Did you ever see the movie Crazy People?  It came out in the early 90’s and starred Dudley Moore and Darryl Hannah.  The premise of the movie was Dudley Moore was an ad executive who reached his breaking point because he had to lie everyday in his work.  He eventually found himself in a mental hospital and began working with other mental patients on ads that only told the truth.  The movie was not the best movie, but it popped in my head recently when I watched a number of Sprint television commercials.  I am sure you have seen them, they have Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse walking down several New York City streets talking about the digital revolution and how “cool” these new cell phones are.  He ends the commercials asking us to join him in the digital revolution.

Now for the last what couple of years Sprint has been hemoraging customers.  If you take five minutes and do a few searches on the web, you would quickly realize that many of the customers left because they believed Sprint had atrocious customer service.  Give it a shot, do a Google search for “Sprint sucks”.  Now I don’t know anything about Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse and I have not been a Sprint customer for many years, but instead of spending millions of dollars on commercials that talk about the “digital revolution” wouldn’t that time and money be spent more wisely talking about how Sprint has heard the complaints and feedback and is taking steps to change?

Am I nuts or would a commercial with Dan Hesse sitting in a diner saying, “We have made mistakes in the past.  We have listened to our past and present customers’ feedback and we realized that without great customer service our cool phones and great plans mean nothing.  That is why Sprint has made the following changes….  Yada yada yada..”

I think a commercial like that would raise more attention and deliver a greater ROI than their present, “You can update your Facebook status from our phones, how cool” commercials.  Though if Dan Hesse Sprint CEO would ask me, I would say cut down your TV media buy considerably and put that money into engaging with your present and potential customers online.  Though now I am just plain talking crazy.

NBC announced on Monday that it would join ABC and offer their prime time series free on Video on Demand (VOD) for a test on Cox cable system in several cities. Now the catch is that Cox will be disabling the fast forward button so that the same commercials that ran during the initial broadcast of a show will run again for anyone who wants to watch it on VOD.

This type of announcement just makes me crazy to be honest. I cannot believe that we are in 2007 and still these suits from the networks still just don’t get it! They have been living in their ivory towers for so long that they are under the ridiculous impression that they are in control. Hey Hacks, here is a bulletin for you. Please read it as you send one of your fourteen assistants to get you a Grande Latte, you are not in control. I along with every individual consumer is in control and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

You really think disabling the fast forward button is going to accomplish anything? You really are under the impression that forcing or putting restrictions on users is anyway to treat your customer base? What the hell is a matter with you and what planet have you been living on for the last several years? Networks, you are losing market share every single year. Between cable, internet, Tivo and DVR, your ratings are at all time lows. People are watching shows when and how they want to watch them. But instead of understanding that and actually embracing it, you decide to continue your ridiculous tactics that has not worked for years by forcing users to do things that you want them to do.

Before you spend the millions on running this test, let me tell you the results. Your target demographic of 25-45 year olds will fall into one of two categories. Either they are technologically savvy enough to either have a DVR/Tivo and be able to fast forward through your commercials or they know where to go online to view the episode they missed. If they are not savvy enough, more than likely they already watched the show when it ran in prime time and you still lose.

Wake up network hacks and begin working on how you can provide us with entertainment the way we want to watch it and not the way you wish we would watch it.

Technorati Tags: NBC, ABC, Video on Demand, Cox cable system

I just finished an absolutely wonderful book called Marley & Me by John Grogan. It a fabulous story about a families life with an absolute terror, but great dog they named Marley. If you have not read it, its a really fast read and a great story that works on so many different levels. The author speaks about even with all his faults, Marley the dog taught him so many things about life and how it should be lived. Specifically, he wrote about Marley’s unwavering love and loyalty.

Even though this dog was far from perfect and at times was a total nightmare, his positive qualities, his heart and his soul far outweighed the negatives. And when things were all said and done, this crazy dog had made a huge impact on the author and his family. He was a true member of the family that was loved unconditionally. After I finished the book, I was thinking about some parallels to this dog and this story to marketing.

It seems to me that this kind of loyalty and love is very rarely seen these days when it comes to customers and the companies and brands they do business with. In years past, there were brand names that absolutely owned the market. When you thought of a particular product or service, there was always one company that everyone knew and associated with. That does not seem to be around anymore and it made me wonder, how as marketers can we help actually getting that back?

My initial thought was that both we the marketers as well as the companies we work with are only looking at one side of the marketing coin and are pretty much ignoring the other side. We forget the multiple layers of what is the customer experience. For example, my focus for several clients recently has been developing marketing campaigns that will raise brand awareness and drive more traffic to these companies’ web sites. While that is definitely important, I believe there are numerous steps after that which are being either forgotten or not being given the attention that it needs. They include the following:

• What is happening once a user gets to a web site? I am not talking about basic analytics here, I am speaking about true path analysis to discover what is working and what is not.
• What do people really think about the brand I am working for compared to its competitors? How are we being seen and thought of and what we might do to change that thinking? What are people talking about?
• Post sale – how is a customer communicating to the company after a sale has been completed? What are delivery times? How is customer service? Is the experience not just good, but great so they will not only recommend our product, but rave to their friends and family, so that they will be a true customer evangelist?

Are my thoughts in line with yours or am I crossing the line when it comes to truly what our responsibilities are as marketers and what is not?

Has ever happened to you?  You were surfing the web or watching TV or driving or listening to the radio and you saw or heard something that caused you to grab your trusty computer and type in a URL. Fabulous! Guess what, us marketers love to hear you have done that because most of the time, it was some sort of marketing or advertising which grabbed your attention enough that you literally went to where we wanted you to go. Great news!

Now tell me if this has happened to you. When you got to the URL, before you can do what you went to do on the web page, you need to register and the registration form was longer than the Magna Carta? Yup, this has happened to me a number of times as well and I have been wondering just how many people stop right there and do not continue with the web site because either the web site was forcing a registration or that the registration page was just too long.

I understand the rationale involved with registration pages. Web site owners want to capture as much information as possible about their users and hopefully be able to use that information to market to their users better. Though I have been thinking that for a great many of these sites there is another reason.  Many of these web sites are not offering enough for a user to come back a second time, so this is the first and ONLY time they have to get as much information out of their users as possible.

Here’s an experiment I would like to do. Develop a web site that the initial registration is three questions; first name, email address and zip code. That’s it. With that information, I can contact this person again, I can personalize that next communication with his or her first name and I know what part of the country they live in. Now if I created a site that offers people something of value they will want to come back time and time again and as they come back again and again, I can ask them further questions about themselves. And I bet if they see the value in my web site as well as the reasons why I am asking, they will be that much more willing to share their information with me.

What are your thoughts? Do long registration pages turn you off and stop you from registering?

We have discussed and debated much here about the “Customer Experience” and I think this most recent announcement from Apple is just fascinating. Apple will begin charging $5 just to enter the Apple stores. That’s right, you want to window shop, check out the iPhone? It will cost you $5 bucks just to get into the door.

“Part of the move was to limit crowds to keep the stores safe, but also we wanted to keep the right kind of people in the stores” said vice president of retail outlets, Vince Sciopiano.

According to reports, when you pay the $5 at the door, you will receive an an Apple button which will allow you entrance into the store and the button actually tracks the customer’s movements. Then if you decide to buy something that $5 entrance fee will be deducted from your bill.

Absolutely brilliant! What a great idea… Steve Jobs and his team are just firing on all cylinders and they can do no wrong. This works on so many levels. First off, it keeps the stores from being packed with gawkers and people who get in the way of customers who actually want to buy something, but also this is another move that continually reinforces the amazing Apple brand. This is the exact reason nightclubs keep giant lines waiting behind the velvet rope when inside the club is half empty. It is reinforcing the notion that Apple is place to be and now if you want to hang with the cool kids, you are going to have to pay just to enter.

Finally, from a revenue side, how much money will Apple make this year from literally revenues just from the door? Steve Jobs for President! He saved Apple, now we need him to save the world!

What do you think? Would you pay $5 just to enter an Apple store?

Technorati Tags: Customer Experience, Apple, iPhone, Steve Jobs

Since the launch of this blog 6-7 months ago, I have written several critical posts on Yahoo! and it’s properties. Last week, I had a new experience with Yahoo! that I am hoping will never happen again. On Tuesday of last week, I tried to login to my Yahoo! Mail account and was denied. I proceeded to go to the page where I can reset my password, but it would not allow me to do that either as I got an error message saying that my physical mailing address did not match up with their records. Hmmm, interesting. I thought maybe Yahoo! Mail were having issues and I just left it alone for the day.

On Wednesday, I tried to login again and once again no dice. I tried the reset password page again and again I got the error message that said what I typed in as my address was not what they had in their records. I then went into their help section and tried to figure out what else I could do. After reading many total useless pages, I finally just went into their contact us and filled out a form telling Yahoo! what had happened and asking them for some assistance. I gave them two other email addresses since I could not login into my Yahoo! Mail. Wednesday came and went and I never heard back from them.

Thursday, I was just too busy with some work stuff and just did not even bother with Yahoo! other than just trying to login and once again it did not work. Finally on Friday, after still not being able to login, I tried one last ditch effort. I found within Yahoo!’s pages that there was a way to reset your password if you had ever used a credit card with Yahoo! before. I decided to give it a shot and bam, I got back into my Yahoo! Mail account. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that MY Yahoo! Mail account was not mine anymore….

Somehow, someway, my Yahoo! Mail account had been hacked. Someone changed the name of the account as well as my mailing address which is why I could not reset my password. Even worse, my dear old hacker went through some old emails I had and found information on an account I had on Ebay. The hacker then proceeded to login to my Ebay account and starting bidding and buying like it was Christmas time.

So a great deal of my time this weekend was spent trying to clean up this mess, cancel accounts, change passwords and freeze my credit to ensure that my identity was not stolen as well. Oh by the way, never heard or received back any type of communication from Yahoo!.

Now here is my question, Yahoo! offers the web email free of charge, but even if it is free, don’t they have to have some sort of customer service especially when it comes to situations like this when my account was literally stolen from me and time is of the essence? We are seeing more and more that web companies are willing to give away a great deal of stuff in return for our time and attention on their web sites. What kind of responsibility do these companies take on when they give away things for free?

Oh by the way, I sent an email directly to Jerry Yang about this incident, did not hear back from him either.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, help section, hacked, Ebay

With the release of the iPhone last week, there has been some interesting stories being posted about how the customer experience was much different for people who went to buy the iPhone at the Apple store compared to people who went to an AT&T store.

There have been numerous reports about how AT&T were forcing people who wanted to buy the iPhone to also purchase accessories for the phone. AT&T stores were bundling the iPhone with an accessories package and according to reports in Gizmodo, AT&T personnel were telling customers that they could not purchase the iPhone without buying the accessory package as well. While in the Apple stores, the iPhone could be purchased all by itself.

You know there has been a lot of pundits debating on how big the iPhone is going to be. I think the more important question is going to be whether customers will actually put up with AT&T’s BS or not. I am going to make a little prediction here. I would be willing to put money on the following:

• AT&T is not prepared for the large influx of customers they are getting with the launch of the iPhone.
• There will be HUGE customer service issues with people who just signed a two year contract with AT&T to get an iPhone.
• In the coming weeks to months, there will be a backlash of terrible customer service stories and people will finally have enough of AT&T.
• Apple will eventually be forced to allow other providers to sell the iPhone or risk alienating their customers.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, customer experience, Apple, AT&T

Last weekend, as many of you know, I proposed to my girlfriend Leigh… Before I proposed, Leigh and I were hanging out at this swanky hotel. It was probably around 95 degrees last Saturday here in NC and we were in the hotel’s pool with some nice fruity drinks to stay cool.

What was funny was right next to where we were in the pool, a wedding was actually taking place. As we sat in that wonderful pool, we watched as the wedding guests sat under the boiling sun in their best attire of suits and dresses, sweating and wishing for the ceremony to end already so they can get into some air conditioning.

I began to wonder as I sipped my frozen margarita from my cool pool, what were the bride and groom thinking?

Bride: “Ok, let’s have the wedding right here where their is absolutely no shade in mid June right around 2-3 o’clock in the afternoon when the average temperature is around 90 degrees. Yea!

Let’s invite all the people that we are closest to in the world; our family, our friends and let’s force the men to get dressed in black suits and ties and the women in uncomfortable dresses so they can sweat like they never have before. Right!

Let’s also make sure they are seated at least a half an hour before the ceremony even starts so they will be giant piles of sweat for the reception!

Great idea!! Book it Danno!”

I know weddings are about the bride and groom, but I always thought that a wedding is a celebration of two people finding love. And if you think about it that way, a celebration involves all the family and friends and it is not just about the bride and the groom.

This really got me thinking about all the weddings that I have ever attended. You know most of them are pretty much just a huge inconvenience. Let’s look at my wedding inconvenience checklist:

1. The wedding is usually scheduled on some long holiday weekend when you would rather be doing something else.
2. You have to get all dressed up – I hate fricken ties – You see I have no neck – genetics suck.
3. You sometimes have to travel long distances – Trains, planes and automobiles, oh my.
4. You have to shell out cash for present, travel, hotel, gas, etc. – Do I sound cheap?
5. No matter what denomination of the ceremony is it usually is WAY TOO long. I think we need to tell every priest, reverend and rabbi that a wedding ceremony is not about them and pick up the pace!
6. The food usually blows.
7. And finally if they do not have an open bar, I make a wish that their luggage is lost on the way to their honeymoon – Just kidding, while maybe not.

I write constantly here about User and Customer Experience in marketing and I realized that weddings are a terrible user experience. So I was thinking, maybe there is a way to pull of a wedding that can be a great experience for not only the bride and groom, but also the attendees and maybe I can do this for my wedding!

To do this, I figured that both Leigh and I are going to need a whole lot of help. That is where you come in. I have added a new tab to the top of the page called wedding ideas. This is where Leigh and I are asking for your help in planning our wedding. We need all your thoughts, experiences and ideas. If that is not exciting enough, we are also offering for anyone that gives us a great idea that we use, you and a significant other will receive an invitation to our wedding! Think about it, could this be a good story or what?

Please head over to the wedding ideas page and start posting your ideas and thoughts. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: proposed, Customer Experience, marketing, user experience

I signed up for a Yahoo! Mail email address in 1998. I have used that email address as my primary personal email address from signing up till Gmail was released. I still use my Yahoo! Mail address because there are just so many people who have that address for me since I have had it for so long. Unfortunately, I have made the decision that I am going to start notifying people of my Gmail address because Yahoo! Mail has plummeted to levels that I cannot take anymore.

Yahoo! as a company confuses me in so many different ways. They created way back when all these great properties that recently seem to be dying a slow and painful death while they continue to buy new properties which then very soon after purchasing them they begin that very long walk off of a short cliff. I just don’t get it. Has Yahoo! forgotten about user experience? Do they actually think that they know what their users want? Because trying to actually find somewhere to submit feedback and actually get some sort of response is a near impossibility.

Today, I actually went to the Yahoo! Mail Blog. And like a bad dream I discovered that they do not even allow comments on their blog!?!?!?! A blog that the only reason it was created was to communicate with it’s users on their product does not allow their readers to actually comment. It’s like a freaking Greek tragedy…

So before my Yahoo! Mail account becomes my spam email permanently, I would like to list out why I believe Yahoo! Mail has gone from the best web email program to the absolute worst.

1. The front page is slower than my grandmother and she has been dead for ten years. Why do I have to wait for my local weather to load to go read my emails? Did I ask for local weather? Did anyone?

2. Does the SPAM button actually do anything? Come on, be honest, you guys are just deleting the messages and have absolutely no spam control whatsoever. That seems to be the only logical explanation on why I get the same damn spam almost everyday when the senders name and email address never change…

3. Why is it when you ask for feedback, you send us to your Yahoo! Tutorials page? See I did not ask for a tutorial. I actually understand how to send email, to be honest, I think I understand it much better than most of the people you have working on the Yahoo! Mail team. If you actually want feedback, then provide me a way to give feedback. If you are not interested which obviously you are not, THEN DON’T ASK FOR IT!

4. Why oh why don’t you have a target=”_blank” in your code? If someone sends me a link in an email and I do not right click and choose open in a new tab I will leave my email totally. Do you want us to stay within Yahoo! or not?

5. Finally, what the hell is this?

Why is it that every time I type in a person’s name in the TO: line and you actually find that person from my address book it still gives me this error message? Why is it that every time I send an email I have to remove the person’s name and just have their email address in the TO: line to actually be able to send?

Yahoo! Mail, you took what should of been your flagship and have turned it into a second class citizen of cyberspace. Shame on you.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, spam

A couple of weeks ago, I decided with summer coming it was time to get myself a new pair of sandals. I did what many many other people do when they are searching for something online, I began at a search engine. In Google, I typed in Birkenstock. From there based on the natural search results, I don’t click on PPC, I began looking at many different web sites to see what kind of selection they had, what their prices were and what kind of experience they gave me on their site. In today’s world, what a user experiences when they land on a web site will have a significant impact on not only if that person buys, but also, how that person thinks and feels about the company, brand and products. In other words, if your web site is crap, users will equate your company with crap as well.

As I surfed on these sites, if I ran into any problems like not being able to find what I was looking for quickly and easily, poor content or product pictures, I would immediately close that browser tab and move on to the next result in Google. You have one chance when a user lands on your site, if you do not take advantage of that chance, you most likely will not get another.

After looking at a half dozen different sites, I finally landed on a site that I really liked. The site had a clean look and feel, good navigation, great content and product pictures. Before even knowing what I wanted to buy, I had already decided where I was going to purchase from. After a little bit of time surfing and exploring different styles, I decided. The checkout process was easy and before you can say, “Damn Fricken Hippie” my new sandals were purchased.

Now many E-commerce players out there might believe that this ends the customer experience. I would disagree and say that once an order is purchased, the experience continues with the kind of service a user gets post purchase.

About a day or two later after ordering, I got an email from the company saying that my order had shipped. Fabulous! The company did everything right in the email which included a link to UPS so I can track my order. I clicked on the link with great anticipation to see when I could expect the package and that is when the wheels came off the wagon. UPS’ expected delivery was 9 days. NINE DAYS?!?!?!? Was this package coming in from Neptune or had the pony express come back?? NINE DAYS?!?!?!? What takes nine days to be delivered these days?

Annoyed, I went back to the companies web site and found in very small letters that ground shipping can take from 3 to 11 days. Now maybe I should of looked more closely when I was ordering, but I would guess that I am far from the only person who had ordered from this company and then was surprised at the great length of time it will take for delivery. If that was properly communicated to me during the checkout process, I would of probably been willing to pay more for quicker shipping, but instead this was hidden from me.

This company just lost any chance of me becoming a repeat buyer for them. But even more importantly, they turned a user, me, from a possible customer evangelist into a person who will never recommend this company to his family and friends. No matter where a customer is in the process, the customer experience never ends.

Technorati Tags: search engine, Google, Birkenstock, PPC, E-commerce, customer experience