The Customer Karma® book is at the final phases of its production.  The cover design is done. Now it is left to the publishers to do their share to make the book look good so that I can get the book in your hands. As I look back and relive every moment I spent writing this book, I have to admit that it was one of the best times in my professional life. I wrote the book as me, without trying to be anyone else.  You will find "no non-sense" business sense, and my signature attempts at being funny.  But the thing I am most proud of is the thread that goes through the entire book, about the similarity of human relationships with our relationships with customers.  Having this thread throughout the book helped me look at actions brands take in the name of “investing in customer relationships”, from a totally different perspective. There were some actions that one would never ever consider in everyday relationship but it is OK for brands to do it in their relationship with customers.  That simply did not make sense. Here is an excerpt from the book on my customer relationships and normal human relationships are so similar. As brands strive to build a strong connection with its customers, it must remember that relationships have phases. A deeper understanding of the phases will shed more light on how business relationships evolve. Understanding why we get into relationships and how relationships evolve is important in order for brands to realize why a customer will choose to build a long-term relationship with them. A journey must start with self-discovery. Before jumping into the dating world and seeking a relationship, it is always important to have a clear idea of who one is and what one is seeking. Here Are the Four Relationship Phases of a Date First Impression: Within seconds of the start of a date, one forms a first impression that sets the tone for the rest of the date. Doesn’t the same thing happen within minutes of entering a new store that one is visiting for the first time? The first impression is important in building a relationship. Making It Easy to Explore: This is the early part of the date. During this phase, both individuals are cautious and simply want to explore. The same thing happens with a first visit to a store, as the customer in this phase wants to walk around and let the surroundings soak in. Seeking Confirmation: As the date progresses, both persons become aware of a reality. The reality is that at the end of the date, each has to decide if there is going to be a second date. Hence, they start becoming a little more proactive in getting information they need for this decision. The Grand Finale: Decision Time: At the end of the date, each person makes a decision about the future of the connection. A customer goes through exactly the same emotions during the first visit to the store. As we go through the phases of customer karma, it is important to know that the focus should not be only on doing good karma always; how and when you do good karma also matter. Good karma should be done in a spontaneous, natural way without the other person feeling stressed or overwhelmed. As you reflect on the similarities between both, let me ask you a question.  Think it is the birthday of one of your best friends or the person you started to date.  You want to do something nice on his/her birthday. Would you ever consider giving him/her a coupon for “½ off dinner” at a restaurant” or “$5 off if you spend $25 or more” at a retail store?  Probably not.  If you are a little tight on cash flow you can still give him/her a $5 gift card with a nice card.  That will be a good reflection of your feelings. The recipient can use the $5 gift card however he/she wants, as there are no conditions to its use.  The “½ off dinner” at a restaurant” or the “$5 off if you spend $25 or more” at a retail store both require the person to spend money to use the offer.  That is simply not a nice gesture.  Instead why doesn’t the brand simply offer a $5 gift card at the restaurant or the retail outlet, where the recipient can use it however he/she wants.  That makes it a true gift instead of it being “how can I trick you, on your birthday, to spend money at my store?”   Subscribe to be notified of new blog postings  ...

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Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. Super Bowl is the #1 night for pizza delivery. But it was not this way all the time.  Let me take you back to 1990s.  Look at this Pizza Hut ad from 1990s.  One thing is missing in the ad is no mention of delivery. Early 1990s Pizza Hut Delivery took the country by storm.  This Pizza Hut ad was one of the early delivery ads, which had the catchy jingle, Change for the Better, Change for the best. One market where Pizza Hut delivery did not catch on immediately was Southern California.  I was invited by Larry Zwain to jump in and look at the reason for this.  The research team did every possible consumer research, and found the following: Customers loved Pizza Hut They were ordering from Pizza Hut They showed very high purchase intent for getting pizza delivered to them They showed very high purchase intent for Pizza Hut delivery But why were they not buying?  What was it that we were missing? As a final attempt, I decided to do a series of one on one interviews with customers.  Within minutes of the first group, I got my answer.  The answer was so simple and obvious. Respondents started telling me, that "Pizza Hut does not deliver to me."  Wow, that was a direct answer. When I asked them what they meant, each went on to say that, a year or two back, "I called Pizza Hut delivery and the person who answered the phone got my street address and checked.  Then I was told that Pizza Hut does not deliver to your address." I showed them the Pizza Hut Delivery ads that were running in the market.  The customers started getting a little frustrated with my 'not getting it'.   One customer finally explained it to me and I got it. "I have seen these ads.  I know Pizza Hut delivery is in the city.  But remember that I told you, I called a few years back, that I called Pizza Hut delivery and the person who answered the phone got my street address and checked.  Then I was told that Pizza Hut does not deliver to your address." At that instance I realized that each of the customers (and thousands like them in the market) in the area had a PERSONAL REJECTION.  All the ads on the air were not REVERSING THAT PERSONAL REJECTION.  In fact, it felt that the customers did not want TO RISK A SECOND PERSONAL REJECTION. So what was the answer?  Very simple.  Pizza Hut put up billboards in the market which said, "If you can see this ad, Pizza Hut Delivers to you." When I look back, I felt the consumers were acting very rationally. They took the input directly from Pizza Hut delivery order takers and held on to it, untill Pizza Hut made the effort to change it. Thank you. Arjun   Subscribe to be notified of new blog postings ...

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Happy New Year everyone! I hope you and family had an amazing holiday. Now that the holidays are behind us, you may be reflecting on the stress of the last minute shopping in December and then the anxiety of returns in January.  You will realize that retail brands have not wasted a moment and have moved to the next event on their calendar, Valentine’s Day.  After Valentine’s Day it will be Easter, then Cinco De Mayo, then Mother’s Day also in May and then Father’s Day in June.  Retailers like to celebrate each of these days with a lot of energy, hoping it will bring them closer to us customers.  Not only the special days, but brands want to get closer to our personal life too, and some brands go the extra mile to try to include themselves in our birthday celebration. A few years back, I started tallying all the nice gestures different brands were extending to me on my birthday.  Here are few examples: A free cookie from a restaurant. That was a nice gesture but come on. Just one cookie and you expect me to go all the way to your restaurant to get that cookie? I have a suspicion that you are trying to trick me as you think I will also buy some food at your restaurant when I go to get my cookie. Even if your intentions are honorable, I am sorry that I do not think I can make a trip to your restaurant just to get a cookie. Another restaurant offered me a Buy One Get One Free offer. Hmm, this was interesting. I felt this meant I have to find someone who would like to go to this restaurant with me, and if he/she pays for their own meal (at full price), I get a free meal. I am still not sure how this was a birthday gift. Why would I be excited about this? You are using me on my birthday to make me introduce my best friend to you. The local Regional Transportation Department sent me four free passes for the light rail. When I got it, I started searching for the disclaimers.  Do I have to use these passes at odd hours, say after 10 pm on weekends?  Or, do I need to get a friend of mine to travel with me and pay full price for me to be able to use the free passes?  I searched hard and realized that these passes were truly free; they were unconditional, and I could use them.  I felt good giving them to my daughter who was excited to use the free passes.  Thank you Regional Transportation Department for the nice gesture and useful gift. Then was the gift that totally startled me. A lingerie company sent me a personal letter with a classy printed card that said, “Happy Birthday Arjun. Here is a free sports bra for your birthday!”  When I got this, I could not believe it.  I thought it was a prank from one of my friends. But the more I thought about it, I realized that my daughter shops in that store and I had taken her there a few times. Here is my recreation of memory: Every time my daughter and I went to the store, I felt quite embarrassed. I simply wanted to do my task, pay and leave. In fact, when we left the store, I wish I had a brown paper bag in which I could carry the stuff my daughter bought from the lingerie store. On one occasion as I was getting ready to pay, my daughter discovered that the she gets a free product if we share our email address and other personal information with the store. I honestly did not care and was ready to do whatever it took to get out of the store. So I gave the email address and other personal information (like my birthday) and left the store. I then realized that this was the input the store had used. Even though the “free sports bra” offer initially had shocked me, the more I thought about it, I felt there were quite a few good elements to this gesture. Here are few: They put in the effort to find out my birthday and to remember it. The document that they sent me on my birthday was a classy one and completely customized to me. The gift, a free sports bra, was way more valuable than the free cookie or the buy one get one free offer. But then what was wrong with the offer? They automated their offer and sent the same offer to every customer.  Did they not take the time to think that that teen daughters with dads (accompanying and paying) are a big segment?  Hence, it is not the value of the gift but the relevance that matters. So I want to ask retailers around the world the following questions: We can be friends but why are you trying to force yourself into all aspects of my life? Can I not have my birthday celebration without you trying too hard to be included in the party? Why can’t some moments be left to the customer to enjoy? Offering a Valentine’s Day selection to help me is nice, but creating Valentine’s Day décor and having each employee dress up in the spirit of Valentine’s Day may make some of the customers uncomfortable. I know you may run all the numbers to “whoosh” my suggestions and keep doing all these promotions as I am sure some of them are profitable for your brand. But, can I please make one request to you? Can you please never ever send me a free sports bra again?  As a single dad with a daughter, it is really embarrassing. Thank you. Arjun   Subscribe to be notified of new blog postings ...

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In the last blog, I talked about the power of customer observation. This time, let me switch gears and talk about the power of conversation with customers. The power of conversation is based on the following three key learning: CUSTOMERS CAN REACT TO A PRODUCT OFFERING, BUT THEY CANNOT DESIGN NEW PRODUCTS FOR A BRAND. Example: A customer in a shoe store can tell the sales staff where a shoe hurts, but the same customer cannot design a solution to remove the discomfort. IF YOU ASK A CUSTOMER A QUESTION, HE WILL SURELY GIVE YOU AN ANSWER. It is important that the customer shares their reactions and feelings, and not act like an “expert giving an opinion.” Hence, you have to be very careful as “how” you ask the customer a question, as you do not want to make the customer feel like an expert. When a customer gets into the “expert mode” he will give answers that sound good and are rational. Here is an example: In a focus group when I asked a respondent how he felt about a new product, he stated that his single friends would surely like this product. When I asked him if he was planning to buy the product with his own money, he was not at all ready to commit to a purchase. I wanted to learn how he, himself, would react to the product. Instead when he was talking about his friends, he was speaking as an expert and most probably he did not have firsthand knowledge about his friends’ reaction to the new product.  That answer could be very misleading as he did not have any desire to purchase the product himself. A BRAND CAN LEARN A LOT BY WATCHING A CUSTOMER BE A CUSTOMER AND ENGAGING IN A CONVERSATION (NOT JUST ASKING QUESTIONS). When a customer is truly in the customer mode, it is truly enriching to see how he processes information and makes decisions. If you can engage in a conversation with the customer when he is in that mindset, you will be amazed to learn how a customer reacts to your product. In this video blog, I talk about Blockbuster video and how I was trying to discover the brand’s connections to families.  If I started with a traditional quantitative research, I would have learned that 8 out of 10 respondents feel that their families connect to the brand. That insight would be very powerful but would not have given me any idea of the magnitude of the connection.  I truly wanted to know, “What was the true intensity of the connection the brand enjoyed with respondents and their families?” I got that answer when I created a mini lounge in the store, and invited loyal guests to come in and have a one-on-one conversation with me. The interaction with the guest was very informal while putting them at the center of attention.  I would greet the guest when they walked in, give him a tour of the store and then we sat down to have a conversation.  Instead of structuring the conversation in the form of a series of questions, I wanted to create the environment that facilitated sharing “brand connection moments.”  As I prepared for the conversation with the customer, I wanted to create a personal environment as if I was talking to a buddy of mine, asking him about when and where he met his wife for the first time, and what he felt after the first date, etc.  The same way I wanted to learn about my friend’s excitement, his passion, and his memories; and everything in his words; the same way I wanted to learn the customer’s connection to Blockbuster. As you watch the video blog, I am sure that you will be amazed at the learning that came out of the conversation.  The conversation made me feel the heartbeat of the customer. Now I knew how the customer and his family actually connected with the brand. It truly was simple yet insightful, as the customer was not feeling like an expert.  He was in a moment where he felt that I was genuinely interested in what he was saying and was helping me out by sharing his emotions. I did a quantitative study as a follow-up to quantify the emotions and understand which age groups felt the connection the most. However, without the deep-dive “one-on-one conversation”, I would have never had a true appreciation of “how families felt connected to the brand.” Enjoy the blog!   Subscribe to be notified of new blog postings ...

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Do consumers lie to mislead you?  I was told they do not.  Then help me understand what was wrong with the following picture when I was working for a bagel restaurant chain. 65% of customers stated that they wanted to try specialty bagel and flavored cream cheese. 55% of customers stated that they do not come to a bagel store to get plain bagel and plain cream cheese But actual sales from 500+ restaurants showed that more than 80% of customers were ordering a plain bagel with plain cream cheese. This made no sense, as I could not explain to the senior management team the consumer insights were not in sync with actual sales.  As I thought more about it, this made sense only if the consumer’s buying situation changed from the time they answered the survey questions; and the only way to find out was to actually be at the store and watch customers buy a bagel. THE OBSERVATION PHASE: On a Saturday morning, I was the first person in the store and seated myself at a table close to the ordering area. By 8:00 am, the line started becoming long and soon, I saw something that completely baffled me. Here was the sequence of events: A customer stood in line. When his turn came and he was at the ordering counter, the store employee greeted him. The customer then started looking at the menu board behind the employee. The menu was nearly 30 feet long. The customer started browsing the menu, trying to identify what he really wanted to order. By the time the customer browsed the entire menu and wanted to ask the order taker a question, he realized that the order taker had “TAKEN EYE CONTACT OFF HIM & PLACED IT ON THE CUSTOMER BEHIND”. This was a very uncomfortable situation for the customer. In a way, the order taker announced in broad daylight, in front of all other customers in the store, that the customer cannot perform a simple task of placing an order at a bagel store. This is very humiliating. To get out of the situation, the customer goes for a plain bagel and plain cream cheese, something that is a default answer. This occurred over and over, and soon I realized that the customer had approximately 8 seconds to place their order before the order taker declared them a failure.  And it was not easy to read the entire 30 feet of the menu in 8 seconds. TESTING A SOLUTION: The next morning, I was back at the same store, but this time I prepared a table mat that had the pictures of all bagels (with names) and all cream cheese lids (with names too).  I moved to my observation seat and saw that the table mats changed the entire customer/order-taker interaction. Now the customer took the eye contact away from the order taker and focused on the table mat. The table mat allowed the customer total control to choose what they wanted to order. For groups, there were discussions centered on the table mat, which allowed each person in the group to get what they wanted. By the end of the evening, nearly 70% of customers in the store had ordered specialty bagels and flavored cream cheese. RESULT: Soon this idea was tested in more stores and then taken nationwide. The result was dramatic: Nearly 75% of customers were ordering specialty bagels and cream cheese. The profitability and customer satisfaction scores increased significantly. RETROSPECTION: As I think back I realize the following: The marketing team built a 30 feet long menu but did not know that the customer had only 8 seconds to read the menu. This was bound to create problems for the customer who had to either ignore a big part of the menu or be “reprimanded” for taking the time to read the entire menu. Nearly ½ the customers were leaving the store ordering things that they did not crave; in fact when this group ordered a plain bagel and plain cream cheese, they settled for something that was just an “OK Solution”. I do not think it is a sustainable business model for a brand to force ½ of their customers to settle into ordering what they did not come in to get. BEYOND BAGELS: This is a situation faced by customers nearly every day in different restaurants and industries beyond. Here are a few situations where I would request you to think of how the customer was made to feel: Drive thru restaurant, when a customer wants to pause to make sure the food order is correct. The order taker does not have time to go into the details of the order. When a customer is picking up a prescription at a pharmacy and wants to have a discussion about the side effects of the medication. The pharmacist makes the customer aware that all the information is on the 8 pages of instructions and is simply interested in getting a signature from the customer that shows that he explained to the customer everything about the medication. Specs for electronic goods, especially digital cameras. Instead of training the employees to help the customer make the right decision, employees are referred to the description of each camera. Hence when a customer wants to understand the difference, and asks a question, the employee starts reading to the customer the descriptions. Come on, the customer can read, and the customer wants to know what the descriptions mean. In short, businesses surviving on making customers feel like goofballs, and hence there is an opportunity for competition to step in by solving for this; and be rewarded big.    Subscribe to be notified of new blog postings ...

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