Will it be over soon?
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: March 3, 2010
The consumer advocate for the San Jose Mercury News writes a column he calls “Action Line.” In today’s column he published a letter from a consumer who had a problem with a treadmill and called Sears Home Services for a repair estimate. The estimate was $915 and the charge for the estimate was $99, which I assume would have been credited against the repair, had one been made. Due to the high cost of the repair the consumer decided against repairing the treadmill.
She soon thereafter discovered that the power-strip the treadmill was plugged into had failed and the treadmill was, in fact, not receiving any power, which was at least significant to the fact that it was not working. The technician from Sears Home Services had failed to notice this issue.
The consumer called Sears to ask that another tech come out and re-evaluate the problem because the consumer was not totally convinced the problem was just the power strip and was reticent to plug the treadmill back in. She also suggested that she should not have to pay for another visit by a technician. Sears Home Services advised that the charge was at the discretion of the repair technician. She declined to pay again for what was obviously misdiagnosed the first time, so no repair technician was sent.
She contacted the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and almost immediately Sears Home Services sent out a technician at no charge to the consumer, found there was indeed a small problem with the treadmill, which required a part to be replaced, which was done at no charge. Happy consumer? Well maybe.
My son had a similar problem with a Sears washer and dryer combo that he bought and got the same run-around. After contacting the BBB, Sears replaced his washer and dryer with a new unit as the old one clearly had a defect in it. (It had been repaired 4 times in one year for the same problem and was no longer under warranty so they had initially said, “too bad,” you have to pay to repair it.)
Happy customer? Sort of. If you have to call the BBB to get Sears to do what they should do, who needs that? This is a far cry from the Sears I wrote about in my book, It’s Not Rocket Science: Using Marketing to Build a Sustainable Business. That Sears still operated on their pioneering premise “Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back.” That Sears is long gone and with it, the Sears that was a profitable retailer leader.
Sears has been on a downward spiral for a VERY long time. Will it be over soon? Maybe.
And should you believe that the old “guarantee of satisfaction” can’t work in today’s world consider Zappo’s, a booming shoe retailer that offers unconditional return privileges for any reason or no reason. And there are others like them that have the same thing in common.
Mitch
U.S. Postal Service to consider everything … really?
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: March 2, 2010
John Potter, U.S. Postmaster General, is widely quoted today as saying that the USPS must “consider everything” in fixing the revenue shortfall and losses facing the USPS. He is then quoted as discussing options such as closing branches to allow contract locations inside grocery stores and other retailers to provide more of the services that the Post Office now provides. He also is discussing eliminating Saturday delivery.
His focus is on efficiency given the decline in usage of the USPS due to the increased use of email. Those all may be good ideas, but the USPS still suffers from “monopoly mentality,” and their people and processes are too often focused inside-out rather than outside-in (from the customer’s perspective).
Two recent and separate examples bring this point home. A friend recently went to the Post Office to obtain a passport, which is the way it is done today. Upon completion of the application he attempted to pay for it by credit card. He was advised that the USPS does not accept credit cards for payment of passport fees. Since he did not have any checks or enough cash with him, he left that section of the Post Office, stood in line and bought a Postal Service money order, which he paid for with a credit card, and took the money order back to the clerk and paid for his passport fees. Go figure?
We ship books ordered from our office via USPS Media Mail. Our office manager recently discovered that the stamps sometimes did not stick to the envelopes we were using, so he went to the Post Office to inquire how to solve the problem since the packages were being returned to us undelivered for “postage.” He had considered taping the postage to the envelope (a standard bubble envelope purchased at the office supply store) and was informed, in no uncertain terms by the postal clerk, that such action was unacceptable. She did not threaten him with arrest, but did make it clear that the package, with clear tape over the postage, would not be accepted by the Postal Service.
He asked her for other suggestions which met with a curt response that basically suggested that it was his problem to solve. He advised her that his solution was going to be to use FedEx Ground in the future. She wished him “good luck with that.”
While we are not a large shipper by any means, there will be fewer packages from our office going by US Mail and a few more by Fed Ex. And undoubtedly the Postmaster General will believe this was beyond their control and will need to be addressed with cost-cutting.
Mitch
What’s really wrong at Toyota
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: March 1, 2010
Akio Toyoda spoke to the U.S. Congress last week and apologized for his company’s failures to perform. (As an aside, it is interesting that Charlie Rangel has no problem holding Mr. Toyoda responsible for the failures of people who work for him [Mr. Toyoda], while simultaneously suggesting that he [Mr. Rangel] should not be held responsible for errors by his own staff. But I digress.)
Toyota Motor Company is in deep trouble because of the highly publicized problems that have been headlines for weeks. Much has been made of what happened within Toyota to allow such problems to occur. Is this a failure of the Toyota Way? Did Toyota grow to fast, as Mr. Toyoda suggested? I submit there is another, more likely cause.
In all of my years in dealing with Japanese customers and vendors, since my very first job out of college as a Product Engineer, I have found the Japanese companies and their people to be “annoyingly” focused on finding the root cause of all reported problems. They have frustrated the heck out of me (and my co-workers) by their single-minded insistence on knowing for certain what caused what we would often consider to be an anomaly. Virtually every time their insistence forced us to get better.
To this day Toyota does not seem to know what caused their myriad of problems. And, surprisingly at least to me, they didn’t seem to be focused on finding out. People died because of apparent problems with their vehicles and they did not look to find the root cause. Why not? What changed within this company that permitted root cause analysis to be over-looked?
I doubt that growth is the problem. Something else is afoot and until they figure that out, their problems will continue.
Mitch
PR and buzz still beats advertising
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 22, 2010
Probably without question the most controversial ad of this year’s Super Bowl was the Focus on the Family sponsored ad featuring Tim Tebow’s mom. The ad got lots of press prior to its airing due to the allegedly controversial nature of its content. Or of its sponsor?
Thank goodness they got the press because I doubt the ad would have done much of anything without it. Not sure you agree? Take a look at it again, and pretend you did not know anything about it before seeing it. Would you care? Would you be interested in learning more if you weren’t a Tim Tebow fan, or otherwise just curious? I doubt it.
They got 50,000 unique visitors and a lot of social media buzz as a result of the ad. Or of the controversy? Granted, if you don’t run the ad you can’t get the controversy.
Mitch
What’s better website hits or customers?
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 17, 2010
Go Daddy ran two Super Bowl ads this year to drive traffic to their website. I commented last week on the use of Danica Patrick in that campaign. Go Daddy does not release the traffic figures the ads generate, and we can assume it is a lot. It is safe to assume that some of those people sign up for Go Daddy services or they would not be running the ads anymore. However, I would be surprised if they got 2,000,000 hits on their site.
Denny’s on the other hand is estimated to have given away 2,000,000 free Grand Slam breakfasts again this year based on their Super Bowl ad offer. Not a fair comparison you say because Denny’s had to pay for those free meals. Maybe not. Could be that free meals are a self-liquidating offer.
The actual cost of a Grand Slam breakfast has been estimated at about $1.80. This amounts to $3,600,000 in cost. However, beverages are not included in the free offer. The sales of beverages to those diners have been estimated to generate a profit of close to $3,200,000. This suggests that Denny’s got 2,000,000 people to actually try their product for about 80 cents a person.
Seems like a pretty low-cost to get someone to actually sample the product. Assuming customers liked what they ate, many will be back. Since they did the same thing last year, we can assume it worked. If you could get target customers in droves to pay your costs to sample your products or services, how far ahead would you be?
Mitch
Teen Hottie is so last week
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 16, 2010
Chase is running an ad on radio promoting their debit card monitoring business. In the ad a teenager is using her dad’s debit card and buys something at Teen Hottie. Her dad, alerted to the spend by Chase (a bit big brother or maybe not), calls his daughter who tells him not to worry she has already returned the item because she has decided that clothes from Teen Hottie are “so last week.”
We are in a change driven world … more so than ever. And while some industries are more “fad driven” than others, it behooves us all to recognize that we have to stay in front of where our customers are headed. Otherwise, as my co-author in our book, It’s Not Rocket Science: Using Marketing to Build a Sustainable Business, put it so well by quoting from song lyrics, you’ll be “riding high in April, shot down in May.”
How are you staying in touch with where your market is moving? And what are you doing to make sure you innovate well enough to be there when they are ready?
Mitch
Is it qualified to be a Super Bowl ad?
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 13, 2010
The Super Bowl pits the two best football teams of the past year against each other for the championship. This year’s match-up was well-played and the professionals showed why they belonged in the Super Bowl.
For many years, Super Bowl ads have had a similar expectation. Not only does they ad need to be effective, it needs to be Super. Critics and pundits (including me) spend time each year after the Super Bowl dissecting the ads in many ways. I have done so all this week, in case you haven’t been paying attention. So the question is, can you get away with running a good, and probably effective ad on the Super Bowl, which is not ’super?’
The Skechers Shape Up ad fits this category. On message, clear and differentiated. In any other venue but the Super Bowl probably reasonably well constructed. But is it Super? Should it have been there? What say you?
Mitch
Should you use a celebrity in your ad?
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 11, 2010
There is a lot of controversy around celebrity usage in ads. Are they credible? Do consumers really follow their advice? What happens if they have a highly publicized negative event? Opinions abound on all fronts, and if it were clear-cut, there would be no discussion. All of that being said, a specific question I ask is: Did Danica Patrick add any value for Go Daddy this year in their Super Bowl Ad?
Go Daddy claims a large spike in traffic due to their Super Bowl ad again this year. Exact numbers are not provided, but the spike seems confirmed by third parties, and I have no reason to believe their ad did not drive a lot of traffic to their site.
My question is really this: Did they need to pay Danica Patrick her celebrity fee to make that happen? I suspect the incremental traffic her place in that ad created was minor if anything. While she is listed as the Go Daddy Girl, and I do not know how long her contract is for, I would not be surprised if she is not included in next year’s ad. Not because she is not hot, just because she is more expensive than unknown women who can create the same result for Go Daddy.
Mitch
The most confusing ad of Super Bowl 2010
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 10, 2010
Without question, the Audi ad confused me, and apparently a lot of other people. The whole commercial focused on the environmental police. Now if you think environmentalist nuts are going to make that happen, then the whole focus of the car in the ad can’t really be for you. And if you want an environmentally “friendly” car, how can the idea of environment police seem like a good idea to you. And if they do, I suspect you are in a small minority. I just don’t get it and I am a target customer for an electric car coming up later this year. And the ad turned me off … completely.
What were they thinking? Or were they?
Mitch
Search
- Toyota vs Audi and unintended acceleration
- What's really wrong at Toyota
- Comments on the Super Bowl Ads
- Removing waste increases profits
- Sales People Want New Products to Sell and Other Myths
- You can still learn a lot from customers
- 11 Secrets to Marketing in a Down Economy (Part 10)
- What should your pricing strategy be in this market?
- Culture vs. Strategy
- Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
- Bill: You have the AUDI angle completely wrong. They were taking off because drivers were mistakenly stepping on the gas instead of the brake. It was driv
- Removing waste increases profits « Value Acceleration: [...] In June of 2007 I posted about the mis-application of 6-Sigma to innovation and creativity. However, the idea of removing waste that does not
- Mitch/Ralph: To be clear, our purpose in the post was not to suggest that either company was "at fault." In discussing the Audi story in other contexts over the ye
Categories
- 6-Sigma (3)
- airlines (23)
- Automobile Industry (27)
- brand (14)
- CMO (2)
- communication (1)
- consumer electronics (2)
- customer loyalty (17)
- customer satisfaction (22)
- customer service (27)
- Down economy (37)
- first mover advantage (3)
- global warming (2)
- Innovation (20)
- Interviews (3)
- market research (8)
- Marketing (42)
- marketing performance management (4)
- Negotiation (1)
- Pricing (9)
- process management (26)
- promotion (7)
- recession (16)
- retail (29)
- sales (13)
- strategy (3)
- Super Bowl Ads (8)
- teams (1)
- trade shows (1)
- Uncategorized (20)
