I applaud small companies trying to look big, but you have to get your logo superimposed just right if people are going to believe you are big enough to occupy an entire building. ePromos’ graphic designers can fix this like this for our clients.
Here’s the image grabbed from the offender’s About Us page with a Photoshop superimposed image.
Here’s the real building on Google Maps: (caveat: this could be an old Google image!)
Business Lesson: If you are going to make yourself look big, remember technology can blow your cover.
Too bad most businesses today can’t muster up this level of service. My ten year old daughter went to sleep-away camp this year. An while this is her third year, parents still approach the departure with trepidation and concern. Will she be homesick? Who is in her bunk? Does she have a good counselor? You do put a great deal of trust in a camp when you ship your kid off on a bus for seven weeks.
However, when you get a hand written note as brilliant as this one you calm down in a hurry. Written beautifully in nice handwriting, the Group Leader tells you about herself on camp branded logo note pads and everything suddenly is better. Just a perfect touch from some brilliant camp business people, who really care and really get it. All a parent needs to hear is “I’m going to work really hard to make this a great summer for your daughter,” and you feel great about your decision. Way to go Dan and Jane you know who you are.
http://www.trunkclub.com/ is a great idea. They are not paying me for this. I just think it’s a great case study on how to solve multiple business problems at once.
Problem:
1) Hassle: Men hate to shop but want to look good. Psychologically, it’s uncomfortable for men to shop, even at retail stores with a dedicated salesperson/stylist. On a macro level it would seem that more men’s clothes could be sold if some of these hurdles were removed in the buying process.
2) Even the web is far from perfect: The web solves some of the problems, but adds others. Typically web stores lack personal knowledgeable service – you can’t really see what the merchandise looks like in person and colors can be off. It’s also difficult to assess the different fit of various brands and styles. Returns can be a hassle.
3) Business challenges: Businesses have to support the web sales channel which means maintaining a state of the art web store with photos, merchandising, pricing, promotions, SEO, SEM, PPC and centralized inventory systems. This means more employees and more overhead. Selling branded merchandise on the web often means you have to get more competitive and therefore lower your profit margins. The brick-and-mortar retailers have sales every other week, plus it’s easy to check a brand name product and style to see if it’s cheaper at some other web retailer. Businesses know they can sell more if they get the customer face to face.
Solution: Remove the hassle, provide service, make it fun, keep your margins, and it appears they don’t even have to have the huge expense of running a traditional web site. Here is how Trunk Club works:
You register and provide your Name, Email, Phone, store you typically shop in, brands you like, your job, measurements like waist, neck, weight, height etc. and you get a call.
They send you a box, you try on the stuff with the consultant over skype so they can see the fit and change your profile if necessary in their systems and replace items you like with new sizes. No one is watching, you feel more comfortable, and the personal interaction should increase retention as the person won’t return everything. A sales consultant in the process can make the buyer more likely to keep a bigger percentage of the merchandise.
Here’s the ABC Nightline Segment on Trunk Club. Thank Hulu for the pre-commercial:
Trunk Club is a brilliant solution, solving multiple problems at one time. Their use of Skype for Business shows how companies can further enhance communication and improve the customer experience while improving their bottom line. Nice work Trunk Club, good luck to you.
Okay, so you caught me. I didn’t put my napkin on my lap. We were still in “having drinks” mode. But actually, that isn’t what is wrong. I don’t know if their is a top ten rules to make you a better server, however, when you deliver a fresh new drink to a small marble table that’s already filled up with bottles and drinkware, you take the old one away. Period. Put one down, pick one up. Put one down, pick it up.
Restaurant: La Bottega, 9th Avenue, NY
Food: Solid 4/5.
Waitress: As rude as they come in NY, so that is saying a lot. Rest of the staff seems great.
Patron: "Excuse me, I think you may have forgotten my Amstel."
Waitress: "You didn't order one. Would you now like to
order an Amstel."
10 minutes later...
Patron: "Excuse me, we're still waiting for our Mushroom Pizza"
Waitress: "You didn't order one. Would you like to order a Mushroom
Pizza now. Going forward I'll repeat back your order."
Message to Management: She’s the blonde with the attitude that makes it obvious she doesn’t want to be waiting tables. You know who she is. Worked the middle of the outside on June 28, 2011.
My Drink: Ketel One with Blood Orange Juice – I don’t have a fancy name for it yet but I’m working on it.
Hospitality Lesson: Customers are special – your job is to act in a way that impresses them and respects them so they come back over and over again. When a customer says anything to you that indicates any form of dissatisfaction, just say, “I must have missed it, I apologize, let me get that for you right away.”
This is video begins to show why Van Morrison is one of the most amazing and powerful singers ever. Listen to how he takes the place down to silence, entertains them and kills it with throbbing rhythm. He brings it all together, everything he learned from his deep musical knowledge of the R & B greats… and he’s only 25 years old in this video.
Back in the day, the Yellow Pages were often the primary marketing vehicle for the small businessperson. Although it wasn’t intentional, the Yellow Pages were so effective at the time that they actually created an entire generation of business people who didn’t need to learn all that much about marketing. All they had to do was pay a few hundred bucks to the Yellow Page salesperson, snag a spot in the phone book, live off referrals and call it a day. This is the generation of local handymen and plumbers who often had their wives or teenage daughters take their phone calls and they’d call you back the next day. Evidence of this Yellow Page Marketing Generation can be seen today in the lack of quality of the typical local service providers website. They did have one very important trick that can be used by shrewd marketers today.
Back in the 90s, the pinnacle of marketing excellence was realizing that if your company wasn’t named AAA Plumbing or 123 Handyman, it probably should be. Alphabetical directories like the Yellow Pages were exploited regularly, and believe it or not this YPO (Yellow Page Optimization) tactic is still effective today.
Recently, I found evidence that the YPO strategy still works flawlessly while browsing the site of one of ePromos’ (for those of you unfamiliar with me, my promo products company) clients, Seamless Web. Seamless Web is a brilliant time saving website that allows you to order online from almost any restaurant that delivers, as well as order office catering from one centralized web site. It remembers you favorites, etc. If it’s not already part of your life, my guess is that it will be soon. Anyway, they happen to run an ABC-type directory of restaurants that has been exploited for months now. Take a look:
It looks like Darbar, one of the more popular and well known NYC Indian restaurants has now become “1 Darbar”. Even the illustrious Subway has abandoned their brand to become the new-and-improved “@Subway”. And it looks like Witchcraft used a little black magic to transform into “`Witchcraft”. Anyone with access to the Wiki page on alphabetical ordering is now a qualified marketing genius in the world of SeamlessWeb using the 1970′s tactic of Yellow Page Optimization.
Kidding aside, you have to hand it to any business owner who is smart enough to spend some time in their customers’ shoes to evaluate the online ordering experience. In this case, those who did their due diligence found out they could easily increase their exposure with barely any effort. It probably won’t be long before “@#$%^ 1A Restaurant wins the top spot, only to be beaten out by !”#$%^ 1A Restaurant!
I wonder if this is something SeamlessWeb is aware of, or if they have any plans to prevent this sort of thing. Would any managers or owners like to leave a comment here?
The moral of this business story:
1) Exploit ABC directories using YPO (Yellow Page Optimization) whenever and wherever possible for quick results.
2) Take every opportunity to see your business from the customer’s perspective to make sure you are doing everything you can to improve it.
Stacey’s Pita Chips are a favorite snack of mine. I like them with hummus. They’re a big part of the new hummus craze. This blog isn’t about the 32 flavors of hummus that suddenly have their own section at the local supermarket, but rather another business lesson related to opening channels and listening to the customer.
I was recently eating from a bag of Stacey’s Naked Pita Chips (plain flavor) and I found something strange. I was only getting these double wide thick fat chips and hardly any of nice thin crispy ones. These fat ones are the ones that are created when the pita isn’t sliced the long way. They are harder to eat and absorb more oil than the others, and for me, just don’t taste as good.
Here’s my bag, full of doubles:
I really prefer the thin kind, like Stacey’s advertises in their own images:
Something definitely was wrong with this batch. I thought maybe these were a new product line – “Stacey’s Double Wide, Extra Double Thick” chips perhaps. Bag said plain old regular Naked Pita Chips. I spoke to someone else recently that complained about the Stacey’s chips being double thick at Costco, which is where I bought my bag. Maybe they dump the thick ones at Costco?
Anyway, here’s what’s important, the business lesson. I wanted to give the company some feedback. Running my main business, ePromos, I know how important feedback is to retaining customers, innovation and finding new ways to satisfy our client’s preferences, Here is the saga that ensued:
I thought the easiest way for me to let Stacey’s know my thoughts would be through social media. I figured I would compliment them, but also drop in my thick chip experience.
So I go to Twitter, search for Stacey’s Pita, I see various mentions, but no real twitter representing Stacey’s or StaceysPita or Stacey’s Snacks, the parent company.
I go to their website, which isn’t Stacey’s Pita, it’s staceysnacks.com. So I had to use Google to find them. I would suggest they own staceyspita.com.
On their site I don’t see a Twitter icon, but they do have Facebook:
I’m thinking, great, I’ll just post to Facebook. On Facebook I try to post on their wall, but I can’t do it. I think something is wrong. I later learn that the Facebook Page administrative settings can get set to not allow posts unless you first “Like” the page. This isn’t clear to Facebook users. So I go back to the website and look for a comments area.
On the website, it gets worse. The website menu has “Contact Us”. I’m thinking OK, I’m getting there. After clicking Contact Us, my choices are to write or call a toll-free number (I’m not going to speak to a operator, I don’t think my message will make it past their ears, let alone to management). At the very bottom there is a link to the a Consumer Feedback Form (must have browser popups enabled), which doesn’t really turn out to be a form as much as a mini site.
Here is the form, I totally miss “Ideas and Suggestions” on the left because I assume this is the form I have been waiting for, I have to select How they can help me from a drop down (see picture), I didn’t really want to complain but the closest choice was specific product complaint.
I’m thinking what a hassle, I’m out of here, I just wanted to leave a 20 word email, but then I catch the Ideas and Suggestions link on the left side. I’m thinking YES, I’m finally home – but NO!
Their idea of “Ideas and Suggestions” is for new product suggestions only – not where my thoughts are heading: customer feedback.
Anyway, I am really amused at the text on this page. It blows me away that any company would say this at any point in any situation. I guess there are so many legal concerns at Stacey’s they don’t even want new product suggestions. I think you’ll agree, whoa, this ain’t good business:
“Although we are sincerely complimented that you thought to offer us your concept, we cannot accept nor consider ideas from outside the company. Our company receives many suggestions from the public. However, these ideas often mirror, or closely resemble, ones we are working on or that we have used before.”
So I am frustrated that I can’t easily give a suggestion that I as a CEO think they would appreciate. But Stacey’s looks like such a nice entrepreneurial company, something must be wrong. I’m thinking maybe Stacey was purchased by a big bureaucratic company. I Google it and what do you know, my suspicions were correct. Stacey sold to Frito-Lay back in 2000 and something.
I think Stacey may have been a real person, running a small and successful snack business at one point in time. As a small company, I like to imagine she was probably was good at listening and really cared about her customers. As a big company, Frito Lay seems less inclined to value the public opinion and feels the need to be very legally protected from suggestions lest they get sued for stealing someone’s idea. I’m not sure how this happens when someone has to enter their idea, thereby giving it away, proactively on a web form.
Business Lessons: Make sure to own the URLs that people might type in rather then sending them to Google where they will be distracted with advertising, perhaps from your competitors and potentially never make it to your site.
Get a Twitter account and have someone on your staff looking for compliments and complaints. This person should have a direct channel to upper level management.
Consider setting your Facebook page to allow comments without requiring people to first LIKE your page –you can delete comments in a click, just have someone monitor them.
You should look at your website and ensure a consumer is no more than two clicks from filling out a suggestion. If not, fix it.
Don’t make people classify their suggestion if possible.
Don’t use a fancy popup mini site for feedback and suggestions Popups aren’t always enabled.
BTW: I love Stacey’s and if you haven’t tried them you should. Just be careful of the Costco bags if you like thin ones like me
