Open

I do!

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:37:15 +1300

I recently got married and am now someones ‘missus’. If you work at DNA you would probably already know this due to the constant wedding chatter that was coming from my pod, but not ordinary chatter (bridesmaids dresses, suits etc) this chatter was all about colour palettes, icons, look and feel – and that all important consistent thread, making sure our guests got a consistent ‘on-brand’ experience.

It dawned on me halfway through the wedding prep, that this wedding was really just a big client brief and by default I was applying the very principles that make campaign generation and activation so successful. You take for granted working in this industry, having the knowledge of all these tools and bringing something large together. So naturally I swung into suit planning mode. “Everything needs to be seamless, have that sense of integration”. (Cue awkward looks from my fiancee and bridal party) “Bridgette – briefings, mood boards, iconography?” My husband didn’t understand why it was so important that everything was integrated and planned out perfectly, the answer seemed obvious to me, but then I thought how many people really understand the importance of integration, planning and process and how it can make or break your campaign.

On even the smallest of budgets, campaign integration allows you to leverage elements – driving greater reach, and efficiency. Sound planning and process enables you to stick to the brief, and ensure things run smoothly. Sounds simple right? It is, but sometimes we fall victim to lack of time or will to follow process. So often it is easier to approach every brief in silo, put your blinkers on and get it done to the deadline. Doing so usually means you loose consistency, projects cost more and things take longer. Short term win, but long term fail.

Take my wedding for example….

When I (we) started planning the wedding I (we) had a clear vision of what we wanted. We worked up a mood board and segmented it into different categories – from this out fell the theme ‘Vintage romance with a hint of contradiction’ think dusky pink, hand written type, DIY feel, animals, big character. This became the consistent thread that brought everything together. Everything we did going forward was assessed against the mood board – did it fit? Was it conducive to the overarching look and feel? Does it add to the consistent experience – no? fail, yes? lets consider it. It took all my strength not to fall into the silo trap. Just because something is cool, and I like it, does not necessarily mean that we should include it.

Our event plan also drove integration and ensured things ticked along nicely – every element implemented at each phase of the wedding, was consistent – and again provided our guests with the same experience. Vintage furnishings, nude and pink colour palettes, hearts, bucket loads of bunting and lots of DIY loveliness. Towards the end of it, I have to admit I did get over all the paper – updating of running sheets, contact sheets, briefs. But perseverance paid off.

So what did the end result look like? The day went off without a hitch. The project plan, running sheets, briefs, moodboards, site layouts all paid off. The theme was evident throughout and people appreciated the effort and the long DIY nights that went into bringing it all together. I received a few jabs in the speeches about my lists and ‘ticking boxes’, but that’s okay they will come across to my way of doing things soon. At the end of the night my husband and I took a walk down the boat ramp and looked back at the marquee. Laughter filled the air, bunting swayed in the wind, the photobooth and pinata were going off. Chris turned around and said ‘I get it now, this was big, and everything came together and slotted in nicely, you aced it… I will never question your process again’. So this suit and new wife smiled ‘good, you have a lifetime ahead of spreadsheets, boxes and lists’.

So it just goes to show that process and the benefits of ‘the consistent thread’ and associated tools – are transferable to every day life. Why change something that is not broken? The proof is always in the pudding.

Getting over usability

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:09:39 +1300

Having recently returned from an international conference on Interaction Design in Dublin what struck me most was a sense that we in New Zealand still seem to be hung up on the whole ‘usability’ movement while the rest of the world has moved. This has been on my mind for some time, a sense that we’re putting too much emphasis on usability testing as a way to produce ‘user centred design’.

We at DNA have been challenging this over the past few years and introducing clients to the power of Design Research upfront as a way to ensure your project is heading in the right direction from the start rather than solely relying on rounds of usability testing down the track. This is not to say that usability testing isn’t useful, it’s absolutely a useful tool for validating design and solution choices made throughout the process, but what good is usability testing if you’re designing completely the wrong thing?

When given the opportunity to get out into the field and talk with our clients customers and users we’ve seen enormous benefits for our clients. These have come out of the insights and understanding gained including:

Greater connection and deeper understanding of their customers and users
More focused projects where decisions are made with confidence
Unearthing of different perspectives leading to new opportunities
An ability to better balance user needs, business drivers and IT constraints
Cohesive and collaborative client/agency teams where focus and priorities more clearly aligned

At Interaction12 where 750+ practitioners came to listen to 80+ talks, it was refreshing to see just how pervasive this way of working is amongst the rest of the world and I can only hope that as we continue to push ahead in this space we’ll start to see growth in research lead work here in New Zealand and the benefits that this brings to clients and their customers.

Consistency of service across partners

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:03:53 +1300

When a partner doesn’t deliver the same level of service your business can suffer as a result... My recent experience with booking a long haul flight to London with Air New Zealand and finding myself on sub 'Air New Zealand standard' partner flights between the US and London set my resolve to not fly with Air New Zealand again on a long haul route to UK or Europe.

There was nothing actually wrong with Air New Zealand itself and the experience on board their planes was good as usual. However I had paid ‘Air New Zealand’ prices and having booked with them I expected their level of customer experience across the whole journey. Unfortunately for them, their partners really let them down and I came away feeling disappointed and dissatisfied with Air New Zealand.

It may seem illogical that I should feel disappointed with Air New Zealand for their partners’ shortcomings, but when I think back across the entire experience from planning, to booking, to flying, I realised my disappointment stems from the fact that when booking the tickets, the Air New Zealand holiday shop agent didn’t inform me that I wouldn’t be flying with them the whole way. As a result my expectations were incorrectly set and I was also denied an opportunity to choose a different route to London where I would’ve been flying Air New Zealand the whole way.

When thinking about service design, it’s well worth considering beyond your own services and scrutinising partner or flow on services in order to understand the full picture for customers and mitigate any potential issues they may experience that could reflect negatively on your business.

Post-digital – what the?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:44:21 +1300

I'm always a little suspicious of such phrases and phases, are they truly the beginning of a new paradigm, or merely the sales driven twist to something current that an agency or channel guru has dreamt up. The latest term I've had throw at me of late is 'post digital'. So what is it and what is it not?

More than digital or after digital?

My first assumption was it meant 'after digital' – what's coming next. In reality it's merely a description of when digital grows up – well, in fact it should be more truly described as when we mature to include digital as a central part of the world we live in rather than a change agent or new toy. In reality then the idea seems to be that everything is now so integrated and multi-device, that digital has no real pulling power as a term or channel in its own right any longer. It seems to me that a more accurate description of the more assimilated-digital than actually post-digital.

Over time digital has just blended into our everyday life practices. 'Emergent technology' means there are now just more ways to get the interaction and interface between people, communities and commerce. The value exchange however between a business and a customer can now be anywhere anytime, and increasingly personalised. The challenge for business is to make sense of this and find a way to deliver it at a cost that is acceptable to you and your customers – ironically this may mean doing less.

The real challenge in this digital world still seems to be over-building (but that is another post altogether). So if post-digital is assimilated then what I expect as a consumer, a user and a viewer is something that is effortless to use, always available, reasonably priced (no not free necessarily), and most of all about me, for me and right for me. Is that too much to ask?

Clever Government?

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:47:50 +1300

It’s been a busy start to the new year for many of us and how come it's already March? We are winding out the financial year, looking forward to the next and in Wellington eagerly watching the manoeuvring around the Government’s planning for their new year and May’s budget. It’s no secret that significant change is on the way. The impetus to constrain Government spending is gaining momentum. But will the change be just brutal reductions reminiscent of Muldoon’s razor gangs of the early eighties – a 10% cut in every department – or something cleverer? Do our politicians have the vision and our public sector leaders the nouse to innovate rather than cut our way to a more effective public service?

We are hearing encouraging noises from the public sector itself – receptiveness to, interest in and even concrete plans for innovation in the way public service is delivered are clearly evident. And the opportunities are myriad. One example is Inland Revenue’s quest to get 95% of their transactions enacted online. Imagine the transaction volume and the quantum of system innovation necessary to get all but a very few trusting their tax to the online medium. I imagine that New Zealand would be one of the first jurisdictions in the world to achieve such a transformation. In the late eighties the Rogernomics inspired reform of the Government sector was similarly world leading and spawned a considerable export of our expertise to the world. The same opportunity exists now. Innovative ways to deliver more service with less cost would find a ready export market right now you’d think.

This sort of breakthrough though is tough, and requires a similarly innovative approach to the challenge of change. Going back to the Inland Revenue example, what will it actually take to change people’s well entrenched behaviours around their tax business? Whatever IT systems drive this, if they are not incredibly well grounded in the realities of life of the intended users they will fail. The challenge will be not so much to roll out the system – though that will be challenge enough – but to understand what the barriers are in the heads and hearts of the users and to imaginatively and realistically transcend those barriers. This will take some brave leadership, and dare I say some superb application of design problem solving. Let’s hope for all our sakes that this combination occurs in many departments.

Money is not the only currency

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:23:21 +1300

It's true. There exists a value exchange between business and customers which is not confined to money. People are willing to trade in other currencies of value, if only business would front up for the exchange.

Challenge your business to deconstruct the value exchange with your customers to find what else you can be trading with. In addition to price and cost, people value their time, their energy, their efforts and their psychological wellbeing. If you are smart, you will tune into the latter and start trading on them. Money will follow.

Some examples.

Macey's Backstage Pass exchanges instant expertise and advice for customer confidence and validation prior to purchase
Tesco barcode shopper exchanges a virtual shopping list for the assurance of a full cupboard and no forgotten items
A Tesco variant for the Korean market exchanges a whole virtual store which rebates people's time and energy

Want to gain advocacy and have people mention you on Twitter, post a review on MenuMania, Like you on Facebook, Pin it on Pinterest? Find out what you can exchange for their time and energy post service experience.

Like to gain loyalty without squeezing your profit margins? Employ the construct of Gamification to bring fun into the exchange. Foursquare successfully exchanges loyalty for play

Get out of the money obsession and start deconstructing the value exchange with your customers. Identify what they value, at what part of the service, and start offering it as currency in the value exchange.

If you believe usability is a fundamental value, see Charlene Turei's article, Getting Over Usability, to disrupt your thinking.

Sorting out New Zealand is a design job

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:41:21 +1300

At DNA we help organisations thrive by making sure that everything they do lines up with, and springs from, their essential nature It’s a design exercise sometimes labelled as branding, service design or customer experience design, but, labels aside, in principle it’s a simple process. Understand clearly the essence of the organisation, then design everything – the way it works, the products it makes, and the way it communicates, recruits and connects with its world – to reflect and reinforce that essence.

The brighter future we are promised will materialise only when we collectively earn a better living in the world. We need to export more and get paid better for what we export. And we need to do that in a world economy which looks shaky at best.

Analysing New Zealand the way we would analyse a client before starting work quickly identifies the problem. A lot of what of what we do is in conflict with our essence.

In the world we are known primarily for our magnificent and unspoilt environment; our unique and renascent Maori culture; and, to a lesser extent, our social and technical innovation. I think of this bundle of core assets as Arcadia plus Utopia, and most of what we sell in the world is essentially a product of these characteristics – clean safe food, sustainably produced timber, holidays in paradise and, peripherally, a number of innovative products and services. All these things carry with them the imprint of us and our country. In many respects, when we sell honey or merino clothing we are selling a little of the dream of New Zealand Aotearoa.

So if you were the Government, the right strategy – the one good designers would recommend – would support, encourage and require New Zealand businesses and government to align their activities with New Zealand’s essential nature – the Arcadia Utopia complex.

This strategy would

keep our wilderness wild and our environment clean
make sustainability a virtue
invest in and profit from the natural and growing diversity of our society
encourage entrepreneurism and technical innovation, especially when it supports and feeds off the above.

With this platform in place, our businesses will be better able to move upmarket, increase scale and earn us a better living. Then we could afford to educate our kids, keep them healthy and safe, stay healthy ourselves and support our elders.

The design strategy is obvious, but clearly the politics are more difficult. What we are going to get is potentially contrary to our essence: mining, irrigation, postponing emissions trading, losing control of vital bits of infrastructure, less rather than more social cohesion.

So, vote for design!

Who are these people?

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:27:10 +1200

At the end of the day it's not about the numbers. Not even about the conversions. Not about repeat visits. It's about depth. Sure a person may use your service a lot, but if they leave as soon as a rival pops up then their depth of commitment was low. Once you have an engaged customer it's not about telling them your hopes and dreams, it's about listening to theirs. Also while it's nice to hear your grand plans, I also want to know your past times, secrets, fears and embarassing cock-ups. Until then intimacy is still just surface level. If you want customers to flirt with you you're going to have to flirt with them and show them some leg. Not too much too soon though or you'll appear to be some co-dependant attention starved moron who loves long walks on the beach and would you like to move in with me?

When is self service going to get personal?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:05:04 +1300

The new appetite for self-service

It started out as an interview, but ended as Grenville Main and Hayden Vink having a conversation about trends in self service, and all sorts of other things along the way.

Gren

It seems to me that customers are innately cynical, and have a distinct view on value, both in cost terms and of their time – so what challenge does that set for businesses in coming to terms with using different channels, picking which channels to focus on and in adding to personalisation and self service in their offer?

Hayden

Well the best way of seeing this for me is to draw the gold rush analogy – everyone is in a frenzy to get in first and stake a claim, without knowing what the stakes are or what the cost is. I think self service is on the rise, definitely, but not enough people understand the consumer mindsets to pull this off well..

Gren

The gold rush analogy is actually really interesting, in the sense that there is a sense of rush on, because people want to get ahead and get the gains with customers that they think are there. However as opposed to a gold rush - where it's really clear what you are after, it's been proven to be there and you've just got to go and start digging and you know you're bound to find it sooner or later - the thing with multi-channel is actually, what's the gold? I don't think people have actually figured out what it is, what's nirvana, what's the ideal outcome/destination/benefit? The problem here is you might turn up to the goldrush and find you're a bit late, and you might not get the best part of the river.

Hayden

Yes, we've got more technology, more channel options coming in to play, lots of whizzy toys you can build better experiences with - and just think, if you could integrate all your channels, well, wouldn't that be good. The trouble is, no-one’s really clear on the 'science' of how to actually make all of that work for the customer.

Gren

How many examples do you actually see of this working?

Hayden

Powershop is a great one, you can actually get some unique benefit that many, many customers are quite intrigued by, but it doesn’t seem to bother them that they have to do a bit of work to be in control and save some money. Also at New World supermarkets they have recently launched the notion of the express checkout: self service. In my experience - if it's less than ten items then it’s great, but it's early days and not clear yet in consumers’ minds that anything over ten items is a pain, and you need to choose the right solution at the right time.

Gren

And I know we have discussed before the Air New Zealand self-serve analogy - I like the notion of being in control, choosing when I fly, where I sit and all of that. I can save myself a whole bunch of time and see what deals are there. But sometimes it can take you a few minutes to do the whole booking, and actually I've just done a whole bunch of work. Sure, I’m in now in control of my experience a lot more, but by the same token I have to do a whole lot of work from end to end, and at the airport as well. Now that's something we've actually all adopted and adapted to quite rapidly, because somehow the airlines have sold it to us that we have little or no choice, that it’s something we have to do because they've had to save money in order to save themselves… Or maybe it’s just as simple as - sometimes to get what you want, you actually have to take control and do a bit of the work yourself.

Hayden

It's probably the latter, isn't it?

Gren

Yeah, it's probably the latter. And maybe that’s the thing – when you’re looking at multiple channels, I think businesses are concerned with trying to make things easier and simpler for the customer so they can save money for themselves and so more customers will spend money with them - but they’re too hesitant to actually confront the reality - that actually, if consumers want control, if people want to be able to do it themselves, then they’re going to actually have to do a bit of the work. It’s another example of us being in a cotton wool society. If self service is to be the ‘gold’ in all of this - that consumers get a personalised, tailored experience - businesses maybe just need to be a bit more frank and open and say yes you can do it, but that it is actually down to you to do it, or we may even charge you for the ability to do it.

Hayden

OK, so the key ingredients for good self service from business point of view are obviously cost savings; and certainly with online channels and the web, businesses can save money by serving people at a lower cost. But people realise that it’s cheaper for Air New Zealand for example to have online ticketing, or that it suits the bank if you use internet banking, so the success factor needs to be that it actually offers the customer something that they couldn’t get in the traditional channels. It either saves them time or money and ultimately giving them ultra-personal customer experience that acknowledges who they are and how much business they’ve done. So back to Air New Zealand customers - they’re prepared to put up with buying their own seats because they’ll save time, money and have a degree of transparency and perceived choice.

Gren

The Bank/Airline analogy is interesting - we seem to be in a transition zone. We’re not quite in the future state of total self-service that’s completely smooth, personalised and integrated yet. The intriguing thing around the airline self-service notion is that the benefits of self service are not just that it’s tailored , but that it’s actually starting to give customers the ability to make better judgements about what they really need and it’s putting them in control of deciding what they do and don’t value. How much is that the real driver of the change we have seen, and do businesses understand that?

Hayden

I think that level of understanding probably isn’t so widespread at the moment. But it is changing...

Gren

It seems to be more the way many businesses are starting to pitch it to customers now – ‘you decide’, but if you go back a few years self-service was really all only about cost-saving.

Hayden

Like buying movie tickets online. That used to be purely a transactional experience, another way to buy your tickets, so merely a different channel option. There was no cost saving there. But recently - and you can see this at present with Avatar: 3D coming out - you realise that if you want to go and see it at a time you want to go and see it, you actually have to book online, because if you don’t then by the time you get there it’s sold out and you’ve missed out.

Gren

So it comes back, not just to value, but also to access. What you value, what you are prepared to pay, when you want to go to the movie, the premium for ‘reserving your place’ is about early access and being organised. So now when you book online it is surely more than just that you don’t want to miss out...it’s that you want to tailor your experience and consumers know that just cause the theatre is open you can’t always get what you want.

Hayden

Yes, and additionally it suddenly opens a lot of options for the theatre, they can offer you preferential seating at a price or reward you with that for loyalty and all of that.

Gren

Ah, loyalty. I often wonder, as a consumer, do I really need all of that? Is it just because everyone else is offering that so I’ve come to expect it? I think a more interesting question is whether you think consumer loyalty is affected by the ability to self serve and to personalise transactions.

Hayden

In terms of brand or the personal relationship a consumer has with a business - then yes, it is affected. Because the offer of self-service should be something you’re doing for the consumer, you’re giving them a benefit and they like you more because you’re giving them control and making things easier and/or cheaper for them; you’re adding value.

Gren:

Ironically though, the more you allow customers to self-serve, the less opportunity you have to deliver value through the physical, people-based customer service side - in the case of a bank or airline. Do you think that because the customer is actually more independent that they are therefore likely to be less loyal to you?

Hayden

I think that’s the other side of the equation. The more you invest in self-service and let customers do more of the work, the more you need to invest in the customer service too. Because when they do need to make contact, you need to offer them mind-blowing service to earn and retain that loyalty.

Gren

Why have we not seen more tiered service offerings being introduced then, from express to standard to premium? Technology is a cost-saver – but you suggest that after the initial investment, you actually need to spend more on your people and training. Surely the question then becomes: through technology in the longer term - rather than cost-saving, you’re adding cost?

Hayden

Yes – and you may be. But it’s required for a lot of things. For example, eighty percent of the time if you book your movie tickets and your flights online it’s all fine, but in some cases things will change at the last minute, and that’s where you need personal service – and you expect it to be good. You need a level of human input because it’s still a few years before a computer can deliver those really complex transactions in assuredly human ways when you as a customer may be a bit stressed out.

Gren

So is the customer’s mindset currently where it needs to be - are they educated about what they can expect in terms of service? Or have customers just got lazy, knowing that so many businesses ‘love them’ and want them? Do they now have to re-set what they value, and what they’re prepared to pay and do?

Hayden

I think the starting point would have to be to really know and understand the customer. There are a few people talking about it, but if you really scratch the surface, it’s hard to find companies who actually do understand their customers at the level that’s required to understand the ‘service ecosystem’.

Gren

I think that’s a valid point - we do currently inhabit an ecosystem when we choose a company, a product or service, but there are lots of parts of the ecosystem that customers have been allowed to disregard. The classic Wal-Mart criticism is that they have patterned their customers to consider cost at the expense of understanding value. So, maybe self service is like this – it may be huge for some customers, but not for all of them. Maybe there’ll never be the ability to serve all of your customers in that way, all the time.

Hayden

A business needs to step back and see what exists currently, then through understanding customer goals and needs, seeing what parts actually make the best sense for the business (like where to differentiate or save money) but also at what will offer the customer things you couldn’t offer in the past or thorough traditional channels.

Gren

So we’re back to talking about degrees of service: standard, conventional, enhanced, etc.

Hayden

Yes. It’s that continuum – on one end purely transactional, and on the other end premium/complex. And those customers at that end are prepared to pay more and obviously they expect more. But there will always be customers who fit on both ends.

Gren

Let’s go to other examples; say in an FMCG context, how do you validate the virtues of self service?

Hayden

Well at a basic level, you can serve more people, potentially in a way that suits them better, but only some of the time. If you have over 10 items in the supermarket, then self-serve starts to be a bad option. All I get to save is time, which is not bad, but...

Gren

Is time not a big enough lure in itself? In this case perhaps the challenge here is that it’s about the transaction rather than the product you are actually seeking. Even an airline in a way is a fairly transactional thing for most people – getting from A to B. Or with banking, you just want your money to go from one account to another account. But the self-service component is not fully replacing the whole service – you still need to take the flight, you still need a bank account. You still need the end product.

Hayden

Regardless of whether it’s self-service or not, you can still have systems in place to recognise your customers personally. In the old days you had the local mechanic who serviced all the customers in the local area, he knew them all personally, but he could only have so many customers. Now you can have more customers, but it’s more of a challenge to actually get to know them all personally.

Gren

As a customer, when I do get my car serviced, nowadays I expect you to have all the required information about me and my motor. To what extent does personalisation of information play a role then as opposed to the conventional idea of personalisation?

Hayden

As long as you have systems in place to manage the data you have, you can get that information and turn it back into something that will help to improve the service you provide. And all businesses should do that.

Gren

So all this information a business has about customers now, what does this lead the majority of customers to think? Will they look for fewer businesses that will do more for them - and consequently expect better, more personal service - or will they just start lapping up and loving the raft of choices, and maybe deciding that true control for them is about keeping a degree of distance and keeping a smaller footprint with many businesses?

Hayden

That’s the paradox. Because when it comes down to it, we’re creatures of habit. People are still onto their fourth or fifth Toyota because that’s what they’re used to – whether this model is better, whether that service experience was good or bad. We don’t make brand decisions that lightly, and it’s amazing how much goodwill some customers will extend.

Gren

As a business then, you probably just need to work on some sort of criteria for value or choice that makes sense in customer terms.

Hayden

It’s not that simple - probably it’s looking at what more you can do for customers that will bring the most return for both sides. The novelty of self-service can wear off. When you’re at the supermarket you may think at first, hey great, I can bypass the traditional checkout and do this myself, but then you realise that it’s actually pretty tedious and you may go back to the regular one anyway just because it’s not actually saving you any money, and maybe it’s too much effort. For many businesses, consumers are cynical about their motivations.

Gren

Therefore any business has to ask itself, “Are we introducing this because it’s good for us, or good for our customers too?”

Is 'below the line' simply a pejorative?

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:56:20 +1300

I have been wondering for a while about the genesis of the term ‘above the line’ to describe mass media advertising – and its corollary, ‘below the line’, for everything else.

A little bit of online research hasn’t unearthed the source, other than to clarify its association with the same term used in financials. And that’s fascinating. In financial vernacular, the line separates where you make your money from where you spend it – and guess what – above the line is where you make money.

Business managers understand the difference between investments and costs, and what that means: maximise the return on the former and minimise the latter. It’s not absolute, but the things to invest in are mostly found above the line and the costs to minimise are found below it.

I imagine some ‘Mad Men’-style advertising executive in the youth of the TV age creating this cunning plan to elevate the importance of mass media advertising by simply associating it with investments (rather than costs) through labelling it ‘above the line’. And gosh, it’s worked rather well. The whole industry still uses the term.

If ‘above the line’ is still broadly, if unconsciously, understood in these terms, then calling ourselves ‘below the line’ can be seen as pejorative. Perhaps we should stop doing it. We want to promote an integrated and interactive connection with customers, so we should consider using a more powerful and less reverential term to describe it.

The most successful change campaigns take control of the language – it’s a powerful tool.

Water makes its way to the sea

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:04:50 +1300

Avoiding unplanned online/offline collisions

If an unplanned online/offline collision happens, then the incident report can only cite the business or its agency as the cause.

Online/offline collisions occur when a business is channel focussed rather than customer focussed. Dividing a company into delivery channels ensures budgets, resources and key outcomes are neatly bounded and accountable. However, in all efficient practices the distinctions are artificial. The reality is each channel eventually converges at the point of the customer.

The bigger the company, the more siloed its delivery channels and the more likely a blindsided collision will occur. To avoid these kinds of the collision, the focus must shift from being inward to seeing with the customer’s viewpoint. It’s the customer (i.e. what they’re looking for and what will suit them best) who should determine the shape channel delivery.

Just because you can, does not mean you should. Take the supermarket with its beautiful LED touchscreen informing you of the specials and recipe ideas to go with it – just when you’ve queued for 15 minutes with the kids in tow and the parking meter is about to expire. The shopper’s goal at this point is to feel efficient and complete the shop as fast as possible. In this context the LED screen experience can only be one of irritation. Most definitely not what the supermarket intended. A channel/customer collision occurred because the focus wasn’t on the customer.

In essence, an online or offline channel is an end solution. Digital touchscreens, txt promotions, price comparison sites, shopping list apps, ingredient origin trackers, virtual mannequins, GPS store locators, RFID shopper identifiers, self scanning and check out…. these should only exist because the are a solution to a shopper’s goal. A shopper has two types of goals. An experiential goal is how they wish to feel, such as stimulated, proficient, successful or popular. A task goal is what they wish to achieve, such as finding the right shoes to go with the dress, learning about stereo systems, or locating a value of money fishing rod. In reality the shopper is actually channel agnostic. If the solution fulfils their goal, all is well in their world. There are no irritants, no collisions.

One way to derive empathy for the shopper’s goals is to go with them through their shopping journey. The optimal journey from a shopper perspective is one which seamlessly meets their goals and just happens, everything just falls into place. Cognitive Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who was instrumental in teasing out the holy grail of happiness, describes this feeling as a State of Flow.

Just like water making its way to the sea, people take the path of least resistance to reach their goals. A state of flow along the retail journey is achieved by offering the shopper the right path (channel) in the right way at the right time. In essence, the channels are synchronised with the shoppers experiential and task goals.

Taking the shopping journey with a retailer many of us have experienced - The Warehouse - it becomes obvious where the synchronisation occurs. The goal of many a Warehouse shopper is finding and purchasing a ‘value for money’ item. Woven into this task goal is the experiential goal of the thrill of the find - the act of finding. I know families who can lose themselves, and each other, for whole afternoons smooching around the proverbial Aladdin’s Cave.

Let’s take a look at some common shopper goals and experiences in this context: Looking at this we can begin to see the multitude of solutions to shopper’s goals, and more importantly, how they can work together enabling a state of flow. In this context the online and offline division is meaningless to the shopper, as long as their goals are realised in a seamless manner.

Selecting which solutions to offer is an exercise in prioritisation by the business. If they are smart this prioritisation is weighted on building the long term ‘desired’ brand experience, rather than meeting short term resource availability. In doing this the skill lies in determining where the harmonies sit.

Some solutions, such as access to real time stock management, are able to satisfy goals at differing journey stages. Efficiency goals of the Transact phase tend to suggest the online channel, which excels in process and information management.

And finally, an important thing to remember - we are not all digital natives, surrounded by an ecosystem of digital hardware and online knowhow. Keep your eye firmly on your customer’s goals and hopefully you’ll never need to write an incident report about an online/offline collision.

Social Media and Commercial Intimacy

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:16:41 +1200

Social media was, as its name suggests, envisaged as a phenomenon of the social rather than commercial sphere. The frenetic adoption of social media for commercial ends belies that vision. But as an immature medium (or at least a still rapidly evolving one) the end, or mature state is not yet clear. So far the bulk of corporate and commercial use of social media seems to treat it as just another channel.

In reality it’s potential to turn the tables on big, one direction marketing is enormous. The interpersonal networks that social media supercharge have enormous, latent commercial clout. Any brand or service that performs well or poorly can and will be instantly outed, for good or ill. What is emerging is a hugely powerful, instant and pervasive referral system. This sort of power in the hands of consumers is new – we are picking it will be a powerful driver towards more personalisation and to greater brand integrity.

Self Service and Commercial Intimacy

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:16:06 +1200

The ability to access products and services without requiring personal assistance is a relatively new phenomenon. In the bricks and mortar world the first example was probably the supermarket. Since then internet and kiosk based versions have revolutionised the retail environment and beyond. Everything from government information through banking, travel, groceries right through to pornography can be accessed privately and without help.

Perversely, this lessening of person to person contact is a powerful driving force for greater personalisation of service. For a start the ability to capture, store and process data from the digital interface is much greater than from the face to face encounter. Data underpins the ability to tailor offers to personal preferences and needs. Secondly reducing the number of face to face contacts, and consequently the staffing required to support those, allows suppliers to employ fewer service people but of a much higher quality thereby improving the service, whilst reducing its cost.

Loyalty and Commercial Intimacy

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:11:33 +1200

Loyalty schemes have for many years been part of our purchasing experience. But their pervasiveness and standardised blandness may force radical change.

When computing power makes it possible to differentiate and track individuals and their patterns, it will be possible also to customise rewards. By the time that level of personal responsiveness is the norm, the loyalty scheme will probably be an integrated part of the sales interface. Some loyalty schemes are already moving towards this future – is yours?

Data Collection and Commercial Intimacy

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:00:47 +1200

The deployment of information and communication technology in our lives creates huge amounts of data about our movements, preferences, health, wealth, habits and more. Much of this data is collected and stored sometimes with, and sometimes without our consent. Much of the data collected is used by various organisations to better tune the products and services they offer to us. The potential to collect data will increase over time as technology becomes both more capacious and ever-present. This will make it more and more possible for organisations to use that data to more and more personalise their offers and their service.

Before this can develop to a stage that makes truly individual service the norm, issues of data ownership and access will need to be resolved. For commercial intimacy to be realised in all its glory and potency the data used to personalise the engagement will need to be of a depth and intimacy best gathered with consent.

Equally the organisations most likely to gain that consent and the consequent access to powerful personal data are those who have earned the trust that consent is based on.

Customisation and Commercial Intimacy

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:02:36 +1200

More and more the offers put to us have been in some way tailored to what the supplier perceives as our particular tastes and needs. Some such offers are pertinent and others laughably inept.

As this sort of tailoring becomes ubiquitous it loses its competitive edge, driving the leaders in the field to further refine and deepen the degree of personalisation in their offers. In this way the practice becomes both more pervasive and more acute. Add in increasing power to collect and process personal data and it’s easy to see this trend accelerating. At some point on this progression the pertinence, timeliness, and allure of the offer itself will rank alongside the quality of the product or service and cost in the decision to purchase – or not.

Branding is dead. Long live the brand!

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:30:45 +1200

I’d suggest that alot of what I do as Strategy Director at DNA is customer experience design. Simplistically if you design and deliver customer experiences you are branding.

“Brand” is all the past, present and future associations about an organisation that have some value in the eyes of the customer.

“Branding” is designing, building and operating everything in the present thereby creating positive memories and valuable future promises.

Customer experience is the interaction between a person and a business at any number of touchpoints. If you design and deliver customer experiences you are branding. So they are one and the same or another term for the same thing.

The problem with this thinking is that it is completely wrong.

Here are some quite revealing stats I came across when prepping for a presentation at the Customer Experience Management conference last week:

From Bruce Temkin: 90% of senior executive respondents think that customer experience is very important or critical to their strategy and 80% want to use customer experience as a form of differentiation.
From Fournaise: 75% of all CEOs believe marketers lack credibility and 77% feel that despite marketers talking about brand, brand values, brand equity and other similar parameters, top management has difficulties linking it back to results that really matter: revenues, sales and even market valuation. 67% think that unlike CFOs and Sales, marketers don’t think enough like businesspeople: they focus too much on the creative, “arty” and “fluffy” side of marketing and not enough on its business science, and rely too much on their ad agencies to come up with the next big idea

So, customer experience is real observable interactions between the business and people, quantifiable, meaningful, impactful and business-like. Branding is a misnomer generally confused with logo design and advertising, controlling aesthetics, form and communication.

Clearly there are big perception problems with brand and branding and people who undertake this in the mind of senior executives who allocate scarce resources in organisations.

How do we (marketers and brand designers and builders) secure a share of scarce resources to design and deliver a strong branded experience? How do we get experiences that are ‘brand-led’? How does the customer experience create brand equity and value?

Here are five tips to consider to make headway against this issue:

Rethink the concept and execution of brand and marketing in the organization
Do better brand visioning that helps and leads customer experience design
Really truly engage the employees at the frontline
Rethink the hard numbers around brand
Shoot the mule which is “branding”!

For more on this check out McKinsey Quarterly for an article on the future of branding and then give us a call and we’ll take you through the full presentation I made to the Customer Experience Management conference.

Everyone has baggage

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:00:14 +1200

In fact we had bag-loads courtesy of my fiancés desire to pack for every conceivable occasion as we arrived at a prominent hotel in Hong Kong. Despite the luggage challenge, I was excited about the prospect of staying at a hotel that was about 3 stars above my usual station. Armed with confidence given this hotel rated highly in its star category, the last minute website deal that gave us an attractive rate, the positive guest review comments posted, not to mention the free upgrade voucher to a suite – my expectations were high. And this hotel delivered – the sweet scented foyer was grand, the front line staff were friendly and attentive, the room was beautiful with more technology than I knew what to do with, the roof top pool had exceptional views, alluring bars, quality restaurants, cigar rooms, spa facilities and the list goes on.

But in a field where a 5-6 star rating suggests a place is ‘top class’ – how do you rate one ‘exceptional’ hotel from another? Does price set the expectation or is it the comfort of the bed, the size of the television, the proximity of its location or the depth of the mini bar that wins us over? Is it the ‘grandness’ of the foyer or genuineness of the smile that greets you? The balance of such expectations are of course essential, but what is to say a five star hotel down the road would not deliver an equally impressive experience? It’s the little things you may say, but how do you define what they are?

Once I was able to overcome the challenge of trying to suppress the child-like excitement of checking out the hotel facilities so as to suggest to other guests that I was used to such extravagance, I started to pay more attention to the small things. First port of call was to offload some of these bags that were dominating the impressive floor of our suite. As we placed some of our luggage in storage the hotel baggage ticket read ‘EVERYONE HAS BAGGAGE’. I chuckled thinking how those three words reassured me that I am not the only one having to manage such excess.

We then looked to venture out into the city and came to the realisation that we would need firstly a map and then translate to our cab driver where we needed to go. The concierge of course negotiated the deal at the door, but handed me a card that read ‘TAKE ME’ with tick boxes to various locations around Hong Kong with a return to sender detail – essential for late night return. The free hotel umbrellas were also a welcome touch in case of the inclement rain forecast.

On return to the hotel room, a drink was required. Not brave enough to usually pay for anything from a mini bar, it was impossible to resist at least a look – to which the card inside read ‘DON’T WORRY WE WON’T TELL ANYONE’ possibly playing on the regular corporate rule of it being a no-go zone. The next morning breakfast was of course exceptional, but as I waited a ruthlessly efficient 2 minutes for my coffee I noticed my place mat had the top news headlines from every major source for that day, the weather forecast and currency movements. I marvelled at how the hotel knew that I might have 2 minutes of downtime that needed satisfying.

It seemed that every conceivable thought I had at the hotel had been covered before I knew I needed it. In fact it became a treasure hunt of enjoyment (get out more I hear you say...) as I opened cupboards within the room awaiting a smart note – from the ‘CLEAN ME’ label on the dry cleaning bag, the ‘NOTE TO ME’ on the stationary, to the ‘READ ME’ on the daily newspaper sleeve or the ‘CONNECT ME’ information pack as to how to use the technology in the suite. The most favoured was what I found when I went to plunder the rich bevy of bathroom products on check out which read ‘CHECK OUT THESE GOODIES’. They even knew I intended to knick the soaps...

The question is often asked how an organisation in a generic category can differentiate itself from its competition and deliver an exceptional customer experience? The small things that count are those that are anticipated before your customers know they are needed. It was clear that this hotel had anticipated its customer needs across every conceivable touch point. Everyone has baggage and is looking to engage in an organisation’s product or service in which to address their requirements. Anticipate customer needs and deliver them in a manner that will delight to build greater loyalty.

‘LIKE ME?’ the hotel questioned on the survey – bloody long time. And I will be return as a consequence.

Heart on your sleeve or in your pocket?

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:22:35 +1200

Like never before, customers are being exposed to the head and heart of the businesses they buy from – or at least the market’s view of it – thanks to the proliferation of communications channels that give equal voice to an individual and an organisation. Beyond specifications or pricing detail of a product, potential buyers are faced with weighing up the opinions of other customers on any manner of related subject – not least the ethics, corporate citizenship, legal history, financial integrity – of the organisation they’re looking to purchase from. The backlash on Adidas by Polish graffiti artists and formation of the Adisucks facebook page is a fantastic example.

All well and good we say – power to those who invest in a clear corporate conscience. Transparency and openness is a good thing.

But the longer term implications are worth pondering. Does the threat of ambush by the masses really encourage greater integrity by corporates – or does it simply stifle innovation and limit boundary pushing? Worse still, does it actually perpetuate a greater propensity for guarded, whitewashed communications by organisations to avoid a social media headache?

Turn a deaf ear to the roar of the crowd at your peril

Thu, 26 May 2011 15:33:08 +1200

OK. So Wellington has an international reputation as a film destination (quite apart from everything else that's wonderful about the city), and it's perhaps a useful thing to highlight and raise with visitors flying into the city (well at least those sitting in a window seat on the left hand side of a plane landing in a Southerly). To keep pushing a concept that is quite frankly insulting to all our collective creative intelligence is quite one thing. To ignore the outrage of the populous is quite another.

Place branding is one part the physical location, another part the people who live there, make up the culture and contribute to the local economy. The Airport company seem to lack an understanding of what place-branding is all about. (According to them we're also aparently 'Wild at Heart' which I don't actually mind.) They said they opened this up to the public, to get their ideas, and got diddly-squat back. But what was the forum, the brief?

Come on, really, Wellington is held up as the creative hub of the country, and we can't come up with something more original? This is a PR opportunity waiting to be milked. An open transparent competition that's well publicised would actually do a lot of good. It would seem, however, that those sitting around the table are determined to push ahead and argue that it's all just a little too late. The fact that they aren't listening to what would seem the majority, that the idea is unoriginal, that the idea is already subject to some kind of trademark, that the threat of vandalism hangs over any planned installation should really smack this one between their ears.