theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

Top 10 customer experience trends: The future of customer experience

In this post, I talked about where customer experience thinking came from. This one is about where I think we are headed.

1. It's all about the customer. Still

Yes, that seems obvious. But it needs constant repetition. Control is not going to go back into the hands of the marketer. The diversity around us in styles and choices is just mind boggling. Customers are driving that, with the aid of new technology.

Personalization, check. Customization, check. Co-creation, check. None of it is going away.

2. Brands are powerful

Consumers are overwhelmed by choice and information. A brand can help you narrow things down. A brand can help you, as a person, tell your story. Only if the brand HAS a story, of course. See #8 for more on that.

3. Touchpoints will continue to expand

The number of mediums in use just keeps growing. The old stuff is still with us (newspapers, for example), and new channels pop up every day (like apps). As a marketer, you need to try to pull this herd of cats into something that looks like a coherent brand message, customized to deliver what your customer is looking for, and responsive to what they are telling you. Sound difficult? Absolutely.

4. If anything is going to replace consumption of goods as the thing that defines our culture, it will be consumption of experiences

There is evidence all around us that we value experiences as much as, perhaps more than, stuff. Which could be good for the planet. Stuff is not going away, but it might be dropping in importance. What is social media, after all, but an experience? Sponsorship marketing delivers experiences. Digital media delivers experiences. Great packaging even delivers an experience. If you aren't delivering an experience, you are going to have problems competing. [Yes, I feel your pain, wondering how the heck to do that as a consultant.]

5. The service + experience economy is going to produce a lot of tension. Show a little respect

The person serving you your coffee today is getting served by you on an airplane tomorrow, going in to your bank branch during the extended hours, and calling your support centre tonight after dinner. And vice-versa. Despite growing income inequality, the tolerance for being treated like a nobody -- even when you are buffing a toenail -- is low, and I think, decreasing. The 1% didn't get the memo on this. There's a lot of people out there feeling disrespected.

When you design a service experience, don't assume you will be able to find staff who can be trained to be obsequious. They're not growing those folks any more. [Except in those odd environments where people are highly paid to be obsequious.Your barista is not highly paid, regardless of what you think.]

6. We're going to expect better experiences in places that have never had to bother before

The last bastion of the bad experience will be anything that looks like government. Are petty bureaucrats still wielding power over people -- of course they are. We hate it, but we haven't figured out how to change it yet. We're all working on health care first. But when all of the commercial/consumer world is oriented towards creating a better experience, everything that doesn't try too hard is going to really stick out, and not in a good way.

7. The drive to improve experiences is going to improve efficiency

Oddly, most people think better efficiency and greater productivity comes from taking things away from customers. Not necessarily true. You can take away stuff that no one wants anyway, like delays in service, out of stock inventory, difficult check-out procedures.

It's not all about high-touch -- sometimes it's about just letting me get on with it. Consider self-serve gas. For most of us, doing it yourself is just a lot easier and faster, and therefore a better experience. Cheaper is a bonus. The same thing has largely proved to be true in transactional banking. [Now if we can just bring that to public transit!]

8. Faking authenticity is going to get harder.

There's no place to hide. Even for Apple. Instead, why not go for genuine authenticity? It's cheaper and more fun.

9. The perfect targeting solution won't help you if you don't have a story and an experience to offer

Will big data solve your problems? Maybe somewhat. But more likely it will be to the 2010s what CRM was to the 90s and 00s -- a lot of money spent for a lot of disappointment. Your perfect algorithm will only help you if you have a story to tell and an experience to back it up.  [Surely that's a relief, isn't it? Just hollering "buy, buy, buy" won't work better because of big data.]

10. No one will be paying attention

You think it's hard getting attention today? I think it's going to get harder. All that stuff about localization services that will drive traffic into your store. It will just feel like more spam for most. All those apps? Well, how many apps can you really use? Three? Five? Ten? Certainly not 30 or 40, not 100 or 1,000.

The only solution is to insist on relevance. Relevance might not mean utility in the conventional sense, it might mean amusement or charm [just look at Pinterest].

The bright spot here is that local businesses with some savvy will have an easier time of it, I think. People will be walking by your store anyway, right? 

 

This is what I see, at least today. What do you see?

Everyone is a creator and the new tools keep getting better: 3D printers, DIY apps

3D Printers, which must have seemed like a sci-fi fantasy only a decade ago ("Earl Grey, Hot"), have gone the way of so much technology, and are now no more expensive than a laser printer.

This recent Businessweek story says there are now models available for as little as $1200.

I did a trendwatching report for a client a few years ago and told them this would happen. Not because I am brilliant (I so wish this were the case), but because all things flow down the food chain over time. Something only available in jet planes today will be available in your car in the future. Innovations cascade from the most exclusive markets to retail markets. GPS was a military creation, then it was a commercial thing, and now we all have it.

At a copy shop near you?

I have a prediction for you now -- just like copiers and printers before them, it wont be long before there will be a 3D print shop near you, perhaps in a corner of the Home Depot (that's where I'd put it, anyway) or perhaps in Staples, or in Kinkos. You'll be able to rent time on someone else's 3D printer instead of having to buy your own. You might be able to get help building your 3D digital model to feed to the printer. They might have 3D scanners where you can get a scan of your broken widget to reproduce (say, an broken part for an appliance that you want to repair.)

Make your own app

Improved coding tools are bringing the act of digital creation into the realm of ordinary folk as well. Take this development, for example: TheAppBuilder (written up by PSFK here)

 

The apps look to me a lot like a personal portal of sorts, where you can track sites, rss content, and similar things that have been built elsewhere. (I can't build a game this way. Not yet, anyway.)

For the creative human -- which is essentially all of us -- times could not be better.

Co-creation strikes again: Everyone wants their own charity now

I have been noticing a trend of people launching their own charities and aid foundations lately. 

The narrative goes like this. It starts with a story about someone who has just returned from a trip to [pick one: Africa | Nepal | India | Middle East] and discovered people there who could benefit from some aid.

They then announce that existing aid organizations don't seem to be working, for whatever reason, and so they are starting a new one.

This story is followed by a letter to the editor of the [pick one: newspaper | magazine] decrying the launch of yet another charity by a celebrity or otherwise noteable individual, who should instead be working with existing charities. Said letter is often from a director of an existing charity.

Here's what I think is going on.

• Existing charities want your money, not your ideas
• People want to contribute more than money
• They particularly want to feel connected in a personal way, to make a personal impact
• When faced with personal knowledge of problems and a compelling need to help, their efforts to become directly involved through existing channels lead nowhere
• So they launch their own organization

Net result is a fragmentation of aid efforts that is likely to continue. The number of new private foundations is skyrocketing.

Here's a good example: socks for Japan. A more serious effort is Room to Read  New ones are popping up constantly.Selena Gomez wants to start her own charity. Christina Applegate launched one. We could probably come up with about 50 similar organizations without too much effort, right?

There are now programs to teach you how to do this, such as this one offered by Global Volunteer Network. You too can "be the change" and "become a social entrepreneur".

A few organizations seem to have found ways to engage people more directly without losing effectiveness. Habitat for Humanity is one -- they actively engage donors in real activities beyond the chequebook.

Political parties, by the way, appear to be having the same problem -- no one wants to just give money. People want to be heard, have influence, be part of creating the ideas. But few organizations are set up for that, and probably most don't really want to be that collaborative.

Co-creation. It's not going away, it's spreading.

Image: The image above is Colin Glassco, who started his own charity.

The Age of Creativity: Fashion Co-creation

Infographics are a great way to communicate ideas -- they give you a snapshot of something really quickly. The one below is about fashion co-creation.

I've written on co-creation and customization before -- in transit design, maker communities, fashion and design, online sites like Google maps, more products and designs. It's a trend that continues to build in so many ways -- so I was intrigued by this fashion co-creation infographic sent to me via MyFashionSales.  It has some great examples, a few I hadn't seen before.

Even better, it meant I discovered the charming writing of the MyFashionSales blog. And I also checked out a site which you simply must investigate -- submitinfographics -- which has a lot of terrific infographics -- including many user-generated graphics. Another veritable hub of creativity.

We are just surrounded by creativity everywhere -- new ways to communicate, new ways to share ideas, new chances for everyone to participate. Someday the era we are now living in will be called the Age of Creativity [unless someone thinks of a better name. Maybe you?]

And aren't we lucky to be living in this time? The Age of Creativity.

 

Fixing the TTC: design thinking is only part of it

I remember visiting Toronto as a girl [living in Sarnia at the time], and the Toronto transit system was initially frightening-big-complex, and then magical. Underground trains that sped you from place to place! Buses that would take you anywhere! People of every social class in sight! 

Not exactly world class, Toto

Sadly, little has changed since I was a girl. Except that people who can afford to drive don't often take transit to commute, because it's so unpleasant. Many of the same trains and buses are in use. If you were here when the place was built, you'd still recognize the colors of most of the stations -- the only difference is that a lot of the tiles are missing and no repair is forthcoming anytime soon.

And the system, frozen for cash for so long, doing so much with so little, has become a cranky curmudgeon. There are points of justifiable pride -- I remember hearing that this system can keep a bus running longer than anywhere else, for example. The mechanics are probably bringing in tools from home to do it, I'm guessing.

But it's broken.

And in desperate need of a giant Swiffer WetJet and a home reality redesign show

Some recent social media scandals [are there any other kind now?] have only highlighted the dark, dusty, dripping corners of this situation. Pictures of conductors sleeping in their toll-booths. Video of bus drivers stopping for a bio break and a coffee late at night, leaving freezing passengers to wait to get home. Big expenditures on ticket/token fraud prevention in a system that should have converted to swipe passes years ago.

Naturally, these public assaults are being taken very personally by good people who are doing their best in a stressful and damaging situation.

Yes, Virginia, it's a syndrome

This situation is hardly unique, and I'm not talking transit anymore. I've seen some well-documented case studies that have many of the same organizational characteristics (see Resources for the Nut Island story). And I've observed a few situations like this first hand; I bet you have too.

The TTC (aka Toronto Transit Commission) has been going in this death spiral for so long now, that external design and innovation help will not be enough. It's a great idea, but this system is sick on the inside, not just bereft of ideas or money.

Even consultants who could walk on water...

We've been told that a customer service consultant has been hired to help. Well, I am one, and it will not be enough, almost regardless of what they do. Other people are suggesting that 'design thinking' will help. Well, it would help, but it wouldn't be enough either.

The only thing that will turn this situation around is a multi-faceted high-engagement strategy that involves all the people involved in making the change.It might be Appreciative Inquiry. It might be Solutions Focus. Who cares, really? As long as it gets literally thousands of people in conversation about making a change. Because that is the only thing that will make an impact.

Management has been sending out memos to staff, making them public to ensure everyone hears the message. This is their idea of rallying and engaging the people.

I have only one question: when was the last time a memo of this kind made you think differently or change your behavior?

Resources:

The Nut Island Effect: When Good Teams Go Wrong, by Paul F. Levy, March 2001

There has to be a better way, by Anthony Reinhart, Globe and Mail, Feb 5, 2010

A refreshing new look for a TTC Station, by by Melissa Feeney, Mel, Do Tell Blog

Better to just hold it at TTC pit stops, by Jack Lakey, Toronto Star, March 10, 2008

TTC Union responds with a statement on Transit Toronto blog, February 9, 2010

Co-creation watch: Hackerlabs and the democratization of creation

Human beings are by nature creators and builders. The evidence of this surrounds us. We have created many, many tools to support this enduring enterprise, ranging from oil paints and violins to concrete and laser-cutters.

In the not-too-distant past, the act of creation was highly stratified. There were fine artists, or those striving to be. There were craftspeople, like Gepetto the shoemaker (aka Pinocchio's father, who dreamed of having a real son). There may have been many stonemasons, but there were few Berninis, and they lived in an elite place.

This segregation of high and low creation has been pervasive throughout the world of work and in recent times too. I recall being told in no uncertain terms by a senior executive that I was not a creative person, only some people were creative, and that when creativity was needed, it would be hired, thank you very much. I doubt that was an isolated conversation. Even in creative industries, the true creatives were housed in special cages.

This is all changing. 

Crafts used to be denigrated as "low art", somehow a lesser act of creation. The same was true of graphic design -- if it was produced for commercial reasons, it shouldn't be framed an hung on a wall. There is a shrinking community of people who actually care about these distinctions now. Case in point: Etsy, an online craft market and community. Yes, some of this stuff is perfectly hideous. But much of it is charming. Anyone can get in on the act here, including children.

Although many strive to make a living with their shops, I suspect that many more just want to share their creations with the world. This motive is surely part of what drives Instructables, a place where you can share your approach to making Lego shaped gummy candies.

 

In fact, these communities have their own ideas about what makes something wonderful.

Customized manufacturing is another sign on this creation highway. You can go questing for amazing sneakers in your local hip neighborhood, or you can quest for them online, or you can design your own. And it's not just sneakers anymore.  (Levi's tried to pull off something like this more than a decade ago, but they didn't quite get it right, or perhaps were also a bit too soon. It was custom fit, not custom design, for one thing.)  If you are an actual designer in the sneaker world, keeping your job may depend on being at least as good as the free stuff coming in.

And it's not just sneakers. The tools of big-time industrial creativity are fast becoming available to people. 3D scanners and printers -- and the aforementioned laser cutters -- are now within the range of affordability, just as desktop printers became affordable. And they are going to get more affordable. The real question is whether you'll buy these things in the tool corral at Home Depot, or in the electronics section at Best Buy.

Today, I discovered another wonderful sign of these times in Hackerspace. 

 

Here's how my local Hackerspace describes itself -- "a community space with a diverse membership, including artists, computer programmers, web designers, and hardware hackers. It is inspired by the philosophies of the global hackerspaces movement which encourages people to socialize, share knowledge, and work together on their projects."

 

Hackerspaces reminds me of the unconferences that have sprung up all over the place -- loosely organized groups of people getting things done.

New communications technologies is what has made all of this possible, in many ways, but it is as much a servant as a driver of the change we are seeing. Tools, access to people, and now access to physical space, are all becoming liberated from their place in the stratification.

The change is the great democratization of creation.

Resources

3D Printing and scanning: Wikipedia has a good overview here, Jay Leno wrote for Popular Mechanics on this topic, and there is a delightful YouTube with a demonstration.

Related posts

Creation and customization: here to stay and growing. Susan Abbott on CustomerCrossroads blog, Sept 29, 2009

Where customization is going. Susan Abbott on CustomerCrossroads blog, Oct 30, 2008

Get your own car logo, make your own stickers. Co-creation is everywhere. Susan Abbott on CustomerCrossroads blog, Mar 31, 2008

Co-creation and customization: here to stay and growing

The ability to customize your own designs, using the base of a major brand, has a real appeal for me personally. I've wondered how widespread the uptake would be, because many people don't see themselves as either a) creative or b) an arbiter of style and taste. But the great thing about so many things web, is that they don't have to be mass markets to be big enough markets.

These customized product creation opportunities are expanding rapidly, with new players in the mix all the time.

Zazzle and Keds were among the first to come to my attention. [In fact, I own a pair of custom Keds that have one of my abstract paintings on the canvas. Ridiculously expensive, as I took the expedited shipping to ensure they'd be here in time for a presentation.]

Now MilkorSugar.com provides a directory of all things customizable, including reviews of the various sites, and a ratings grid that provides useful information e.g. can you upload an image on the site. I had no idea I could have had customized leather Adidas for about the same price as my canvas Keds -- no image upload, however. 

"In 2008 we noticed a stream of ‘customize-your-own’, ‘build your own’ and ‘design your own’ sites coming to the market. So we built a database of online customization. Initially to serve our curiosity, that became this website. You could call it the the web‘s first Customization Portal."  ~ Milk or Sugar founders

When we can get EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT for a little more money, and a little more time, we seem to be quite willing to pay up. This has been an important driver in the catalog business for years, a la LL Bean, J Crew, Lands End, etc. And these sites have expanded their own customization options for many items, such as backpacks. 

On MilkorSugar I learned of some other quite interesting sites. One example: Colorware offers custom external parts for phones, computers, and other electronic stuff, so you can really make it your own. This development is an extension of the skins we've been seeing everywhere, and the jewelry that people add to their cell-phones.

We can expect to see a continued expansion of custom manufacturing, in part because the cost of custom manufacturing tools is also dropping. Things like 3D printers and laser cutters are in the price-range of the home aficionado, no more costly than laser printers and desktop publishing when they first arrived.

Personally, I love it. It's a good thing, and I'm happy to see someone like Milk or Sugar helping me find the goodies.

Resources:

Thanks to Springwise for letting the world know about MilkorSugar. Crucial reading for trend-watchers.

Improved local search is coming soon to a smart phone near you

 
I was looking for maps of local meeting places (aka Starbucks) one day recently, and found this great little tool called FindbyClick. It looked like something I could really use, and I was excited to see it had mobile download availability. Just not for my Blackberry. Darn.

This prompted a quick e-mail to the company, which resulted in a delightful conversation with Kevin MacDonald, head of the location-based product group at developer Pentura.

FindbyClick was a media darling for a brief period when it was first introduced, but is not the main line of business for this IT development company. Nevertheless, it has a place in the hearts of the team, and is still in line for some development.

"My dream is to tap into the community, to help take content that would be of interest to others, and to use this content to create a social network on a map," Mr. MacDonald says.

He observed that a challenge for all mapping services, whether Google Maps, MapQuest or TomTom, is that "they have a lot of stale data."  He had hoped to build enough of a community that people would go in and correct incorrect data. This did indeed happen in some instances. "We had one guy who had a Wal-Mart obsession," who did considerable work tagging and moving points around to their correct locations. Another individual provided many of the locations and tags for Starbucks in Hong Kong.

Mr. MacDonald believes that the launch of FindbyClick was "a little ahead of the curve." IPhone had not yet been released, and mobile device capability was constrained. At the time this service was built, only Nokia had the capacity to put such an application on their phones.

Subsequently the firm has worked with a number of major organizations on location-based applications, including Google.

Maps as information sources

You can learn a lot from mapping. For example, Mr. MacDonald notes that Manhatten is covered with Starbucks, but New Jersey has almost none. We speculated that perhaps New Jerseyites were more of a Dunkin Donuts crowd. Or perhaps they get their Starbucks at work, not in their home neighborhood. You can tell alot about the people in an area by the stores and services in the area.

The future of mapping is definitely bright

Mr. MacDonald agreed with me that push marketing to your mobile device is not likely to be appealing to many people -- the "turn around now for a great deal" kinds of applications that were forecast a decade ago.

Instead, what he sees is the potential for predictive functionality based on an individual's own tags. So my phone might tell me about things that are similar to what I have already expressed interest in. If I have tagged a lot of delicatessens on my maps, my phone might find additional delis for me from the lists of things others have tagged. This feels something like Del.icio.us functionality brought to a map, and that would be excellent.

Another limitation has been the lexicon of descriptions available to tag a given location, which Mr. MacDonald likens to working with a limited vocabulary. In the future we will have more free-form searching, instead of being limited to a specific set of tags.

FindbyClick will launch a new version in 2009, "with more data, more content, and content more personalized to you."

Experience design implications

So many of the things we want are local. And the web has not been very good at local search. When we are looking for a hair salon, we want one that's convenient. Even more for a drycleaner. Same thing for a daycare, a dentist, or a framing shop. Sometimes it's urgently local, as is the case with a gas station or a bank machine.

With local search and mapping getting better, and with smart mobile devices ready to help, we will all be able to get out from behind our desks more and find the places we need. If your company has any kind of physical presence, you will want to be considering how you will take your place in these interactive maps.

Resources:

Pentura Solutions Inc.-- an IT consulting firm that developed FindbyClick

Google Maps Mania --  a blog about Google Maps. Here's their story about FindbyClick

FindbyClick the blog -- Kevin MacDonald's blog

Where customization is going

I've been searching for the perfect planner for years. The hidden hope is that somehow the right system will help me stay on top of things better. One result of this is that I am on the mailing list for various planner outfits. Over the years I have used Daytimer (my first love), Prenote from QuoVadis, Priority Management, DayRunner (only a brief fling), Franklin Covey, and Levenger. And like a lot of planner junkies, I have also created my own pages when I couldn't find what I wanted. (Yes, I was looking for something more customized to my needs.)

It's a good way to have a look at the whole notion of customization, a trend which continues to pick up speed, thanks to information technologies.

The paper planner business hangs on, I believe, because some of us just are not linear enough to deal with an electronic calendar. Or we just like the fluidity of paper and pencil. Electronic calendars have relatively little in the way of customization ability -- you pretty much have to deal with the interface the way the software designers planned. 

The Old Way

Proprietary systems, special binders, expanding layout options support the drive to differentiate

Some systems have almost no customization options, such as Priority Management's paper planner system, below:

You can buy fancier binders, but that's about the extent of it.

Quo Vadis has pretty standard guts as well, but offers a great selection of good looking covers.

Daytimer, one of the granddads of this category, has a massive selection of binder options. And they also have quite a wide variety of page formats as well as a few colorful themes:

 

Franklin Covey goes much further on the theme options, as you can see in this shot below from a recent e-mail advert:

 

The New Way

Custom printing lets people create their own unique style

Sadly, the planner that you can design yourself doesn't really quite exist yet, unless you are a do-it-yourself kind of person. But it can't be far off.

I can print business cards at MOO with a different picture on the back of each one. Pictures that I upload, or pictures that MOO has.

 

I can print custom sneakers for myself, again, using my own designs that I upload, or using a set of patterns and colors the company makes available to me. Yup, there's a hefty price premium. But why not? I haven't been able to decide what I really want, or I'd be sporting my own pair already.

If I really want to build my own planner, there is a web-site for me and my community where I can download templates -- or upload my own designs! DIY Planner has templates and designs you can use to build your own planner. Users upload images of their planning and calendaring systems, share tips, and demonstrate a zestful commitment to meeting their own needs instead of being forced into a template that's not-quite-right.

 

This is what customization looks like. Options built for one person. Not a pre-printed theme -- a me-theme.

Creative fun with Kodak

Who couldn't use a few super-hero tricks this week? You can turn yourself into a super-hero at the Kodak "Make Me Super" site.There's a little video with a song -- customized with your name even! And you can order fun accessories.

It's a promotion, yes. It's not world changing. it's just for fun.

There's a nice piece on this campaign by blogger Karen Hegmann. I like her point about the use of narrative, and giving people permission to have fun. When so many things seem to be going wrong in the world, fun will take on a lot of importance for people.

Using GPS to build customer experience: yes, it's another Harley-Davidson story

GPS device maker Garmin is launching a specialized version of the Garmin Zumo - the Road Tech Zumo. It will come pre-loaded with all the Harley-Davidson dealerships, as well as a program to share rides. These will be the kind of rides motorcyclists love, of course -- with windy roads, good scenery, and an absence of express-lanes.

As GPS becomes ubiquitous, I expect to see a lot more innovation of this nature. Read more on the GPS Lodge story.

Resources:

Harley-Davidson Zumo GPS - the Road-Tech Zumo, on GPS Lodge, Aug. 4 08

Co-creation watch: Lolcats

There seems to be an endless appetite for amusing ourselves with frippery. Here's the LOLcat I made today.
What I am wondering is this... is there anything on your web site that is designed only to amuse, only for the sake of amusement? Or is it all sales, sales, sales and more sales?
Just asking.

Get your own car logo, make your own stickers -- co-creation is everywhere

This is my Scion crest. I don't actually drive a Scion, but in the interest of keeping you well informed, dear reader [and avoiding real work, of course] I went to their site and designed one. It has several symbols that make sense to me. I had a lot of trouble picking the animal for the top, but the crest just didn't look right without it.

You can make the crest using the provided elements. The site is really easy to use, and free. You can download the crest and get it printed up if you wish.

To be honest, I'd never even heard of the Scion. Maybe you hadn't either. This is buzz at its best, quite apart from showing your loyalists that you understand them. And Toyota has never been known for innovation in this area. Looks like that's changing too.

If you want to see some interesting research video, you can also find that at the Scion Speak site. They came up with the icon after sending a graffiti artist around to talk to Scion owners, and some of the clips are here.

Somehow, the ability to make your own car crest reminded me of Moo, who now offers customizable sticker packages for a mere $9.99. This is not much more expensive than the stuff I buy at Staples, and a lot more interesting.

I am a stationery junkie at the best of times, and when I found out about these stickers, I had to seriously restrain myself from ordering great gobs of them. [I would have the coolest discussion groups around, surely! Okay, I've only put it off till I have a good business reason.]

Co-creation is everywhere. This is not going away anytime soon.

Resources

Do-It-Yourself Logos for Proud Scion Owners, New York Times, March 24, 2008

The ratings game: President's Choice gets 3 stars for their new star system

Star systems have been in use for decades, maybe longer -- the Michelin and Zagat guides, the auto association guides, the various star systems for European hotels.

Even university students can rate courses and professors. The trend continues to grow, and becomes continually more democratized.

Amazon gets free content created by their customers with the book reviews. And customers get the insights and ratings generated by average folks. Anyone can rate anything on Amazon, not just books. These Tommy Hilfiger Nantucket blue extra-long twin sheets were rated high by some, poorly by others.

Given how useful these ratings are to most people, it's interesting that it has taken a long time for the trend to spread. I was excited to see that President's Choice has just launched a rating system for their line of food products. It's a great idea, and I hope they stick with it. Here's why:

In addition to the useful feedback, this kind of approach acknowledges customers as an active part of the story -- participants, not just consumers.

Consumers get useful information. I read somewhere that even negative reviews on Amazon didn't necessarily translate to lower book sales.

Imagine adding a 5-star label to the packages of crowd favorites? This is as good as a testimonial.

The image pictured above is a PC Goat Cheese Torta, and hors d'oevre that gathered 5 stars from at least 4 raters. It's construction uses several products. They could have featured recipes in the store (or by cell phone?) that give you ideas and ingredients for highly rated recipes.

My one complaint is that the web site is painfully slow. I looked around for a while to try to find a negative rating, and just gave up in frustration. If I hadn't been writing an article, I would not have persisted as long.

So their system gets 3 stars out of a possible 5: good idea that could be much better.

Addendum:

I added a review to their Noodle Wrapped Shrimp. Was annoyed that I have to say "value for money," because I have no idea what the shrimp cost. They just came out of my freezer. I think this is a limitation that would discourage some people, because you are required to rate on three categories.

The other note that I would make is that there is a loyalty question, "would you recommend?" But surely the correct question for a food item is "did you like this enough to buy it again?"

Monitoring Web 2.0

Reader, technophile and very capable researcher Matt Towers sent me this link to everything web 2.0.  Great list, thanks Matt.

Web 2.0 watch: how to build your own anything

You may think you have heard altogether too much about web 2.0. But in fact, it's like seeing a big boat slowly move across a lake -- you can hardly believe the size of the wake when it finally hits shore. In my usual Agatha Christie / Miss Marple way, I hope to draw some interesting ideas from some applications you've seen or heard about.

Instructables
Here's a personal favorite:  Instructables.  There are instructions from ordinary people here on how to do everything from avoid having to sort laundry to building your own Computer Numeric Controlled Router from scratch. I'd really love to have one of those, but it's a bit beyond -- actually WAY beyond -- my assembly abilities. Here's my own modest contribution to the pool of learning.  The site is extremely easy to use. Explore only at your own risk, because honestly, if you have a creative bone in your body, it will take you half the day.

This site is primarily built around visual instruction for things that have a physical world presence. Like laundry, lathes, earrings. I haven't seen any instructables yet about how to set up a trust fund. But why not, really?

Imagine cross-breeding Instructables with banking and investments. What we see today are a lot of bulletin boards that have disjointed information provided by investors and home budget gurus. What if this kind of information were more carefully harnessed and structured?

Implication of all of this: as information about how to do things continues to get easier and easier to find, by itself, it won't have much market value.
What this means for you and your service business:
--> you need to keep raising the bar on the knowledge and skill you are selling. Because low level knowledge and skill is free
--> you should be thinking about ways of taking existing platforms and leveraging them for your own content. Get out there, get in the conversation!

Custom-manufacturer with clever marketing idea: Freddy + Ma

Custom manufacturing really seems to be taking off, and here's another example: Freddy & Ma, makers of custom handbags.

Pick a basic style, choose a leather color, then go wild on fabric choices, from a fantastic selection of fabrics. So many wonderful possibilities, and a very engaging interface.

And how did those clever people entice me to their web-site? They offered TypePad bloggers a generous discount on a bag. And look at all the free publicity they are going to get from this, to say nothing of new customers.

How can we make information more accessible to customers?

This is interesting on so many levels...

DiggExpose has combined -- what the cool kids call a mash-up -- Snap's web page image previews with Digg's tracking of what's being tagged online. 
The site lets you choose which type of information display you would like. For each display, as you move your cursor around, the display responds. It's very intuitive. Here are a few screen shots of the options...

This one is my favorite -- it's a giant loop you can very quickly scan

  This one is the default, a cluster.

Tile view ...

This rolodex style view reminds me of something available in Windows 3.0 that was also very intuitive.

Snap, the people providing the previews, have invited all their users to Digg the site. And on the Snap blog, commenters have started riffing on applications they would like Snap to develop along these lines.

This would all just be so much blah, blah, really, except for these things:

• Customers will use your product in unexpected ways, especially if it is digital. You can learn from this if you pay attention. Because some of it will reflect improvements. Some of it will reflect new market opportunities you hadn't thought about before. There might be alliances just waiting for your call.
  

• The notion of managing information feeds in a non-linear way is very appealing. It puts much more control in the hands of the recipient. It's not just a feed anymore, it's a buffet that you can quickly scan for the most appealing morsels.

Imagine being able to look around in a content heavy site in this manner. Something such as a bank web site, or investment information site. Even a hospital site, or a government site. I'd love to be able to access a catalog shopping site this way.

The existing navigation would be there, but there might also be a page where you can just sort through the images.

• The designer created several options for using the images.  A cluster, which is fine if you just want to see what's happening in the Digg world. The tiles, for those who like their world to be a little more organized. And the loop and line for scanners.

Questions you should be asking:

1. How are our customers 'mashing' what we provide with something else to make it better suited to their needs. And does this suggest a new product, service, alliance, or market?
2. How can we give customers more control over accessing information from us? Especially online. Can we let them choose the display format? What about copying this brilliant thing, and putting a Snap image search on our content heavy site? We might even get some amazing PR from that.
3. Do we have easy ways for customers to help us create our product or service? Can they post their ideas on our blog or bulletin board? Is there anywhere on our site that you INVITE people to tell us their ideas?
4. How can we use images or graphics to help our customers navigate the experience better -- whether it is signage, or wiring instructions, are we making the information maximally accessible in the shortest possible time? Or are we still stuck on text?
5. When was the last time we launched something and people smiled with delight, charmed that we were working so hard to make things better for them?
   

Innovation Watch: Moo Cards

When I heard about MOO cards, I was so tickled I had to have them.  And now my blog has its own business cards, with graphics used in the blog.

MOO cards are smaller than a business card, and printed on very nice stock. They arrived in a little white plastic box with a colorful label, and a card that says "Yay! You're our new best friend."  Another MOO card, of course.

What's the beginning of the experience like?

What a delightful thing when it arrived, looking more like a new i-Pod than a box of business cards. It made me realize how deficient and un-exciting the arrival of a regular box of business cards has been in the past.

If you want to re-think customer experience, you might consider what the 'unpacking' or 'entry' point looks like. Is there anything to delight the senses? Do people enter your premises with anticipation?

Personalization and Co-Creation

Moo lets you create your own card using a simple online interface. If you want, you can upload your own photos, and slide a little editing window around on each one to pick exactly what will go on your card.  Up to 100 different images. [At last, another use for all those graphics created for the blog!!!]  Or you can use MOO's images.

These are cards I would hoard if I didn't want so much to share them.

And they arrived faster and more painlessly than any business card I've ever ordered. Okay, they don't have custom print colors, but so what. They are uniquely mine. Something MOO and I created together. And of course the unit cost is much higher than a regular business card, but the value is so high, it feels like a bargain.

So now my blog has its own business card. It won't be original for much longer, now that I've told you. So don't tell too many people okay? Only the cool kids.

Co-creation watch: Make Your Own Wired Cover

I missed the chance to get my real July issue of Wired issued with my own picture on the cover. But we can all have fun making our own Wired cover just by going to this link.

Fun promotion, and a good way to get a story into a blog or two.

Co-creation and fashion brands

Reader Sophie R. is studying at the London College of Fashion, and sent me some questions with respect to her dissertation on fashion management. I thought her questions were interesting, and hope you do too.

Sophie: What has changed in the last decades in terms of : consumer behaviour, ways of consumption?  What do the consumers expect the most from the brand today?  Is consumer behaviour in fashion different? If yes, what is different?

Susan: With the advent of the internet, many people expected brands to become less important. This hasn't really happened, except in commodity purchases, where quality and status aren't that relevant. When faced with overwhelming choice, a brand that you trust can help you make a decision. In this sense, brands are even more important.  The big change with brands is that we no longer choose a brand for life; most of us are pretty fickle when it comes to our brand selections.  Another big shift is that we may be luxury brand purchasers in one area of our lives, and bargain purchasers in another, without finding anything inconsistent about this.
This trend is very evident in fashion, with the success of knock-off houses like H&M and Zara providing inexpensive access to high-style and design. Yet luxury brands still have tremendous presence, whether it's a Prada handbag or an Omega watch.

Sophie: Could you explain in a few words the concept of co-creation? How does the consumer react towards co-creation? How could you qualify the presence of co-creation on the market place   
nowadays? Does it have implication on any brands’ success?

Susan: Co-creation is about bringing consumers into a closer relationship with the brand by inviting them to take part in the creative process. This could be by letting people propose advertising. Or it could involve giving customers tools to customize and personalize their purchase. Mini Cooper gives customers an enormous array of customization options, for example. 

We would still want our brand to make sure we look good at the end -- my assumption is that BMW is not going to let me design an ugly Mini. So I can trust the brand, and experiment within the brand's boundaries.

A brand should only choose the co-creation route when they can make it fit into the brand promise -- co-creation is likely not for every brand. A brand that is all about stability, for example, might not be a good candidate for co-creation. I think most financial institution brands would struggle with this concept.

Sophie: Why is interaction important for the consumers? How can co-creation influence consumer behaviour?

Susan: Consumers don't want to be passive recipients of dispensed wisdom from big companies. There are a multitude of personal styles at work today, especially in the fashion world. There are so many 'looks' now, that we can all do almost whatever we want.

Let's consider a fashion organization that is conducting creative design workshops with their target customer on a regular basis. The customer involvement in the creation process will ensure that the product that emerges makes sense. This is a lot more than a focus group -- this is an ongoing involvement of customers in the creation of the future of the brand. The internal designers have the last word, but they have greater access to involve the customer in creation.  I don't see this being relevant for all consumers, but for those that are really engaged with the category or the brand, and are opinion leaders in their segment.

Sophie: Can you describe the role of Internet in the development of co-creation? How does Internet help brands to interact with the consumers?

Susan: The internet has provided a means of communicating with customers on a large scale, and allowing tremendous efficiencies in creating supply chains that can accommodate a lot of customization, and customer interaction. Web 2.0 applications like MySpace give people the opportunity to create and interact on a huge scale. This is now setting the standard for what we expect to be able to do generally.  So the internet has simultaneously improved the ability to create two-way communication, and raised expectations for it.

I expect that people like Madonna have always been able to enter into a dialogue of co-creation with designers like Gaultier. Patrons of the arts have had some co-creation capability since the time of the Medici. But the presence of the internet, and the general flattening of the global economy, has brought this possibility to a much larger number of people -- it has democratized co-creation.

Sophie: Is co-creation a short term phenomenon or a long term change?

Susan: We don't usually want to give up things we have learned to love. So I would say this is a trend that has long-term legs. But no organization, fashion or otherwise, should think this relieves them of the need to be cool and be design-focused, or to understand their customers and segments. In fact, that need has never been greater.

Co-creation does not mean telling me to go ahead and do-it-myself. It means bringing my ideas as a consumer / customer inside the company, creating an ongoing dialogue with this group, and giving them more influence over direction. In this sense, we could consider co-creation as the next phase of evolution of  Voice-of-the-Customer thinking. Except VOC is often a survey, and co-creation is much more connected, more of a dialogue.

Sophie: Last words: suppose you have one advice to give to brand’s managers who want to co-create with consumers, what would it be?

Susan: I think I've said enough already, and am going to throw this one out to the readers. Readers, how would you answer that one?

So Sophie - if you get an A, send us a gold star, okay buddy?

Co-creating with your customers: a TTC story

Our local Toronto Transit Commission is not known for its usability or customer experience.  I tried to figure out which one of four buses would be most likely to come by one day recently, and was completely unable to decipher any of them (see above map, which defies all cartography conventions).

The TTC's web site is no better, either from an aesthetic or informational standpoint.

Bringing bloggers into the design process

But let's get to the co-creation, and see what can happen with even a little effort to invite your customers inside the tent...

The story is best told by the blog that started it...Reading Toronto:

"The Toronto Bloggers' website challenge to new TTC Chair Adam Giambrone gathered steam with postings on readingtoronto.com, Spacing.ca, Torontoist.com, Blogto.com, and transit.toronto.on.ca. It seems that Toronto's netroots can influence city hall. In case you missed the news, bloggers in the city were embarrassed by the transit commission's online presence. We asked our readers - people who tend to use the site every day - how they would improve the TTC website. Their answers are honest and insightful."

The new TTC chairman, Adam Giambrone, seems to have accepted the challenge. Today's Globe and Mail reports that he will be meeting with the bloggers to discuss their ideas, and a new site should be up and running by the summertime. !!! 

This is a big step for an organization I've heard described as insular, rigid and paramilitary in outlook.

And the input is excellent.  Here are a few of the suggestions made via comments on the various blogs:

"Like Google Maps, I want to be able to type in a destination address, execute a search and be taken to a map segment that shows the nearest TTC route; then I’d like to be able to use that route information to construct a travel plan from my point of origin....
The current system expects a user to know what route number he/she wants which is, of course, backwards thinking."

"As well as a journey planner, simple printable maps should be available to broswers, maybe with operation schedules/wheelchair accessible stops/other related information provided."

"Information like closures, schedule changes, or route disruptions should be available on the site, as an RSS feed, as an e-mail subscription, or as an SMS subscription that can be signed up for from a page on the TTC website."

"Trip planner please. Vancouver’s Translink already has one that on their website that’s very helpful. Also, most Translink stations display a phone number which you can call en-route and speak with an attendant regarding Transit schedules, like how long until the next bus, and route information.
http://tripplanning.translink.bc.ca/hiwire?.a=iTripPlanning&.s={$SID}"

I thought this recommendation was particularly insightful...

"...the TTC should hire a someone to head up a Design department. This person will be in charge of formulating standards for TTC advertising, route/schedule information posters, website design, and station/vehicle signage. ....If that doesn’t happen, this will just be a one-off, and like all one-offs will end up decaying into another sloppy mess. The TTC needs design everywhere, not just on its web site."

Another commenter has created a TTC schedule for their Palm, that you can download!!!!! 

Another great suggestion from several people: the TTC should make their database available to developers, to enable just this sort of open-source innovation.

So what?

The learning here: if people care about your service, they are receptive to helping you improve it to meet their needs better. The insights generated on these blogs contain real insights, the sort of ideas I'd be delighted to generate for a client as part of a research project. And this organization is getting them for free. Let's hope they have the brains to listen.

If your customers built a web site about your organization...

You might ask yourself this: if your customers built a web site about you, what would be there? What tips and tricks would they share with others? What navigational aids? What contact points? What secrets would they share?

References:

"The TTC gets some online help", by Bert Archer in the Globe & Mail, January 6, 2007. [free for 7 days]

Reading Toronto, founded by architect, urban planner and columnist Robert Ouellette, looks at the city from the standpoint of the creative arts.

Spacing Wire, a blog about public space issues in Toronto. Here's the TTC post with comments.

Blog TO, a blog about Toronto events, with an emphasis on the arts. Here's their post about the TTC with comments.

Torontoist, their TTC post and comments are here 

Transit Toronto shows how a dedicated fan site can actually provide significantly more useful information than the corporate site.

Personalization & Co-creation Trend: HP's its personal campaign

HP's new campaign, it's personal, is letting me create my own little video ad.  You can see it here:

Or you can go make your own.
 

HP has tapped into something important here with the notion of "it's personal". Our computers are extensions of our hands and our brains, more and more. Losing a hard drive is now worse than losing your wallet. When you can't use your computer, it feels very difficult to be productive. Amazing how this has happened so quickly.

Apparently some of HP's enterprise customers are exercised about the new campaign, because they have been telling their employees that the computers are not personal, are in fact company equipment, and should not be shared with kids or used to download music, edit personal pictures, etc. Someone needs to tell these companies that they crossed the work-personal boundary first, by expecting employees to be available anytime, anywhere.

The personalization trend we have spoken about here before is more than just acknowledging this, however, it is giving people the ability to have their own preferences met. This seems like a good start. Is HP thinking about customers the way Apple does? We can only hope.