Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

September 18, 2013 · 10:30 am

Where’s The Wow?

Who remembers Clara Peller? She’s the “where’s the beef” lady from the Wendy’s commercials.

The picture sleeve of a "Where's the beef...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think of her from time to time – well, maybe not of her but of the question she asks. I think of it a little differently, however, as you can probably tell from the title of today’s screed. Let me explain.

20 years ago, Tom Peters started his book “The Pursuit of Wow” with ”Being average has never had much appeal.”  If anything, I think that’s more true today given the explosion in choices customers have.  In addition, businesses have much less control over the information consumers receive about their brand, and word of mouth, according to a recent study by Nielsen, carries more weight than the company’s information anyway. I think it’s just as much about “wow” than it is about “what.”  The latter is the questions potential customers ask about your brand, your product, and your customer service.  The former is what gets them coming back and telling their friends (earned media as it’s fashionably called these days…).

So what is wow?  To me it’s understanding and setting customer expectations before they get there and exceeding them on a consistent basis.  You do this via data and through monitoring the various media channels, especially social.  Brands that are proactive in reaching out to unhappy customers via social channels and fixing the problem post-haste is one example.  Encouraging happy customers to post accurate reviews is another way (they shouldn’t over-promise on your behalf – that’s not helpful!).  Your challenge is to deliver beyond those expectations on a consistent basis.

When you promise to get a repair person someplace, they need to be there on time.  When you promise to deliver a product – say high-speed internet – it’s not good enough for the product to be fast – it needs to exceed the level of speed you promised.  I was promised some coupons from a brand that did a great job of proactively reaching out after a negative tweet from me.  That was a month ago, I don’t have anything, and now the positive experience is turning negative again – the “wow” is gone.

Wow doesn’t need to be overwhelming.  A great sunset is a wow, as is a quiet afternoon.  They’re subtile but they stand out because they exceed our expectations developed over the many other similar experiences we’ve had (a smoggy, cloudy evening sunset or an afternoon filled with the daily noise that makes us all a little nuts).  By stepping back and asking ourselves “where’s the wow” we become better businesses.  Agreed?

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September 17, 2013 · 10:13 am

Our Own Private Idahos

Happy TunesDay!  For our musical subject today, let’s listen to the B52’s.  It’s OK to get up and dance – I’ll wait:

I got to thinking about that phrase and our own private Idaho‘s the other day.  On one level it’s about someone who is wrapped up in their own narrow frame of reference.  They create their own little world and exclude anything outside of its borders.  Maybe that thinking was what inspired yesterday’s post on TV and social.  I do know that it was a bit of synchronicity (not the song!) when I came across an article in the NY Times magazine about popularity that made the point about the continuing segmentation of culture very well.

The piece, entitled What It Means to Be Popular (When Everything Is Popular) sums it up well:

This refraction of the culture into ever-smaller slivers leaves us instinctively with a sense of something lost. Once we listened to the same song together, watched the same show together, argued over the same movies together. Now we’re each focused on our own screen, listening to our own playlist, we’re bowling alone, etc. A landscape that once featured a few unavoidable monoliths of popularity is now dotted with a multitude of lesser monuments, too many to keep track of, let alone celebrate.

I think this creates opportunities for those of us in business along with the obvious difficulties, the ability to scale being the largest problem.   Perhaps we need to be thinking about deep engagement in a series of micro-audiences as opposed to the mass reach everyone seems to desire?  Rather than thinking about going viral (which to me is top-down thinking), maybe we should recognize that there are too many different Idaho’s for that to occur with any regularity and focus instead in creating something for several of them which each of them can serve within their own borders (bottom-up).

When I was a kid there were three television networks and the roster of programs was pretty limited.  The lowest rated shows then would be huge hits now.  That’s not a function of their quality, it’s just that there weren’t any other choices.  Today’s choices are unlimited. “Popular” means someone – anyone – is paying attention.  We need to run our businesses around that definition of popular and build a business model that works, throwing away “old” models in the process.

You with me?

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September 5, 2013 · 8:34 am

Shana Tova Time Again!

A shofar made from a ram's horn is traditional...

A shofar made from a ram’s horn is traditionally blown in observance of Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish civic year. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy New Year!  I’m thinking about making this post an annual thing.  I know I don’t often repeat content but as I was thinking about what to write as Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, I went back and checked out another post I wrote on the topic.  It seems to cover it pretty well, so I’m posting it again (in case it seems at all familiar as you read!).

Last night marked the start of the Jewish New Year.  I didn’t go down to Times Square to see if they were dropping a giant knish at the stroke of sundown – probably not.  L’Shana Tova – a happy and healthy New Year to all of you.

One of the things Jews do over the next 10 days (or at least are supposed to do) is to reflect on the year gone by and think about where it took you on life’s journey.  It’s not really as much about looking back in my mind as it is about looking forward.  Oh sure, one is supposed to think about where one strayed from life’s path in terms of dealing with other humans and human codes of conduct.  We get a day of fasting next week to get that sorted out.  But it’s also a time to think about a fresh start.  Which, of course, promoted a business thought.

When do businesses stop and enter a period of reflection?  It’s obvious when they’re changing – witness Facebook last week – but I, for one, certainly wonder sometimes if those changes happen due to the momentum of previous (maybe not so good) decisions or if they’re the result of a pause, some reflection, and a willful thought by the entire organization as to the direction.  Often, I fear, it’s the former.

Jews are to use the next ten days for reflection and repentance.  I like to think of them as ten days of self-improvement.  I’d also suggest that it would do many businesses a lot of good to build the same sort of period into their corporate calendars.  Some do – they call it the budget process – but I think that’s too selective in terms of participants and goals to do much good.  Some smart CEO needs to declare it New Year’s Day for the company once a year and get everyone to do the same sort of professional reflection that many of us do on the personal side.  Identify your sins (figuratively speaking) and atone.  Faulty customer service, weak brand identity, bad employee relations, products that aren’t optimal, fostering an atmosphere of fear – these are all good places to start.

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