Perspective Counts.

A small tweak in perspective can go a long way.

A few years ago I found myself in a rut. After catching up with a mentor, I took her advice and started looking at projects as building blocks as opposed to stops a train makes on its way from Point A to Point B. In the building block scenario, contributing to projects allowed me to build upon my experience and each experience added to my overall portfolio over time. I wanted to participate in a wider variety of projects over time, because I always learned so much from my peers and soon enough the small tower of blocks turned into a skyscraper of relevant ways I could use my skill set to be a resource for others. In the train scenario however, I viewed each project as a stop on the way to something else which greatly hindered my ability to fully commit myself to the task at hand. The constantly moving train never gave me enough time to stop long enough to be fully present, which meant giving 100% was almost never an option.

Your Problems Should Never Become Your Customers’ Problems

I was having an interesting conversation with a friend the other day that I thought was worth while sharing. While he and I come from different disciplines, have varying opinions on most topics and often respectfully agree to disagree, we did quickly agree on this: The Customer’s experience should never be compromised by being peppered with whatever challenges, process improvements, or political battles that may be going on internally within a business. In the end, everyone loses. The customer walks away from the experience thinking that the business is disjointed. Internally, energy ends up being diverted to fighting fires and playing politics instead of quickly identifying the problem and agreeing to fix it and move on.

Bringing The Brand And Brand Promise To Life Is A Big Piece Of Customer Experience

Given Apple’s various announcements yesterday, I thought it’d be nice to republish this blog post highlighting Apple’s brand promise.

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When you see a brand logo, what sort of expectations come to mind?

Let’s take a look at Apple, a brand that successfully brings the brand promise to life in all incarnations of the experience. When you think of the way Apple delivers on its experience, do you agree that they focus on these three things?

• Design & Innovation
• Ease & Simplicity
• Quality

Design & Innovation, Ease & Simplicity, and Quality – these are Apple’s Core Values. This is what fundamentally drives every decision that impacts their customers. It’s their brand promise. No matter what aspect of their company you interact with, you should feel the embodiment of these Core Values in every piece of the experience.

The Experience of Consistency is What Gets People Coming Back

As I continue to explore local businesses, I notice that I mentally categorize them into general buckets:

• You Get What You Pay For – varying expected sub-categorizations based on price, product and service quality
• Value Play – typically lower on the price and service scales but higher on product (or lower product and price and higher service)
• Over The Top - typically high all around, but can be focused on service only

One thing has to exist before I can ever place a business into one of these categories: The experience needs to be consistent across multiple purchases.

Even if your product is average but you deliver great value – if your business falls into the consistently average AND consistently high value categories every time – you will have a much better chance of retaining a high repurchase rate because your customers know what to expect from you. In fact, I would argue that this specific segment yields the highest return rate across the general public.

Lessons From Life: Sometimes, You Do Know Better Than Everyone Else

The other day, I had my first golf lesson in almost a decade. Masa, my instructor, watched with intent, asked me to do some balance tests, followed by pretending to swing a bat and tennis racket. At the end of our first 30 minute session, Masa came to the conclusion that I should probably play golf goofy. In his words, “You’ll probably be fine playing right-handed, but you’ll never be as good as if you played naturally left-handed.”

The Soft Benefits of Social Media Not to be Undervalued

I’ve dived cannon ball style into social media for small business.

Because the relationship piece of running a business is extremely difficult to measure, the value is often overlooked. Small businesses have however always relied on a strong relationship to drive recurring revenue, which is why adding social media to their marketing mix makes so much sense. I’ve found that more are using social media as a relationship building channel first, and a revenue conversion tool second.

So for those of you that are looking to dedicate what little resource you have to also jumping in the social media pool, this one’s for you.