theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

More on Third World VIPs: World's Least Expensive Qualitative Research: Monitor Community Discussion Boards

I went looking again for pictures to lift for the Nigerian phone story about managing VIP customers in third world markets.  I didn't have permission to use fabulous pictures of Nigerian phone kiosks (here), so thought I really should not post them without permission. 

What I found instead was this incredible site, a community of Nigerian telephone users, responding to the question,

Have u ever lost touch with your cellphone for a whole day, or for a greater part of a day? Maybe u misplaced it, or left it at home. How do u feel and how do u cope without the use of your phone for those periods? Lets share...

If this isn't qualitative research, I don't know what is.    (These are just the sorts of stories I try to elicit in research)

What's even more interesting is just who does have a phone in Nigeria.  I went looking at the CIA fact site , which is a great resource for this type of snapshot.   

Numbers don't always mean much in isolation, so I've created a couple of little graphics.  This first one shows the percentage of people who have a land line, a mobile phone, or internet access.  That's Nigeria there on the left, with the single digit percentages.

So less than two percent of the population have a telephone (as of 2003).   These people have to be considered wealthy in any sort of segmentation analysis.   

We often think of the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, when we think of profitability distribution by segments.   In North America. 

But the rule in Nigeria is clearly more like the hockey stick rule.   The top 10% of the country's population controls 40% of the income.  You can see this in the next graph.

Bringing this back to the customer experience for a moment.  Remember we started this conversation because CRM Guru had a question from a contact centre person about managing VIP customers.  Once you really start to see who these folks are, it becomes fairly clear that anyone with a telephone is a somebody in Nigeria.    

So the question about the top spenders in that top group becomes rather interesting... these folks would be the creme de la creme.   Trying to port a North American segment management strategy into this environment is just plain silly.   Or perhaps arrogant. 

What would make them feel special?  What would their expectations be about service recovery?  About special arrangements?  Probably a bit different than yours and mine.

Addendum May 10

I asked some senior technology people to comment on Edwin's question, below, and Rick Makos of Teradata kindly sent along some material.   

Sorry for the late reply, but I thought I would attach a number of the pieces of Sales collateral for Teradata CRM, as well as how National Australia Bank (NAB) is using our CRM solutions. We built our CRM solution in partnership with NAB as you can see from the attached articles it has generated a significant amount of value for NAB. We have a very different - Event Driven approach to CRM, it is also extensively used in the Telcom market place.

I am also speaking at the upcoming CMA conference next week on the shift to more event driven techniques for customer management, if you would like to learn more I can send you the details of the presentation. We are also demonstrating the solution live in our booth at the conference.

Files and articles here: Download nab_grabs_crm_supremacy.pdf   
Download nabs_track_record_a_winner.pdf  
Download accelerate_your_time_to_value_with_teradata_crm.pdf
Download teradata_crm.pdf

(No, this is not just crass commercialism, and we have no business relationship with Teradata)

Online Research Using Live Video

I had the pleasure of visiting with some research pals online today, courtesy of E-Qualitative Research. 

E-Qual runs something called "Cyber Suite", which is a facility for running live-feed video focus groups or individual interviews. 

Here's a couple of screen shots taken during the session:

This is pretty cool stuff.  As long as everyone has high-speed, it is very real.  We saw some video clips, we talked to each other.  We played dress-up with a virtual paper-doll.  We used mark-up tools on the whiteboard to show what we liked and didn't like about packaging.   When we had no need of the white board, Jack (our helpful host) removed all the other visuals so the pictures could be larger.

The whole thing was recorded.  Clients could lurk and watch without being seen, and we were able to see the whole thing again after the session. 

Did we have glitches?  A few.  But surprisingly few, IMHO.   
I wondered how many people actually have a camera and mic?  Not a problem, as it turns out, since they are inexpensive to buy, and form part of an attractive incentive package for the participants.  (Way cool, huh?)

I also loved the idea of using this type of facility for an online meeting, as well as for research purposes. 

My only issue:  I had to figure out how to surreptitiously disable my camera and mic from time to time so I could slurp coffee without offending my compadres.   

I also want to thank Betsy Leichliter who kindly invited me to participate. 

Managing VIP and High Value Customers in Third World Countries

There was an interesting question posed today on CRM Guru (free registration required):
Sarwi Rahaman, who works in the call centre for a telecom company in Nigeria asks about handling the VIP customers, "not your average Joe on the street":

1. How do we handle/manage our highest spend subscribers?

2. How do we grow their spend? Or increase their ARPU?

There were a number of good responses to this question, but most seemed focused on sales and call routing.  No one addressed service recovery.  (Amazing, since the last interaction is a powerful influencer over loyalty, especially if it is a problem interaction)

Here's what I added:

I have looked at customer segmentation in other third world countries, and have found that the top tier frequently accounts for a disproportionate percentage of profitability -- much more so than in countries with established middle class.

So the primary goal has to be retention. This group is going to be highly networked among each other, and a reputation for fantastic service will travel quickly among the group.

All of the points mentioned earlier are good ones, but I would add a couple:

1) Do some qualitative research with this group to find out more about their needs and wants. (This can be tricky -- I have found receptions in high-end hotels work well for locations in situations like yours)

2) Provide clear guidelines for service recovery situations. This is probably more critical operationally than anything else you might do. Problems need to be handled by seasoned trouble-shooters. Don't wait for these customers to escalate -- if the first person can't solve the issue, send it immediately to the troubleshooter team. Plan to call daily or more often until problems are resolved. This will win you great loyalty, more than any discount or special promotion.

I know I am always pushing for research.  In a situation like this, the average employee has no understanding at all of the world these customers live in.  Doing research is totally critical in these circumstances. 

And it will pay off -- by showing you places you can leapfrog the competition by providing exceptional value.

More on Nigerian telecom here, including some wonderful and evocative photos of telephone street vendors. 

What happens to the downsized -- are they your alumni or guerrilla anti-marketers?

 

An executive I admire was telling me about a downsizing program that the company is undertaking, driven by some major process improvement changes.   He is pressing for rapid completion of the down-shift, in order to get through the staff pain as quickly as possible.  (Totally the right thing to do in my view)

It's a regional bank, and one of the most respected and desirable employers in their small market.   I was delighted to hear that they were doing their best to help employees find positions.   

When we talked recently, my advice was:  do even more. 

The most important advertising you will do in the next year is how you treat these employees, I said. 
Provide vacant office space, phones, copiers and a couple of PCs and encourage people to form a job-finding club.  Help them get it started and keep it going.  Tell them you hope you can bring them back someday as you get bigger.  Encourage them to keep in touch. 

We spend time and effort thinking about WOMMA (word of mouth marketing and advertising) and trying to show customers what good people we are with our corporate good-citizen stuff, cultural and charitable activities.  But it's all for nothing if we treat our employees badly and they tell the world. 

Employees understand business reality.  There will be re-organizations and process changes that lead to job losses.  This is no justification for disrespect. 

Senior people often kid themselves that only the weak links are being tossed overboard. That the merger, or whatever is an opportunity to high-grade the team. 

This is nonsense, a fairy-tale that HR people tell themselves to make themselves feel better.   The truth is, talented contributors are being laid off.  And what will they say about you later on?  Will they be customers for life?  Will they tell people how fairly and how well you treated them?  Will they be what  Eric Myers at ICE calls  Evangelists or Vigilantes? 

How to make customers apostles for you: Return calls

I have to extend major kudos to Six Apart, the fine people who brought you Movable Type and Typepad blog authoring software. 

I have sent them three online help tickets in the time I have been using Typepad.  They have never failed to respond within 24 hours with a helpful, usually personalized response. 

This bears repeating:  Helpful, Personalized.  It's a small company, but I'm already an apostle, and just keep becoming a bigger fan.  They are making me feel like a customer, not an intrusion.  I like their tone.  Actually, I feel like I like them. 

And they are delivering this service for about $98 USD annually.  Gets you thinking, doesn't it?

Way to go!

Mr. Picassohead, Ikea and Other Miscellany

There are so many banal intrusions from ActiveX every day that one almost forgets how many interesting things are being done with it.
Here's an example:  my self-portrait done on Mr. Picassohead.   

A few months ago, I had a lot of fun with a similar tool you can download from Ikea to design your own office. 

You may have tried things on  using  My Virtual Model at LLBean and other places.  It's not quite as good as being in the store, but better than a flat picture, and gives you a more realistic sense of cut and length. 

I'm still trying to finish the scrabble puzzle at TD Canada Trust -- you get to scratch for new letters every time you pay a bill.   I don't know that it's making me want to pay more bills, but it does make the process kind of fun.   (Something sorely lacking in most banking customer experiences for the most part). 
 
Miscellaneous Stuff
Readers have asked me for an e-mail link -- there it is, on the left, Bot-a-blog.  I'd welcome any feedback as to how well it works for you. 

A much better option IMHO is to set up a Bloglines account.  You can easily add feeds (like this one and lots of other good ones, a few of which are shown on the blogroll on the right). 

Instead of having to remember the addresses of various blogs, you can quickly scroll through what's new since you last read it,when you have a few spare minutes and need some mental recharging.  You only have to bookmark your Bloglines page. 
Then when you are on a blog that looks interesting enough to follow for a while, you can just click the button that says "Sub Bloglines" and you can easily add the new blog to your list. 

One brief note on blog etiquette -- if the writer leaves a space for comments, comments are welcome.  Don't hesitate to add to the discussion.  You might even get hooked enough to start your own blog. 

Privacy and Trust: Watchfire Survey says it's about Trust

Online risk management firm Watchfire has sponsored a survey of online banking customers that suggests TRUST is the thing to pay attention to.

There are a lot of tables and charts, and some reasonable commentary, but from my perspective, it's this trust and loyalty thing that is interesting and new.  Although the commentary suggests that trust creates loyalty, that seems too simple.  The picture looks like this:  people with more of their wallet at one institution tend to shop around less, and tend to have higher trust.  So maybe the real formula here is this:  if you are trustworthy, I may give you more of my business, and have greater confidence to conduct business online.

The study also suggests that breaches of trust will be dealt with harshly.  Well, we need to wait and see on that one, because consumer inertia in matters of financial services is legendary.  I suspect the issue is a lot less salient when someone else had the problem than when it happened to you or someone you know. 

We'll have lots of opportunities to test this idea, since major breaches of security are becoming alarmingly commonplace: ChoicePoint, and now MasterCard. 

ChoicePoint was a spin-off from credit bureau powerhouse Equifax, who compromised the privacy of many thousands of people by unintentionally selling private data to crooks, enabling them to perpetrate identity thefts on a large scale. You can read ChoicePoint's apology to people who were compromised here.

The real story here is about the impact these problems are going to ultimately have on data mining -- maybe we've already had the golden age?

More on Choice, Intermediaries and Certainty: Using a Mortgage Broker

This advertisement in my alumni magazine caught my eye for a couple of reasons.  First, it is actually a pretty good advertisement -- eye catching simplicity that made me stop and look at the jam jars wtih the different labels. 

There are other interesting things about it though.  If you read the fine print, you'll find that HLC is actually part of CIBC.  That explains the dominance of CIBC affiliated brands on the jam jars... PC Financial and CIBC are the obvious ones, but First Line Mortgages is also part of CIBC. 

HLC is providing some options that CIBC might hesitate to provide directly -- sales of products manufactured by other Financial Institutions. 

Although the advertisement is about choice, this is not really what using a mortgage broker is about:  it's about certainty.  Choice is a euphemism in this context.  The web site has language that captures the certainty issue much better:

There are specific financing solutions available if you are self-employed, experienced previous credit issues or bankruptcy or require financing on a non-traditional property.

You know that a broker is going to get you a deal, if there is one out there to be found, no matter how difficult your circumstances.  And the broker is probably going to get you just about the best price you can get as well, even with their commission built in.  The real bonus is not having to deal with a dozen financial institutions telling you that you have "a difficult file", giving you the pained expression, or any other patronizing, demeaning experience. 

The broker's interests are almost perfectly aligned with yours:  get you a good deal so they can get your business, earn a commission, and probably get a referral from you.  Here's something you won't see at too many bank web sites:  names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers for the mortgage broker people.

(I actually put something just like this on a financial institution web site last century:  names and phone numbers of real contact people.  It was amazingly successful.  In fact, I personally used to get calls from all sorts of people who just hoped I could help them find the right person.  And of course the commissioned sales team was happy to be easy to find.  Back to our topic...)

Some mortgage brokers are so good at understanding the risk appetite and policies of the various lenders that they don't often get rejected -- they know how to package a deal so it can be done, and they send it to the right lender the first time. 

We bought our last car this way -- a less common thing, but worked great.  No sales person to deal with, no stupid negotiating game, and even with her commission tacked on, we got a better price than we likely could have by holding our breath till we turned blue. 

You can buy many things this way, actually -- commercial printing, commercial financing, in fact most commodities, a house... 

And the benefits are the same in each case.  You get one knowledgeable player who does the legwork for you, thereby increasing certainty, reducing complexity, saving time and cutting back hassle significantly. 

(Imagine trying to buy a house without a realtor and MLS ... driving around the city looking for signs, knocking on doors, reading ads in the newspaper -- what a nightmare!) 

Intermediaries use their market knowledge and negotiating power to improve the customer experience, making a nice living while they are at it.

Up close and personal with customers: how to innovate

A terrific article by Mark Kingdon in ClickZ, called "What's Your Analysis to Emotion Ratio?"
Kingdon argues that you need to get out in front of the mirror and interact deeply with your potential customers to really go beyond conventional thinking in development of new products or new advertising.

Many tools analyze customers, but do we really understand them? From what I see, in most cases we don't. We observe customers from a distance, through two-way mirrors or in black-and-white PowerPoint presentations. Where's the empathy? Where's the emotion?

Kingdon shares a great idea to generate out-of-the-box thinking about customers:  buy abandoned suitcases from the airport, and try to build a profile of the person who owned it.  Where were they going, what were they doing, what do they care about, etc. 

Here are his top tips for innovative customer-focused thinking, with a few notations from yours truly:

EVerything You Need to Know About Web Site Usability: Billboard Going by at 60 mph

This great review of Steve Krug's book is well worth clicking over to, even if you don't want the book:  Accessify.com - Book Review: Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug. A common sense approach to web usability.

Here's the extract that caught my eye:

We're thinking 'great literature' (or at least 'product brochure'), while the user's reality is much closer to 'billboard going by at 60 miles per hour'

Yes indeed.  We do tend to think our corner of the world is central to the lives of our customers, not just our own.  A good reason to do experiential research, so we put ourselves in the shoes of our customers, in the same context they have as much as possible.

Security Breach Hits HSBC: Will Doing the Right Thing Pay Off?

Oh, Oh -- another major privacy breach, this time at HSBC, involving a reported 180,000 cardholders.   Here's the CNN version of the story: Security Breach Hits HSBC's MasterCard Credit Cards - Apr. 14, 2005.

  Although HSBC so far appears to be the only financial institution to disclose that it is alerting cardholders of the incident, credit cards issued by other banks also could be vulnerable. Under current rules, however, banks aren't necessarily required to alert their cardholders to the potential fraud.

Good for HSBC for talking to their customers.   And remarkable that disclosure is not required, isn't it? 
The question is, will HSBC be rewarded by customers for doing the right thing here?  Add your perspective, all predictions welcome.

Management Rules Inspired by SuperNanny

Dave Crisp's newsletter inspired me to visit the Supernanny site and find out what the rules really are.   Not a bad shortcut to managing people.  (Except perhaps for the naughty-room.)

See the rules for yourself, here. 

Clarity, accountability and respect seem to be the chief underlying principles -- simple, powerful concepts.
 

Stop Fighting the Customer: Puretracks Launches Kiosks

Puretracks, an online music download service, has recently launched free-standing kiosks that will burn a CD  for you of tunes you select.  Just like at home, but you don't need your computer with you to do it.  Future functionality improvements planned will include direct-to-player digital downloads through on-board ports.   You can read a more detailed article at Business Edge (no sub rqd). 

This is, in an odd sort of way, a long-tail idea.  Some of the locations for the kiosks are record stores.  The kiosk will permit them to add selection in specific categories and change the focus of their floor inventory. 

I bet it works.  People will keep buying music; they just don't want to buy it the way the music industry wants to sell it.  Thank goodness that's changing.

Customer Communication: How Clear is it Really?

How often have you read a "Dear Customer" letter from a company and been unable to distill the critical essence from it?  I'm guessing fairly often, regardless of whether it's a new product offering or a recall notice.

In my Miss Marple fashion, I'd like to illustrate with something happening outside my window.  They are digging up my street, taking jack-hammers to the sidewalks, and there are guys with shovels standing in holes up to their shoulders on my neighbor's front lawn.  Other guys with yellow spray paint have put mysterious arrows and lines all over the place.   

Many of the neighbors have expressed surprise, saying they had no idea this going to happen.   

My spouse has been somewhat dismissive of these folks as just not paying attention -- he of course was right on top of this when we got the letter from the city six weeks ago, and has contracted for additional work with the crew.   I asked him to find me the original letter.

Here's what the notice said:

Dear Sir/Madam,
For your information, pavement and/or sidewalk reconstruction has been proposed for your street in the near future.  Prior to this work, the City of Toronto has awarded Contract No.04D1-517WS to The State Group Inc. for the replacement of substandard water services.

Now here's a letter that would have communicated what was really going to happen:

Dear Sir/Madam.
For your information, we will be replacing the sub-standard water-lines up to the edge of your property line sometime in April.  In many cases, this will entail removing the sidewalk and digging into the boulevard.  We will make reasonable efforts to respect any landscaping you may have installed on city property.  Temporary water pipes will be strung along the street. There will be disruptions to street access and on-street parking during the project.

So before you sign off on that letter to customers that is filled with corporate speak, give yourself a reality check.  Does it really communicate the important facts?

 

Research Incentives: How Much Is An Opinion Worth

I-Tracks, an online research organization, published some helpful tips about research incentives in their newsletter, available at this link:  Press Room :: Newsletter :: Article Archive :: Itracks.

Face-to-face focus groups are more well established, and a good recruiter can usually provide some guidance as to the current going rate.  Online is still emerging, and frequently the participants don't know what they are getting into. 

Author Lisa Lowe suggests the following as a starting point for online projects ($USD)

Online Focus Groups:

• $50 to $75 for general consumers
• $100 to $150 for professionals

Bulletin Board Focus Groups:

• $15/day for general consumers
• $25 to $50/day for professionals

With professionals, the amounts are really an acknowledgement of their time, and that you value their contribution.  Of course in some instances, notably executives, they are unlikely to be able to accept a cash incentive, and you need to be more creative wtih your recognition.

Another variable is how much time you ask them to commit to the project.  Typically Bulletin Boards run over three days, with respondents asked to commit a certain amount of time each day.  B2B projects often generate very detailed responses, and respondents will often take the time to read all the comments.  This is great, of course, but it does add to the time they are spending. 

Lisa makes another good point about sending out incentives quickly. Delays don't help the cause of research one bit.  And if the sponsor is known to the participants, then it just makes the company look cheap or disorganized.  The 30 day accounts payable standard does not apply here.  Ten days is the practical limit, before respondents will start phoning and asking what happened to their cheque.

Reading the Luggage Tag: Nuts and Bolts of Customer Experience

I had a pleasant conversation yesterday with a senior executive at Rogen, the people who train execs to communicate and give winning presentations.  This is someone who travels extensively, and has experienced the full spectrum of travel joys and sorrows -- a veteran road warrior.  He had recently stayed at the boutique hotel chain W,  in New York. 
Here's what he told me, in the tones we usually reserve for religious experiences:

Within less than a day of checking in, everyone I met there knew my name.  I finally asked the bellman how he did this?  He told me he had been trained to look for and covertly read names on luggage tags.

The story gained more ground for me when I learned that the Manager also learned names and spoke to guests on a frequent basis.  What a friendly thing, and would make you feel at home in a big city! 

Why is it that some companies are able to achieve these startling service results, while others struggle?   

Well first, they have established behavioral service standards.  These are things that say clearly, "use the customers' name at every opportunity".   This stuff has to be granular, and crystal clear.

Then you have to actually train people in how to achieve the standard.  Senior executives often underestimate the need for this type of training, assuming that having the standard is enough.  It isn't.  We all need tips and tricks and help.  And committing time and $$ for training reinforces that you think your standards are important.

You also need management practices and systems that reinforce the standards in every way.  It's no good saying "do what I say, not what I do".  Every level in the company needs to reinforce the importance of behavioral standards.

Treating your employees well is another pre-requisite to good service.  (Incredible that we need to see proof of this, isn't it?  "Is there really a linkage between employee engagement and customer loyalty?  i.e. Do we really have to be nice to people to make money in this business?")

The bottom line is -- if you don't think you need to be civilized to your staff, why should they treat customers any better?   The fact that many do, even in the middle of long-standing labour disputes, is a tribute to the employees, not the skills of management.

And yet we do ask the loyalty question.  My own view is that service quality represents the margin of preference when you have choices. 

By way of example, I spent about 50+ nights in one city over about a year, where there were four convenient hotels to choose from.  I tried them all.  The first one I weeded out  did not have enough dining variety close by.  One of the others had too small a lobby area, and there was no place to relax at night.  The difference between the last two was largely service.  A few staff members learned my name in one of the hotels, and I kept going back.  When you spend that much time away from home, it is nice when someone remembers you.  Here's the hotel.

Customer service is a nuts-and-bolts game.  It takes a clear definition of what the experience is supposed to look like, and reinforcement from every angle you can think of. 

And then you get the kind of experience that can impress a polished executive like my acquaintance from Rogen, and make him want to tell a dozen or so of his friends.  And you can't buy that kind of ad any other way.

The Social Context: Mysterious Underpinning to Everything

There are people who think they can just change an organization culture as easily as you might upgrade your wardrobe.  I'm not one of them, actually.  I'm still trying to figure out why no one in my city seems to respect the red lights anymore.

I've had a couple of things tucked away gathering dust that seemed to shed light on this, but they're not all that well connected. Maybe you can figure it out...

First datum:  Michael Adams, Fire and Ice, USA and Canada
It's doubtful that anyone in America cares as much about our cultural differences as we do, chronic navel-gazers that we are here in Canada, but Michael Adams is a big thinking researcher who has studied this quite a bit.  He wrote a great article for Vue, called Sex and Fire: religion, homosexuality and authority in Canada and the United States. 

Adams says that religion is the effect, not the cause.  Religion, in this case, refers to the massive difference in church attendance between Canadians and Americans.  Adams says this is about attitudes toward authority, not religion, per se.
Adams says this about family values:

when a Republican says he or she believes in family values, while it is not implausible to assume that this person is intolerant of homosexuality and opposed to gay marriage, it is wrong to read intolerance as the essential meaning of the statement. 

Family values are actually about "responsibility, fidelity, moral rectitutde and other goods".  We largely did not understand that where I live.

Adams believes that "orientation to authority is the 'X Factor' which drives both ... religion and attitudes toward homosexuality."

Second Straw in the Wind - a letter to the editor about four dead Mounties
We recently had a situation near Edmonton where four of our RCMP were shot by a single bad guy.  The last time something this big happened the date was 18-something.   I like to read the letters to the editor as a barometer of sorts, and there was one letter about this incident from a Canadian born law-enforcement officer from Illinois, who said this:

Each time [I visit] I have noticed a little more of an erosion of the high respect for social order for which Canada is known.  ...If I have learned one thing in almost 20 years of policing, it is that even minor breaches of the peace ultimately erode the fabric of society.  (Globe and Mail letters, March 12, 2005)

You might not know this, but the Canadian equivalent of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has always been felt to be "Peace, order and good government".

Third Straw in the Wind -- Official Apologies
The same day, a federal official who was jailed for taking bribes (not a very Canadian thing to do - we deplore graft) made this apology for his acts:

"I deeply regret the embarassment and aggravation which have come about as a result of my actions"

If I get this right, it is not the essential wrong nature of the actions, but the inconvenience caused to the perpetrator that are being discussed here.  (Ref. Globe and Mail March 12, 2005). 

What Does It All Mean?
Community and social order doesn't seem to be as important to us here as it once was.  This might look like a little ripple on the water, but I don't think so.  I think the waves are coming, perhaps slowly, but we'd best pay attention.

The Brand Self-Test: How Well Do You Know Your Brand?

Don Shultz at Shift-This  asks the question:

Is your brand based more on the dreamy aspirations of executives than the real perceptions of the market?  This multiple-choice quiz determnines whether your company's branding efforts are strong, unified, comprehensive and rooted in customer reality.

I took the quiz, but was not brave enough to see how well I did -- after all, this is a guy who has an image of a fly crawling around on his site, and I hadn't yet finished my first coffee.  But it's a good quiz, and will shake you out of any complacency you might be feeling. 

Thanks to Ruth Lukaweski of the MRIA's B2B Committee for bringing this site to my attention.

Bill Gates & ThinkWeeks: A problem in naming

People clearly think Gates is weird, has Asperger's syndrome, or whatever -- and are somewhat gleeful when they find apparent proof.  But I suspect the world looks different from behind his eyeballs -- because, let's face it, he's smarter than the vast majority of us.

His recent ThinkWeek  retreat  was interrupted by a visit from Wall Street Journal reporter Robert A Guth, who documented his habit of reading prodigious quantities of stuff over long days, sustained only by grilled cheese sandwiches and Orange Crush.  And people thought it looked pretty geeky.  In fact, Google wanted to know: did I actually want to search for ThinkGeek, not ThinkWeek. 

The problem here is this:  ThinkWeek is about resource allocation not creativity.  Doubtful that Bill made this error -- I think the rest of us did.  (We didn't hear about "InnovateWeek", where he goes to the same cottage, but spends his days walking on the beach, reading poetry, and dabbling in watercolors to inspire creativity.)  This is really a problem of labelling.

I thought there were some things worth emulating about Mr. Gates as described in the story:

He knows the power of the executive nod
He recognizes that his least raised eyebrow will cause people to start hopping, and he takes that responsibility seriously: 

Mr. Gates is well aware of the potential impact of his comments and doesn't take writing them lightly. "If I write a comment that says, 'We should do this,' things will be re-orged, engineers will move," he says. "It's not like I can just read this paper and say, 'Hey, cool, looks good.' They'll assign 20 people to it then."

He looks at everybody's best ideas personally
Here's another interesting thing:  if you have a great idea, you can get it past the analysts in strategic planning or wherever, and actually put your best thinking in front of the best brain. 

I love that part.  And so would anyone who couldn't get past the gatekeepers in a big company.
(Been there, done that)   But at Microsoft, it seems that you get a chance to be heard by the top guy.  if you took your best shot and he hated it -- well, you had your chance, didn't you?  Not like you could say "he just didn't get it."  Here's what one of the employees thought:

It's the world's coolest suggestion box

He reads things that have details
Here's another thing:  he's actually prepared to read something in depth.   By way of contrast, a buddy of mine tells a story of the other extreme.  Getting ready for a big presentation of results to a visiting senior exec of a major food-products company, she had condensed a huge research project to a 50 slide deck.  Then the exec says to her, 'I'm in a hurry, can you show me your two best slides?'

Yes, we've been there too -- asked to reduce months of thought to a sound bite, otherwise forget it.  Isn't it nice to know there are some deep thinkers out there?

Yes, I have had my beefs with Microsoft, who hasn't?  But Bill's still a hottie in the head department. 

Financial Services Innovation Watch: Artist Pension Trust

Imagine a pension plan for artists where the artist invests works of art for several years, for a guaranteed pension in the future.  Sounds pretty out-there, doesn't it? 
But that's exactly what the Artist Pension Trust is doing, as described in Wired, Paint by Numbers.
The whiz person who created this idea, Moti Shniberg, sees future opportunities in other areas of intellectual property, for people like filmakers.

The project relies on some research conducted at NYU by business school profs Michael Moses and Jianping Mei into the long term investment value of art.  They tracked art that had sold more than once at the major NY auction houses.  Guess what -- the art outperformed the financial markets over the period from 1953 to 1998.  And you don't have to buy masterpieces.  In fact, you are better off with gallery quality art that has not attained star status, and is therefore reasonably priced.

To select the artists to invite into the plan -- and you do have to be invited -- the investment pros turned to David Ross, a former director of major galleries the Whitney and SF MOMA. 
He says:

It's all about finding the X factor.  X doesn't equal talent.  Loads of artists have that. X equals promise. X equals the potential to hit it big

Not everyone is a fan of the speculative elements of this approach, particularly the possibility that the investment fund will attempt to influence the value of the art in their collection.  However, it's a popular idea:  the article reports that a number of other art investment funds are going to launch this year.

Additional stories and links:

Vested Interests, Price Estimates, and the Future Performance of Artwork , another paper by the same professors
Give Em Shelter, Forbes article on the topic
Art & Money, Perfect Together, in Registered Rep
Whitney Museum

San Franciso Museum of Modern Art

Rewarding Customers to Create Raving Fans

Passionate Users is really a great blog.  The posts are a bit long-ish, but they have tremendous insight into the customer experience. 

Kathy Sierra, one of the site's authors, relates a story about having to choose between practical and fabulous eyeglasses at a store where she has shopped for years.  She went with the practical ones, and the optician ordered both for her, with the funky ones as a complimentary thank-you for all her past business.

"Oh, I talked to my wife last night about you, and you've been such a great customer that we decided you might want to have some fun... so we went ahead and made those purple ones for you as well. They're on us."

For the author, this was not just about the thank you, or the complimentary freebie, it was about the emotional high from the whole connection.  Worth a read, and will make you wonder how you can do more to acknowledge your own loyal customers.

The comments are also worth a look, as they get into the debate about whether such treatment needs to be consistently offered or not.