your ad)?

6. Do your human resources policies and procedures incorporate and reinforce your brand in the way they are structured and implemented?

7. Does your employee training reinforce your brand in the way it is structured and implemented?

8. Do you outsource any part of your business operations? (If no skip to #11).

9. When and what do you outsource? How do you decide?

10. Do the people you outsource to know what your brand stands for and how it impacts what they do for you?

11. Is customer service positioned in the business as a cost or an information asset?

12. Do you include customer service in marketing discussions and decision-making?

13. Where is your customer service located?

14. Do you have a customer loyalty program?

15. Do you offer a guarantee? What is it and why?

16. What technologies do you choose to use? Do they support and reinforce the brand?

17. What methods and terms of payment do you offer? Why?

18. How do you handle billing disputes and returns?

19. Do you manufacture goods? (If no skip to # 21).

20. What drives your manufacturing choices? Does it align with your brand?

21. Do you want to grow your business or do you want to flip it?

22. How do you fund your business growth? Investors, bank, organically?

Some of these questions may not seem to be all that related to your brand. Over the coming weeks I will expand on them and show how everything on this list has the potential to strengthen your brand, undermine it or outright destroy it.

In the meantime, how does your company stand up against the list? Is your brand part of the discussion when you are considering these aspects of your business and organisation. Why not?

Do you have others you would add - leave a comment for me.

Posted in Alignment, Brand Think, Ideas that matter. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , .

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Posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 by Michel Hogan

Rule #10

I’ve always been a fan of questions. Always ask questions is one of my core values and was a key culture point in my old company. So when I was reading through Alan Webber’s new book 52 Rules of Thumb, it didn’t surprise me to find Rule #10 – A good question beats a good answer.

Since I first picked up Fast Company magazine, where Alan was a founding editor, I have always appreciated his style of thinking and the way he seemed to always ask questions that resonate with what was going on at a particular point in time.

So what is it about questions that intrigues us. Is the the opportunity to go exploring, the challenge of finding the answer, or just the great conversations they generate? Probably all three and then some. So if the questions is so important do we often skim over the most important part - coming up with the question to ask.

There have been some powerful fans of questions over the years. Starting with Socrates who was so famous for asking questions that his style of dialog is today called a Socratic method. Throughout the ages and into the modern day thinkers, philosophers, artists, authors and business people have all used questions as an anchor.

The biggest-selling business book of all time - Good to Great, by Jim Collins was the result of 7 years of rigorous exploration of ONE question. How can an existing company go from good to great? The answers he found confounded much conventional business theory and rewired many people’s thinking about their companies.

A note here - sometimes you don’t want to explore anything, all you want is a yes or a no. I am not talking about those kind of questions, they have their place but generally don’t stimulate new thinking or ways of doing. So given that all questions aren’t created equal, what is the difference between a good question and great question?

There don’t seem to be any rules perse, but a few guidelines can be found courtesy of World Café. These guys are dedicated to finding great questions that drive dialog and reveal insights that transcend assumptions and preconceptions. From their guide to asking powerful questions comes this short list of things you should shoot for when framing your own questions:

  1. Construct your question to be open and stimulate dialog. A good way to do this is make sure it starts with an interrogative – who, what, why, how are good options.
  2. What work do you want the question to do? Deliver a concrete outcome; build a sense of team; open up the dialog to explore new ideas…
  3. Create a broad scope within the question that is practical. For example scope could be “our project”; “our company”; “our industry”.
  4. Limit the assumptions built into the question. Many words in english language come loaded with assumptions and putting them in your questions creates an often unintentional direction for the outcome.

There are other many other considerations when framing great questions and I encourage you to take a browse through the Guide to Asking Powerful Questions. Then, to quote Alan Webber:

“Work at asking great questions in meetings.Reward people for raising questions that need to be asked. Have the courage to ask unasked questions to make explicit was you think is obvious – knowing that just by asking the question you’ll make new connections and open new lines of enquiry…It’s not what you don’t know that will hurt yuo and your business. It’s what you don’t bother to ask that will kill you.”

You might be wondering what questions have to do with Brand? Well the foundation of every great Brand is knowing the answer to the following question – What do we believe and what do our actions show? Do you know yours?

Any questions?

Posted in Brand Think, Ideas that matter, Management. Tagged with , , , , .

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Posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 by Michel Hogan

Talk to me

If I see one more industry babble, jargonistic “positioning” statement crafted to “speak to our audience” I think I might just have to shred my thesaurus in protest.

Last time I looked, your audience was probably comprised of people. And chances are most of those people speak, write and read English (among other languages but we will deal with the whole multi-cultural consideration issue another time). Now using the English language requires a bit more than just stringing random words together in the vague hope that they will mean something to someone.

The process that usually generates these “statements” (I use the term loosely), is often a committee (first mistake), it tries to appeal to everyone (second mistake) and doesn’t want to offend anyone (third and biggest mistake).

Let’s work through them with the starting caveat that unless you have a good sense of what your brand is - what you stand for and are willing to defend any “positioning” exercise you go through is most likely to fail. But back to the mistakes.

Positioning by committee
You want to create ownership of the statement, make sure that all the relevant people have an opportunity for input. Okay fair enough, but that doesn’t require them to be part of the entire process, and certainly doesn’t mean that they need to have sign off.

A general rule of thumb is the more people involved in the final decision the more watered down and devoid of personality and oomph the statement will be. By all means, ask for input and opinions, consider them, keep what will work and discard what won’t. Then craft something that makes sense.

Appeal to everyone
Apart from the obvious fact that this is impossible to do, “everyone” are not your customers, they are not your employees or other stakeholders. “Everyone” don’t care about who you are and what you are selling. “Someone” does. So that is who you should be talking to - your “someones”. Do you know who they are? What they care about? Why they might care about who you are? No - then find out. Yes - then talk to THEM and don’t worry about “everyone”.

Try not to offend
We have all heard the statement - “if you aren’t upsetting someone you aren’t doing it right” (or something to that effect). I am not saying you should go out of your way to be offensive. But the thing is if you take a stand, draw a line in the sand with your position and are willing to defend it to and against others, then you will upset someone. It’s okay. Revel in it, be happy that you have passion enough about your business to risk the wrath of others. It’s a good thing.

There are plenty of articles, books, papers, blogs and the like out there that will tell you how to go about writing your positioning. There are even websites that will generate one for you (all in good fun).

Often what these resources fail to tell you is that the most important thing is to be authentic. One of my favourite stories about why this matters was when I was working with a group of forensic engineers. Their positioning was unintelligible goobly de gook.

“Optimise the outcomes of major events to generate successful results for all…” or something along those lines.

During a workshop to discuss their positioning I kept asking, so “what do you do and why do you do it?” In total frustration at my repeated questions one of the engineers finally said: “It’s like this, when things go wrong, we keep looking until we figure out why it happened.”
Thank you. Finally a sentence that not only told me what they did (look for answers when things go wrong), but also why they did it (because not giving up until they found those answers was the most important thing). AND, did it in normal, non-jargonistic language.

So, next time you are trying to come up with a positioning statement, throw out the committee, stop trying to speak to everyone, be happy if you upset a few people and most importantly - just say it. You might be surprised by the results.

Posted in Alignment. Tagged with , , , .

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Posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 by Michel Hogan

The Economist on Brand

The Economist has published a book on Brands (and branding). A line in the write up grabbed my attention -

“…all organisations should make the brand their central organising principle, guiding every action and decision…”

Well it’s about time that mainstream started to get with the program. Its not marketing people. It’s Brand. So while I am waiting for my copy of the book to wing from UK to Australia, I’ll just take heart that this school of thought on Brand is getting noticed and talked about.

Review to follow once book lands. In meantime pick up your own copy.

Posted in Brand Think, Management. Tagged with , , , , , , .

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Posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 by Michel Hogan

Brand Graveyard

They are dying off like flies, the mounting tally of well-known and often long-standing brands biting the dust. In the US and Australia and beyond, the wasteland being left by the GFC continues to claim some very seemingly unlikely victims.

But the question for me, that keeps echoing across the veritable brand graveyard emerging is this - would they have survived if they had honored the values and ideals they were built on?

Now I am not against business making a buck. It’s a necessity - without profit you can’t survive or thrive. But the pursuit of ever greater returns has led many corporations to abandon their core values and in the process risk their very survival.

Seriously is it in the best interests of the shareholders, stakeholders, and any other holder of a private or public company for that business to end up on the scrap heap being sold for pieces and parts?

There comes a time when you have to stand and defend what you have built and honor the values that built it. This is not in opposition to growth and relevancy, but is the very foundation of it. You can have both growth and values, but for the values to be worth the paper they are printed on you have to enact them even when it is inconvenient to do so.

To keep track of the mounting tally of Brands in the Graveyard, visit the new section at Salon.com

Posted in Alignment, Brand Think, Management.

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