The Key To Delighting Customers: #WhatIsWom

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Scott Gould

There’s a lot of talk about ‘customer delight’ but I find few deliver on it. Perhaps you’ve read or heard the phrase used at a conference or on a blog recently – it’s the idea that we shouldn’t just satisfy customers, we should delight them – particularly pertinent because customer satisfaction isn’t hard to come by these days what with everything we want within a few clicks or a stroll through our local city centre.

Unfortunately, this idea of delighting people is a mystery to most, painted as a very soft and intangible concept that is hard to gauge and even harder to create. I’ve certainly heard the phrase ‘customer delight’ used a lot over the past 18 months, but I’m yet to hear anyone tell us how we do.

Well, except for the guys at 1000heads.

How 1000heads do it

When James Whatley posted this beautiful info graphic on “#WhatIsWom” over the summer, I chomped at the bit to get my hands on one for myself. Sure enough, as promised, it came:

There’s two lessons here that I’ve learnt from James and Molly Flatt and the other guys at 1000heads. The first is the fact that they delivered on the promise in the first place. I’m writing this post right now because James made good on a promise to send me my very own #WhatIsWom poster. You can’t underestimate the power of doing what you say you’ll do.

The second thing that they taught me is to disrupt expectations. I didn’t just get the poster as I was expecting, I got a beautiful hand written note to me, which now sits proudly next to my poster over looking my desk as a fond reminder to go the extra mile.

Now Do It Yourself

I wrote a while back on expectation management, in which I presented a framework that helps you go from what we call ‘customer sacrifice‘ (where the customer doesn’t get what they expect), then ‘customer satisfaction‘ (where the customer gets what they expect), through to ‘customer surprise‘ (where the customer gets more than they expect), and even through to ‘customer suspense‘ (where the customer can’t wait to see what they get next.)

To get a beautiful diagram and framework to help you do this, check out The Basics of Expectation Management. But don’t forget the core two points above: do what you say you’ll do, and then go the extra mile.

And I’d say that to do those two, you have to ultimately and passionately care about people. That’s what 1000heads do.

Your Leading Thoughts

What is going the extra mile for you and what you’re doing right now? If you run a business, how can you exceed expectations (and profitably). If you run a church, how you can deliver more value to the congregation than they expect? If you’re blogging away, how can your blog go the extra mile?
I boil this down to passionately caring for people. When you passionately care, you do your best to value and bless people. Do you see the same correlation in passion care = go the extra mile?

Scott Gould and Friends: A Whole New World

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’ve been thinking for sometime now about how you make a blog more social. I’ve talked it through a lot with Robin Dickinson, and we think that whilst the “I write and you read” strategy works for well known names like Seth Godin, it does not have the value in richness, application or networking that we believe blogs can have.

On the other side of the ditch, you have community sites where it’s guest post after guest post, and there is a lack of an evolving narrative that guides people over the course of prolonged conversation.

Hence, welcome to what I trust is a middle ground: Scott Gould and Friends.

I’ve rebranded this blog of ours (it’s always been our blog) as Scott Gould and Friends. The name comes from the fact that whilst I write the posts, I do so from the comments that come from the friends who participate here, and thus my role is to guide the conversation that happens here. There’s also conversation that happens on a range of other places – your blogs – where you are the one who guides the conversation.

But to be sure, it’s about the friends.

Not followers, by the way. Friends sums up the fact that we are not only mutually connected with one another, but we’ve entered into friendship with each other, and that is a precious thing.

What Does This Mean?

There’s a beautiful new redesign. It’s not done, but 80% of the way there – we’ll tweak as we go. The idea is to help people find the gold that there is on this blog of ours more easily, hence I’ve arranged things by category menus.
You can introduce yourself on the Friends page – you’re an integral part of the blog!
I’m looking for guest posts from you. You know the content here, and if you have written something that you’d like to contribute here rather than on your own blog (the same way I write posts for elsewhere as they’d fit better elsewhere), then please bring it forward. For the moment, we’ll arrange this through the Contact page.
This is also part of the way I want to introduce a platform to empower people to use the gold that is on our blog.

But other than that, things won’t be too different – still deep and thoughtful pieces, still Sunday videos and ‘Leading Thoughts’ attached to every post – just with more emphasis on our community, because that for me is the real asset.

Your Leading Thoughts

How does this idea sit with you? I haven’t run it by any of you, so now is the time to deliver feedback – ways to do this better, ways this will work well, design comments, etc.
On a futurist note, how do you see the future of blogs with regards to participation? I’ve been trying some things on creating comment driven blog posts, and I’m still of the opinion that a strong sense of guidance is required to make sense of it all.
Finally, how are you? It’s been a while since we spoke last

Cheers,
Scott

Top 10 Productivity Tips

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Scott Gould

On yesterday’s post Ian Mcleary shared his 10 top productivity tips. Very useful:

1. Sort out my to-do list every morning
2. Start at 7 every morning.
3. Review my 99 day goals every week
4. Review my stats every week
5. Keep my CRM system up to date
6. Bring my laptop to meetings and be productive when waiting for people before meetings.
7. Do the GYM at least 3 times a week at lunchtime. The GYM helps me think and makes me more productive.
8. Avoid the laptop 1 day a week. You are more productive with 6 days work not 7.
9. Group my tasks by context, if I’m on the phone I try to do the phone calls all at once.
10. Make sure I’m doing 1 to 9

I’d say those are pretty good - although point 10 is blatant cheating.

Your Leading Thoughts

Dont’ worry about 10. What are your top 3 productivity tips?

And then, and then, and then

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Scott Gould

Whenever I talk with too much certainty about what I’ll do then, and then, and then, I know that I’ve become arrogant and lazy.

One of the gems from the Like Minds Summit back in February was short term execution with a long term goal. In other words, it was “there’s where we want to be, but let’s execute this first.”

So, essentially, there’s no “then,”, there’s only “now.”

Your Leading Thoughts

Do you have similar traits when you get too confident and become complacent? (Or is it just me?)
When did you learn that execution was more important that ideas?

Photo by juicyrai

Video: What One Man Can Do For God

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Scott Gould

A lot. Mix faithfulness with tenacity and you see this one man did amazing things, not for himself, but for God:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdspKNEzH54

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch directly on YouTube.

This video convicts me as a Christian, as a marketer who understands that what should drive us is a genuine love for people, and finally as a human who wants to do the right thing, even if there’s no return. There’s no telling what someone can do when they don’t care who gets the credit.

Your Leading Thoughts

Let’s crack open the discussion – we know each other well enough – how does this video inspire you? As a marketer, as a person, and what about as a believer in something?
Lessons we can draw – what are they?

Photo by Leland Francisco

What Is Social? Well…

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Scott Gould

What with starting work this week on a manuscript for a book – “Social” being the working title – I want to share some of the content that I will make up the backbone of the book that I haven’t made public until now, as it’s been reserved for paying clients only.

[slideshare id=5063806&doc=whatissocial-100826163537-phpapp02]

If you can’t see the above slideshow, click here, or see it directly on Slideshare.

This is a short 12 slide presentation that explains succinctly what the difference between social and broadcast as – as mindsets before they are media – and then three lessons that we draw that help us understand social.

Social is a big topic for me. Everything I do keeps coming back to it – whether it’s learning, event design, social media, marketing, church, relationships – social is right in there. And it’s not that social is a new thing. Far from it. Social is our original and default method of communication. As our default method, it also is ruled by our default physical limitations (how loud we can speak, etc), and it is from these limitations that we create broadcast, which is a one way extension of what is socially created, for wider reach.

My basic premise is that we have social innovation and broadcast duplication. Social is the fluid conversation that is a real-time co-crated product. Broadcast is the recording of that conversation and duplicating it so more people can hear it. In social, the conversation can change. In broadcast, it does not.

What the book will then lead into is a discussion of the Social / Broadcast Matrix, and the three social strategies. And true to these three strategies, the book will function on one: socialised channels, socialised content and socialised culture. In other words, it’ll be available everywhere you’ll want to consume it, it’ll be full of UGC (i.e. YOU), and it’ll be open for you to use and build upon.

(You can watch a video of me discussing Social on a larger scale here)

Your Leading Thoughts

Do you see holes in my premise? Given I’m basing a book on this, I need you input!
How would you like to contribute to the creation of ‘Social’?

I’m Back!

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnyKNHc__g4

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch direct on YouTube.

Hello friends – I am back from Spain (36°C) to the glorious English summer of clouds and rain. Certainly I am very, very rested and relaxed. I did no work except on the first two days, and for the majority of the holiday I didn’t even know what time it was as my watch and phone were out of sight!

A year ago after my summer holiday I said I felt re-envisioned, which was just before we launched Like Minds. This time, I feel like I’ve got a bit more re-prioritised.

Getting perspective, getting away and seeing things with fresh eyes, is a wonderful byproduct of a holiday. I find that month-on-month, we add things into our life that often are very unproductive, but we take them on because they demand our attention, and we get into the tradition of doing things for the sake of doing them. Many times we don’t even see this happen.

Or we find we are putting disproportionate amounts of time into the things that don’t yield the return that we should be putting more time into.

What I’ve found is that because a holiday STOPS you doing the little things like this, you are forced to reconsider what the priorities are.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’m keen to know how you get perspective and how you find holidays help you.

A Conversation With Me and Andrew Pickering

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Scott Gould

I had the pleasure last month of having a conversation with Professor Andrew Pickering from Exeter University, on the subject of “where do good ideas come from?”

The conversation was the latest in a range of interviews at Imperica, a smart new project by the renowed Paul Squires which “tracks a number of disciplines, wraps them all together, finds the interesting angles, then talks to the people behind them.”

The conversation began with a discussion of how accesible ideas are today, which made me say that I think ideas are harder to actualise because of the false confidence that an abundance of them creates, and ended up touching on many things including education. Here’s an extract:

Are we seeing a shift from intellectual rigour to the more technical display of “doing things”?

AP: During my lifetime, the number of young people that go through university has increased enormously. When I was an undergraduate, it was 10% of the population. Now, the target is 50%. That change implies a change in what university education, is. So, if you pick the cleverest 10% and tell them to sit around for three years, they can very probably go deeply into something. I studied Physics. If you just pick half of the population and say that “We’ll give you an education”, then education is going to be something else. The ratio of students to teaching is much higher, so you can’t give people that kind of personal attention and engagement.

Education itself has been reconceived since Mrs. Thatcher’s day. Now, it is seen as a way to fit people into the economy – to produce useful cogs for the industrial machine. Learning for itself is not a priority of the Government. So, higher education becomes industrialised, and produces an industrial product.

SG: The irony in that, is that we’re a knowledge economy – we’re not even in an industrial economy. And, yet, you’re right, the industrialised approach, turning out people who then become knowledge workers…

AP: It’s an industrialised conception of knowledge… not for its own sake, but “useful knowledge”. Physics isn’t all that useful, but engineering is. I don’t think that’s anything to do with the Internet, but the Internet feeds into this trend that already exists. The same goes for research; funding is made increasingly conditional on producing useful knowledge. How are “users” going to benefit from this knowledge?

Read the whole interview between Andrew and I here.

Your Leading Thoughts

Are ideas more accessible today, in your option? And if so, what are the repercussions of that?

Using Social Media to Extend and Enhance Offline Events and Experiences

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Scott Gould

Wow, that’s a mouthful. And that’s exactly what I’ll be discussing at the unGeeked Elite Retreat in Chicago on May 12 – 14, 2011.

How does Social Media extend offline experiences? Sure, you can get a long list of resources that will make your event what is called a ‘hybrid’ (a virtual and physical event), but how do you know which ones are the priority for you, and what is the strategy behind those tactics anyway?

In 2004 I was running a youth organisation that I started called Feedback. We’d already discovered that by putting bands in the show they’d bring their fans along, and that would increase our numbers, but it was when we latched onto MySpace that we discovered the ability to increase participation virtually, aside from the physical limitations of our monthly events. (You can see some old footage on our old MySpace profile still today!)

This really is the benefit of Social Media as an extension of an offline offering. An offline event or experience is typically a single point in space, time and matter, but through Social Media, it can be extended in all three of these areas.

We then need to know how to extend those three in a way that is meaningful and relevant to ‘the why‘ of the offline event in the first place. Perhaps the most helpful element in this is Joe Pine’s model on The Multiverse (For a fuller discussion of this, you read our discussion on ‘virtually present‘)

There are 8 possible configurations of merging time, space, matter with non-time, non-space, non-matter. Joe presents a video on it here, which I would recommend you watch should you have a spare 50 minutes to get acquainted with the future.

Space: virtual / physical. This is the mix between being physically there, and being virtually there. Being virtually there means that you don’t have to be restricted by:
Time: linear / non-linear. This means that I be at the event before the event, during the event, after the event. You get the idea. This also means that I lift the restriction of:
Matter: real / bits. This is about what things are made from. You can be in the same physical space but then still still experience bits – digital data – with which you can then contact those who are virtually present.

It can get very complex, which is what my talk certainly won’t be. I’ll be keeping things simple by getting back to the three core Social strategies that we’ve talked about recently, namely Socialising Channels, Socialising Content, and Socialising Culture. (I think things are easier to remember in threes, don’t you?)

I don’t want to share much more, but there’s a good taster for you here, and I’ll be sharing more of the content over the months, as we’ve got quite a bit of time until May!

Your Leading Thoughts

What’s the best example that you know of, of Social Media extending an event?
What would be you dream usage of Social Media as an enhancing of an offline experience?

Legendary photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis