Be a farmer and spread your brand seeds

When a customer comes into contact with your brand they take away a part of it in the form of a seed. Is this seed remarkable, the message will spread. Is the customer a close connection to your brand, the message will spread.

I just re-stumbled over a note by Scott over at Scottgould.me. I have always liked Scott's approach and am always spurred to think differently when reading his posts. Definitely read his writings. A few months ago Scott wrote a piece following the likeminds conference about the spreadability of situations, concepts, anything  basically.  

1. There will be failure. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tweeted something with the #likeminds hashtag, expecting it to get taken up, only for it to fail. I’ve wrote blog posts I thought would capture the hearts of readers that get no comments. I have gone from having a massive event to running the followup which has been poorly attended. You have to factor in and expect a percentage of failure.

 2. You need to prepare the soil. You have greater chance with your seed with good soil. You soil is your community, your network, your brand, your reputation, your customers, etc – and the more connected you are with them, the greater chance your spreadability seeds have. (But of course, still expect some to fail.)

 3. There are always unknown variables. Like inclement weather and unforeseen circumstances, there are always variables that you don’t know. This isn’t necessarily bad – because an unknown variable can be what rockets you to success. If anyone has read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, you’ll understand that this is the law of context - which is made up of so many variables that can you never be 100% sure.

 4. You don’t know what will succeed. The above three points should help us understand that we actually don’t know what will succeed, for sure. Now I know that, yes, we can be certain about somethings, but let me illustrate with the #likeminds hashtag example again. When I put something out on that hashtag, I never know if it’ll take. Sometimes the things I think are best, get no mentions, and sometimes the worst things do. Even worse is when other people seem to always have their stuff on the hashtag retweeted when mine arent’! Knowing this, I then follow this final fundamental:

 5. You have to keep scattering. Spreadability is accumulative. As you build upon your network, your failures at the least add to the soil – teaching you lessons and at least keeping your network nurtured.

These are great points and very applicable to experience creation. When structuring the physical engagement points with your customers keep a particularly keen eye on point two and five. 

Prepare the soil. 

Think about your current customers, and strengthen your current relationship with them. The closer you are to your current customer the more willing they are to share and spread your message. 

Keep scattering. 

When creating your brand experience, think of your touch points as the seed scatterers. Every time you come into contact with a customer/prospect you give them a seed. Give these contacts a remarkable seed and they will share it with others. Think of how Cold Stone Creamery took the touch point of the waiting customer and created a remarkable moment. 

Do you prepare the soil? Do you keep scattering?

Brand Evangelists - Brainstorm

Just stumbled upon this great visual by Stefano Maggi who writes the blog Digital Ingredients. I have not read the article yet so I am going to post my perspective based on this visual alone later this week.

Six ways to differentiate through customer service.

via mycustomer.com

This is a great interview that shows the authentic character of Zappos.com. Zappos has long been crowned the king of customer service and for good reason. In this interview, Alfred Lin, COO of Zappos.com speaks about their customer experience efforts.

1. Ensure that your staff believe in your company's core values.
2. The phone is still a powerful tool for personal emotional connections.
3. It's the little things that make it a personal, caring customer experience.
4. Don't take the quick and easy route with service metrics.
5. The right company culture provides a platform for great customer experience.
6. Be transparent and open and your service can be refined by the wisdom of the crowds.

In a nutshell it's about humanizing your business. Treat your customer like you want to be treated. How do you take these lessons and apply them to your own business?

First of all, realize that the character of your staff is the character of your company. When hiring new employees keep in mind the core values of your company and see if these match up with the candidate.

Second, look at your customer journey, all the touch points the customer experiences with your brand and try to find a differentiator. In Zappos case they use the phone more than the average online business, they also look for little personal touches. Look at your own touch points and see where you can stand out and create a memorable and remarkable brand touch point. This will get your customers talking about you.

Thirdly, be open and transparent, humanize your business communication by communicating through your core values. When a person speaks to a person they personalize the conversation. This is essential, also in business.

Do your employees define your company character?

Kick start your customer experience analysis

Start your customer experience analysis today. I was asked last week by a company how they could improve their customer experience. There are a lot of things that can be done so I gave them a few points on how to get started.  

1. Touch Point Identification and Mapping

First, take a look at all the points of contact your customer has to your service, all the way from initial word of mouth, through flyers, website, marketing, through the contact with the actual service and then the follow up and after sales service. How do you as a company come into contact with your customers? Map all these as individual points, title them, set up a short description, and who is responsible for them internally. 

Physically map these out on a wall, use post-it notes, draw on a white board, whatever makes it visual. 

2. Customer characters.

Create typical client/customer characters, set up their demographics and the backstory (create a character that is a typical consumer for you). For example:  

Janice is a 45 year old female born and raised in Malaysia, she has three children likes indian food, but thinks it's too fatty to eat every day. Her children are her life.....etc. etc. 

 The goal of this is to create a character you as a company can empathize with. You will see that by giving the character little character traits you will put yourself into her position and see things from her perspective. Take a few people and brainstorm 3 of these customer characters. 

3. Touch Point Analysis / Gap Analysis 

Take your customer characters and map out the touch points again but then from her perspective. You can do this under the touch point map you created earlier. See things from the characters perspective. At every touch point, how does this affect her life? Does this make her happy, if yes why? Is this an annoying touchpoint? Think of the different color caps, positive, negative mindset etc. and feel what she feels. Note this down and note this down for all the characters.  

Once you have done this you should analyze each touch point. What is the difference between what the customers perspective is and what the company perspective is. Is there a gap? 

Also see if there are any missing touch points to make this a fluid customer experience, and see if there are too many touch points at a certain bit.  

Note: additionally I would interview some of your customers, to see what the actual experience was like. 

Continued

These initial exercises will already give you a wealth of information. You will see what the distance is between you and the customer. Now it might be tempting to fix the process touch point per touch point, but the most lasting way is to make structural changes. See how these touch points come into place, what are the structures behind them, who are the people responsible behind it. This is what should be restructured.  

Does this help your company? Can you see yourself applying this to your customer experience?

BNet has character

I am a big fan of BNet, they've got great articles about fields I enjoy reading about. I am also a fan of them on facebook (correction: "like"). Here is a response by BNet on one of my comments.

They responded with: "Admit it: you all feel smarter just saying "Pareto's Law", don't you? ^SHS"

It is a candid response with a cheeky touch, and it gives BNet character. Can this response be taken the wrong way? Yes it could. Did BNet think about this when they commented back? Yes they did. Traditional communication would have frowned at such communication. These days this is the only way of connecting with your tribe.

Are you ever cheeky in your communication?