This article is the the final of four on a topic I touched on in my post Your Brand Isn’t a Logo, It’s a Lie, this series is about positive creation of customer experience.

Conclusion

My personal examples are all from consumer-facing businesses because these changes are starting in the consumer sector and are the most obvious there. In time they will permeate every corner of business. In some regions and industries they’ll take a little longer, but they’re coming. Which is to say that a law office may not need a kid’s craft area (some might…) but you can’t win by being the last business to catch the coming wave.

Like my first article on this subject, I’m not trying to convince the naysayers. If you think this has nothing to do with your business, market, or sector, then you’re choosing to do nothing in the face of change, choosing to drive your business into the ground, and choosing to fail.

Good riddance: I’m tired of clueless businesses who just don’t care.

I said in the first article that in addition to a customer experience a business also needs a story for the employees. Stay tuned for more on that.

This article is the third of four on a topic I touched on in my post Your Brand Isn’t a Logo, It’s a Lie, this series is about positive creation of customer experience.

Zappos

This is the “big boy” of the businesses I am recommending in The Real New Business series, and you’ve probably heard of them. They were, after all, featured on Oprah.

Zappos sells shoes online. Which one might think would be a very difficult way to build a business. No one buys shoes without trying them on, and it’s very tough to get a feel for the look of a shoe on a website.

So how does a company win at that game? Take it from the Zappos vision:

• One day, 30% of all retail transactions in the US will be online.
• People will buy from the company with the best service and the best selection.
• Zappos will be that company.

Or you can consult item one of their Core Values:

Deliver WOW Through Service

Zappos offers free shipping both ways (in the event you return a purchase), a 365-day return policy as long as the items are in new condition, great prices, and huge selection–even for someone who wears size US15.

When I used to shop retail for shoes, I had 1 or 2 pairs to choose from and shoes that could be ordered in my size were not returnable, even though I couldn’t try the shoe on before purchasing. Once I placed an order with Zappos 8 hours after the cutoff and still received my shoes the next day. Where do you think I now buy all my shoes from?

Coming in The Real New Business Part Four: conclusions.

This article is the second of four on a topic I touched on in my post Your Brand Isn’t a Logo, It’s a Lie, this series is about positive creation of customer experience.

Plumgood

In Nashville it isn’t as easy to get organic and all natural products as it was in California. At least, not if you shop in a “traditional” chain grocery store. We found a cheaper, more convenient way to get our groceries, organic or not.

There’s a company here called Plumgood that sends out big purple delivery trucks every day. The trucks are full of groceries. Plumgood has a full suite of grocery products (check it out on their site, see if you can’t complete a reasonable grocery list) that they will deliver to your home in insulated tubs.

Here’s the fine print: the minimum order is $50, place your order by 11PM for next day delivery, leave the tubs out for your next order, they don’t suggest leaving the food out all day if you order perishables, and the customer service is great. That’s it. No gotchas. Prices are competitive; a few things are a little more expensive, but compared to paying for gas to drive around the city getting everything you need, that’s peanuts.

If we have a small need, we’ll run to a “traditional” store. But do you think it’s easier to shop from your kitchen where you can see what you need, or in a busy store, unsure if you’ve forgotten something? Which business do you think actively creates pleased customers?

Coming in The Real New Business Part Three: shoes.

This article is the first of four on a topic I touched on in my post Your Brand Isn’t a Logo, It’s a Lie, this series is about positive creation of customer experience.

Summary

You can’t coast anymore. Most business segments are saturated with near-identical competitors. Compete on price if you want to race to the bottom. Or you can wake up and realize that you only need two things to win: an experience for your customers and a story for your employees. This series is about customer experience. These aren’t new ideas, I’m just sick and tired of businesses who don’t get it and don’t want to.

Fairytales

A mere two blocks from my house is a children’s bookstore called Fairytales. My daughter only knows the name of two retail stores and Fairytales is one of them.

The are plenty of bookstores in Nashville and Fairytales isn’t special because it’s 2 blocks from my house, or the selection of entertaining and educational books and toys is good, or they carry many unique products, or they’re locally owned, or because the staff are friendly. Though all those things are true.

About one-third of the Fairytales retail space contains not products, but a craft and play zone for kids. A baby-gate keeps kids from running off and staff members are dedicated to supervising and engaging the kids in a safe environment.

Off of the main retail space there is a “parent’s zone” with seating, relaxed decor, free wifi, and beverages. Parents can talk, relax, shop, or use the internet for up to 2 hours while the kids are in the play zone.

Compare that to any experience you have ever had with a toys-r-us type box-store. Which do you think has more casual visitors, more repeat customers, and more grateful fans who tell friends and post positive experiences on their blogs?

Coming in The Real New Business Part Two: groceries.

Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, is being made available for free in audiobook form by Audible.com. You must download it and listen to it. After listening to it, I am probably going to buy a print copy from Amazon because I want to mark the hell out of the text.

I downloaded and listened for the weekend driving around Chattanooga and the trip back to Nashville. I had several near-strokes listening to it. Brilliant and challenging thoughts about the nature of leadership, business, bringing change and making a difference.

Today Apple announced new notebooks, which I ordinarily wouldn’t point out here, but Apple has been making a big deal about the new manufacturing processes they developed to create these new products.

Apple discusses how the details of the thumbscoop affect product design:

It’s the indentation that allows you to open the display. If the scoop is too deep, you put too much pressure on the display to open it. If it’s too shallow, you struggle to open the display. It may seem incidental, but if the thumbscoop is well designed, it makes the difference between a bad experience and a good one.

Every product (website, software, hardware, silverware, resumes, etc) is made of a million tiny details that together create an experience. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be Apple, but if businesses would just think about the tiny details, we’d be a lot better off.

Here’s a video about the manufacturing process, if you’re interested.

This screenshot goes back a while, but I came across this while watching the Adobe CS4 announcement.

What, exactly, would you guess the buttons labelled “700″ and “300″ do? Here’s a hint, they don’t change the size of the streaming video.

Encouraging and challenging at the same time:

Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn’t mean they’re in charge, it doesn’t mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people we’ve got.

So much to do, so little life to do it in.

Read the interview here.

I don’t think or talk politics a lot, and I was becoming borderline neurotic that my frustration with the current political situation was turning my blog political. Not that I don’t think about governance, as an INTJ/System Builder I think about it frquently. Politics (which is wholly distinct from governance) in America, however, are fundamentally broken.

Before the first presidential debate in this campaign “season” I decided that I was not going to watch the debates, but I would instead read the transcripts afterwards. This allows a more objective analysis of the statements and claims of the candidates. Not that it matters so much. If you want to disappointed in your ticket of choice, browse factcheck.org or any of the other fact-checking sites. And I mean fact checking sites, not partisan flame sites.

I only had to skim the transcript of the first debate to realize that it had nothing meaningful to offer.

American Politics are not about a logical discussion of issues and solutions. The dominant political parties fight a war of collusion founded on give and take of power funded by Big American Business at the expense of the voter. Big Business has money which buys access to political power, and in turn favor. With that money, politicos buy votes. To keep getting money politicos must get elected, which it turns out is much easier in a dyad.

So the messages, “plans,” and proposals that politicos front are plays for votes to get elected at any cost, even if they are lies, stunts, gimmicks or empty promises.

For example, you may or may not remember GW Bush claiming in his presidential campaign that we (the country) needed to “change the tone of Washington” by reaching “across the aisle” and leaving partisan politics behind. That worked out, didn’t it?

A political system with two entrenched political parties is, by definition, divisive, because in a Winner-Take-All system most citizens will necessarily view the opposing party as “The Enemy.”

That attitude is not sustainable. To quote the Bible, and Abraham Lincoln, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Of course it isn’t.

I invested quite a bit of time trying to find a disparaging Yahoo ID username that communicated my highly nuanced feelings about needing yet another email address and ID to use flickr. It turns out Yahoo has some pretty sophisticated detection methods. The upshot of which is that I now have a Yahoo ID/Flickr account with a lost username/password/email address that I can’t get into. So I won’t be using Flickr.

Yahoo gets a lot of press within the Usability/UI world for the design pattern work and UI development. Sometimes business decisions override usability. In this case, the pain of a Yahoo ID does not outweigh the pain of not using Flickr. I hope someone takes this into consideration, but I’m not optimistic.