Source: Co-creation – How to build raving fans, Conny Kalcher, LEGO from Rebuild21 on Vimeo.

AT&T adds ‘administrative fee’ to wireless bills, stands to rake in hundreds of millions from unwitting customers…

AT&T has introduced a new “Mobility Administrative Fee” to its postpaid contracts. The $0.61 monthly fee ($7.32 per year) is being categorized “below the line” alongside tax and fees as an administrative surcharge. The fee came into effect on May 1st, and applies to all consumer contracts as well as “IRU” business contracts (business accounts where the user pays the bill).

Source: The Verge

PASSION is one of the most important element of customer experience.

The Shoemaker from Dustin Cohen on Vimeo.

An other great video / film about passionate people ( Jiro dreams of sushi):

There is a certain miss belief in the minds of the people that more choice gives higher satisfaction. They think that if it is possible for the customer to construct from several elements their own product or service, at the end the customer will be happier.

In reality this is just a fancy, good sounding idea! The majority of the people get confused  when they have to select all the elements of a service / product and depends on them to construct a perfect solution – at the end they will feel frustrated and in some cases even they just simply postpone their purchase.

So my message for today is to forget about innovative service / package / tariff / product constructors and optimizers: FOCUS on simple and easy to understand offers!

To get a deeper understanding on the topic watch the TED video from Barry Schwartz about the paradox of choice or read the book.

As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis. And in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression.

Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

Source: The Fun Theory

Connecting (Full Film) from Bassett & Partners on Vimeo.

Source: Youtube

The hilarious online conversation between a customer and a member of staff has become an internet sensation with the mobile phone feed using words such as “fam”, and “ting”.

The Twitter exchange begins when a customer complains to the phone company, saying: “b****** man ting I swear direct me to your owner what happened to my internet connection mans having to use wifi and dat.”

But instead of replying using traditional language – the O2 account decides to mimic the customer.

Source: The Sun

An in depth article you find about RET in the lates HBR magazine, but also I suggest to read the following two blog post from the research designers on the HBR Blogs: Tracking the Customer’s Journey to Purchase / Using Mobile Phones to Capture Customer Experiences

Unfortunately, few companies have an overall picture of their customers’ journey towards a purchase, because the information is all too often stuck in a channel silo. An intercept survey that a customer might fill in upon leaving a website can tell you a lot about that customer’s experience with the website, but it usually does not provide any information on where the customer will next experience the company. Surveying customers directly after their purchases to explain how they arrived at them means that you have to put a lot of faith in their remembering exactly what they did. A CRM system might let you know how customers moved between the website and the store, but it tells you nothing about how they responded to advertising or word-of-mouth reports.