Customer Crossroads

MadMen shows us a stratified society: things HAVE changed

I am a MadMen addict, and with the start of the new season, I was marveling at how much our society really has changed since the 60's.

We have more social equality, but actually less economic equality

Although many of the show's characters are very affluent, the post WWII decades were an era of unparalleled egalitarianism in North America. At the same time as economic equality was within reach, socially society was still quite stratified.

A brief vignette when our protagonist, Don Draper, walks into his office and practically tosses his briefcase and hat to his personal secretary, followed by his coat for her to hang, really highlighted this for me.

Today, the reverse is true. I live in a world where people are largely unwilling to acknowledge social stratification, but economic opportunity is highly stratified. A few people -- entertainers, sports figures, financial engineers -- gather a disproportionate amount of the total wealth in society.

I'm just as bad as you

In terms of customer experience expectations, this change has a couple of very real world implications.

The person who buffs your nails in a salon does not think of themselves as a lesser being. In fact, the clientele at the spa may well include those who have saved up for this kind of a treat: Baristas and others in relatively low paying positions.

It's hard to identify many occupations or professions that are still held in high esteem, regardless of their earning power.

For service cultures, this societal flattening means that many people are not prepared to engage in the kind of role-playing that dedicated personal service requires. So when you ask for something, you hear "no problem" instead of "I'd be pleased to get that" or "yes ma'am", or some similar nicety.

When we don't think others are better than we are, it changes the service dynamic. And I don't think we have really come to grips with this.

Because not only has the cultural environment changed, but corporations are resistant to paying good wages for front line staff, and aggressively automating wherever possible.

Isn't it ironic

This situation creates some serious irony. In our roles as customers, we wonder what has happened to service. But in our roles as service providers, we demand a level of respect, we don't want to grovel, we don't want to deal with people who are rude and impatient, and we resist any behaviors that would imply something less than equal status. 

What's your take?

Am I imagining this? Or have you observed this too?

Would you pay more for lesser quality data?

There's a controversy afoot in Canada right now about the Census.

A quick overview

There are two forms. Everyone does the short form, which is a handful of questions. Twenty per cent of Canadians have been required to respond to the long form as well, which contained more than 50 questions, relating to ethnicity, language, and many other topics. Some people objected.

The replacement proposed by the government is that instead of twenty percent completing the mandatory long form, one-third of Canadians will be offered the opportunity to voluntarily complete the long form.

Why you should let statisticians do it their way

Many people who are not statisticians may see this as a better idea, or something "that can't hurt." Not true.

Because certain kinds of people probably won't bother. Who -- well my guess would be those who are very busy, those who might struggle with the questions due to literacy or language challenges, those with anarchist inclinations. The very old, the poor, the wealthy. Those who can't find a pencil.

Other groups will respond in greater than average numbers. Net result -- skewed data.

The statisticians will have to work hard to estimate the skew, but ultimately the result will be vastly degraded data that drifts farther and farther from reality over time.  It won't be comparable to previous data either.

Bad data will cost more!

Oddly enough, this new voluntary approach will cost more.  More forms to send out. More forms to analyze. More analysis to resolve the issues of skew.

[We might wonder what sort of ideology would support this nonsense, but that isn't our beat on this blog.] 

Arguably ...

Instead of being the gold-standard data we now have, the new census data will come with the adjective "arguably" permanently attached. Not just public policy decisions, but many private sector applications as well will be affected.

For example, don't you want really good data about regional language preferences to drive your advertising? How about regional ethnic distributions -- that's important for marketing too, right? Examples abound.

Why would anyone want bad data??

In business, people who don't want good data usually have a good reason -- they don't want consistency of measurement.

An example that may be familiar to you: many brokers don't provide consistent measurement of rates of return to their clients. [Something clients uniformly hate, by the way, shown repeatedly in research]

My Take

If you have access to high quality data to manage your work, whatever your work is, fight to keep it. There's no substitute for good data. Ask yourself what will replace it -- speculation? Gut instinct? Personal preferences? 

Ultimately, poor data leads to poor decisions, which pretty much always cost more. 

Your take

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear your views on either the census controversy, or on how data is managed in your organization.

Resources

Marketing Research + Intelligence Association (MRIA) letter to Cabinet (spawns PDF) This letter clarifies the US situation, which seems widely misunderstood. Yes, the US dropped the long form. But they added something else, which is indeed mandatory.

Toronto Star: Axing census questions adds up to trouble for Tories by Bruce Campion-Smith, July 15, 2010 -- admittedly a left-leaning news outlet, but has some great quotes from a variety of experts.

Also worth scanning is this editorial piece by Haroon Siddiqui, "PM facing revolt over census change" July 15, 2010

Statistics Canada Senseless Census Decision, by Armine Yalnizyan of The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, July 2, 2010

Of course there is a Facebook page: Keep the Canada Census Longform

The StatsCan comment, basically no comment

How to survive in the shark tank: go for actual loyalty, not just inertia

If you feel like you are swimming in a shark tank of competitors, you are probably right.

Today's example: we are miffed at the service from our pharmacy. We use their automated call-in service, which is nice when it works. But if you have a new prescription on file, they won't refill the old one. Even though the IVR accepts the order.

Okay, fine. It's not a perfect system.

But the pharmacy staff know that they aren't going to fill this order. They could call to let you know. After all, isn't that why the automated service confirms your phone number? Why wait until you come in to tell you this?  [No kidding. When you put these things in words, the craziness is obvious.]

Other recent incidents: they were OUT of a drug I refill regularly (along with, my guess, about a thousand other women in a one mile radius). They told me to 'check back with them every week'. Are you kidding me? I transferred the prescription to another pharmacy. They had the same problem, but at least offered to call and let me know the situation.

Here's the thing. Within a 15 minute walk from my home, there are at least 5 major competitive outlets (some under the same banner, but with a different store operator). If I care to drive a little farther, there are many more options.

If there is a consolidation in this industry, (which seem likely due to other factors), who do you think will survive?  What about you -- if there is a shakeout in your industry, will you be on the steamroller or on the road?

I ask myself these questions all the time. And honestly, I often find areas to improve. That's the nature of service businesses -- they take constant management.

My take:

State your actual operating method in words, as if it were a service directive instead of just what you do. If this approach were the rule instead of just the habit, would it still make sense? What would your customers think if they saw it in writing?

Don't rely on inertia for loyalty. Try for actual loyalty. Then you have two kinds of glue in place, and a much stronger position.

Your take:

What's your view on this? Does service count for you? Could you easily replace your current providers? How do you keep your competitive edge in the shark tank?

Customer for life or enemy for life? You're only as good as your after sales service

I've been having a few challenges with the appliances in my life.  Which has highlighted, once again, the difference between what most organizations SAY they will do, and what they ACTUALLY do.

The Dishwasher Repairman who didn't show up, after we'd waited patiently for days

This morning, the repairman for the Miele "e-mailed in sick", and got himself a four-day long weekend with this well-timed illness. Naturally, we did not find this out until we'd been making followup calls to find out why the repair person was more than an hour late. 

This is the kind of situation consumers really hate, me among them. First, you are powerless, completely hostage to the company and their parts inventory. Will the sick repairman actually have the right parts when he shows up at the house? Or will we have to wait again? I started wondering if there is any way to thwart this insane system by choosing where I buy the appliance.

The HP planned obscene -- oops I meant planned obsolescence -- issue

I've been a loyal fan of hardworking HP printers for as long as I can remember. The first laserjet worked for about a decade before we sent it to printer heaven. For the last two purchases, I only briefly considered another option, and that was the Xerox solid ink option (not a great idea for a boutique office like mine, as it turns out).

I've been so impressed with the cartridge return option, and HP's commitment to reducing waste, being green, and on and on. I had a nice warm feeling every time I packaged up the old cartridge and sent it back. I suggested HP as an example of a green company to another client. Seriously!

What the heck was I thinking? I just fell for the PR messaging.

"We didn't sell you the cartridges, that's not our problem"

The fuser on the HP Color LaserJet 3600n has packed it in. The replacement part is $350, plus a maintenance kit for $50, and a minimum one hour of technician time -- bringing the total to $500. If I find a huge box and haul the machine in myself. If I get onsite service, it's more. This is roughly the cost of a NEW printer.

Here's the problem: the color cartridges in the dead printer are about half full, representing an investment of about $400.  I thought perhaps there is another HP machine that uses the same model of cartridge? No there is not -- they are no longer manufacturing for that configuration.

I thought there might be some kind of program to give these back or provide a credit for them, or ANYTHING. Nope. Nada. In fact, so nada that the good people there told us "We didn't sell you the cartridges, it's not our problem".

Don't they WANT the cartridges? No, actually.

What about the TONER? No, actually.

Wait a minute - what about all that green strategy you keep telling me about?

My long fandom for HP has come to an end, I think. I'm now so annoyed I feel like buying another brand just to get payback.

How consumers get payback

Consumers often feel this kind of annoyance at perceived injustices from big companies. Research suggests, and my own experience confirms, that consumers attempt to balance the score. They do this by creating negative word of mouth (perhaps you've seen my Twitter feeds on the HP topic? And now this blog?). And they switch brands. but they don't stop saying bad things about you.

Customers for life is an interesting concept. But enemies for life is much more common.

My take:

When you are designing an amazing customer experience, be sure to design in the end. The maintenance. The repairs. The replacement model. The parts disposal. Because nothing lasts forever, except perhaps consumer memories of how you treated them. And those memories are expensive to restore. (Just look at the effort Ford has needed to restore their reputation.)