The Market-Intelligent Executive

Yahoo! Customer Service Unwittingly Contributes to Potential Scam

Yahoo! email users appear to be the unwitting victims of a scammer posing as Yahoo Customer Service.  Paradoxically, Yahoo customers' inaccessibility to Yahoo's customer service is contributing to the problem.

Users receive an email saying that they have to "verify your free yahoo account" or lose their mail box in two weeks.  The sender asks for the customer's user name, password, date of birth and country of origin.  I received one of these messages this morning.  My suspicions were raised when I found two grammatical errors in the sender's email.

The irony is that users can't report the problem to Yahoo customer service.  There is no way to easily contact customer service on Yahoo's website.  I Googled "yahoo customer service" but didn't find contact information for Yahoo customer service there either.  Instead, I found numerous posts from frustrated users venting about their inability to contact Yahoo customer service!

I don't mean to bash Yahoo.  I've used their email services for years.  There is, however, an opportunity to reflect on what "customer service efficiency" means.  In the case of Yahoo, it means easy navigation of their websites, answers to frequently asked questions and host of other resources...but not the ability to talk with them live. 

Is your customer service efficient?...for you or for your customers?  Most companies' understanding of the customer experience is mistakenly limited to touchpoints.  But, the customer experience doesn't begin and end with touchpoints.  In fact, some of the most influential customer experiences happen when the customer isn't in touch with company, or can't be in touch.  Yahoo is learning that the hard way.

We'll see how this potential scam plays out.  In the meantime, if your company is focused exclusively on managing touchpoints with customers, watch out.  The only way to understand the customer experience and make it better is by living in the shoes of your customers.

-Jason Sherman

Whyze Group Marketing Research

Graeter's Ice Cream: A No Fluff Customer Experience

We have to coax our organizations to deliver genuine, compelling customer experiences.  Promotional fluff alone won't cut it.  In some organizations, the only marketing they do is caretaking for the customer experience.  The rest is driven by street buzz.  Case in point, Graeters.

Graeter's is a Cincinatti-based manufacturer of premium ice cream.  What's the street buzz on Graeter's?  To die for.  Prospective franchisees call the company daily.  Conglomerates have offered to make the current owners rich in a buyout.  Oprah made the company famous by raving about it.  And, having just tried my first pint, I'm thinking of defecting permanently from my tried and true Ben & Jerry's. 

My Graeter's experience began with my peering into the ice cream freezer at my grocery store.  After a couple of minutes, the dairy manager asked me if I had found what I was looking for.  I hadn't.  My beloved Ben & Jerry's was gone. 

He departed to the stockroom and returned with a pint of Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie.  I asked what had Uncles Ben and Jerry done to warrant taking away their shelf space.  He said, "Nothing, it's a great product, but we're carrying more Graeter's.  Graeter's is the best ice cream I've ever had.  Have you tried it?" 

Sacriledge, I thought.  But, my curiosity was aroused so I replied, "No. What so great about Graeter's?"

He said, "the company only uses the best ingredients and they make it in two-gallon batches.  They use the french pot method, which avoids the need for injected air and creates a dense, rich ice cream. It's packed it by hand.  Our purchasing manager got a couple of pints of Graeter's as a gift.  He tried and said, "We have to carry this."  He called Graeter's and asked for an order but the company told him that they didn't have any way to fill the demand."  I felt like I was in a TV commercial shoot.  The only thing missing was the hidden camera. 

Fast foward a few days to a phone call I made to Graeter's headquarters. "You didn't have any way to fill that order?" I asked company president, Rich Graeter.

"We make the product the same way we did 100 years ago. It's just cream and natural ingredients, no air, no preservatives.  The french pot process requires that the product by made close to the customer and is best consumed within days of production.  We could have shipped it, but we chose not to."

Mr. Graeter explained that the 140 year-old company didn't even brand its products, selling them in plain white containers, until relatively recently. 

Street buzz, part two....I told a colleague about my Graeter's experience.  He said, "People flying out of Cincinatti carry frozen Graeter's home with them.  It's that good." 

How to Establish Yourself as an Internal Consultant

Consulting is a privilege bestowed by someone who has a problem and asks you to help find a solution.  And the key words are, "asks you."

Many corporate marketers and researchers are under the impression that they should be consulted when there's a strategic decision at stake.  That's not consulting.  That's wanting to be consulted.  There's a flaw in the notion that decision-makers somehow have an obligation to us. 

One corporate researcher shared his frustration with me about internal clients who were ignoring or running roughshod over him.  I asked him, "Have you earned these people's regard as a consultant?"  He looked back at me quizzically.  So, here's the essence of the pep talk I gave him.

• You're bright, inquisitive, ambitious, creative, analytical, experienced and many other qualities that helped make you a great marketing researcher.

• Being consultative requires more than a desire to be consulted.  Your internal clients need to see you as a thought partner who can help them define and solve their business and career problems, not just their research problems.

• Advocating marketing research is fine, but sometimes there isn't a sufficient business case for doing marketing research.  Applying a balanced perspective with clients rather than pounding the research drum will position you as fair minded and, therefore, more valuable to clients.

• Learn how the company makes money.  Understand how profitable each product is by unit and gross contribution to the bottom line.  Explore your clients' ideas on how operations might be streamlined.  That will help you think-through with clients where the biggest opportunities to help are.

• Help your client clarify what decisions are at stake, what the alternative are and how you'll choose one.  Ask about who's involved in making the decision and what their key concerns are.  Address these issues in the research design.  This will help your client begin creating alignment and support among other stakeholders.

• Show that you care about your clients.  Communicate your desire to help them succeed.  Ask them how you can help with other projects they're working on.  They'll appreciate your concern and will be more likely to bring you into their cadre of trusted advisers.

 

       --Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

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Getting a Grip on SEO

A recent American Marketing Association survey describes search engine optimization as among the new skills marketers feel they need to learn. 

Yeah.  That'll be the solution to marketers' woes.

As a gentle reminder (read "There's an Elephant in the Room" here) CEOs and others outside of marketing view marketers as lacking in innovation and communication skills, not SEO skills. 

So, let's put SEO in perspective.  It's just another marketing investment that you should consider based on the facts.

Having just evaluated SEO firms for my website, I've decided that it doesn't make sense to invest much more than I already have, but it might make sense for you.  I'm not an SEO expert, but here are some basics to help fellow neophytes get started.

What SEO Is

SEO consists of techniques for getting your company's website listed highly in response to searches on Google, Yahoo and other search engines.  SEO relies on website content, key words, meta tags, links and other devices that lure search engines into thinking your site is the be-all-end-all on specific topics, industries or products.

Cost

The costs of SEO are driven mostly by the time you or someone you hire invests in making your site search-engine friendly. 

Buying Placement on Keywords

You can buy your way into higher search engine rankings, but here's the rub...If you want to come up high in searches on the most commonly used keyword searches, it's going to cost you much more than if you get more specific with the keywords on which you want to rank highly. 

Here are a couple of examples:  My dentist pays $40,000 per year to be listed among the top results for searches on "dentist", "Cleveland".  A friend who runs bar tending schools on Long Island pays $25,000 a year to show up in the top rankings.  That's for "bar tending school", "New York".  Pretty specific stuff.

Now imagine what the investment would be for searches on your industry or your product category, particularly if you have national or international reach.  We're talking big bucks, but it may be worth it.

Overture

Www.overture.com (now called Yahoo! Search Products) includes a free service that will tell you how many searches were made last month on any combination of keywords.  For example, there were about 7,800 searches on "marketing research" in July.  Those searches produce several million listings, so getting to the top of those page rankings would be difficult for our boutique firm.  Searches on "market intelligence" were far fewer, but this is what we genuinely offer, so those are among our key keywords.

My advice (and, again, I'm not an SEO expert) would be to try unique combinations of keywords that are specific to your brand and unique product characteristics.  If you're an auto insurance company, for example, try "auto insurance", "New York" and "declining deductibles" if you offer that feature.  There will be fewer searches on those terms each month, but your chances of getting a higher page ranking are greater.

A Moving Target

There are hundreds of SEO firms out there working with thousands of businesses to get their search rankings higher.  SEO isn't an event, it's a long term commitment.  High search rankings today can disappear as competitors use new strategies to get their rankings over yours. 

Next Steps

• Read up on SEO.  It could be a powerful addition to your marketing mix.

• Talk to a few SEO firms to get a sense for how they can help.  If any promise that your site will consistently be listed first, walk away.  No one can guarantee that. 

• Try to winnow down your keyword combinations to those that differentiate your offering.  You're trading off volume for efficiency.  Ask your prospective SEO firm for their suggestions.

• Evaluate the business case for SEO, particularly if you're considering buying placement on keywords.  You might get a sense that your ROI will be higher for other kinds of marketing investments.  It's perfectly fine not to jump into online marketing investments if you've got better ways to spend your money.

      --Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

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Frustrated with Your Company?

I have a colleague at a Fortune 500 company who was once very frustrated with his organization's low level of marketing sophistication.  If you've felt similarly, take heed...Understanding your organization's execution maturity and how to improve it will help.

Execution maturity has emerged in consultant-speak (ah, leave it to consultants to come up with new buzz words) as a framework for assessing your organization's proficiency...in this case, its ability to transform market intelligence into profitable innovation.  Your company executes the process at a level of proficiency you can assess.

Execution maturity covers three dimensions: supply, demand and application.

Supply

This refers to the capacity of our organizations to develop useful market intelligence.  At the low end, market data is generated by an unskilled staff who collect secondary research or manage very basic surveys. Anecdotal reports from sales people and others around the organization might contribute more data.  There's no repeatable "intelligence process" in place. 

At the top of the scale are organization's proficient in marketing research, business intelligence and competitive intelligence. This is not to say that these same organizations demand this intelligence or apply it well.

Demand

This refers to what stakeholders ask for.  In mature organizations, decision makers are knowledgeable about different kinds of market intelligence and how to use it. 

In organizations where there's little maturity in demand, research departments are often peppered with lots of irrelevant requests.  (I used to get these on sticky notes at one firm that will remain nameless.) Often, these have little to do any decisions to be made (otherwise known as "CYA" research). 

Application

This refers to transforming market intelligence into profitable innovation.  It's not unusual for companies to be proficient at executing marketing research but inept at applying what's learned. Here are a few more things to consider:

• Dissemination.  Is market intelligence freely accessible to those who could use it or does it only reside in the heads of requesters?   

• Combining.  Are multiple data sets being combined to create powerful, proprietary views of innovation opportunities? 

• Decision rights.  Do users have the authority to act on the intelligence?  If not, then there will be little application value.

Implications for Marketers and Researchers

You might not be able to avoid frustration, but managing it is key.  To begin improving your situation,

1. Estimate your organization's maturity on each dimension
2. Selectively validate your assessments with trusted colleagues
3. If enough people with juice in the organization agree with your assessment, then you'll begin to gain traction
4. Get ready to act.  If demand is a problem, be prepared to educate.  If application is the problem, get more consultative in up-front intelligence planning.  If supply is the problem, look for external vendors who can complement your existing capabilities.

     --Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

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Research Doesn't = Intelligence

The difference between market research and market intelligence is this: marketing research is a data collection activity; market intelligence is a differentiating connection with buyers that exists in the hearts and minds of company leaders. Market intelligence drives companies to innovate and orchestrate a compelling customer experience. 

Some marketing research imbues company leaders with market intelligence. Some doesn't.  My colleagues in the U.S. and U.K. agree that a signficant portion of marketing research studies never create intelligence or lead to profitable innovation.

When we begin working with new clients, we compare their existing marketing research data with what they do and the business results they get.  Here are two examples of where marketing research failed to produce market intelligence and presented significant lost opportunity costs:

• A mortgage division was investing $200,000 per year on customer satisfaction research.  Reports consisted mainly of several thousand verbatim comments. No one other than the customer service director read these reports.  This company should have acquired far richer intelligence and put it in the heads of far more people running the company.

• A health insurance company was disappointed with the demand its direct response TV ads generated.  They had used dial testing in the course of developing the ads.  This particular dial testing study showed where the audience perceived high and low points during the ad, not where it perceived superior or inferior benefits relative to competitors. This is what this company really needed to know at the time to produce highly effective ads. 

Marketing research can elevate the state of market intelligence in your organization.   But, simply "doing more research", (which seems to be the modus-operandi at many companies), and having non-experts design research studies significantly increases the risks of wasteful research investments and lost strategic opportunities.  Only the right kinds of marketing research for your situation at that moment will lead you to the promised land.

     --Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

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Primer on Organizational Change for Marketers

Innovation is change. Marketers are familiar with changes to products, services, advertisements, sales collateral, pricing, delivery options and customer communications.  To implement these innovations, successful marketers have to manage change in their organizations. Many marketers understand this intuitively, but don't have a framework for understanding what to change, or how.  My colleague, Frank Capek, Vice President of The Concours Group, describes five dimensions of organizational change:

1. Culture, values and beliefs.  These define what the written and unwritten boundaries of acceptable action are in an organization.  Market intelligence plays a leadership role (ideally) in connecting an organization's beliefs about its constitutencies with changes in what its constituents actually want. 



2. Job, skills and organization.  As constituencies' wants evolve, jobs and skills must often be reorganized to deliver the intended innovations in the customer experience.



3. Metrics, measures and rewards.  Measures and metrics define the dimensions by which the customer experience is assessed and the minimum performance standards for delivering the intended experience, i.e, we will answer the phone within three rings.  Rewards are inducements assuring that employees who consistently meet or exceed these measures are recognized, compensated and promoted accordingly.



4. Tools and technology. These are the enablers of organizational processes and quality control systems that deliver an innovated customer experience.



5. Processes.  This refers to the order of  interactions and events within the organization.  The process encompasses the first four dimensions of organizational change.

I've already mentioned the critical role of market intelligence in changing the beliefs of the organization in accordance with market place opportunities.  To implement successful, profitable innovation, marketers have to do two things.  First, we must use market intelligence as a vehicle for creating alignment about what should change.  Second, we need to collaborate with other internal business partners to implement each dimension of organizational change.

Do those two things successfully, and we'll find ourselves at the forefront of innovation in our companies.

Bon appetit and happy innovating!

     --Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

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There's an Elephant in the Room

Marketing managers and researchers need to own up to the elephant in the room.  This is the first step toward becoming more respected in our organizations--something we need to do (see bullets below). 

Researchers often sense the elephant's presence in meetings with internal clients. These clients know what they're going to do regardless of what the research says. Research is a weigh station to justify decisions they've already made.

However, many researchers are still in denial. Whenever I ask our workshop attendees about their organizations' ability to wring business benefits out of marketing research, the majority say their organizations' processes are well-managed, even optimal.

A quick scan of various business media suggests that those outside of marketing research feel otherwise:

• Dawn Lesh, in exploratory research presented at the Advertising Research Council Conference, found that only 17% of CEOs find marketing research useful, compared with 56% who consider financial reports useful. (Cited by Prof. Terry Childers.)

• An article appearing in the February 15th, 2006 edition of Marketing News, an American Marketing Association publication, is titled, "Is Research Dead?"

• In a leading marketing trade journal in the U.K., Marketing Week, professor Nigel Piercy opined that marketing research has become irrelevant.  His article is titled, "Masters of All They Survey, and of Little Else".

• In Inc. Magazine's August 2, 2006 edition, columnist Adam Hanft writes, "In my experience, I'm seeing an over-reliance on research that is doing more harm than good."  He adds, "...more often than not, [focus groups] are more about self-validation than any real learning."

• Here's an exchange between management gurus, Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin, posted on August 7, 2006 on Mr. Kawasaki's popular blog:

Mr. Kawasaki: What is an example of company that created a brand by conducting a dialogue with customers?
Mr. Godin: You don't know many either, do you Guy? Ahh, we agree!

Feeling the face swat of the elephant's trunk? Others in marketing are also smarting:

• The July 15, 2006 issue of Marketing News shares results of a survey showing that CEOs perceive that innovation and communication are two key skills most often lacking in senior marketers.

• Dr. David J. Rebelstein, Wharton marketing professor, adds in that same issue, "the negative perception is that marketing is not well-positioned for driving innovation..."

• Spencer Stuart's research shows that the average tenure of CMOs at the 100 top branded companies is just 23 months, compared with an average 54 months for CEOs.

• Jim Heckman writes on the American Marketing Association's website that 40% of marketers have been fired or laid off in the last five years.

So, what's the solution?  Very simply, we marketers and researchers need to engage our organizations in ways that we haven't before.  The answers are likely to come from outside of the statistically-driven or creatively-driven disciplines that have traditionally defined marketers' yardsticks of accomplishment.

My ambition is to make The Market-Intelligent Executive an indispensable resource for helping you tame the elephant, and become more influential and fulfilled on the job.  During my 20 years working with corporate marketers, researchers and consultants, and having been director of marketing research at two companies, I've learned a lot about what works. 

I certainly don't have all the answers, but enough clients and colleagues have told me that I've helped them that it's compelled me to start this journal.  There are testimonials on the "Experience" and "Training" pages of our website about this.  While I mention my practice in this article, I promise not to make this a promotional forum!  No one wants to read hype, including me.

What I will promise is that I'll continue to search through literature and tap the best experts I can find in areas that will help all of us become better marketers.  I have a huge collection of material already, drawing on disciplines as diverse as business intelligence, organizational change, business process, strategy, knowledge management, financial analysis, leadership, marketing and market intelligence. I'll be updating this journal frequently and will strive to make each article valuable and applicable to your daily life at work.  And, I'll be counting on you to submit your ideas and, when necessary, keep me on the straight and narrow.

Which brings me to my next point.  This journal will only be as hard-hitting as we make it.  Your participation is welcomed and encouraged!  Make comments, submit articles and share your success stories!

I hope you'll take the next step with us. This is the first of twelve steps that have proven effective for millions of people who have improved their quality of life. So, close the door to your office and repeat after me...

I'm a marketer and there's an elephant in my room.

That wasn't so tough, was it?  See you soon, right here. 

  -- Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

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If you have a questions, comments or an article you'd like to submit to The Market Intelligent Executive, please email here.

Lives are at Stake

I am a card-carrying market-savvy profit-driven innovation evangelist.  And, I’m on a mission to recruit and help as many marketers as possible in this cause.  Why? 

• Lives are at stake.  When marketers get it right, customers are fulfilled, stock holders are enriched and employees continue to feed their families.  When we don’t get it right, people suffer. 

• Marketing is war. The spoils of marketing and military conquests are the same: prestige, prosperity and security.  Marketing is the war of civilized, free enterprise societies.  Lose the marketing war, and we risk everything —our livelihoods, our ability to meet our basic needs, our ability to educate our children and even our health. 

• The war is won through innovation.  Innovation is change.  Change isn’t easy.  When we fail as marketers, it's often because we have been ineffective in getting our organizations to innovate, which is the sublime essence of marketing.

• Innovation requires leadership.  We need not be at the top of the organizational pyramid to lead.  But, we do need to be trusted champions of profitable innovation by those outside of marketing.

• Opportunities for leaders are abundant.  When marketers play a more essential role in winning the war, we will be viewed by company leaders as indispensable.  That isn’t the case today.  Companies stop investing in marketing when times are tough.   Chief marketing officers have an average job tenure of less than two years, significantly shorter than other executives.  (More on this in my next post, “There’s an Elephant in the Room.”)

• It’s high time we created more leaders.  My ambition for this journal is to provide marketing and research leaders with the sustenance they need to lead—knowledge, skills, inspiration and the ability to inspire others.  If you’re a leader, or aspire to lead, I hope you’ll subscribe and share what you've learned.
                     

        --Jason Sherman, Whyze Group

      

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