Customer Crossroads

Extracting value from your customers: Companies and the customers who hate them

Fantastic must-read article in the June 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review: "Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them" by Gail McGovern and Youngme Moon.

McGovern's thesis is that many otherwise great companies have drifted into a situation where their most-profitable customers are the ones who have the most reason to be dissatisfied -- customers who are trapped by a contract, or pay too much because of complex service plans and penalty fees. 

Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?  But I'm raving about this article because of the clarity with which the situation is presented, and the thinking it triggered for me. McGovern suggests this situation is the result of drift, not malice:

"Without ever making a deliberate decision to do so, they have, over a period of years, taken great advantage of their customers. In most cases, there's no defining moment when these companies crossed the line. Rather, they found themselves on a slippery slope that led to an increasingly antagonistic strategy."

The industries that exemplify this approach are cell phone service, retail banking, and health clubs. Service plan contracts, for example, may appear customer-centric at first glance, but in fact take advantage of the "customer's difficulty in predicting their usage." If customers use too much, they pay more. If they use too little, they paid for something they aren't using. Regardless of the direction of the error, the house always wins.

Competitors that enter this kind of environment with transparent offerings often do well, rapidly growing their customer base: Virgin Mobile in cellular, ING Direct and President's Choice Financial in banking, for example.

McGovern & Moon's diagnostic questions:

McGovern offers four diagnostic questions to discover how seriously affected your business is by this approach:

⇒ Are your most profitable customers those who have the most reason to be dissatisfied with you?

⇒ Do you have rules that you want customers to break because doing so generates profits?

⇒ Do you make it difficult for customers to understand or abide by your rules, and do you actually help customers break them?

⇒ Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?

Abbott's addendums:

I'd like to add a few more diagnostic questions to this list that are a little more granular. All of these are based on personal experience as a customer or a consultant:

⇒ The cost of doing business WITHOUT being in a service plan is prohibitively high. A lot of calls to your bill-payment lines result in back-dated conversion to a service plan, and reversal of 'pay-as-you-go' charges. The staff in this area are rewarded for sales of this nature. Good example: bandwidth charges on mobile phones

⇒ You have complex online tools to help customers select a service plan. They need to be able to accurately predict their usage to use them. The tables and charts have footnotes explaining the exceptions. Examples are abundant: bank and telco web sites

⇒ You recommend that customers bring several statements in to your offices to talk to a specialist to help them select a service plan, because it's too difficult to do without accurate data. Commonly seen with: banks, phone companies

⇒ Your own staff find the whole area confusing. The good ones offer to switch the customer's plan with no charge in a few months if they find they have chosen the wrong plan. Commonly seen in: new customers selecting a bank account

⇒ The cost of 'making a mistake' is so high that you are able to sell insurance against 'making a mistake' even to those who have never made one, or are unlikely to. Good example: overdraft protection

⇒ You can accurately predict the 'breakage' on typical products. In fact, you count on this ability to build profitable new products.  e.g. Minimum balance requirements, credit card insurance with low claim rates

⇒ You rely on customer inertia and hassle-avoidance to reduce churn. Hello cable companies with bundled channels and complicated high-definition set-up

There are abundant examples in these industries. In fact, it is so entrenched, you might find it difficult to even think of alternative approaches.

How to start fixing the problem

Changing service-fee strategies usually means someone has to prepare a business case. Resolving the kind of issues that the McGovern and Moon article is discussing is going to mean a drop in revenue from fees. Regrettably, that drop in fee revenue will be easy to quantify, while the resulting gains in loyalty and brand equity are likely to be much harder to quantify.

If you want to start addressing this situation in your organization, you are going to need metrics that help put some numbers on the other side of the equation. You would be well-served to get the support of whoever is managing loyalty, retention and churn, as well as brand equity.   

When I'm conducting research in any of the industries named above, a recurring theme is the feeling that the deck is stacked in favor of the company, not the customer. And I have a news bulletin for you: training your staff in being friendly isn't going to get you past this issue.

If you've had some success changing this game, please tell us about it in the comments.

Resources

Harvard Business Review does not provide free online access to its material. Individual articles can be purchased, however, and it provides a short summary of articles. Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them by Gail McGovern and Youngme Moon can be found here. (Product# R0706E)

Interview with Jonathan Tisch about Reinventing the Customer Experience

This blog tour by Jonathan Tisch has been interesting on a few levels. What a creative idea, for starters. And what a clever publicist to pick up on it.

I knew we'd be up at the end of the tour week, and I thought that things might be getting repetitive by now. So I sent questions that I hoped were different, and might scratch through the polished package that accompanies anyone who occupies a corner office, to say nothing of someone who is also on the speaking circuit.  I don't think we got anything unvarnished, but I think we did get some frank and forthright commentary.  Here's our e-mail Q&A, as conversational as we could make it.

"[It is] challenging for CEOs to balance service versus profits"

Susan Abbott: Jonathan, I first wanted to tell you that I read a paragraph from your book to kick off a recent client working session about customer experience. It was about how everyone in the organization actually needs to think about and be focused on customers. I was happy to hear people repeating this stuff a week later to others.

I only wish it was so easy to get people on board, especially at the top of the organization.   I know some are -- Lafley at P&G of course is a great example. But it seems like the exception, not the rule. Why aren't more executives on board?

Jonathan Tisch: With the focus coming from Wall Street on quarterly earnings for public companies, it becomes a bit challenging for CEOs to balance service versus profits. The enlightened leaders of some companies have figured out that great customer service usually leads to an enhanced bottom line. That is the ultimate challenge – to find ways for your customers to receive the service that they deserve, turn them in to life-long customers, and ensure that they don’t go to the competition should they have a bad experience. 

"What has changed is the business of hotels, not the hotel business"

SA: One of the things that immediately drew me to your book was your genuine understanding of the vulnerability of the traveler who is a guest in your hotel. I spent a few years where I was continually on the road, and it can be a lonely and frustrating place at times.

Still, I recognize that my expectations are very high. But of course this wasn't always the case -- I can't imagine what travel in the 1800s must have been like. It makes me wonder how customer expectations will change in the future. You mentioned the importance of staying on top of emerging trends and the next demographic shift. Could you comment on that? 

JT: What is happening in the lodging industry today relates to the old saying, “the more things change the more they stay the same.” What has changed is the business of hotels, not the hotel business.

Our business has become highly sophisticated with very large, corporate entities becoming players. When you look at the Marriotts, InterContinentals and Hiltons of the world – all with many thousands of properties, at different price points and market niches – you understand that the big are getting bigger and that, through acquisitions and strategic alliances, they have become formidable competition with tremendous offerings.

There has also been a greatly enhanced focus by Wall Street and private equity on the hotel business, so many of the new players are very well capitalized and have extremely bright people as part of their organizations.

That’s the business of hotels.

But what hasn’t changed since the first person checked into a hotel 1,000 years ago, is the hotel business. At its core, our business is based on hospitality and making people feel welcome, comfortable and safe. The companies that continue to thrive are the ones able to skate the line between profitability and hospitality.

Going forward, we will always have new technological advances to deal with. But once again, our industry is extremely biased toward interpersonal and human relations.   

"The companies that thrive are able to skate the line between profitability and hospitality"

SA: You mentioned several instances in the book where staff quite correctly bend the rules to look after a customer. But you also note consistency is critically important -- customers need to know an organization is reliable and dependable.

Is there a tension between customization and consistency? And if so, how does an organization deal with this tension?

JT: If your co-workers are properly educated and trained, then customization and consistency can, indeed, be compatible. That’s the nature of crisis resolution. What I like to discuss with my Loews Hotels co-workers isn’t about the problem necessarily. It’s about the recovery.

With so many options for the consumer, recovery from a problem is paramount because that’s how you keep one of your customers from going to a competitor.

It is a very fine line that has to be taught to, in some cases, entry-level individuals – how to get involved and what opportunities for crisis resolution are available to them. At Loews Hotels we pride ourselves on balancing consistency with customization to provide the level of service our guests have become accustomed to. 

"The CEO cannot be involved in every decision -- nor should they be"

SA: I'd like to ask you about managing a culture of innovation. If we want to harness the creative talents at all levels of an organization, how do we do that? What specifically does the CEO need to do to role model the right approach? Short of writing a book, of course.

JT: The CEO always sets the tone for an organization. Due to corporate hierarchy, it can get a little lonely at the top if there’s not complete buy-in at every level of the organization.

Due to physical and time constraints, the CEO cannot be involved in every decision – nor should they be involved in every decision. It’s extremely important for middle and senior-management to have a very clear understanding of the goals and objectives of the company. In addition, creativity is an important tool that should be harnessed to effectively manage toward these goals. This is something that needs to be taught to all the individuals making decisions.

"The CEO always sets the tone for an organization"

JT: It’s very important to always monitor the touch-points of your organization so that you can see where the customer intersects with your product or service.

As the CEO, there are times when I find myself talking to clients about their experiences, in a sense pleading with them to be honest and candid with me. It really is important for the CEO to hear everything – the good and the bad. Because much of what gets to a CEO on a daily basis is somewhat sanitized by those working for them, I find it important to regularly speak with our guests.

Additionally there are always letters, observations, comments and criticisms that come across the transom. CEOs always need to understand what’s being said about their organization so that they can deal with the situations appropriately.

SA: Thank you, Jonathan. It's not often that a CEO of a major organization lets themselves be interviewed by a blogger. I really appreciate having your executive level perspective on things that my readers and I think about!

JT: Thank you, Susan, for this dialogue! I’ve enjoyed this week immensely. Thank you for welcoming me to your blog.

SA: We talk a lot on this blog about the need to stay close to customers, and the tools that help you do that effectively. I'm wondering what some of your favorite methods are?

What we can learn from squirrels, and other research tips

I planted my garden over the last few weekends. A few wildflowers native to this part of the world (trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit), some herbs, and the usual impatiens, fuchsia, and such. [Yes, it's true, I do have a few domestic skills.]

For days after a new plant goes in, it's a certainty that the squirrels will dig it up. I replant every morning. This morning it was the hanging planter of morning glories.
Why do squirrels do this?

It came to me this morning. They do this because they can smell something in the freshly dug dirt. They know it has recently been disturbed. And this is a good place to look for snacks -- perhaps nuts that other squirrels have buried. It must be, otherwise why would they bother?

I've been annoyed with this behavior for years, but have never stopped to de-construct it. From a squirrel's point of view, it makes perfect sense. 

And so often this is what we need to  do when we study customers. Especially when their behavior seems irrational. Because behavior is not random. It is purposeful. If it is random, the randomness itself is purposeful. It may not be rational in the conventional sense, but it achieves a result, it tips the odds, or it has been rewarded in the past. There are reasons, there are patterns, even if the patterns are unconscious, or seemingly irrelevant.

We cannot change our customers. But we can understand them if we work at it.

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?
   

Jonathan Tisch to visit May 25

Jonathan Tisch, author of Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience (with Karl Weber) will be visiting this blog for a Q&A next Friday, May 25. 

It's all part of a blog book tour.
(And isn't that just a cool idea, courtesy of David Polinchok at BrandExperienceLab)

Jonathan's the CEO of Loew's Hotels, so he knows a few things about chocolates and such. I have been pleasantly surprised at how meaningful and meaty the book is.  In fact, I read an extract from the book at a recent client working session to get us all into the right mindset.

So I am delighted to be able to have Jonathan as my virtual guest. I don't think we have the capability of virtual autographs, for which I'm truly sorry. However, we're very big on co-creation around here, so if there's something you'd really like to know or ask a hotel CEO or experience leader, please e-mail me.

Other blogs will be hosting Jonathan as well.  Here's the schedule:

Monday 5/21

http://blog.brandexperiencelab.org - Q&A format

http://customersrock.wordpress.com/ Q&A format

 

Tuesday 5/22

http://theengagingbrand.typepad.com/ Podcast/Q&A format

 

Wednesday 5/23

http://www.grokdotcom.com Podcast format

http://www.vacantready.com Q&A format

 

Thursday 5/24

http://www.lipsticking.com/ Podcast format

http://experiencethemessage.typepad.com/blog/ Q&A format

 

Friday 5/25

http://www.arc.typepad.com/customercrossroads Q&A format

http://experienceology.blogspot.com/ Podcast format

People with a problem are a gift to marketers: new business opportunities in travel and tourism

The glamour and excitement has definitely gone out of most air travel, between the general withdrawal of services by the airlines and the increased security. This is just the sort of environment where there are NEW PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE! UNSOLVED PROBLEMS!  In short, a marketing gold mine.

Check out some of the new businesses that have launched to address our travel-related problems.

Beep Tech Inc  provides beep-free products like belts so you don't have to disrobe at security. They also have leather travel accessories to make the presentation of ID and boarding passes more convenient.

If you hate lugging luggage around, you can get it shipped for you by several different services such as SportsExpress, LuggageExpress, Excess Baggage, and so on.

You can go one step further and avoid packing the bag in the first place. Flylite will give you a virtual closet that you can use to select the items you want for a specific trip. You send them the items you usually take when travelling, and they store, dryclean and ship these items for you.  Perfect for the chinos and sports-shirt consultant that's on the road a lot.

When you see a sector where there are unhappy people, you are looking at a sector rife with opportunities.

Customer Service Carousel Redux

*** Updates are added at the end of this post.

I've been having some problems logging in to my main business bank accounts, as documented earlier.

I have now called the 800 number twice, and have spent a considerable amount of time -- as they requested I do -- documenting what exactly is wrong with their web site. I sent this information exactly as they requested, through a secure internal message site.

They promised

1. to get back to me within 24 hours
2. to e-mail me when their response was posted so I could log in to see it

They appear to have fulfilled promise #1, but I didn't know, since they didn't fulfil promise #2. I found out today that the problem isn't fixed, and it's basically my problem now.  Here's the message they sent me:

Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate the time you have taken to write us.

Please note that the team that answers messages only has limited access to customer accounts and personal information. Although we can assist customers with general inquiries, we are unable to fulfil account servicing or investigation requests.

For further assistance, please call Online Banking support at 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. If you don't have a Telephone Banking password, at the start of your call press 0 twice to be connected to a representative. Assistance is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you're calling from abroad, the number is 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. Collect calls are not accepted.

Thank you for using Online Banking.

Sincerely,

Jane
Internet Communications Specialist

This organization is making more than a billion dollars a year. And they are spending a LOT of money on branding.

This is what I would call a 'customer managed relationship.' If I want the relationship to work, I'm going to have to manage it. And that includes figuring out why their web site is -- you know -- [what's a polite word here???]

Update May 21, 2007.  My e-mail response to feedback has not received a reply. Problem still exists.

Is it time for Air Laws? Or just more thoughtful design?

I discovered the Zeitgeist blog when Bill Geist linked to my piece on yield management in travel, and what it's done to the experience.  And discovered his excellent list of Air Laws -- the new rules designed to restore civilized behavior to air travel, ensure that space hogs don't take up all the storage, and that big guys get the emergency exit row seats. [I confess I don't totally support that one, unless we could reduce the height restriction to 5'8" ...]

Law #8 about crowding around baggage carousels particularly resonated because the baggage thing seems so unnecessarily badly designed.

All it takes is for a few people to crowd in, and then no one can see. You can't enforce polite behavior, but you can design things in such a way that they signal what is expected. I've spent countless hours waiting for my bag and observing this phenomenon in detail, and have a couple of ideas.

• Signal a no-crowding zone with different floor markings, perhaps even vertical elements like short pillars that show people where they are supposed to stand. These seem to do the trick nicely to prevent people crowding the exits in airports -- those waiting for arriving passengers to leave the secure baggage area.

[I learned via Bill that a guy named Chris Maland has built a web site dedicated to this idea.  I prefer my  no-crowding zone name to his proposal.]

• Build angled mirrors over the carousel, just like the cooking shows have. So we can see if our bag has arrived even if the front is crowded

• Put a video camera on the business end of the chute with several large screens, so you can monitor without crowding.

Of course, none of these measures will help those who obsessively check every black bag tag to be sure it's not theirs. [Buddy, see those red plaid ribbons? Keep your paws off.]

Bill also pointed to this wonderful destination marketing campaign about aliens that love New Mexico, 'the best place in the universe". Very innovative marketing that carves out a unique position.

Fear of flying or yield management in action

In Montreal for a brief trip, I thought I could make a 3 p.m. flight. Not a chance.
Called to rebook ... after listening to a bunch of marketing stuff, they told me it would cost $20 to speak to an operator instead of going online.

Ever conscious of  clients' perceptions of the expense tally, I searched out an internet connection.
No dice -- it was less than 45 minutes to my flight, so I had to call.  They would waive the $20 surcharge if I provided a special code that showed I'd tried to do this online. Okay, scrounge a Post-it note, and take down code. Start again with the phone.

$40 to change the flight an hour. No problem, I said.
But they couldn't book me a seat, I had to do that at the airport, because people had already started to check in for the later flight. I have to admit, that surprised me, but what could I do?

Upon arrival at the airport, I see that -- incredibly -- the original flight has not yet left. Here's where it gets good. For another $50, I can rebook. I tell them I already paid. They check the system. They want to know if I paid at the airport or over the phone?
Too bad for me, I paid over the phone.

"Phone is not the same." That is literally what they told me. Shaking of heads, looking at each other for confirmation, agreeing. "Phone is not the same."

When you have to administer policies that horrible, you do your best to close off any possibility of discussion as quickly as possible. And can you blame them? In this kind of environment, they'd be wasting their money on customer-service training or anything else like that.

Yield management is about squeezing as much as possible out of every seat on the plane. And of course, by extension, out of you and me. No wonder the tickets need three pages of conditions after the itinerary.

"The freedom to fly your own way"

Because I organized my day so badly, I had to sit in the middle of two big guys who were travelling together. I would probably have paid a fee to avoid that. Maybe not for a 75-minute flight. But definitely for a long flight. A fee to avoid the middle seat. Or a fee to ensure you sit only beside thin polite people who have showered today. See how insidious this kind of thing can be? 

Riding the customer service carousel

The bank forgot me. Well, not the bank really, but the part of it I interact with most often. Those little shortcuts that saved me from typing in 16 digit access numbers were gone, gone, gone. I thought perhaps I'd inadvertently wiped out cookies or something. [Dang! It's probably your own fault, you idiot.]

In the process of trying to get set up again, I had a few problems. So I called the 800 number. Twice. That was about 10 days ago.

The problem appeared solved. But it wasn't, it only looked solved.

I was still on the carousel.

No matter which business name I thought I was logging into, I went to the same account. This was pretty alarming, actually.

I couldn't envision going through the whole story again with phone support, so I sent a note to the tech support link. Their initial response, 24 hours later, was pretty much telling me to delete my cookies and try again.

I confess, this did elicit a grumpy response from me.

They then confessed they had been unable to duplicate the problem, and asked me to undertake some further research, and sent detailed instructions of how to do this. 

So I've been catching up on my blog reading while I create said log.

You can read the whole sorry story here: Download the_great_bank_login_project.pdf, with names changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. [Plus I'd hate to bite the hand that might in future be feeding me.]

Of course you probably already know what it says. I'm guessing you've experienced something very like this incident before. Probably dozens of times. Maybe hundreds of times. The frustration, the disappointment. The incredible waste of time. Being made to feel like it was probably your fault, if you can't prove it was theirs. As if normal people choose to spend their life energy this way. ['"What did you do today dear?" "Well, I hassled a bank when I could have just reloaded my browser. It was a laugh a minute! Tomorrow I'm going to call an airline."]

Riding the customer service carousel

No one gets on the customer service carousel willingly. We get on because we have a problem.

A human voice and human empathy makes a big difference. And when it's missing, we feel like we are dealing with a machine. To end every e-mail with "Thanks for visiting www.bank.com" is just dumb, and very likely reinforces the sense of anomie.

Asking me to spend a bunch of time documenting the issue probably didn't seem like that big a deal to the carnies running the carousel. But it took me the rest of the afternoon. There was no acknowledgment of this. And I doubt if they'll send me a plush teddy to thank me. More likely, they'll want more. And they'll want it for free.

These are not the rules of human engagement. There's no shared sense of obligation. There's no real memory. The existence of this issue will never be documented in my CRM file.

If I went in to apply for a mortgage tomorrow, no one is going to say to me, "Gee, did you get that log-in thing dealt with OK? Really sorry about that. Oh, by the way, I just want to mention that the tech people really appreciated your efforts there. I think they're sending you a gift basket. They had no idea this problem existed, and your detailed notes were tremendously helpful."

Two events you need to know about: Ideas and Innovation

I'm delighted to be attending two cool events in June that you should consider adding to your calendar. Both these events have the potential to refresh your thinking, and recharge the spirit. Plus, they are both highly participative, so you'll get a chance to really engage with the ideas.

Business Pulse '07 -- Innovation Summit

Where: York University Executive Learning Centre, Toronto

When: June 5, 7:30 am - 5 pm with reception following

A one day event that will wrap an 18 month research project on best practices in innovation. Good speakers, and an interactive program will make this a memorable event. Hosted by Schulich Executive Education, York University.

The conference web site is here, or you can go directly to the brochure by clicking here.

[Full disclosure: I'm part of the facilitation team.]

Idea City

Where:Toronto

When: June 20, 21, 22

Three days of stimulating speakers and engaging with others around ideas. What could be more fun?

I've been hearing about this event for years, and this year I shifted my continuing education budget around in order to attend. [People tell me it's life changing. In a good way.]

The event site is here.

I'll probably blog about the event while I'm there, but wouldn't you rather be there than just read about it? Tickets are now getting expensive, but there are still one or two early-bird tickets around. If you want to snag one, please e-mail me.

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.

Web 2.0 and Banking

Wonderful, detailed and thought-provoking post about Web 2.0. Basically how to think through the implications for a large business (in this case banking) in a structured way. "How to Web 2.0 your bank", at Bankwatch.

While you are there, you'll find some other interesting reads as well as lists of banks operating without branches, and so on.

Personalized Direct Mail Steps Up a Notch

I got a package in the mail this week that contained an inflatable globe (very handy, and I mean that) with a sticker on it directing me to a web site. A web site just for me.
How cool is that? When I got there, a nice sound and light show telling me more about e-Rewards, and offering to send me a report on global online research capabilities.

We're not really experts on direct marketing here at the crossroads... but this just felt very engaging to me.  You're welcome to try the site yourself, for as long as it lasts. But please don't order the book, I don't want hundreds of them to arrive! ;0)  Here's the link.

Vialuna are the clever folk behind this piece.