Category Archives: Customer Experience

Disgusted… I want authentic marketing

By naomisimson | Published: August 18, 2010

First of all I would like to say to the advertising agencies working on with the political parties for this election… tough gig – the fees must be nice – but, ugh, I bet the briefs you are receiving are cluttered – and the approval process a nightmare.

I was watching ‘Top Gear ‘with my son (12) last night – and at every single ad break we were bombarded with political messages. My son would yell at the TV – ‘GO AWAY’ …. And I have to agree. I’m not an idiot, and to be shovelled bucket loads of scare mongering (by both political parties (and other lobby groups)… is simply atrocious. AND UN-AUSTRALIAN!

I am ashamed.

My last post was about authenticity of message. About being ‘real’ with our customers.

Where is the campaign in this election campaign? It seems like every political advertising execution is different! There is no consistency of creative. I know I am too young to remember ‘It’s Time’ – stickers, posters, radio, TV, flyers – complete blanket. Even ‘Kevin ‘07’ had some consistency.

My son thinks that our political leaders are a waste of space… he learned nothing! This was an opportunity to create a vision, to demonstrate a track record and dare I say it inspire us.

Did Obama use such tactics in his campaign? 

As a customer (ie a voter) I am absolutely appalled at the lack of creativity, lack of integrity, and lack of inspiration.

I want leaders I can believe in…. and authentic marketing would be a good way to get me to believe.

Dexter knows more about authentic communications than this. (Dexter's Twitter Page)

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Cut through

By naomisimson | Published: August 17, 2010


 I’m a marketer and a ‘sucker’ for new things… but the shear volume of messages that I’m bombarded with each day overwhelms. It is very hard to be a remarkable ‘purple cow’ as Seth Godin implored – when everyone is claiming to be a ‘purple cow.’

Real cut through comes from the authentic experience someone has of a brand.

At RedBalloon we just figure that rather than making ‘promises’ and ‘ trying to sell’ stuff – we will just let people know what we stand for.

I was very chuffed to read this blog post (well done team)

http://maloneyonmarketing.com/2010/08/10/using-real-australians-in-your-advertising-redballoon-vs-qantas-frequent-flyer/

Really, we are just a bunch of passionate people who are all focused on making sure that we deliver amazing experiential gifts…. We so understand that people have a choice and we are so appreciative when people choose us.

Marketing has come along way from the 1950’s – but the premise is the same – “I want to know that I am dealing with someone real - and what you stand for”

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Corporate Customer Love

By naomisimson | Published: July 8, 2010

I recently read the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh – CEO of Zappos.com – He believes much of the success of his $1billion online retail business comes from it’s commitment to the culture of the business – which allows every person in the business to stay customer focussed.

He talks about customer happiness with religious zeal. The culture of the business means that there is not a department accountable for customer care – the whole company is. Every employee has at least 2 weeks on the phone with customers as part of their induction training. No matter what role have joined the business for, being with customers if everyone’s job.

At some point in the book – Hsieh poses the question – ‘As leaders are we asking the right questions?’. I ask myself – how do we know what are the right questions?

Recently RedBalloon for Corporate wanted to find out – not just if RedBalloon was delivering on it’s promise (ie customer satisfaction) – we wanted to gain real insights to assist us ask the ‘right questions’ and determine future activities.

We know to be successful we must be truly transparent with our customers – acknowledge our commitment to customers – but also appreciate that sometimes things do go awry.

If we are not asking the right questions –and listening to customers, more often than not, we also won’t even know if things get out of kilter. Establishing listening posts with customers is also a great source of innovation and development of how we can grow and better support our corporate clients.

94% of the corporate customers said that we were friendly, knowledgeable and professional… (Whilst no one said we were extremely bad at these things) what is it that the 6% of people who are ‘on the fence ‘were expecting ? How could we either better manage expectations or create a better approach for them? RedBalloon has close to 2000 corporate customers  so a short fall of – 6% represents – 120 people – which is a lot of clients who we are not serving the way they want us to.

94% of people also rated the experience suppliers approach in the same way. This gives us an opportunity to drill down more into what people expected and how we could make that smoother for them.

We discovered that only 5% don’t know the impact that the RedBalloon for Corporate has on their business – whilst 91% claimed that RedBalloon was successful or very successful in achieving the business objective of using us.

Satisfaction is a subjective term – and depends on an individuals perceptions… so what we wanted to discover was whether our customer talked about us to others and are advocates of what we do… I was delighted to see that 91% of people are strong supporters and tell others about us. – and 92% have recommended us to others…which of course support the theory that word of mouth is the best marketing strategy of all.

As RedBalloon progresses it’s customer excellence program – this is the first time we have surveyed our corporate customers. Thank you so much to the hundreds of people who took the time to help us listen.

We appreciate it – and look forward to delivering.

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The 10 point Customer Excellence Checklist

By naomisimson | Published: July 5, 2010

I’ve been reading the book ‘Delivering Happiness’ by Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos.com. There are a significant number of similarities between RedBalloon and Zappos. As CEOs we both wanted to create a place where we too wanted to work. We both believe in experiences over stuff, we both believe that the key to success of business this century is transparency, vision, values and alignment.

And we both believe the company's culture and the company's brand are really just two sides of the same coin – As we say at RedBalloon Happy People = Happy Customers = Happy Profits

In Tony’s book he outlined his 10 beliefs in customer service. It can almost act as a check list to customer experience success.

Zappos.com 10  ways to Instil Customer Service into your Company

  1. Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top.
  2. Make WOW a verb that is part of your company’s everyday vocabulary.
  3. Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service… because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare.
  4. Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees.
  5. Don’t measure call times, don’t force employees to up sell, and don’t use scripts.
  6. Don’t hide your 1-800 number. It’s a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well.
  7. View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you’re seeking to minimize.
  8. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company.
  9. Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service.
  10. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors.

Every new person at Zappos (no matter there role in the business) has at least two weeks on the phone to customers as part of the induction program. There is no better way to know a business than have time with customers.

Thanks for the reminder to be vigilant, zealous and addicted to the customer experience. We'll see how we stack up using this score card.

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