Monday, July 18, 2016

More Customers - More Calls

I always say more companies and people fail from perfection than speed.

Of course for some things, like surgery, I want perfection.

Lack of perfection can cost time.  For example - Danby sells about 2,000,000 appliances per year.  If 1% of the customers have problems or questions, that is 20,000 calls or emails.  My experience is if those are not resolved perfectly and in a timely manner, many people contact the CEO (That would be me).  So any lack of perfection in our process costs me time.   So it makes sense to polish the process.

I am a big believer in closed loop.  If someone calls us, figure out the why and change the product, the label, the packaging - whatever the problem is so there are less calls.  Now the challenge with that is the manuals can become tomes since there is always someone with a unique problem that you could add to the manual.  The catch 22 here is - the longer the manual - the less it gets read.

And with Danby's introduction of table top appliances like smoothie blenders, electric kettles etc, the number of customers will climb dramatically.  So perfect process it is...

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For those who greatly prefer email to texts (like me) because of the organization of it, I am enjoying using Gyst.  And yes, I invested in the company.

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I had previously written on Bitcoin so was fascinated by the huge Block Chain Heist.  It is a real story of intrigue.  2 videos on the topic here and here.
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And to counter balance all the worrisome things going on in the world, we have grandkids:






Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Impossible to Ignore

I read a great book by Carmen Simon, PhD called Impossible to Ignore - Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions.

Of course I love marketing and SEO.   Simon is a Cognitive Scientist.  I am not smart enough to know exactly what that is but she writes scientifically (which I love) with proper research.  Much of the approach to me echoes what a psychologist would do.

Some examples she speaks about:

1 - Using the power of surprise to get attention.

2 - Using cues and tying to emotion.

3 - Creating distinctiveness.

4 - Of course creating memorability.  I enjoy the many funny beer ads.  You can search them on Youtube.  But after watching a few, I am not sure which company is advertising so they may make me remember the ad but not the beer which was the real purpose.  Take for instance this one.

5 - Visuals can work in both getting attention and in creating memory.  I am thinking of using this in some Danby freezer promotion.  Have a picture of an old freezer and a stream of money flowing from it down a drain next to a new one with perhaps a penny.

Simon has the advantage of hindsight.  It is always easy to see what great Content worked.  As I read the book I am thinking what can I do and the answers do not always flow as easily.

One challenging thought she has is we should not always be succinct.  (challenging for me anyways since I always preach about the power of brevity)

From the book:

Short feels good but it is not always memorable.

If we aim for gist memory, the standards of length are looser.  We can get away with more content. as long as at least one main message is clear and we draw attention to it often.  And if the content is complex, we don't need to sacrifice all the complexity; we just need to ensure that we return frequently to that one main message we would like our audience to retain.

Good book - I enjoyed it.

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I had a great long weekend with family.  My brother posted this picture of himself with my granddaughter on facebook.  Such shameless posting - just for likes.