Archive for the 'Amazon' Category

The 2011 Netpromoter benchmarks report does say lots of obvious things. But that can be useful when said with numbers. Take this parargraph:

“Businesses are expected to spend $214.3 billion on advertising in 2011, according to SNL Kagan. But only 4 percent of Americans trust advertising the most as an information source when choosing products or services. Instead, the Satmetrix study finds that consumers most trust recommendations from independent sources (83 percent), especially those with whom they have personal relationships. Half of consumers (50 percent) cited personal recommendations from friends, family or colleagues as the most trustworthy source of information. And, approximately four times as many people trusted product test reviews (18 percent) or consumer opinions posted online (15 percent) as compared to advertising.”

So here’s one to  discuss with your board colleagues…… the exam question is “What would the business look like if we spent 83/4 times, let’s say 20 times, as much on improving the colleague and customer experience as we do on marketing our brand or product?”

Anyone who  has played with business simulators will know that more advertising of a poor performing service or product just leads to a worsening economic cycle – higher acquisition costs, higher cost to serve, low retention. Word of mouth reality outstrips advertising glitz.

And the opposite is true. Businesses like Amazon, Google ,eBay and Skype took off and stay up there without much, if any, advertising support. You can read more about Amazon and Google in our “100 things you can learn from …” series at our website.

100 things, 21st century marketing, Amazon, Google, customer experience, ebay, netpromoter, word of mouth | 1 Comment

The book of “The Best Service Is No Service” is already up to 12th on Amazon’s best seller list and people such as Guy Kawasaki are blogging it.

The FT ran an article on it on March 27th

It’s going to be big…. More importantly the idea that its not ok to do dumb things to cause your customers to contact you is even bigger.

Amazon, contact rate, customer experience, fast+simple, the best service is no service | No Comments

I loved the Oct HBR interview with Jeff Bezos especialy where he said: “Years from now when people look back at Amazon I want them to say that we uplifted customer centricity across the entire business world”

Of course, we are intent on helping that happen by sharing some great Amazon processes such as Skyline and WOCAS.

He comments on the strategic significance of such processes:
“..we know that when we put energy into defect reduction which reduces our cost structure and thereby allows lower prices, that will be paying us dividends ten years from now.”

And on what we in Budd call “the best service is no service” – the name of the book to be published in April next year:
“…that execution factor is a big factor and you can see it in our financial metrics over the past ten years. It’s very obvious when, for instance, we look at the number of customer contacts per unit sold. Our customers don’t contactus unless something’s wrong, so we want that number to move down – and it has gone down every year for 12 years”

And relative to our common sense loop which says the customer knows best:
“when we can’t decide what to do, we try to convert it into a straightforward problem by asking “what’s best for the consumer?””

And a lovely quote relative to why these processes are so important to get on with:
“I think most big errors are errors of omission not commission. The times when they were in a position to notice something and act on it…and yet failed to do so”

Thanks Jeff

Amazon | No Comments

Jonathan Wilson is moving from our advisory board (see www.budd.uk.com/people.html) to lead Budd’s executive coaching and change management. He reminded me the other day about the Gallup data on the 12 key questions to ask your staff ( and yourself !) if you want to know what happy bunnies they are.

I won’t fire them all at you, but the first four are an interesting self test. Try them:
1 Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2 Do I have the right materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3 At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4 In the last 7 days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?

Let us know what you find…. Email us – peter.massey@budd.uk.com

I started to find the 12 questions by Googling but, as is too often the case these days with Google, lots of intermediaries are top of the list. Luckily Amazon was one of them. I pressed one click to go to the book that contains them “First, break all the rules”. I pressed one click to add it to my basket, one click to check out and one click to confirm. Approximately 20 seconds. That was Thursday and the book arrived today Saturday. That’s what we call fast+simple.

Had any similar experiences? Email us with them – peter.massey@budd.uk.com

Amazon, fast+simple, people | No Comments