Buzzwords and TLAs - what is Web 2.0?

TLA? Three letter acronym.......come on, keep up! Have you ever felt dumb in a meeting when people start spiralling into lovely jargon. Well Wikipedia is a great source of unjumbling

Try this one on your colleagues.....what is Web 2.0?

As usual there is no one answer, but Wikipedia will enlighten http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

And there's a great wodge of associated jargon so you can amaze your colleagues with your hypervision and brain transplant

What works in 21st century marketing?

"How does it work? I dont know, its a mystery" as they say in Shakespeare in Love. 21st Century marketing as we reported in January's newsletter is something which lots of marketing functions are still seeing as the dark arts (see http://www.budd.uk.com/nljan07.html ).

Attached is some interesting data about what some leading lights believe they'll spend their money on in the virtual world. You can read the ful article at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004532. The bottom line is search marketing and inhouse email lists are better than rented lists and pop ups.....and a whole lot more.

Meanwhile, we're looking for an out of work comedian to appear in our Kazhakstani customer experience videocasts..... And a process consultant to work in Kazhakstan. Now that's sysmmetry !

Catch train 22 - why do travel sites never work?

Why do so many websites not work? Eurostar's never seems to work. You have to phone up, ask them not to charge you £5 for the privilege of buying a ticket from them because their site won't take a booking for free.

Here's a good one - it asks you to fill in the origin of the journey, but the box for that is missing.

The staff are obviously used to the web site not working, because they don't ask what the problem is, or remotely suggest that they are interested in getting it fixed (that's one for the WOCAS process www.budd.uk.com/wocas.html ). Feedback from customers and agents, so powerful but so few companies are geared up to use it - fast+systematically.

Still at least it was simple to find the Eurostar phone number under customer support.

Unlike Virgin Trains which couldn't accept my postcode ( I assure you I do live at my home address! ) and so I couldn't buy a ticket. No easy opt out to get help, but heh, no choice so why do they care. Unless I opted to go by air, using up all my "green" creds, I'd have to buy at the station anyway.

But it doesn't get any better by plane. I haven't been able to get onto the BA site to check in in the last hour. Seems like the site is down completely.

Dell the Storm Maker

So you may have heard that Dell set up a website called IdeaStorm on 16 Feb and it looks like that’s just what it has created. Unfortunately, just like the UK government’s recent online petition, you only get one side of the story. In this case, the storm came from the leading edge users who wanted Dell to ditch Windows and adopt Linux. Less radical but still a popular idea was replacing Internet Explorer with the leading alternative browser, Firefox.

Clearly, Michael Dell needs to think about the direction of the company. Embrace the tech heads with leading edge products (which they would find hard to support) or pander to the conservative mass market, Microsoft led world. Who did they think would respond on IdeaStorm?!

It’s just another example of an ill thought through customer feedback ‘campaign’ that generates a lot of the wrong publicity by giving Dell so much that they are unable to act on. It would be far better if they listen to everyone on a continuous basis – both staff and customers – about how they can improve the basics rather than looking the wow factor.

Read the full article in Business Week at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070226_415604.htm?link_position=link1

'100 and 1 things you can learn from first direct and Google Inc.'

Our Fast+Simple free white paper on first direct '100 things you can learn from first direct' was published in November 2005 and still continues to be our best seller in the library at www.budd.uk.com

Not to be out done, first direct themselves have just opened up more information on their culture including some video clips, podcasts and customer videos. You can see them at www.interactive.firstdirect.com

The more you learn, the more you realise it's no one thing, there's no silver bullet. It's a whole lot of things adding up to everyone being a chief customer officer. This theme is also a striking part of our freshly published '100 things you can learn from Google Inc.' (no prizes for the person who says "but there are billions of things on Google..."). Its released this month and available free in the library at www.budd.uk.com

What's cold and blue, and blue in the face?

Here’s a link sent from our LimeBridge US colleagues showing one of hundreds of slams against former airline star JetBlue which stranded customers on the tarmac during fierce snow and ice storms in the US on Valetines night.

http://www.channelinsider.com/article/JetBlue+the+Channel+and+Me/201587_1.aspx?kc=CICNWEMNL022307EOAD

This is already turning into “lessons learned” for handling bad PR, IT fixes needed, reservations centre capacity during bad weather, and a lot more. JetBlue’s blue-in-face CEO/Founder has said that he will double res agents, all at home, a daunting task among many other changes they need to make. But as the article says, at least he's been honest about the cock ups.

One of his gaffes, our LimeBridge colleagues thought, was stating that “only 10,000 customers” were affected out of a much larger number who’ve been using JetBlue – “only”!!

It will be fascinating to see if they survive the talk show jokes (such as “the free ticket that JetBlue will give the folks who spent 10 hours on the runway in New York will let them spend 10 hours on the runway in Miami”, stuff like that)

A theory of everything all held together with string

Half term holidays are a great time for catching up on your reading. As a long lapsed physicist I decided it was time to catch up on what happened of consequence by reading “Beyond Einstein” by physicist Michio Kaku and author Jennifer Thompson. Nothing too heavy, just the quest for the single unified theory of the universe…… They’ve decided it’s all held together by string apparently, superstrings. Think guitar strings: the same string can play many different notes. A string can be many different things. Bear in mind Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life working on this and getting nowhere, so you are forgiven if you don’t make it to the stunning conclusion at the end of this blog!

I won’t bore you why the universe was ten dimensional before Big Bang turned it 4 dimensional (time and 3D space); you’ll have to read the surprisingly accessible book for all that. I must admit I came away, long ago, from a year in a lab and 3 years study, thinking physics was pretty boring.

I was, after 4 years hard partying (and the odd tutorial), left with just two (mildly) interesting things from physics, the study and explanation of the physical world:
a) You really can drive a 4m car into a 3m long garage if you drive it near the speed of light. I can’t wait til they try that on Top Gear!
b) Obscure mathematicians scribbling on bits of paper find physical objects we didn’t know existed.

So why am I blogging on about it then? Well, because the story of the search for a unifying theory of the universe is riddled with history lessons about human beings that can be applied everyday. Many are about how hard we find it to accept new ideas. It concludes with something you can do with physics in the workplace.

…..FOR THE LESSONS GO TO www.fastandsimple.org and take a look at the paper A theory of everything and the meaning of life all held together with string

You’ll see ten lessons on thinking, on unified business and on the power of symmetry in unlocking the nature of your workplace

Virtually all publicity is good publicity

The key thing is the way people think about viral marketing. A 20th century marketing man or woman thinks “how can I use viral marketing to sell more stuff?” . A 21st century man or woman gets a very different answer to what to do because they would ask “how do people interact with viral stuff and how can I help them do that in such a way that I help not hinder them?”

There was a great example on Radio 4 this week. Apparently staff at Somerfields have been piling up toilet rolls and jumping of them for a laugh, publishing the videos on YouTube. There’s aa example of someone walking the warehouse beams at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNnusJT4ntU&mode=related&search=

Dire consequences from 20th century management taking a dim view. Great edgy publicity for 21st century marketers using YouTube to get the message out there. Now this really tests the theory that “all publicity is good publicity” !!

Hear some guys talk about the point at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/03/2007_06_wed.shtml or read about it with links http://www.headshift.com/archives/003108.cfm .

Are you your company's Chief Customer Officer - if so then breakfast with us on March 21

Are you the CCO? WOT????

Well a CCO is a "chief customer officer" - the person who screams, scratches, bites and kicks the company to make it better for the customer. The one who "stops dumb things happening to customers" !! You may have a rich seam of them in your business or be a lone star

Of course given our mission of "how do we stop doing dumb things to customers" we are mad keen to meet and help as many CCOs as possible.

So two things are in train and we'd love your input (email me on peter.massey@budd.uk.com)

1) March 21st is a directors' breakfast seminar being jointly hosted with the heroic CCO Darren Cornish from Norwich Union. It will be a couple of short blasts on the horn from Darren and I, then facilitated discussion of what it takes to get your organisation acting on all the wonderful feedback customers give ( expletives deletives or whatever !)

2) Our 2007 4th annual Fast+Simple survey will be kicking off shortly and we're looking for chief customer officers and their CEOs to interview

Elect yourself to the role of CCO and get yourself a seat at the table !

No trees killed in this blog

It's great to see so many email signatures now including warnings about not killing more trees, dolphins and small furry animals by pressing the print button.

Well, we thought it'd be great to invent a LimeBridge award for the most "planet wasted" in a single mailing.

So far leading the way is Managament Centre Europe with a clear 400 grammes of junk mail. That's 0.4 kg or nearly a pound in old money.

Its purpose? To entice you to travel across Europe, no doubt by CO2 emitting airplane, to go on one of their 160 pages of educational courses. It was titled "New ways of thinking", but I couldn't find anything on CSR (corporate social responsibility), handling junk mail or 21st century marketing in their courses!!

Send us your own "planet wasted" entries, favourite email signatures to peter.massey@budd.uk.com or take a look at this video on YouTube to see how you can take your junk mail more seriously ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNVekcLrUXk&mode=related&search=

Are you world class?

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of sharing a stage with Alan Hinkes. We were talking about "world class" with a client organisation. An entertaining subject

Alan is the only Englishman and one of only a dozen people in the world, to have climbed all 14 of the world's highest mountains. All are over 8000m. Apparently Everest isnt the hardest, K2 is. It took him 17 years to do them all, 3 attempts being on K2. The first time, he turned back when close to the summit because of avalanche risk. People died in an avalanche the following day. The second time when 500m from the summit, after a 5 month trip, he turned back to bring an exhausted climber down. When finally climbed in 1995, 13 people attempted the summit that year, 8 died.

Kinda makes you think, what have you done that's world class? Skipping rapidly on.......

The angle on world class I like is this. It took Rolls-Royce 4 years from the formation of the company until they made the world's best automobile, a further 3 years before they were recognised world wide as the best car in the world. Skype was founded in Sept 2002, launched in August 2003, sold to eBay for £1.6bn in October 2005 and reached 100million subscribers in April 2006. And still, many telco audiences dont recognise them as competition! So it doesn't take long to be a world class business.

The common factor? A saying by Henry Royce: " Whatever is rightly done, however small, is noble".

Roughly translated: "the best service is no need for service". Get it right by attending to the minutiae of what it takes to remove all the hassle for a customer and you will a) grow and b) be recognised.

I also like Alan's defintion of success. "Reaching the summit isnt success. Reaching the summit and getting down without losing a digit is success."

So sometimes the goal of being world class isn't the right goal. That's about who you are. That's just getting to the summit. You have to get down the other side. Doing the very best you can do for customers is what it takes to be truly world class.