The Changing Nature of Human Interactions

This applies not only to our personal relationships, but to our business relationships as well.  We show a wife, a son, a friend, a customer that we love them by doing something for them, usually small, that brings value into his or her life.  Repeated everyday, this practice will transform your relationships into something lasting and worthwhile.  Do the dishes, make the bed, play with your son or daughter, buy the next round for your friend (even if you bought the last), find out who your best customers are and comp their next purchase or save an article for them that you know they would enjoy.  You will see your relationships blossom before your eyes.

Human ExchangePoints can make even crepes irrelevant

Last week I had a crepe for the first time.  If you don’t know a crepe is a very thin pancake rolled around various ingredients, either cheese and meat or some kind of fruit.  It can be quite delicious and the little shop I visited in Kingston last week was no exception.  But no matter how good your product is, one little lapse in service can ruin it all.

Jaime Les Crepes is a small shop right next to the Kingston Ferry, where about 80% of its customers come from, and the whole shop can’t be more than the size of a small kitchen lending to it the distinct feel of a European shop.  I liked it immediately.  I enjoyed it even more when on the first day I was helped by Kattie, a two year crepe veteran.  Kattie made the crepes, held a conversation with multiple customers, and rang up the orders all by herself.  I was in and out in about 5 minutes or so.  She was very personable, completely competent, and left me wanting to come back the next day.

The difference the next morning was night and day.  I walked into the shop to see two younger girls at the counter, both seemingly in a bad mood, trying to work around each other in a cramped space.  The whole mood inside the small shop had changed.  When they finally got to my order (two took longer than one) it was made well, as far as I could tell, but without the conversation or the enthusiasm.  Since I had to transport the order back to the cabin my wife and I were staying at, I tried to help by telling her what Kattie did the day before.  This employee looked right at me and said with almost a sneer, “I’ve done this before.”  Okay then… I stepped back and observed at that point.  I paid for my food and brought it out to the car only to find that the container with the blueberry crepes had leaked on my foot.  She hadn’t packed it right.

All of these factors make a huge difference.  I would rather have this entry be a love letter to that establishment as a shining beacon of what customer service should be, but instead I would probably not remember to personally recommend that shop to anyone I know.

All companies have points at which they exchange value with customers, ExchangePoints, and the human point is often the most important (as well as the most difficult to control).  Customers buy into these exchange points just like they do a regular product, I wanted the service interaction just as much as the crepe.

In the end this is the difference between a destination point and a stop of convenience.  Most customers will use the product until a better alternative comes around, then the customers will jump ship and swim to a newer boat.  Whether it is a service business or a chance conversation, the little things matter, and a quality Human ExchangePoint could be the difference between a loyal friend or a passing acquaintance.

One of the crowning jewels in this blissful experience was to be an overnight stay in Seattle; catch a show, stay in a nice hotel, eat some really good food.  Alas, it was not to be so.  The hotel I booked looked like it was filled with old world charm and elegance, just the things that my new bride enjoys.  The pictures on hotels.com for the REGULAR GUEST ROOMS, not the suites, look like this:

Beautiful room, right?

Supposed to be the guest room

I won’t say the deal I got on the website but it was a fairly decent price, and I couldn’t wait to show her the wonderful place I found for us.  As we pulled up to the front entrance, we were greeted by an effusive and smiling parking attendant who seemed knowledgeable and very helpful.  He then informed us that we would have to pay an extra $38 for him to park our car or we could go down the street a couple blocks to a public garage.  He said this while taking our luggage out of the car, with an impatient tone, leaving me feeling like we had no option.  I gave him the keys.  This was definitely strike one since most other hotels of repute in Seattle pay for guests parking or offer some kind of discounted service.  Not this hotel.

We walked into the grand lobby, looking just like the pictures.  Rich, majestic, and quite beautiful.  The check-in goes fairly smoothly, and we are off to our room.  The walls are colored robin’s egg blue with trims of gold and yellow, all very well done and the excitement is building, I can’t wait for her to see the room.  We get to the door and open…

The bed was kind of nice

Plain, Plain, Plain

Does this look like the pictures above?

Looks like a Holiday Inn, not a 5 star hotel

To say the least, we were disappointed.  I understand that promotional pictures are different from reality but this much?  And beyond that, how is the theme of the room jiving with the rest of the hotel?  Old world elegance meets thrift store Asian Fusion?

I called down to the front desk hoping for some resolution but instead found a disgruntled employee unwilling to help my new wife and I on our honeymoon.  She had no explanation for the discrepancy in decor, made no apology for the subterfuge, and informed me that ALL the guest rooms looked like that (in a tone that suggested I should have known that) but she might be able to find a different color scheme.  I hung up.

We pressed on and being the great people that we are we had a fantastic night, caught a show, met some new friends, and generally enjoyed life.  The next morning we got up to check out and skipped down to the guest services counter, happy to be leaving the disappointing room.  When we got to the counter, the employee asked the fateful words I had been waiting for:

“How was your stay with us?”

I told her.  In great detail actually of the fantastic frustrations the hotel heaped upon us.  It wasn’t a bad hotel, nice in it’s own way, just the advertising is lying and that isn’t good for the company’s soul.  To her credit, Jonah, listened patiently and apologized immediately for her colleague’s callousness, comping our parking and offering to help us with a room in the future.  She nearly saved the experience.

Nearly.

These days no business can afford to be substandard, to promise a certain level of service or product and then not deliver.  People expect all businesses, just as they do other people, to be honest and fair with them in their dealings together.  The hotel offered one experience and delivered another, not drastically different but enough that our expectations were immediately shattered.  It was so bad that the room might as well have been a flea bag motel.

Will we stay there again?  Probably not.  The memory of being lied to is too strong and I suspect we are not alone.  I imagine that the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle has lost a fair number of customers because its advertising isn’t based in reality.  I know my wife and I will always remember our stay there as the low point on our honeymoon, simply because our expectations were built up and then shattered by a lack of brand integrity.

Photo Courtesy of saffandiphoto.com via avani-mehta.com

Many know, some don’t, that I am to be married tomorrow to the most wonderful woman I have ever met.  After so many years, we are to be joined together in marital bliss for the rest of our lives.  I have honestly never been happier than I am at this time in my life and it will only get better from here.

The wedding will be at First Congregational on Division street in Tacoma at 7pm with a reception following immediately at the Landmark.

Then comes the honeymoon, most of which we will be spending in a secluded cabin out in the woods… almost no cell phone reception… no TV or anything…it will be glorious! Needless to say I won’t be posting anything as I will be indisposed and otherwise engaged.

Thank you so much to all the friends and family who helped to make this possible, and especially to my parents for giving Megan and I the rehearsal party of our dreams last night.  Honestly it could not have been more perfect.

Just for fun

If I have any readers left in a week and a half, when I get back I will begin posting again on the 18th.  In the meantime I honestly want any topic ideas you might have.  Just leave a comment and we will talk.

Thank you and talk to you soon.

Can the Christian Brand be Saved?

In my Twitter profile you can see that my first designation is “Believer” and I try to make that a part of my life everyday.  I am a Christian [stated boldly], and I accept all the negativity and abuse that such a proclamation will engender.  Too harsh?  I don’t think so.

Maybe a hundred years ago, saying that someone was a “Christian Man” meant he was a good man, did the right thing, was humble, and mainly worked to support and loved his family.  Now we call someone a Christian almost with a roll of the eyes, intending that he or she is false in some way, a hypocrite, and will only be nice to you if in some as-of-yet unknown way it will benefit them.  Used to be that someone did a good deed and it was called a “Christian Act” but now that label would be, if not absurd, then irrelevant.  How did things change so much?  How did the Christian Brand lose its effectiveness and ability to inspire?

Ultimately I consider this an issue of marketing and branding.  I like to look at Christianity, as a body like the Church, as a business since all organizations share the same traits in one way or another.  The business is old but often reinventing itself, having an almost open source business model that can bring to life new divisions anywhere at anytime.  The employees are not always the best managers, but they usually are evangelists in the truest sense and believe in what they say.  But most importantly, what is the product?  God?  The Church itself?

This is where the Christian Church has gone askew.  We ,The Church,  have focused too much on selling Jesus and not enough on actual relationships with other people.   Christianity’s ‘product’ is simply relationships, not God or Jesus, but honest and open connections with other humans.

We have sacrificed the beauty and benefit of those relationships for something infinitely cheaper, the need to make a spiritual buck.  Yes, some churches are out there to make a real buck (the lure of $ being what it is), but most are concerned only with converting the unsaved and gaining that spiritual currency in their own bank.  This is drifting away from the organizations value proposition, from the one thing that truly set it apart; individuals caring for individuals BECAUSE they are individuals created by God.

These relationships are what everyone is looking for from the Church, especially its members.  People are naturally looking for an open and honest connection with everyone they interact with, and the Church is no exception.  But as churches drift away from this core identity, the foundation that it was built upon, those churches will slowly fall apart.  The churches that embrace their TRUE  identity and communicate that to others through honest and quality relationships will thrive.  I know my church is going through a similar revolution (called “servolution”) and if we, the believers, truly embrace this identity we will see a change in ourselves and others’ attitudes toward the Christian Brand.

Twitter's Marketing Strategy

When I first heard about Twitter, I believe my eyes automatically rolled.

I thought, “Really?  A service that potentially lets you tell anyone everything that you are doing… sounds dumb.”  I envisioned thousands of teenagers sending messages like “At the movie, it’s awesome!” or “Going to the mall, getting shoes” or at it’s worst simply “reading a book”.  My mind reeled with innane possibilities and I wrote the whole service off until recently.  Why would I want to let everyone in on whatever it is I am doing?

Just a few months ago I took a closer look, after a conversation with a good friend (@justinisenhart), and discovered the amazing potential of the medium.  Should bloggers write everyday? Probably.  Should they write every hour? I never enjoyed that, even with a team of writers on one blog, the posts become watered down and content fuzzy.  Solution? Twitter will let you post your random thought and the beauty is that it’s supposed to be brief.  Now you can easily link  to the picture of your cat in a puddle of milk without wasting a blog post about it and clogging up feeds.  And we can safely ignore, if we so choose, all Tweets since they are but random thoughts and bits of wisdom.  I’m becoming a fan.

Now Twitter has released business guidelines to help companies find their voice and purpose in the medium (thanks to b2bsocialmktg for the link).  The business applications are incredible, from customer contact, to service, to outreach, to plain old effective listening.  And maybe that’s the best reason to use Twitter, it affords us the ability to listen and digest what other people are trying to tell us, especially a business.  If someone cares enough to tell you what they think of your business on Twitter, they probably are telling their friends about it too. It also allows a business to give out free and beneficial information, not related to the company or its products, but info that will make the lives the selected audience just a little better.  That builds trust and encourages even more communication.

Twitter does and will continue to provide an amazing service to businesses looking to communicate effectively with customers and prospective clients.  I can only imagine what the future will hold for this already incredible service.

How bright is a company's soul?

The soul, or pneuma, of a business is shown in its DNA, the very code that gives it life. A company is very much like a belief system offering values, community, relevance, leadership and vision, empathy, and trust to the body of customers (see believers) that buy (see follow) its product(s) (see values). People are looking for companies and brands that they can believe in, belong to, and that spark the right emotions that connect them to something greater than themselves.

On the other side, Companies run and survive on connections, on interactions with people. Without a sufficient quantity of quality interactions, the company will die. These connections are the life blood of the organization, the only way to make it survive.

The average corporation is 20 to 30 years old but most don’t make it to the age of 5, and many die in their infancy. If corporations are treated as people then what does this mean, how do we create corporations that last? A company survives based on the number and quality of its relationships to people, no company is an island and it cannot live alone. These relationships are the fuel, the life blood, the sustaining force.

The Company’s character determines its value to customers and how it communicates that value, the quality of the connections it can establish, determines how long it will stay alive.

Organizations today have the same opportunity with their customers and stakeholders.  In fact, if they don’t begin to REALLY listen to what their constituencies are interested in then the Reaper may be knocking on the door in regards to the salmon mouse.  Companies must be interested in what the customer is interested in and there must be dialogue and positive interaction for value to be built. Communication comes from the organization’s values and goes out in any way it can to interact with the customer.

Organizations must trade mutual values and build agendas with customers where both profit from the interaction.  The first step is really listening.

It occurred to me the other day as I was merrily strolling to work that if we view the company as a person, as a real entity, then something must give it life.  Almost as if God were sending me an object lesson, my next stop showed me exactly what I needed to know.

On a whim I decided to stop in at a local industrial firm that happens to be on my way to work.  We’ll call them ABC Electric.  I have always been curious as to what they actually do since the name is so generic and I haven’t seen any literature about them.   The building stands on an intersection and looks like your typical concrete building constructed in the 70’s and refurbished to become a headquarters.  The front lobby was not well marked, unannounced visitors a rarity I surmised, but eventually I found my way to a pair of opaque glass doors.

I walked in to a very plain front room with white tiled floor and gray walls.  Front and center was a fairly unpleasant looking woman, not because of her natural looks, but due rather to the intense scrunching of her face.  I could only assume this was my fault or that she just ate something unpleasant for lunch.  I walked up to the over sized airport terminal-like desk and asked in my friendliest voice what her company did exactly.  She stared at me for a beat and asked:
“I’m sorry…Do you have an appointment?”

I told her I didn’t, that I just stopped by to see what this company was about because I have always wondered.  She stopped a beat again, almost as if she weren’t able to comprehend what I was saying.

“We can’t really help you, if you want to make an appointment then we could do that.”

I was flabbergasted.  I tried three more times to no avail and left the office with a feeling of utter defeat.  But it got me thinking about connections and companies and life cycles.  Obviously that business is still around, concrete building and all, but how long can it last in a market that demands personal connections?

Start Ups fail because they can’t get the blood flowing, or enough of the good blood rather.  The connections they make with customers are tenuous at best and do not last the test of time.  Once the quality connections run out then the business dies, quality interactions with customers are the blood of a business.

But an organization like this has passed the opening stages and moved on to a new cycle where they are even more equipped to capitalize on any connection, or they should be at least.  Your next contact could be worth a million dollars, but you have to have your touch points aligned with your values or that contact will be wasted.  I still don’t know what ABC Electric does, but if they would have spent just 5 minutes showing me, you can bet at that point I would have been an evangelist or at least a referral.

Makes you wonder how many opportunities they’ve missed already.  How many are you missing by not being prepared?

Humans need connection to other humans.  We relish the rich, complex diversity that only comes from the one on one interaction with another person.  Even so called introverts need this connection from time to time.  It’s an exchange need, a basic belief that mental exchange with another person is vital and even necessary to one’s continued existence.  But does that “person” need to be an actual person, a living breathing, flesh and blood human being?  Explain Christianity, or any religion in that case.  Religions, corporations, organizations, tribes, even products can take on a life of their own in the mind of a consumer.  The product, company, or organization is no longer a lifeless name but a vibrant character filled with history, passions, and a deep sense of familiarity.

We see the corporation or products as we would another person.  We interact with it on a similar level as our friends.  We visit it, we interact with it, call and talk to it, telling our secrets and desires to it.  Most people spend more time interacting with companies and products than actual people or their own family and friends.  While the world is changing, people do not.  We still want the same things; survival, security, identity, belonging, and interaction.  But we no longer HAVE to receive those things from a live person.

Business today has an amazing opportunity to craft and develop a corporate character and soul so that it provides the most value possible in any given interaction with its’ customers.  People want to connect, to interact and are more than willing to look at your company or your product as a viable substitute for interaction with live people.  Or perhaps your employees are the reason the customers keep coming back?  Irrelevant, it is still your corporate personality that brings the customer back time and time again.  People see that and respond in kind.

I really do so the world changing.  “Marketing” as we know it will see a dramatic shift from its current loose and unorganized methods to holistic and cohesive.  “Marketing” will cease to be a word with relevant meaning, relegated to the world of history books that people will look back on in head shaking wonder.  Instead we will speak of story, soul, and personality.

We already unconsciously see companies and businesses as “people” and interact with them as we would a beloved friend and confidant.  The next steps will see us completing this transformation.  But business theory and strategy need to catch up and recognize that business owners have a Frankenstein-like power to bring entities to life, that every decision affects the corporate story, its soul, and ultimately its personality.

I repeat these words for good reason because they, or something like them, will be the new terms by which we describe our organizations, the gauges of how we interact with these invisible, but all too real, entities.

This blog will be about that transition and all the related minutia that affect our societal transformation to a more connected and personable collection of human beings.  If you are reading this, please join the conversation.

Note: As of this post I don’t have a home internet connection, working on that, but I am updating as often as I can.  If I don’t reply right away you now understand why.