MediaPost reports this morning on an interesting new survey from TNS, which says that “sixty percent of shoppers across the globe believe that they will be able to pay for purchases using just their fingerprint by 2015, rated top by 25% of shoppers.” Never mind the chill that should send down the spine of anyone who values their privacy – we’ll deal with that another day. For the moment let’s have a look at what people expect from The Future®.
I’m not going to dive into the telecom policy implications here, but if you thought Sprint was screwing up by firing customers who call support too often, you’re gonna love Comcast’s latest blast of genius.
Comcast has warned broadband Internet customers across the country to curb their downloading or wind up on the curb.The company has a bandwidth limitation that, if broken, can result in a 12-month suspension of service. Continue reading
And now, for a happy story. I bitch so much about how people get it wrong that it’s always great when a company gets it right.
My mobile contract was up and I was looking to upgrade my service and my handset. I work with social media and mobile and the phone I’ve been carrying around is almost embarrassing to pull out around colleagues. It’s kind of like working for Volvo and driving up in a KIA. But more than image, I needed to be fast-forwarding my capabilities – I need to be able to show clients and prospectives what I’m talking about and I need to be able to function better away from the laptop. Continue reading
If you’ve ever been involved in a business of any kind, you’ve probably had occasion to wonder if some customers are more trouble than they’re worth. Whether too high-maintenance, too low-value, or a bit of both, there have probably been times where you thought you’d probably be better off without them. In my case, there have been a couple occasions where I did some informal cost-benefit analysis and walked away from a customer. You hate turning down money, but sometimes it makes sense.
Of course, I’m not a big-time consumer retail and services company, either. If I were, I’d think long and hard about taking the drastic step that Sprint has taken. Continue reading
I’m reading Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s Citizen Marketers on a friend’s recommendation. A lot of folks in his agency are starting to tweak on social media and this highly regarded (and extremely readable) examination of viral and customer-generated marketing activity is guiding a good bit of their thinking and questioning. Good on ’em – a lot more companies need to be exploring these issues, as well.
My only complaint so far really isn’t about the book, which is a very worthwhile read, so much as it is a general idea that all this online activity, and corresponding company attention to it, is a very new thing. To some extent this is true, of course – as I note above, it’s not like engaging the blogosphere and the “citizen marketer” is something that a lot of companies are doing, and even fewer are doing it effectively. I guess I’m frustrated because I’ve been carping on this for years and haven’t seen the kinds of uptake and results that I know are possible.
Here’s an example. Continue reading
I had a little run-in with the “customer service” folks at United Airlines last week. I won’t bother you with the details, because there was nothing particularly unique about the problem, and if you fly United with any frequency you’ve probably encountered as bad, or worse. Short version – when you strand me in a city overnight and cost me pretty much an entire workday, I don’t consider putting me up in a hotel for the night to be “compensation.” You’re the only reason I needed the hotel to start with. If I might exaggerate for purposes of illustrating a point, that’s kind of like running me over with a car, then telling me that you’ll cover the ambulance ride and we’ll be even.
Now, my first inclination was to uncork on the shrews working the Customer Disservice counter at Denver International Airport. But I changed my mind, because that would have been shooting ducks in a barrel. Granted, these people were surly even by United’s standards, and the supervisor was the single bitchiest airline employee I have ever encountered anywhere, which is saying something. Continue reading
These days no manager, director or top executive of any company in the world can speak for more than about four seconds without using some variant of the phrase “customer-focused.” Customer service this, customer-centric that, and my favorite – “delight our customers.”
And most of these folks probably believe it. In fact, you do see a lot of companies and a lot of managers devoting lots of time to figuring out how to better serve those of us on whom their professional lives ultimately depend.
But the emperor is naked, and it’s not a great look. The fact is that no publicly-traded company you’re likely to encounter is truly customer-focused.
They’re investor-focused. Stay with me for a second. Continue reading
wordSmith | Writing / Content Marketing 