One guy and his simple mantra, ‘Happy people sell’ creates a call centre like no other. One of the best examples of business and the blindingly obvious I have seen recently. Nev, the boss of a Welsh call centre keeps his troops happy with what many might call ‘unorthodox’ management tools. If you haven’t watched him in action, switch on and check out The Call Centre aired on BBC Three, available on BBC iplayer.
Great piece from Business Week on what happens to brands which fail to innovate. Simply put, if the world keeps moving on and your brand stands still, don’t be surprised when it all goes horribly wrong. The article cites great examples of brands putting innovation at the heart of what they do vs. those who pay the price of complacency. It’s the reason the once popular Twinkies are no longer a lunch box staple.
The Ministry of Stories
An amazing place in East London, The Ministry of Stories.
Located in a shop selling intriguing Monster Supplies to the Harry Potter Generation, supported by some big name writers, these guys run storytelling workshops to inspire a new community of young writers. And it’s free! Genius.
Virgin Media Innovation Nation asks the public to decide which finalists are the most innovative
Extreme Innovation is about pushing things as far out as you can- and then pushing some more! After years running client projects I can’t remember one where an organisation’s internal conservatism did not dampen down the project results. One client , now chairman of a major UK retailer once said that we should never tailor anything to make it more ‘acceptable’ to them… “We’ll do a great job of squashing these ideas into an ‘us-shaped’ hole”, he said.
How right he was! The lesson for me was to push harder on client projects- they are paying for innovative thinking , not the same stuff they do everyday, not for a chat to make them feel better about the world.
Challenging the status quo requires us to be genuinely different and original. Restless pursuit of something original requires proper thinking and a fearlessness of the discomfort we all feel at the edge of what is possible . Obvious.
Feel the fear
Next time you are about to present to clients asking for innovation, or running sessions on innovative thinking / process..it think about the edges, if you don’t have precipice anxiety …you haven’t pushed it hard enough yet!
Great article in Forbes on when Innovation is not the answer. I love their piece on Icons- if you are lucky enough to have a brand icon, don’t be tempted to relaunch it and mess it up. Whatever happened to the Man from del Monte a UK advertising icon destroyed by an agency keen to do something new for the sake of being new. How many icons are there in the ambient juice category – really? In this case the ad agency brand planners decided that the Man from DM was a little retro, a bit too ‘colonial’ and his ‘saying yes’ was an unfair judgement on the low paid fruit pickers. There is a difference between creating a little more love around your brand and losing one of the most memorable, recognisable, in fact one might even say unique icons in the category. Mistake. A classic example of When not to Innovate.
The Man From del Monte Says ‘Yes’- brand icon
I used to live abroad and came back to the UK looking for lovely things and experiences to remind me of home. A kind of ‘Brit-fix’. One of these was regular visits to a very swanky country hotel with several Michelin stars to its name. My husband and I clocked up several thousand dollars worth of amazing memories and several tens of thousands of calories over the years. But each time we went they would greet us like first time guests. At first I thought it was because we arrived looking like we’d ‘won the holiday’ , so I changed my wardrobe and wiped the chocolate off my daughter’s face. Nothing changed. One awful day my husband remarked on their lack of acknowledgement and suggested we find an alternative.
Horrified that my oasis would be denied me, I wrote to the manager. If my local pizza joint can tell by my mobile number who I am, where I live and how much pepperoni I like…why can’t you say ‘welcome back’ when we come visit?
They were contrite and admitted they were pretty arrogant in believing they did not need CRM. Our clients like discretion they said. Well this client wants to feel welcomed and recognised I said. So they asked us back, pulled out all the stops and made a huge fuss of my daughter who loved being welcomed by name and given a small bear to hug.
We are going back again, we will likely spend most of the cost of a week’s holiday on wine and we will continue to love them as long as they love us back.
I don’t need them to remember my birthday or note my blood group. I just want them to recognise me when it matters. Obvious.
It is the When It Matters part that counts. Try looking at your customers’ journey and identify the key moments of interaction customers experience with you- does your CRM kick in when it really matters? Or do you sling stuff at them according to your signed off marketing plan? Are you missing them When It Matter
An English Garden
The three most important questions for anyone working in innovation, trying to be more innovative, or just looking for some inspiration are:
1. Why ?
2. Why not ?
3. How can I make that possible ?
Asking ‘Why ?’ is more important than asking ‘What?’. Asking ‘Why ?’ opens up a whole host of interesting opportunities to explore. Asking ‘What?’ closes down opportunities to explore new ideas because it asks for hard solutions too soon.
Asking ‘Why not?’ is really helpful, it forces you not to accept the status quo. My 5 year old does it all the time. She’s right. She wants to push boundaries, she wants to control her own world and keep the opportunities to explore as wide as possible. We can learn a lot from her. When you ask ‘Why not?’ you get a load of answers starting with ‘Because..’ Question them, interrogate the reasons, it gets you to new options pretty quickly.
Asking ‘How can I make that possible ?’ means you are not closing things down too soon, not accepting defeat and not accepting the world as it is now. You might think of an idea that seems, on the face of it, impossible, and if you always think about things like that, nothing ever changes. How about thinking ….under what circumstances can I make that happen ? what would it really take to get that going ?, push it around a while and see how the solution space starts to open up.
Ask Why? not What?
IDEO‘s CEO Tim Brown talks about ‘methods for having an open mind’. To open your mind, start using these three simple questions and see how you get on.
After years working on the biggest brands out there, I am still shocked at the number of times ‘innovation’ actually boils down to the blindingly obvious. Let me give you an example: A well known UK high street bank wanted to launch a new current account. They spent millions on some hardcore consultancy and they came up with the following platform to launch the new current account – the more products a person holds with the bank, the better their current account terms would be. Whoo hoo! Everyone’s a winner; the bank gets you to take out more products, you get a bit of interest and some perks on your current account. Easy? You’d think so. But not so fast. After a whole heap of consumer research the bank came to my company saying – people think this idea sucks…we don’t know why! Worse still, we’ve done all this expensive consultancy work and we need a plan. Fast. Help!
So, we asked, ‘What is blindingly obvious about people and their relationship with the bank ?’ Think about it. What is the first thing you think your bank should recognise about you? Is it how many products you have with them ? No, probably not.
It is usually, how long you have been banking with them. It is also likely to be something to do with them knowing what your spending patterns are like over time. So why not reward longevity and loyalty instead? If businesses start with what matters to their customers – in this case -‘ how long I have been with my bank’, and work on new products from those foundation insights, they end up with a better customer response. In this case the bank started with what worked best for them ( no surprise there) and customers hated it ( no surprise there either).
Obvious. Blindingly obvious.
Banks fail to deliver true customer centricity.
Watch this space in the coming weeks and months for more blindingly obvious examples.
How to make an honest deal with your customers
Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Blindingly obvious. So why do so many brands and businesses persist in creating illusions of customer service they simply cannot fulfil ? If I know what I am getting /signing up for, that’s cool. If you over promise and don’t deliver, I get mad, I tell my friends how mad I am with you , I start writing letters, or posting on social networks about how hacked off I am with you and maybe I don’t ever come back to your store. Brands need to be honest about their operational capabilities, customers will love them all the more for their honesty. Moreover, we won’t loathe them for letting us down. Obvious.
Swedish furniture retailer IKEA is a great example of the art of not over promising. Not only that, they make a virtue of their lack of customer service. We have all been and had family rows in their stores and been irate about their returns policy and nearly killed ourselves or a loved one wrestling with an IKEA self assembly erection! But they don’t promise it will be easy, quite the reverse. IKEA ran an in-store communications campaign themed ‘Why ? That’s why!’ designed to reiterate what customers get in return for all that hassle… you pick up your stuff yourself from their warehouse, transport and build it all yourself …. and in return you get exceptional design at eye-wateringly cheap prices – ‘Why ? That’s why!’ explained that at key ‘moments’ in the shopping journey, reminding you of the customer service ‘deal’ you are making with the store. Ultimately you only have yourself and your wallet to blame for the trials of the purchase , self selection and self assembly. You can’t loathe IKEA for under-delivering. They never promised anything extra.
What can brands learn from IKEA’s approach? Simple. Don’t over promise. Explain what the deal is. Stick to it. Done. Obvious. Check out the blog list of the top ten ‘not so excellent customer service’ issues below for more.
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