Billboards and Taxis by Justin in SD on Flickr
Over the past couple of years I’ve heard them all. Reasons to adopt any next big thing from social media to digital, mobile, big data and/or any combination or derivation thereof. Many of those times in relation to improving the Customer Decision Journey.
Predictably unpredictable
At the same time we’re being told that the Customer’s decision journey is messy...
Many people who read my blog for a while now, know I have a particular interest in Service Dominant Logic. And whenever I get to teach or talk about my profession (marketing & service) I take the opportunity to explain why I think Service Dominant Logic provides an excellent perspective on the challenges the profession, the brands and the companies we represent, face.
In general most people I discuss this with largely (seem to?) agree with what I’m saying when I explain that we need to move from a Goods Logic into a Service Dominant Logic world. A world where value is not something that is embedded into the products or services that companies design or offer, but value is created by Customers when using them. Yet, when I continue that, in accordance with the same logic,...
I was drawn to an article on Slate: The Google Garveyard. It’s actually not an article but a memorial service for Google services they pulled from the market. You can leave a flower at each grave to show your postmortem appreciation.
The post reminded me how important it is to experiment when innovating. And with experimentation comes failure (preferably the fast and cheap kind), much like many Google products on the Graveyard can be considered failures. But as those two practices (experimentation and fail fast) are widely described the post also reminded me of a strategy that is less often related to innovation best practices: burning bridges.
Burning your Bridges
Burning your bridges is though a widely described strategic practice in...
You have probably heard this before re: “People in [fill in any country name] do not rate your service with a 9 or higher. That’s not our culture”. And every now and then you’ll see someone make such a claim in a blog as to provide a reason to alter how NPS is calculated (see the picture).
There, of course, can only be one reason to do such a thing: to show a better score than your Customers say you’ve earned.
What’s...
Last week I read a (Dutch) post that covered a new white-paper from SAS. The post was titled: “Customer Centricity, still in its infancy”.
After reading the white-paper I concluded (and commented to the post) that it was written completely from the perspective of the solutions SAS has to offer. And that, as a consequence, SAS itself does not get higher on its own Customer Centricity maturity model than the level “self-centric” (being the infancy level).
That statement, of course, was a little harsher than needed, because I think SAS provides some great solutions that many Customers really appreciate. But it was a shot at open goal, I just could not resist ;)
Three elements of Customer Centricity, according to SAS
In the white-paper they presented a model of Customer...
I stumbled on this -must-read- post from Gaurav Ballah, in which he embedded a video from Steve Jobs I think is a must see for it puts an end to the myth that Apple does not listen to Customers. See for yourself:
by Megan Hemphill (Prairie & Co)
Bill Lee published a post on Harvard Business Review Blog Network titled: “Building Customer Communities Is The Key To Creating Value“.
In this post Lee argues that for a company to capture ‘such’ value from customer relationships requires a Level 4 Value proposition. Where ‘such’ refers to “getting their customers to advocate for them, create peer influence in their markets, and make important contributions in areas like product...
A Nice Story to Start With..
We do not buy our meat at the local butchery very often. For reasons of convenience and price we settle with less quality than we would actually want, but hey.. such is life. And I assume we are not the only ones. That’s why I was so positively surprised when my wife returned from the butchery a couple of weeks ago and started collecting our kitchen knifes. The owner offered her to sharpen the knifes, free of charge, because we would need them sharpened for cutting our meat into a home made ‘steak startare’. “That’s an entrepreneur who gets it”, I remember saying.
Ending Like Too Many..
And because of this excellent experience we...
Cypher Saturn 9 by Neasden Control Centre on Flickr
One of the key-premises of the “Social era” is that the power has shifted from companies to Customers. We’ve all read cases of “United Breaks guitars” and alike to prove this. We also know that Customers are more keen to follow advice from close friends, relatives and credible strangers online than from just any company representative. And there’s plenty of evidence that Customers are showrooming....
