Customer Perceptions

Post is courtesy of Bernice Grossman who read this article in DIRECT Magazine.  Great example of using a little ingenuity to get the customer to notice you in a time of crisis.

Imagine you’re exhibiting at a trade conference and your booth doesn’t show. Bad news, right? Not necessarily.
Jordan Ayan, CEO of e-mail service provider SubscriberMail, recently found himself in such a situation when FedEx failed to deliver his booth to an American Marketing Association conference in Orlando, FL. 

Since FedEx was to blame, Ayan decided that it should be part of the solution. He and his colleagues went to every local FedEx store they could find and grabbed as many FedEx boxes as they could get to build a makeshift booth.  “We told them we had a lot of shipping to do,” Ayan says.

They then went to Kinko’s and created a large sign to hang in the booth that read: “Guess when FedEx will deliver our booth and win a box of Omaha Steaks (delivered by UPS!).”

To complete the gag, they acquired a volleyball, put a handprint on it with mud and called it “Wilson.” The name refers to the beach volleyball with a bloody handprint that Tom Hanks talks to in the movie “Cast Away,” where Hanks plays a FedEx employee stranded on an island with a bunch of FedEx boxes after a company plane he was on crashes.

Turns out FedEx did SubscriberMail a favor. “We had more people come to our booth than we’ve ever had at any show we’ve ever done,” Ayan says. Out of just over 800 attendees, more than 280 entered the contest. As for the real booth, FedEx delivered it on the last day.

Anyone else have some b2b customer delight stories?

Scott Lieberman :: Mar.11.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

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Scott Lieberman :: Mar.11.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

For those consumers who can’t stand those annoying IVR menus, here is a sneaky alternative to waiting your turn.  Gethuman.com gives you shortcuts to get a person on the line–fast. 

Thanks to Damon Darlin at the New York Times for posting this list at the bottom of his recent article on cell phone plans.

Scott Lieberman :: Mar.09.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Bank of Montreal announced a new service for its private banking customers (enCircle) that provides “lifestyle services” such as laundry pickup, grocery shopping, and entertainment planning.  Here is a great example of how BMO is extending the banking value proposition in a crowded and commoditized market.  Although the account is for the higher end customer (you need $500,000 in investable assets to qualify) the concept is a terrific example of how to drive loyalty to the brand:

1. It creates frequency – by offering services that consumers use frequently, the service allows the bank to dramatically increase its touches with customers in aspects of their lives that are not directly related to their finances, but rather how consumers live.  More frequent interactions provide the bank with the ability to influence how the consumer views the bank much more often than if they only deal with consumers when they are ready to buy a financial services product.
2. Data, data, data – presumably the bank is keeping track of the services they use – what a great source of data to create new insight on the customer that the bank could never get before.  BMO will now be able to know when its best customers are either in the market for a mortgage, or when they are looking for a new car; before they call for a loan.  Brilliant!
3. This is value – as I wrote in a previous post it won’t take long for a retail bank to create a ‘killer app’ for switching.  This new service from BMO begins to address the issue of what may compel customers to switch.  Both capabilities could be extremely powerful.

Kudos to BMO for innovating.  Let’s see how quickly their competition responds.

Scott Lieberman :: Mar.08.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Spirit Airlines announced today that it would begin charging $10 for each of the first two bags checked and $100 for the third. What a dumb idea. The first impact will be passengers who typically check their bag, but could carry it on if they wanted to, will now carry on. This will increase the time it takes to load the plane, making flight attendants more irritable than they currently may be, and cause more delays. The airline cites the fact that they made the move to “keep their fares low”. Huh? Do you think passengers would even realize a $10 increase in the fare? And if you check the bag, you’ll incur the increase anyway, just in an annoying nominal fee you will need to pay at the airport. Anyone think this makes sense?

Scott Lieberman :: Mar.07.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »