Posts filed under ‘Cutomer Experience’
Word of Mouth From the Inside Out
Navel Marketing helps create organizations worth talking about and then arm customers to spread the word. On the surface, this may seem like a simple enough task, but too many companies today focus the majority of their efforts on how to get the word out with little thought as to why someone would care. Whether you choose to use more traditional tactics, such as advertising, or new methods, such as social media, your target market needs to know why you matter before they invest any time or emotion in your brand.
Marketing today is about meaning. Customers buy products but evangelists buy causes. You have to mean something in the marketplace before someone will take notice of your communications and, most importantly, tell others about them. Navel Marketing helps you develop the inner tools that create meaning for your customer, such as a cause, a unique and compelling position, a culture that reflects your cause, a simple repeatable message, a viral customer experience, and more. We then implement word-of-mouth marketing tools to help arm your customers spread the word.
Why I STILL Love My iPhone
Lest we get into a tussle over who’s phone is better (mine is, of course), this post is less about a cool toy (OK, WAY cool) and more of an illustration of a company that has created a phenomenal customer experience. Admittedly, I am a bit of a gadget geek. I have been using smart phones since the last millennium and I have an insatiable appetite for the latest new gadget. From the Palm VII to the Samsung I300 to Windows Mobile devices to the Blackberry in all its forms; I have used them all. On the technology adoption curve, I most definitely fall into the innovator category.
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- Image via Wikipedia
As a side effect of my obsessive compulsive disorder, however, my attention span for a new device typically lasts anywhere from 8 months to a year. That is when I start eying other devices and dreaming of how cool my life would be if I only had them. It is not that my current device doesn’t serve my needs, it is just that, well… the grass is always greener elsewhere, right?
The other day I was reflecting on the fact that I am now going on almost 2 years with my iPhone and still haven’t felt the itch. It was as much a shock to me as anyone, but then it led me to the next question – Why? While I believe it is true that every moral lesson in life can be taught using a sports analogy, I also believe that every great marketing lesson can be learned from the products and services we use every day.
In my Navel Model, step number 6, “Experience”, always seems to be the least understood. I believe this is because the term “customer experience” has reached the level of cliche. People think customer experience means selling things in a nicer way. They have simply replaced “customer service” with “customer experience” when in reality, brands who deliver an experience have superseded simply selling a product. Starbucks‘ success came from moving away from selling coffee to creating an environment for meeting, relaxing, and thinking… that also sells coffee.
What are the ingredients of an amazing experience? Let’s use the iPhone as an illustration of what I call the “3 C’s of a superb customer experience”:
Customized: Every customer wants to feel like they are the only customer. Every customer wants an experience that is uniquely theirs. The first step in creating an amazing experience is to customize it to each individual customer. While the iPhone is a single device, I would venture to say that no two iPhones are the same. You can not only add whatever applications that you want from the App Store, you can rearrange the icons on your screen in whatever order you want. There is a strip of 4 applications along the bottom of your screen that stay the same no matter what page of icons you are on. Even those can be customized to be whatever applications you want. Every iPhone is personalized with accessories, ring tones, movies, music, web bookmarks, and more. Rarely do two iPhone owners use it in exactly the same way.
Not only are the phone and its accessories customized to the user, even the service and support are. Obviously, you can select your plan, but when you call in for support, my experience has been that every support technician makes you feel like your problem is the only thing he or she has to work on all day. I posted a blog about an issue I had previously and not only did the support tech walk me through it without giggling at my stupidity, he sent me a follow-up e-mail with some additional information and his personal contact info. I truly feel ownership of not only my iPhone, but of the entire Apple experience.
Consistent: At first glance, it may seem that a consistent experience is at odds with a customized experience. However, there is nothing that can kill a brand faster than a great experience the first time and a horrible one the next. In order to truly create an experience, it has to be consistent both with each customer interaction and at each location. Sometimes this is accomplished through technology, sometimes through training, and sometimes through an established process. In the case of the iPhone, I have come to expect phenomenal service, amazing technology, and simple-to-use interfaces with each contact I have had with the Apple and iPhone brands.
Constant Improvement: The beautiful thing about the free market is that if you are doing something right, inevitably your competitors will copy you. Take the Starbucks example I gave earlier. Today, Starbucks is not quite the star that it used to be. It is being attacked on all sides by competitors, most of them local brands offering something unique. They are currently going through a re-invention phase and cutting back stores. It is not because their product quality has suffered. In fact, by most accounts they still have the best coffee in town. No, it is because they stopped innovating when it came to their experience.
This is probably the area where the iPhone has excelled more than any other. While it’s true that Team Jobs makes an unbelievably cool product, they aren’t simply happy with the status quo. I have seen the evolution occur before my very eyes. I was ecstatic when I first bought my iPhone and could carry one device that was a phone, e-mail, music, video, and Internet device. Then came version 2.0 of the software that allowed me to add ring tones from my songs, move my applications around, and add new applications from the App Store. Just today, I have finally been able to add Skype to my iPhone in its native format and can now access all of my social networks and utilities right from my iPhone. With each new application comes a new and improved experience.
As always, Mr. Jobs has a habit of re-inventing industries and has done it again with the App Store as much as he has with the iPhone itself. Just as the iPod was created to sell songs through iTunes, the same holds true with the iPhone and the App Store. He has been able to do what no other carrier or device manufacturer has been able to figure out, and that is how to sell ancillary services beyond voice and data to consumers.
More importantly, however, I still love my iPhone because I love the experience. It is MY iPhone, unlike any other. I get the same experience everytime I interact with it. It keeps getting better all the time. My guess is, I’ll be an iPhone user for a long time, especially since I hear talk that the next version may have video (but that brings us back to my obsession).
What brands do you see that have created a superb experience based on the 3 C’s?
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What They Don’t Teach You In School… About Marketing
Over the last couple of weeks, I have lectured in 3 different college marketing classes (I have 2 more scheduled) and judged a high school marketing competition. Based on these encounters with mushy young minds, I was able to make a few general observations about the status of our educational system as it relates to marketing. Some of the observations were good, and some not so good. However, I walked away with a general frustration at a lack of the solid marketing principles upon which brands are built today in our educational system.
Don’t get me wrong, while there are some great teachers out there who pour their heart and soul into helping students learn and apply the right knowledge, I think some are a little farther removed from the real world of marketing. In fact, I think it is changing so quickly, it may have passed them by entirely.
Based on my experiences over the last few weeks, here are a few key principles that I don’t feel like teachers spend enough time on in school:
- Positioning - It seems common sense that a class on marketing would start with “what makes you different than everyone else?” I believe that teachers spend WAY too much time on the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). While these are the basic building blocks of marketing, you first have to understand where to build. I believe that any beginning class on marketing should be 80/20: 80% positioning and 20% 4 P’s. Most of the high school marketers built their plans around the 4 P’s but with no thought to differentiation. In my opinion (or IMO for you short hand freaks), positioning is the blood that runs through the veins of marketing. Thank you to the Godfathers of positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout, for blessing us with this morsel of wisdom almost 40 years ago.
- Focused Segmentation - Again, this is another component that receives cursory attention in school, but is critical to the success of any marketing effort. The more focused your target market, the easier your job becomes as a marketer. Start with demographics, narrow your focus with psychographics, then pinpoint with buying emotions. As the ole’ cliche goes in marketing, “the more you narrow your focus, the more you broaden your appeal.” In my view, marketing is a very simple concept. Identify what truly makes you unique (positioning), find out who cares about it (segmentation), and figure out how they get their information. That leads me to the next point.
- Marketing is About Conversations - This was one of my greatest frustrations, with both high school and college students. Whenever they developed their marketing mix, they went right to TV, Radio, Billboard, Print, oh.. and some Internet stuff. Why? Because that is the way their parents and their parents’ parents did it. This is where the previous 2 pieces come into play. If you do any sort of of research, people are skipping TV commercials or watching it online, buying satellite radio or iPods so they don’t have to listen to radio commercials, and getting their news and information online rather than from the printed newspaper or magazine. Not that these can’t still be effective, but stop and think about where the target gets its information from first. Second, think about how you can talk WITH them, not AT them. The reason social media has exploded is because consumers want transparency, not carefully crafted marketing spin.
- The Cause - This is a theme I talk quite a bit about in my interactions with clients as well as students. In order for any brand to become outrageously successful, it has to create customer evangelists. However, most marketing efforts are focused on “speeds and feeds”, if you will. Customers buy products, and will buy your competitors’ products whenever they are cheaper or more convenient, but evangelists buy causes, or buy into causes. Evangelists have to be passionate about something in order to be evangelists. Who get’s passionate about a “good quality product” or “good customer service”? What is the higher, holier calling to what you do? What is the altruistic meaning behind why you are in business? And don’t start into your “mission statement” because that ain’t it either. What is the real reason people buy your product? That is your cause.
- Social Media - To the credit of the college professors, this is the topic they wanted me to come and talk to their classes about. However, most of them were clueless about how to integrate it into marketing efforts. They knew it was a powerful medium, they just didn’t know how to use it. I remember giving seminars 5 years ago about what a blog or a podcast was and now people come to me hungry for information on how to use social media tools. It is a nice change, but those who educate our nation’s youth need to be up to speed on what social media means to 21st century brands. They need to integrate case studies into their classes and, most importantly, need to be users of social media themselves. (As a side note, I was shocked with how few students knew about Twitter, but were avid Facebook users)
- The Simple, Repeatable Message - Unfortunately, most would insert the word “tagline” here but a simple, repeatable message is not a tagline. It is a one line answer to the question, “what is it that you do?”. Too much of marketing today is what Bill Bernbach called “irrelevant brilliance”. It is all about snarky quips and provacative phrases. They miss the simple answer to “why should I buy from you?” Creatives often step over (or on) the simple, repeatable message in favor of some mythical creature called “the big idea”. Don’t get me wrong, your marketing efforts should be wrapped around a consistent, compelling theme but you don’t need to create complex out of simple.
These are just a few of the things that I wish they taught more of, or better, in school. It would sure make what our youth are paying for their educations worth the price.
As a side note, I somewhat broke the rules in the high school marketing competition, but I did it consistently. I took the time with each team to enlighten them as to the principles above. Hopefully they walked away from our interaction with a little more clarity as to what marketing is all about. I thought that was much more important than how many points they received.
What about you? What nugget of marketing wisdom have you learned that you wish they taught you in school?
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Marketing From The Navel
I often get asked about our strange name. Many times I even get blank stares when I explain the term “navel-gazing”. However, I chose the name of my company and my book very carefully, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to make people giggle (OK, it was partly that).
For those who know me, they know I have worked with dozens of companies all over the world. Through my experiences, I have seen both amazing successes and giant failures (and been involved in both). Throughout these experiences, I identified a pattern. For a while, I couldn’t put it into words. I tried “Honest Marketing” or “Transparent Marketing”, but none of those really fit.
I finally realized that each of the companies who were successful marketed from the inside out, where the ones who failed miserably were the ones who marketed from the outside in. In other words, the companies who succeeded developed their internal tools, processes, and culture and used marketing tactics to simply communicate what they had already become. THe companies that failed wanted their communications to reflect an image of what they wish they were or what the customer wanted them to be – they wanted to put lipstick on the pig.
There are many who come to Navel Marketing for our social media marketing services. Without fail, however, they have missed many of the steps it takes to create a company worth talking about. So we start at the beginning. We start by creating a cause, identifying what truly makes them unique, and creating a culture that reflects their vision (for a complete list of steps to create a “buzz-worthy” company, see the Navel Model). Once these steps are completed, the tactics are the easy part.
I have seen a lot written lately about what constitutes a true “social media marketer”. I even wrote about this fact a month or so ago myself. Many base it on their knowledge of the tools or their proprensity to approach marketing as a conversation. However, it is my belief that they are all still lacking core component – what are you going to converse about? What about you is worth talking about?
Whether you use social media, advertising, public relations, direct response, or any other form of marketing, it all starts with strategy. It all starts with creating a company worth talking about. Once you’ve done that, the rest falls into place.
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Gandhi on Customer Service
I love this sign I found over at Andy Sernovitz’s “Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That!” blog. He saw it in the lobby of the Chicago Tribune:
We could all stand to think of our customers like Gandhi would. After all, this is coming from a man who was able to bring millions to his cause with no religious or political power. Maybe a little bit of Gandhi could rub off on my friend at the coffee shop!
The Evolution of the Revolution
This is a concept I often discuss in my presentations, but I thought I would outline it here since I believe that a) it is extremely relevant and b) we may be on the cusp of another revolution.
Revolutions have littered human history as the tired, the worn, and the downtrodden have risen up and taken back control of their lives. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and even the Russian Revolution are prime examples of the disadvantaged masses exercising their right to self-governance. As Wikipedia defines it, “A revolution… is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.”
There have also been several non-violent revolutions that occured that have fundamentally changed the way marketing works today. These typically occur because of some technological advancement that gives the masses broader access.
The first of these is the Learning Revolution. The technological advancement:
The Gutenberg Printing Press
Before the printing press, the collective knowledge of humanity was held by a select few. Books were created through a laborious handwritten or block printing process, therefore, there were only a few of them existed and they were well guarded. It is no coincidence that the Renaissance coincided with the invention of the Printing Press. This allowed books and knowledge to be mass produced and mass consumed, creating a revolution in the education of the masses.
The second revolution was the Information Revolution. The technological advancement:
The Television
Although the radio was the first mass communication device, the television ushered in an entirely new level of information. It’s as the old saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Now scenes from all over the world could be broadcast instantaneously into millions of homes. Ordinary citizens had access to images that, before, were seen by only the select few. Television also provided an incredible opportunity to reach mass audiences with marketing messages.
The third revolution was the Consumer Revolution. The technological advancement:
The Internet
With the advent of the Internet, consumers had unprecedented access to information. As Richard Saul Wurman said in his book, Information Anxiety, ““A weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.” In addition, a 1987 report estimated that “more new information has been produced within the last 30 years than in the last 5000.” Think about how much information has been produced since 1987 when that report was written and 1989 when Information Anxiety was published.
At the same time, the information overload has caused a consumer backlash. 3 of the top selling technologies of the last 5 years are the iPod, Tivo (or DVR), and Satellite Radio – all advertising avoidance technologies. Consumers now have it within their power to control when they recieve information, how much of it to receive, and when they will receive it. Consumers have taken back control of their lives and the Internet has proven to be one of the primary weapons in the fight.
I can walk into a car dealership with the exact price the dealer paid for the car – including rebates. I can compare your prices in an instant with hundreds of other retailers, both online and off. I can read hundreds of reviews of your product or service that will inform me of almost any issue that I might have during its use. I can research any media story to see if you are telling the entire truth or omitting key facts so that the story reads according to your own political leanings.We are connected globally in ways that were never thought possible (see my post about Web 2.0 bringing the world together)
This has forced marketers to fundamentally change how they connect and engage with consumers. They can no longer talk at them, but with them.
Finally, the current revolution is what I am calling the “Publishing Revolution”. My friends Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell wrote what I believe is the seminal book on the trend called Citizen Marketers. It started with blogging but quickly spread to photos, video, audio, and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Even social tagging and voting networks like Digg and Delicious allow consumers to comment on what others publish. What is fascinating is that this revolution brings us full circle back to the days of the Printing Press, except now the consumers are the publishers.
Recently, I came across a company that now combines all of these technologies into a single digital publishing platform. YUDU Media is a UK based company that offers a bureau service converting existing printed publications into digital publications for major media publishers such as Metro in the UK. They launched a product called YUDU Freedom in about April of this year that offered the ability for anyone to upload PDF files in order to self publish a digital publication. This week, they just launched their public beta of their YUDU Plus product which now combines digital publishing with social networking, tagging, reviews, comments, and multimedia.
The Testicle Cookbook on YUDU - You heard right...
I was invited to review the new site and, to say the least, I was extremely impressed. In my opinion, this could be THE tool of the publishing revolution. I can upload PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations and then add video and audio to the publication. I can tag and pull in web pages into my library and make my publications public or private. I can even search the library to see other’s publications and YUDU even has a mechanism for selling my content should I so choose. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if this were the next evolution of the blog?
To see how YUDU works, click on my presentation on the Consumer Revolution below:
How do you see the Publishing Revolution evolving?
*Disclaimer: I actually liked the YUDU product so much, I picked them up as a client.
And Airlines Wonder Why People Think They Suck
One of my favorite quotes from Stephen Covey is (paraphrased), “you can’t be efficient with the customer.” For some reason, the airlines have recently decided that the path to profitability is to milk their customers of every last penny they have. The most likely cause of this was some pointy headed bean counter with a spreadsheet and too much coffee going to the management team with some presentation that sounded something like, “if all we do is charge customers $50 to check an extra bag, $125 for a 3rd bag, $80 for an overweight bag, and charge for snacks on our flights, we can make millions and pull ourselves out of the red!”
The reason I know these numbers is I literally just went through this experience on Delta Airlines. I was on a week and a half trip to Europe and was on my way home from Zurich when I got into Salt Lake City too late to continue on to Boise. I grabbed a hotel for the night and headed to the airport in the morning. After traveling tens of thousands of miles, Delta wanted to charge me $175 for 2 extra checked bags on the very last leg of my journey – a 45 minute flight. This was the result of 2 cuckoo clocks I bought in the Zurich airport (I know, I am a sucker for that kind of stuff). If I had made it to the SLC airport 3 hours earlier, I would have been checked all the way through, no problem. If I hadn’t bought the cuckoo clocks, no problem. But I just happened to get little miss grumpy as my check in agent. After about 15 minutes of sweet talk and a discussion with her supervisor, I was finally able to reduce my punishment for flying Delta reduced from $175 to $50.
This brought to mind a few thoughts, to say the least. There is a reason Southwest has had 35 straight years of profitability in an anemic industry. They focus on happy customers first and operational efficiency second. There is a reason Southwest was the only airline identified in the book “Creating Customer Evangelists”. They even improved their experience recently by creating a more orderly “cattle call” process. In a time when every other airline if following Delta’s suit and looking for ways to bilk their customers, Southwest is making the experience even more enjoyable. Who do you think will win out in the end?
The second thought that I had was how too many employees hide behind “the policy”. As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the worst things you can say to a customer is “there is nothing I can do, that is our policy”. Any business who doesn’t empower their employees to solve customer problems on the spot will “policy” themselves right out of business. There are just too many other options to deal with difficult companies.
One airline who did pleasantly surprise me was British Airlines. The service was great, there was no nickel and diming, the seating was much more comfortable than most American airlines, and they even served lunch on a 2 hour flight. I would fly them again in a heartbeat. It is not hard to stick out when most of your competition sucks.
In such a competitve marketplace, airlines can’t afford to trade customer service for small revenue gains because the impact to the bottom line will always be disastrous. When will they get the hint?
What is Web 3.0?
I have heard this term rolling around for a little bit. At first, I thought it was another guy trying to make a name for himself by coining a phrase (and not a very creative one at that) and then trying to get it to stick. I mean, people are just starting to figure out how to use Web 2.0, but then you heap 3.0 on top of us and we are drowning in a sea of 1s and 0s (OK, let’s not be dramatic here).
The reality is that, although Web 3.0 is still being formulated, one thing is for sure – Web 3.0 will take advantage of artificial intelligence to create a more productive and intuitive user experience. You can read the Wikipedia definition here. Basically, this simply means that Web 3.0 will better understand what you want and need and will automatically serve it up to you. Pretty cool, huh?
There is still a lot of theory behind Web 3.0 and a lot of buzz words being thrown around like semantic web, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, however, we have recently seen actual applications in this space that cause one to think that Web 3.0 may not be far away.
One such company is Certona Corporation. While the company has bee around for a few years, it is finally establishing a customer base with solid results to showcase. The company produces software that turns your eCommerce website into an artificial intelligence engine that will serve up content, product recommendations, or even coupons based on your browsing behavior. Picture a retail sales rep that knows exactly what you will want next and gives you a recommendation for it or even a coupon. Bet you would go back to that store again.
One of their more prominent case studies is with Personal Creations which, according to a press release, it the “top provider of personalized gifts in the United States.” Personal Creations is attributing 20% of its sales revenue to the system created by Certona. That is pretty impressive.
Not to sound like a Certona ad here, there are several other companies popping up now that are taking advantage of Web 3.0 technologies to create highly customized user experiences, beyond anything we have seen before. While Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, and YouTube have taken ownership of Web 2.0, we have yet to see who will emerge as the reigning champions of Web 3.0. Will it be you?
(**Author’s note – this post was NOT sponsored by Certona. I just thought it was cool)
Get Out!…and Other Bad Examples of Customer Service
How many of us have seen the sign on the door of a local eatery or coffeehouse that announces “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”? Has anyone had the unfortunate experience of having that right exercised on them for reasons other than indecent exposure or a drunken brawl?
I had the wonderful experience the other day of being asked to leave Thomas Hammer, an area coffee house, because I had not purchased a drink within an allotted time frame. I was told that it was their “policy” (don’t you love that word) that those who did not buy a drink could not sit there and use their WiFi. What, am I living in the late 80s?
Let’s go back and review the principles of customer evangelism, class. Let’s see … nope, nothing in there about kicking potential customers out of your place of business because they have not bought anything before the last grain of sand falls from the hour glass. What a bad idea in so many ways.
Now, I have to go back and be honest here. I was sitting there naked. No, I am just kidding about that. However, I sat in the store for about 10 minutes before the counter gal (let’s call her “Grumpy” for brevity sake – and the fact that she, in actuality, bears a stark resemblance to the cartoon dwarf) announced to me the store policy with her characteristic snarl. Being the obstinate (let’s say “donkey”) that I am, I thought I would test ol’ Grumpy out.
After about 45 minutes, good ol’ grumpy was back with a “what can I get you to drink” ploy. Ahhh, the game of cat and mouse continues. I retorted with a “give me a couple of minutes and I will be up there” response.
Finally, after 90 minutes, Grumpy stormed on over and said, “it’s time for you to leave. I told you our policy and you have had an hour and a half to buy a drink”. I was floored.
I have to be honest. I didn’t think she would actually enforce the “policy”, but she had the guts/lack of tact/missing brain cells to do it. So I literally went right across the street and bout two drinks from their biggest competitor. Not only will I never go back in there again, I am doing my part to let everyone else know about my experience there.
Let’s take a couple of lesson from this tale. First, don’t hide behind a policy, nor create a policy in the first place that is directed at the lowest common denominator. The competitor, Dawson Taylor, across the street was floored as well when they heard about my experience. They told me that they ask rowdy teenagers to leave when they become too loud, but never peaceful WiFi stealers like myself. Personally, I can understand the rowdy teenager, but never a customer like myself who has been in their establishment many times and bought many drinks from them in the past.
Second of all, why create policies at all? They are typically for the minuscule minority anyway. One of the best examples of employee empowerment comes from Nordstrom, who is world renowned for their customer service. Almost any seminar on customer service I have ever attended consists of several examples from Nordstrom. Their personnel manual consists of one sheet of paper that says:
“Welcome to Nordstrom, here are the Nordstrom Rules:
Rule #1: In all situations, use your good judgment.
There will be no additional rules.”
Now, you can speak with any employment lawyer and they will drone on about the liability of not covering everything in your employee handbook, however, what a statement about Nordstrom – that they trust their employees implicitly to deliver a superb customer experience for their customers. And they do.
Finally, in a commodity marketplace like we have today, as Don Peppers would say, customers are our scarcest resource, not money. If I have customers, I can get money. Therefore, treat your customers like gold, for that is exactly what they are. When there is a competitor directly across the street, can you afford to offend a customer simply because they did not spend $6 on a cup of dirty brown water? I would think not.
Instead, try the opposite approach. Make your customers feel at home. Make them feel like they are welcome any time, any where. Make them feel like they are rock stars. I guarantee you, you won’t be able to keep the dirty brown water on the self.
Take a Lesson From the King
Bruger King, that is. As many of you know, I posted a blog about Burger King’s Whopper Freakout campaign. I thought it was a great example of a successful and well thought out campaign.
I happened to be reading in the Wall Street Journal this morning and came across an interview with Burger King Holdings, Inc. CEO, John Chidsey. It verified my initial thoughts by confirming that Burger King has indeed experienced a turn-around under Chidsey’s leadership. They got back to their roots (“Have it Your Way”), focused on their strengths (fire grilled food), and launched new menu items.
However, the thing that most impressed me what the number one thing he attributed to the turn around. According to the article, the first thing he said was “figuring out who our target customer was, figuring out who was the ‘superfan’ and not wasting our time trying to be all things to all people”. Sound familiar?
Why I liked the Whopper Freakout so much was that it showcases the ‘superfan’ (a.k.a. customer evangelist). However, Chidsey also made another very important point. Focus on the evangelists and don’t try to be all things to all people. In other words, the more you narrow your focus, the more you broaden your appeal.
Finally, I will leave you with the ’5 Tips From John Chidsey to Revive a Striggling Firm’ that were quoted in the article:
- Focus on two or three major drivers that will make the biggest impact on the business.
- Create and maintain a sense of urgency and risk-taking.
- Know your customers.
- Put the right employees in the right places. (Sounds like Jim Collins’ ‘Right People on th Bus’ concept)
- Know your operators and regain their trust. Great relationships are key in this business.
Sounds like Chidsey has helped Burger King finally figure out the formula. I think we can all take a lesson from the King.
