January 28, 2015 · 11:40 am

Expecting Epic, Experiencing Normal

Those of you outside of the northeastern US may have heard that we had a little snow storm here the other day. I got a call from one of my Canadian pals who was inquiring about the devastation foisted upon my home and family. After all, there was virtually no pre-storm shrieking before Buffalo received 8 feet of snow and since CNN had gone wall to wall with blizzard coverage, what was about to hit NYC, Boston, and elsewhere MUST be truly epic.

National Weather Service Caption "Two fee...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not so much.

When I told him that Rancho Deluxe had received barely a foot and the winds were quite a bit less than the hurricane forces many had predicted, he laughed and said “Yeah, up here we call that winter.” I laughed but a business thought popped into my head at the same time.

The nonstop weather warnings, the closure of mass transit and highways, the empty shelves at every supermarket in town all served to set expectations. When the all-time blizzard turned into a large but not record snow event, those expectations were not met. That was fine with me – better safe than sorry. A number of people, however, were actually angry and a meteorologist with the National Weather Service even took to Twitter to apologize for raising expectations and getting it wrong.

The business point is pretty obvious. Overselling and under delivering always means problems. All of us in business need to be careful about how we set expectations and err on the side of caution.  We all go to the airport these days expecting 45 minutes in the security line, a flight on which we’re packed in like cattle, and delays, delays, delays.  Our expectations are so low that when things are actually OK we think it was a great flight.  When our fast-food sandwich looks nothing like the poster hanging on the wall, we shrug our shoulders and eat – who expected anything more?

Your business shouldn’t cause customers to think that their experience with your brand will suck but neither should they believe that what they are about to receive will be the blizzard of 2015.  You need to set realistic expectations and over deliver on them.  If they walk away thinking they got a good value, even if they paid top dollar, everyone wins.  If not, you’ll spend a lot of time digging yourself out, much as we were doing yesterday.  Make sense?

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January 27, 2015 · 4:07 pm

Trust These Numbers

The folks at Edelman are out with their latest Trust Barometer and the results are interesting. Of course, one can ask “why are they important?” As the study’s sponsors put it:

Trust is a forward-facing metric of stakeholder expectation. It is an asset that institutions must understand and properly build in order to be successful in today’s complex world.

I agree. So what did they find?

The study surveyed 6,000 “informed publics” aged 25-64 across 27 markets, finding that online search engines are now the most trusted source of general news. Search also widened its lead over newspapers and TV as the first source for general information and the source used by most to confirm and validate news.

In other words, what you and I might consider as traditional media sources of news and information have fallen behind search engines.  Not surprising in some ways since the “always on” version of traditional media is skewed one way or another with respect to how things are reported. The issue with search is “garbage in – garbage out“.  While algorithms tend to give more weight to “credible” sources such as the same traditional media outlets we might discount on other platforms, many of the highly read digital sources pop up on search engine result pages on an equal footing.  The obvious issue is that many of the newer outlets offer as much quality control as a blind man in a paint factory.

That said, once you become a source, you stay there:

  • Friends and family (72%) and academic experts (70%) are the most trusted sources of information consumed by informed publics on social networking sites, content sharing sites, and online-only information sources. Informed publics are almost twice as likely to trust content created by companies they use (60%) as content from brands they don’t use (32%).
  • 8 in 10 informed publics have chosen to buy products and services from a company they trust during the past year, and 68% have recommended them to a friend or colleague.

So whom do you trust?  More importantly, what are you doing to cultivate trust among your stakeholders?

 

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January 23, 2015 · 11:28 am

Mr. Kanso

Foodie Friday, and today we have something a little on the weird side.  It’s a chain of “restaurants” (you’ll see why I’m using quotes in a second) in Japan called Mr. Kanso.  The first one opened in Osaka in 2002 and became so successful that it now has 17 other locations across Japan.  This is a pretty good summary of the business:

Mr. Kanso has no menus, only shelves stacked with hundreds of different types of canned food from across the globe. Customers choose from such delicacies as “Todo niku kare” (sealion curry), canned cocktail sausages, French salad, and whale meat (tut tut, Mr. Kanso) – all served cold in a can and gobbled up with plastic cutlery.

That’s right – diners visit Mr. Kanso and select their food from a shelf.  It’s not heated up, just opened.  As best I can determine, these are not the same cans one can find in a market.  All of them have a Mr. Kanso label so I’m assuming the chain has them made to their specifications.  I don’t get it from a consumer perspective although I guess if the contents of the cans are really yummy it makes a bit more sense.  Honestly, Hokkaido bear curry isn’t really my can of tea but apparently it’s the variety that keeps customers coming back for more.  There is, however an interesting business point here.

Think about it.  No cooking means no kitchen and no cooks.  The start-up costs are substantially lower than those of a regular restaurant.  The food doesn’t spoil, at least not in days or weeks.  The food is reasonably priced – drinks run about $5 and the cans cost between $2 and $20 (I’m not sure what that one contains) and the margins must be excellent.  The cutlery gets thrown away so no dishwashers.  In short, it’s a low investment cost, high margin business.  As long as the appeal is there, and it certainly seems to be, this is exactly the sort of model any of us can emulate.

Honestly, if a Mr. Kanso came to my town I’d probably go check it out.  Reasonably-priced food with an amazing selection has some appeal even if the dining experience has less.  The business appeal, however, is first-rate.  Thoughts?

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