Seeing the world through the eyes of the customer

Love, passion or empathy allows us to deeply sympathize with the other person(or customers). It allows us to trully immerse ourselves in a matter and understand it from the customer from the other persons point of view.

Building a Business is done from the supporting activites which holds the strucutre up and allowing customers to flow freely through the system and experience through the transaction the value of the product/service. Then you also have management processes and operational processes.

Management = Governing and strategy.
Operations: Creating the value stream through sales, marketing etc.
Supporting: supporting the operational.

Or in other words:

Managerial: Navigating.
Operational: Doing.
Supporting: Helping

Back to empathy again:

Not only will you see the system from the outside and plan accoordingly but you will relate and see it from the inside by sharing the customers journey.  Then you can see what they can see. That is why you should Love what you do and the results will follow.

The Thank You Economy – Part 4 Last

Be authentic. Thank you and small comments from brands = Wow!

Test to give each employee a small budget to try out and experiment with for customers. – This I like a lot. Why not give them some more and see how they use it? An innovation sandbox is great to play within.

Whenever small gifts to customers become a commodity you will already be at the frontier and can move on to the next thing.In other words: as long as you are riding the wave you will always be in the front so dont stress about someone else will do the same. Then you are before the others aswell.

Good intent – differentiator. If your view of social media is so tunnel-visioned that fans/retweets only matters you are missing the point. Put out true value and get back engagement – not force. Water as many plants as possible and take out as many fires as possible. Authenticity is the name of the game.

The Thank you Economy ends with a summary which is great so I dont have to re-read the book. I wish all business books would have it!

The book is good for reinforcing the focus on customers. To be customer crazy. A concept which now is cemented in my thinking.
It is repeated over and over again in the book, but through different perspectives.

Allow customers to participateto help shaping the brand but never to dicatate the direction in which one takes it.
Leading the conversational direction?

New book to come up soon 🙂 Innovation, culture, communication and leadership is the fundamentals in it!

The Thank You Economy – Part 3 – Unleash the love

Many brand seem to want to maintain control over the message.
Vaynerchuk goes as far as calling this stupidity.

What if someone writes angrily?  So what? They could write it elsewhere?
Are you afraid? – Take a closer look at your business. What are you really afraid of?

Naturally, sometimes it goes out of hand, but it is seldome because of the mistake itself but because of something else being fundamentally wrong in the communication. Catch them in time and handle the problem quickly. Or in other words: Take out small fires as quickly as possible.

Even as Gary was pouring free wine at dinner partys as “sorry” he was establishing a culture and brand with his customers. Loose only what you can afford loosing for long term earnings he says. Now personalized youtube videos to customers with tips for them as sorry. If disaster management is handed correctly people forget.

1)      People forgive and forget.

2)      People have a bullshit radar.

Be truthful, be transparent.

“Haters” have strong emotions, so turn them into your advocates.

Vaynerchuk continues:

• Don’t debate,
• be polite
• have a clear and consistent message.
• Treat people like valuable customers. You can control always control the tone.

Another argument that Vaynerchuk counter-argues is that “we are just fine thanks!”

Yes, we are all fine…until we are not!
If you are fine it means you do not care enough. Here one could arguably inflict that it depends on the industry.And again! Have patience! Don’t give up, measure, maybe wrong time and place. Try again.

Rewards for Long term thinking is needed! Todays society is looking at quarterly number rather than long-term.

“instead of focusing heat-seeking missiles on perceived fatal flaws in this, lets try to figure out how to take an acceptable risk and wake its possibility.Explore all possibilities. First movers reap substantial awards. Social Media is a marathon and requires patence and determination.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk

Back to engaging customers:

• Adress complaints,
• answer questions and engage customers,
• correct misunderstandings.

Ads are often not a part of the growth engine – (see previous post about the Lean Start Up.)

Dont sell to all, sell to them who need. A good example used in the book for this is: “I might not care about dental floss but I care about my teeth”. a great thing to talk about, in order to rail customers in later. Talk about things, if you really care it works. Remember that Vaynerchuk who have had 1000 videos of himself talking about wine.

Vaynerchuk introduced me to a new concept which is the CCO(Chief Culture Officer).

He argues that when society increasingly is rewarding good manners, high touch and integrity it wont be too long ( approx. 10 years). until companies seriously think about culture and how important it is.

A strong but small team could beat a bigger company. This is something Virgin has taken great pride in.
Everybody loves an underdog!

Outcare them!

Zappos. Bought by amazon, kept it intact by focusing on the great culture already existing. Amazin was cheaper but zappos had customer service. A trully “customer obsessed” company.

Culture starts at top and falls like water down.

1)      Treat employees as adults – do work as they as they see fit.

2)      Feeling that needs are met.

One good book that mention this sippring down is called Complexity and the nexus of leadership.

It is a great book which I am looking to post about on the blog. They say leadership happen around events, meaning connection time between individuals and improving them. Each meeting can reflect certain opinions and thereby show or point toward the company direction. Doesn´t really sound like rocket science though.

Who cares about vacation and endtimes. Let employees make their own choices. Adjust to the customers. Employees are important. CCO of future will ook at individual needs and goals. Turnover of employees cost.

Building blocks:

•  Yourself  – self awareness. Remember who you are and the qualities you have. Wear your own hat. Don’t spend money on what you are not. Authenticity.
• Mental commitment and spend resources wisely.
• Set the tone, show and lead.
• Invest in employees. Reward those who care.
• Freedome to ask for what they want and to experiment. If they leave so what? Turnover costs and why not be the company noone can speak badly about, having worked there.

Trust people. Allow customers to openly talk about their work, listen and find out their frustrations etc. accountability is important. Second chances are important not only because everyone can make a misstake but how do they change? How do they take responsibility?

The Thank You Economy – Part 2 – Tuning in to the customers

Social Media allows for asking questions and details.
Never before can you really dwell into your customers thoughts as you can today! That is amazing!🙂

Most importantly, and repetedly: Using Social Media to promote your brand is a marathon, not a 100 meter sprint. Therefore you should think long term. Patience and purpose are two concepts that should fill the emotional gaps when waiting for answers.

What is so great with social media is that one does not need several thousands of dollars in budget in order to try something. If you care and create good quality content you can make an impact.  You could for instance engage 1 on 1 = asking for follow questions and details. Delve into what and why customers or prospects feel the way they do.
The low cost of entry should allow for experimentation as we have seen in The Lean Start Up.

You cant buy volume customers in Social Media through pushing your message. It is more nuanced.
It is about the connection, giving and taking and not pushing and ripping off!

Real emotional relationships take time and you get what you put in them.
It is about quality which triumps quantity. You cant easily buy other Fans they have a connection someone.
Customers do not equal customer relationships. It is the quality of the connections that matter.
Compare this to Eric Ries assumptions about customers: You do not experiment about your customers but about your assumptions regarding them.

Vaynerchuk says it requires: patience, persistence and understanding.
Low numbers might feel bad but worse is having none. Be better, care and feel the pulse.
Remember that Ego might hurt but that is the penalty of having an inflated world view from the beginning.
People want close relationships with their brand. One day it wont be all awkward.

Social Media is not a Fad. It is a natural continuation of previous development. Not something that has been around before and died out. It is the understanding of relationships.
It has been waiting just as nice small town businesses have continued with their daily businesses. Since the world is more connected and easier to compete they are gaining in force today.

History of television and radio over decades show that normal media businesses they are slow learners. These industries stood still for so many decades. How were not the music industry fighting? First illegal downloading, then Spotify and Itunes – as mentioned in the post about Randi Komisar.  Now we have newspapers online in a new way and also Netflix.

NFL according to Vaynerchuk have changed with the notion that speed kills ( quicker players today) as a way to meet the big players of yesterday. The same solution exists with social media.

If something better come people jump on people will do so. They don’t jump of, they just take one step to the nearby train/car.
Follow customers and care and relationships and your customers will not have to change vehicle.