What is your team doing when they aren’t “customer-facing?” Hint, it influences the customer experience too.
Welcome, made available by halfrain via Creative Commons on Flickr
There is a fancy grocery in Ann Arbor where I sometimes shop (and that will go unnamed). Generally, the folks here are friendly at the cash registers and at the cases where I order seafood, meat, or prepared food. Yet, I’ve noticed that the staff at this grocery are in a hurry when they’re in the aisles. When I’m shopping with a cart, I’ve had to “pull over” and wait for staff hurrying by to pass me.
When this happens, I wonder what’s so important in the back room—a smoke break, the punch clock, or an angry manager? I imagine that the store’s leadership has stressed quickness or efficiency over courtesy (a customer experience failure). In my head I rewrite my shopping list to frequent other stores.
There is another “fancy” place in town – Zingerman’s. I visited a friend at the Zingerman’s Bakeshop recently, and he walked me around behind-the-scenes. Everywhere we went in the facility, people stopped what they were doing (at their computers, wheeling a hand truck through a loading area…) and greeted me. I’m sure they had as much to do as the staff at the other location, yet they weren’t in a rush, seemed genuinely glad to meet me, and meeting each of them was a pleasure.
Through stopping to greet me, the Zingerman’s team exemplified courtesy and the mission of the company. While I didn’t yearn for a chat with the team at the other store, I would prefer not to feel “in their way.” I don’t shop there as often as I might, and I don’t want to work there.
So the question becomes—what values do you promote in your organization? Values and intention matter whether it is a knitting group, a writing circle, a start-up, or an established business.
What experience do you want newbies, visitors, new team members, and the old guard to experience? Because it is those values that shape the behavior of your team and the experience of your customers.
Nested archways on the beautiful Princeton University campus, made available via creative commons by Rob Shenk on Flickr
I’ve been on the Board of Directors of the Princeton Club of Michigan for the last several years. Although I live in Ann Arbor, I’ve traveled to Birmingham, Novi, Detroit, and elsewhere for meetings. In my time on the board, we have not held an event in the Ann Arbor area.
Well, the Princeton Alumni Council shared some basic demographics about the club with us. It turns out that about one-third of all Princeton University alumni in Michigan are here in Ann Arbor.
So, we planned a happy hour right before Halloween in downtown Ann Arbor. Halloween is also the best time to wear orange and black Princeton gear.
We were pleased with the attendance, and it could not have been easier for me to attend. I didn’t have to cross I-275 or take 696. I just had to dig out my orange beer jacket and find a place to park downtown.
For a membership organization, locating events near our membership helps encourage attendance. It sounds like a “duh” but because most of the leadership was from the Birmingham area…that’s where we put most of our events. We just didn’t have the data and were basing our decisions on habit and our personal preferences. Hard data helps decision-making.
Ever wondered why the theme color of this blog is orange? Now you know ;).
In late 2012, I pre-ordered Daniel Pink’s book To Sell is Human. One of a set of five gifts/thank yous for pre-ordering was a Field Notes memo book, stamped with To Sell is Human on the back.
I read To Sell is Human, and I used the memo book. I am a journal keeper, and I like Moleskine journals (among others). I like to take my journal from start to finish, and I resist starting other notebook-y things and diffusing my writing efforts.
As a consequence, I haven’t always known what to do with little memo books, and yet I found a use for this one. I carried it in my purse. It served me well at those times I needed to jot something down on the run – especially when taking out my phone to add a task/send a message would have been awkward.
I use it differently than my journal. The memo book is a temporary holding place. It’s kind of like a written RAM that gets cleared away. I won’t keep the old one, and I keep journals forever.
My new Field Notes pack!
Daniel Pink’s cobranding/partnership/product-placement/whatever-it-was worked. Now I’m hooked on Field Notes’ graph-ruled memo books. I just received my re-up, this time I chose the kraft paper cover.
And I think of Daniel Pink and how we’re all in sales every time I reach for it, even though “To Sell is Human” is not stamped on the back of this one.
I just completed some go-to-market research for a scientifically-oriented business-to-consumer company. In this research, one of my tasks was to assess consumer sentiment and project possible customer loyalty for a new product launch. Things like customer-lifetime-value, ecommerce conversion rate, and loyalty would be wonderful to have from our competitors, but these KPIs are closely-guarded secrets.
While I loved spy novels as a teen, I am not up for corporate espionage. I do not need to break into competitor website analytics to uncover insights into consumer behavior. I asked consumers about their buying habits and loyalty directly, online.
My research on online consumer surveys turned up two options – Survata and Google Consumer Surveys. I believe I had heard of Google Consumer Surveys and then found Survata by searching for competitors of Google in the consumer survey space.
Similarities
Both show a short survey to give a reader access to gated content. Both offer a handful of questions for a buck or two a completed survey. Both help publishers monetize their visitors. Both offer geographic, age, and gender targeting, which happens, I imagine based on the target demographic of the content on the gated sites.
Both survey engines offer visualization help to understand your survey answers, including visualization of subsets within your answers. Both survey engines provide some sense of statistical significance of any trends in the data. Both require prepayment to run the survey.
Differences
Qualifying Question – Advantage Survata
When I started earlier this summer, Google Consumer Surveys did not offer the chance to have a qualifying question. So if the website visitor met your demographic criteria (say a certain age, your specified gender, maybe your region of interest) they answered your surveys. If you wanted males under the age of 45, great. If you wanted males under the age of 45 with small dogs, not so great.
Since then, Google has added a qualifying question option. The survey client (me in this case) only pays for respondents who answer the qualifying question correctly (e.g. people who answer yes to having a small dog).
Google’s restriction is they need the qualifying question passed at a minimum amount, otherwise they bounce the survey back to you. Apparently, my qualifying question was too stringent. Google kept my payment for the survey and issued me a coupon in lieu of a refund. However, since I don’t want people who don’t meet my criteria to answer my survey, I’m a little stuck as to how to use the coupon.I would have preferred a full refund, so I can get my questions answered at Survata! [edited 10/22 – Google issued me a refund for the incomplete survey].
As far as I can tell, Survata does not have a minimum response goal for the qualifying question. In fact, I used the same qualifying question for both the Survata and the Google Consumer Survey so I anticipate its success rate was similar in both environments. Survata did not bounce my survey.
Cost – Advantage Survata
The two survey engines are both inexpensive, but Survata is less expensive. For a 5-question survey, I paid about $1/response for US respondents from Survata. The qualifying question was not included in the question count. Google Consumer Surveys includes the qualifying question in the count, and I paid about $2/response for US respondents for 4 questions after the qualifier.
Support – Advantage Survata
I had a great experience with Survata. Prior to each survey launch, I got feedback on my questions and setup from a survey analyst. The analyst edited my survey, and I got to see the before and after version and approve it before launch. My analyst was available to me via email, in my survey dashboard, and via IM throughout the process. I also had a follow up call so that I could understand the survey results and get a quick orientation to their visualization engine when the survey was complete. I ran a handful of surveys and was able to work with the same analyst rather than starting anew each time.
Survata – Analyst review before and after
Google Consumer Surveys did a review of my questions ahead of launch as well, but the experience was less caring. I got a basic email detailing what was wrong with my survey and telling me what to do to fix it.
Google Consumer Survey edit request email.
Survata’s help was more helpful – they did the work for me and asked for my approval. Google made me their admin.
Data/Results Visualization – no Advantage
I liked the user interface, question previews, and results analysis engines for both survey vendors.
Publisher Network – Advantage Google?
I imagine with Google’s reach and reputation, Survata has stiff competition. I have not encountered a Survata survey on a website. I did see my first Google survey yesterday, on the Christian Science Monitor website. In case it’s not obvious, this is not my survey, though it is relevant to my home state, Michigan.
Google Consumer Survey encountered on the Christian Science Monitor website.
I prefer Survata
The survey engine (user interface, options, everything) for both Survata and for Google Consumer Surveys changed during my project. So, this review is a snapshot of an evolving set of features. Right now Survata has a strong edge in customer service. I had a good relationship with my survey analyst and a positive experience with the company. My experience with Google was more at arm’s length (only email, always from someone new) and ultimately unsatisfying due to their rejection of my survey after taking my money. [edited 10/22 – Google issued me a refund for the incomplete survey].
Short version: I strongly preferred my interactions with and the results I got from Survata.
I can be a minimalist. There’s almost nothing I like better than organizing things for disposal. I like to give away books (to friends, to the library); I like to give away clothing I haven’t worn for a while. I love to reuse cardboard boxes that come in the mail – to organize items for travel, to use for a gift box – and then to recycle them. I resent “wasting” money on gift packaging, preferring to reuse what I’ve received. I love using leftover yarn as ribbon and I have used newspaper once or twice to wrap a gift even recently. Yet there is some packaging that I cannot bring myself to reuse or recycle.
It’s well-designed and carries sweet memories, and I can’t bear to part with it, even though I detest clutter.
I cannot part with….
Tiffany Boxes
Over the years, I’ve received a few Tiffany gifts. Great-Aunt Jane and Great-Uncle Chuck gave us crystal candleholders for our wedding, and I’ve thought of them and recalled our wedding day each time we use them. More recently, Delta Airlines has been giving Tiffany Gift Cards as an option for their Diamond Medallion members as a year-end perk. Smart choice: For the frequent business traveler, give the wife something sparkly to distract her from your absence.
Tiffany packages everything as a gift — the gift card has its flat box and white ribbon and then the item it purchases gets its own box and ribbon. Each step in the chain brings more white-ribbon-wrapped Robin’s egg blue boxes, a series of gift experiences. The boxes are lovely and I enjoy the whole experience, even though the boxes (especially the ones for the gift cards) become immediately useless. Reusing them seems out of the question. It would be such a let down – to receive something that’s not Tiffany in a Tiffany box! Yet, I have a difficult time tossing them. So they pile up, and I try to use them for special items, like the puff of our sweet cat Floyd‘s fur I found behind the couch, years after he passed away.
Stella & Dot Boxes
When you go to a Stella and Dot party (my neighbor had one, a colleague of mine at work had another), you can order jewelry and it will be delivered to your home. Like Tiffany, each item is packaged as a gift, and the items I’ve purchased have been for me, so a couple of gift boxes hang around after I start wearing the jewelry. The boxes are colorful and printed with nice patterns, and they have a couple of steps to open them (a paper case that slips off before you can open the box).
The Stella and Dot boxes sat around and I could not reuse them (again, it would be strange to give it without Stella and Dot inside). Eventually, I summoned the courage to pull them apart and recycle them. It took a while.
The box for Gerla Chocolates
In Turin, Gerla makes wonderful hazelnut-chocolates (gianduiotti) that Dave brings back from his trips to Italy. Similar to the Delta gift of a Tiffany gift card, I think this tradition started through the canny wisdom of his distributor colleague there – give a gift to keep the wife amused while the husband is in Italy. The Gerla boxes are a strange shape: kind of semi-rounded with squared edges. And I’ve taken to reusing them for knitting supply storage (needles, notions) because, again, I simply cannot toss them.
Wrapping for Gifts from Japan
The wrapping pinnacle is Japanese packaging – special bottles of sake and special cakes have made it home from Japan tucked in Dave’s luggage. Each item is perfectly wrapped in many layers. Typically a printed cloth or paper surrounds a lightweight perfectly fitted blonde-wood box surrounding another layer of insulation (or custom cut wood inserts) surrounding the present. Because neither we nor most of our gift recipients read Japanese, these items are easier to reuse. I use the paper or the cloth to line drawers or shelves and the boxes get repurposed for Christmas gift boxes.
Great Wrapping extends the Gift
When I encounter the wrapping, a decorative liner underneath my cosmetics in their drawer, knitting needles stuffed into a Gerla box, special treasures safely tucked inside Robin’s egg blue boxes, I remember the gift, the giver, and re-experience a positive feeling about the brand. Well done, Tiffany, Stella and Dot, and Gerla designers for attractive packaging that makes the gift last.
My inbox is getting full of marketing messages about Father’s Day, and I don’t like it.
OpenTable would like to help me make reservations at a local restaurant for Father’s Day brunch. Two Guys Bow Ties might ensure he’s snappily dressed for the occasion. Princeton U-Store wants me not to forget the college-themed gift, ThinkGeek offers up some nerd fun, and LocalHarvest and Vosges wonder if I should get my dad some yummies.
Topical messaging is good. Bothering me is bad.
While I am all for fatherhood and dads, especially my own Dad, all of the Father’s Day messaging rubs me the wrong way. I am not a parent and my Dad has been dead about 16 years (wow…longer than I thought).
Dear Brand I choose to follow, why do you want to remind me of my loss? Not a good strategy for you.
If there were a holiday opt-out in email marketing, Father’s Day would top my opt-out list. I imagine I’m not alone, folks with recent losses or who are facing infertility may be even more sensitive than I am.
Until I can opt-out of holidays that poke me, I might set up an email filter to avoid having these little reminders interrupt what is otherwise a fine day.
