Customers don't need Education

Here is a fantastic story about responding to customer feedback. It is about Haier (pronounced HI - er). You may not recognize this brand, it is Chinese and it is the 3rd largest producer of "white" goods (aka consumer appliances) in the world. Haier was receiving massive quantities of repair orders on their washing machines for clogged drain hoses. They investigated further and found that entire villages of customers had moved their washing machines outside next to their vegetable patches and were using them to remove dirt from their freshly picked produce. What do you think they did? Void warranties? Launch a massive customer education program? Place giant DO NOT WASH PRODUCE stickers on their machines? No, no, no, nope. They modified the filter and drainage on the machines along with a new faceplate with settings for HOT, COLD, & VEGETABLES.
Now there's a company that knows the customer is king! I predict they will become the #1 producer of white goods. I've put them on my shopping list for my next major replacement.

Save our Starbucks

Wednesday on NPR I listened to a story about Starbuck's and how the closing of some 600 stores is affecting customers. There is an actual website for customers to go to and commiserate with others and to even launch a petition drive to save "your" Starbucks. It's so fantastic to hear about such loyalty because you can count the number of companies in your own life or even globally that you are that loyal to.

How fantastic for a company to hear complaints from their customers that they are reducing their number of locations!

As a sometime Starbuckster, I will tell you that I am in love with this company because of their consistency. And I know that it doesn't have to do with personalities. It isn't because of a great manager or even great employees. The consistency of service and product is because of processes. These things do not happen by accident. They are a choice. And the choice is documented, it is measured, it is trained, it is coached, it is rewarded. It is NOT an easy thing to do but it IS a simple thing to do. You can do this when you decide to state the choice of who and what your business is and you create documented processes that communicate your expectations, measure your performance, and DAILY coach/recognize/reward performance. It will turn you into a profitable, long-lived, loyalty-getting business.

Do I Have To?

There is a Denzel Washington movie called The Great Debaters with a line that I just love where the son says to the father that he will "do the things we have to so we can do the things we want to." There is a lesson being lived there about duty and about earning your reward that is powerful and necessary. Even after we are adults and think we are past learning or earning, we find out it is a rule of the universe that we have to do some things so we can do others. And I know that instead of resisting or complaining, that knuckling under to do things even that we didn't choose but have been chosen somehow is teaching us a lesson about appreciating what we've worked for.

Birthday Cake

I watched a Tom Peters preview video, (see the link in the VIDEO list) and saw him do an example of the changing economy over time.

Essentially, his thesis (which he borrowed from a VP at Yahoo) was that our economy has moved over time from Raw Materials to Goods to Service to Experience. His example was for a birthday cake. In the 40’s mom made the cake from scratch and it cost her about $1 (raw materials economy). In the 50’s mom used a Betty Crocker cake mix and it cost her about $2 (goods economy). In the 70’s mom went to the bakery and bought the cake for about $10 (service economy). In the 90’s junior required a party at Chuck E. Cheese at about $100 (experience economy). I love the evolutionary model and how different product and service are from experience. I’m bothered though by a few nagging thoughts:

• By following the analogy sequence and timeframe, we should be about to evolve into another type of economy… what is it?
• What is the requirement for kid’s birthday parties these days?
• Do we go in a circle where we will go back to the raw materials economy next?
• Has this analogy expired?
• Have we truly moved into the experience economy when selling/servicing cars?
  
• Could we grow our business/profit by the same percentage if we moved from service to experience?
• What is the visible difference between the two, both from our perspective and from the customer's?
  
• Is there something wrong with me because I prefer to make and eat cake baked from scratch rather than any of the subsequent improvements?