Customer Service Requires Critical Thinking

I've spent the last few days in a hotel in Asia where the prevailing low labor rates mean that the hotel has plenty of staff.  I know hotels in the US that would be astounded at the number of staff members deployed in the lobby, restaurants, and for housekeeping.  Even when I checked into the hotel at 3 a.m., there were three people at the front desk!

Hold on a second, though.  Don't be too envious of the ability to deploy squadrons of staffers to improve customer service.  It isn't just about the bodies - it's also about how the bodies are trained and about how they think about service. 

Here's what hit me. 

I was in the lobby waiting to meet some colleagues for breakfast.  One of the housekeeping staff was assigned the task of dry mopping the terrazzo floor.  He has super-task-oriented and focused on the job ... so much so that he didn't notice a McDonald's bag full of trash sitting in plain sight on one of the coffee tables. In fact, he carefully mopped under the table without noticing or disposing of the bag.

The lesson here is that customer service isn't just about completing set tasks with rote skills.  Like so many things in the service business it requires customer service training and critical thinking.    

Reading the Tea Leaves

I'm headed to Sri Lanka to do some seminars on tourism development.  That beautiful country is making a comeback after a brutal civil war that lasted more than two decades. 

In preparing for my talk, I was reflecting on tourism businesses that have been successful by reading their environment ... and developing products to respond to human needs just as they are bubbling up - not when everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. 

One example I'm using in the talk is Sandals Resorts and their development of destination weddings.  Astute observers of society would have noticed that since the 1960s societal values have changed when it comes to getting married.  There is cohabitation before marriage (largely unheard of in the 50s).  So the bride and groom, when they arrive at the ceremony, already have a lot of their household items.  Both the bride and groom are working now (not so in the 50s) so there's more income.  There's been a decline in the importance of religion in American life, so there's less of a need to be married in the family church or synagog.  Families are scattered, too so often there is no "central place" that is a logical wedding site. 

Sandals processed all this and started promoting "destination weddings" in its Caribbean Resorts.  They provide the romantic setting and the resort amenities.  And since there is more discretionary income with a late-marrying working couple, the costs can be covered.  And since the couple already has a lot of household items, money can be spent on travel. 

Sandals has even branded its product as "Weddingmoons."  The package includes all of the elements necessary for the couples' wedding and honeymoon ... and also the necessary travel and arrangements for the guests.   Amazingly, one recent statistic indicates that about 10% of all US weddings are now destination weddings.

Promoting destination weddings is a great way to reach a high spending customer with a product that reflects current social conditions. 

I wonder what other emerging social trends are out there that can be the basis for successful marketing solutions?

The Care and Feeding of Clients

Today's is a guest posting from Howard Wolff ... a marketing consultant with timeless advice on client service.

Click here for his column "Where Have All Your Clients Gone."

Election Promotions: Are there no limits?

You may have already heard about this Pizza Hut promotion: as part of its election year "Pizza Party" campaign, Pizza Hut is offering free pizza for life (actually 30 years) if anyone in the audience at the town-hall style presidential debate had the audacity to ask the candidates: "Sausage or Pepperoni?"

There has been a torrent of negative publicity around this stunt - and rightly so, in my opinion.  I've never believed the saying that "there is no such thing as bad publicity."  Companies - especially big established companies - need to act responsibly, even if they're trying to be creative.  Pizza Hut has done some non-rational advertising and PR stunts before.  Perhaps you remember when they paid (a lot of money) to put the logo on the side of a Russian Proton rocket in 2001.  I wonder how they measured the return on that investment.  I can just imagine the creative team coming in to pitch the debate idea - and congratulating themselves on how "creative" they could be. 

I remember seeing a bumper sticker once that read:  Bizarre is Easy.  Creative is Hard.

Amen.  

Hey, Starbucks! There are 50 States!

Here we go again.  Starbucks is a national brand with a national cause related marketing program.  The only problem is that the iconic image that Starbucks is using for its "Let's Create Jobs" program is a map outline of forty eight of the fifty states.

Starbucks marketing folks, listen up!  That image has been wrong for more than 53 years.  News flash:  Alaska and Hawaii have joined the union. 

Starbucks store managers and district managers in Hawaii ... give your corporate office a call and let them know that you exist.  And let them know that the jobs program is a good cause here, too.  And tell them that these cause related programs - which are meant to build the brand's reputation - look silly when you lop off two of the fifty states.  And you can suggest that if they want to eliminate two states, maybe they should drop Nebraska and Maine.  That would make as much sense.

Hrumph. 

Creating Cult Brands

I used to tell my students that the ultimate loyal customer was the one who would get your logo as a tattoo.  In fact, in presentations, I used the specific example of Harley Davidson riders who probably are those customers most likely to sport a branded as a tattoo. 

Harley may be an extreme example.  They have clubs, activities and long distance rides.  But Harley also spawned a real life line of accessories that went beyond the bad-boy biker image. 

Saturn cars in its heyday (before the corporate types ruined the brand) had a cult of loyal customers who actually traveled to Spring Hill Tennessee (often as part of a vacation) to revel in the Saturn experience. 

When I was in college near Chicago, Coors was a cult product.  Coors wasn't distributed in the Chicago area and students coming back to campus from the Rockies after break would always bring Coors back with them ... and it was always greeted with appropriate awe.

Apple is the latest cult brand ... though it is much bigger than any of those other examples.  Cultists camp out to be first in line for a new Apple product. 

What does it take to bring a brand to cult status?  Looking at just these few examples, there is no one single successful strategy. 

Harley caters to a unique psychographic group.  They became a tribe ... and Harley is their idol.  It is the brand that identifies them as part of the tribe. 

Saturn created an off-beat brand:  A different kind of car from a different kind of car company.  The brand positioning set Saturn apart from other car brands and created a reason for Saturn owners to bond with the company. 

Coors enjoyed the classic condition of a well crafted product that was hard to get.  It's limited distribution made it a sought-after brand. 

Apple built its cult around the image and reputation of its founder ... and the very real innovation and iconoclastic design it built into Apple products. 

If there's a common thread, building a cult brand means giving a well-defined set of customers reasons to rally together with the brand acting as the glue. 

Good Intentions - and Unintended Consequences

There's actually a law of unintended consequences:

 “The Law of unintended consequences holds that almost all human actions have at least one unintended consequence. Unintended consequences are a common phenomenon, due to the complexity of the world and human over-confidence.” – Author Unknown

Ah, overconfidence.  We are so often so entranced by our latest great idea or the newest shiny new thing that we don't spend enough time thinking through the possible negative consequences.

When I was doing the marketing for Hawaii Pizza Hut, we introduced and advertised a pizza buffet for lunch and for certain nights for dinner.  The program was doing well in general, but some of the restaurants were doing better than others ... and some didn't do so well at all.  So, after analyzing restaurant-by-restaurant sales, management decided that some of the restaurants would have buffet at lunch - and some wouldn't.  And some would have buffet on certain evening nights - and some wouldn't.  The unintended consequence was that we could no longer advertise pizza buffet on television and, as a result, the whole concept of buffet declined.  Unintended consequence coming from well intentioned business analysis.

There have been recent news reports that a low cost air carrier (LCC) may be starting service to Hawaii.  The industry and the media are all excited about the prospect of new airlift.  There may be an unintended consequence, though.   If a carrier like JetBlue comes into the market and changes price expectations, we may see the large "legacy" carriers like United, American and Delta cut way back on their service.  So the net result may be negative. 

I think we're seeing an impending case of unintended consequences when it comes to voting.  Governments are starting to push for the idea of online voting.  On the surface, it addresses some shortcomings of in person voting:  low voter turnout and high cost for managing a voting site in each precinct.  Here's my "unintended consequence" worry.  While it introduces convenience and cost savings, it takes away some of the benefits of in-person voting, notably the privacy of the voting booth.  Once voting can happen on line, what's to prevent someone (your boss, your religious adviser, your union rep, your cult master ... or whoever) from standing over your shoulder and "helping" you make your choices.  I can imagine organizations inviting senior citizens or those without transportation to centrally located computer banks where they could get "assistance" in voting.  Currently, regulations restrict campaigning within a certain distance from the voting site.  How do you enforce this when any computer can be a site?  Maybe there are some safeguards that can be put in place ... but this and other possible unintended consequences should make us think long and hard before making a fundamental change.

Someone once called me "Dr. Doom" because I would probe and ask hard questions when evaluating new ideas.  I don't mean to be negative, but I do want to pursue new ideas with my eyes wide open and an understanding of what might lurk in the world of unintended consequences.  

One of the many challenges in marketing is that there are so many ideas floated around.  The trick is to evaluate them carefully and work hard to imagine the possible negative connotations to a seemingly great idea.