The con of from

From's are the biggest con used to dupe you into spending your money.

The worst froms are those that hide the real price until you've already committed your time. Some of the Airlines are the worst examples. They insist page after page of your details before telling you what the real price is.

Are consumers getting wise to and fed up with froms? Isn't it time there was more honesty? I think so.

Next time you see a from think of the likelihood of paying that price before you commit your time.

Mum

How often do we publicly say things like 'I am proud of my Mum' ? Well, I am one of those having the most amazing Mum who has dedicated her life to looking after children who really need the love of someone who really cares about them. Having such parents is a real blessing but it is only when you become a parent yourself or see the desparate situation some kids are in do you realise how amazing people are who dedicate themselves to looking after others.

Mum recently won an award for 50 years of fostering. Even at 73, she's still doing it!

Read what the local press said about Mum:


-Martin

Humilty

This month I have decided to do something rather unusual. For years I've been working for a client that listens to their customer views and acts on everything they say. This is rare enough, but something was missing. I had a very outside perspective of what was going on and in order to be really effective I needed an inside perspective.

So, I gave up my consultancy rates, embraced an hourly minimum wage and started at the bottom doing the work everyone else did. I faced customers and staff just like everyone else did.

"You did what?" most business colleagues said with a rather quizzed look on their face. Humbling onself, swallowing one's pride and putting an apron just like everyone else has been, on my first day, a really humbling, amazing experience.

Are companies really interested in listening?

I had quite an amusing discussion today with someone heading up the customer services team of a very large coffee company. I was talking to them about feedback (a speciality of mine).

She was convinced they were doing all they needed to do to listen to customers. It made me smile because a while ago I tried what they had put in place.

The feedback card (a tricky exercise to complete, too many questions, too little space for comment) was duely completed and sent it with the 'contact me' box ticked. Still, a month later, no one has. The local branch manager hasn't heard my feedback either.

Never mind. They had a phone number. So I tried when I got in from work. After navigating those irritating menu systems I was duely told the office was closed.

So after a positive experience in the branch I was left with a sour taste in my mouth. How much do they really care about what customers have to say?

Who hijacked customer loyalty?

Somewhere the word loyalty has been replaced by the word advocacy. Talk to any business about customer loyalty and immediately most think of those cards you get stamped or earn points on.

Who made that change? It's probably down to those who think that bribing customers into a repurchase was something to with building loyalty. It isn't. So anyway, advocacy, the slightly more mystical word for the same thing has taken it's place.

Ask a customer if they are loyal, they will tell you. Ask if they are advocates, they will look at you strangely.

So customers aren't loyal?

In some recent work conducted by the Future Foundation, the conclusion was customers show little loyalty to retail stores. Is that a shock? I don't think so.

Could this herald the start of getting to grips with what real loyalty is?

Whilst marketing teams do their best to create loyalty to a particular brand, the front line of retail is largely unaware of the volatility of customer loyalty. Real loyalty is based on real experiences, which happen every day all day. An experience in one outlet maybe completely different to that of another because of the unseen factors creating damaging changes on people’s desire to return or recommend.

This is simple text-book stuff. The problem has occurred largely as a result of centralisation of large retailers where the decision or policy makers have distanced themselves from the frontline experience.

Most of the time, there is a disconnect between local staff and local customers. This is either deliberate to maintain a central control of the experience or a consequence of there being little value placed on individual customer experience in the first place.

Most consumers would agree. Consumer’s primary relationship is with the local expression of the brand, not the brand itself. So, the national advertising campaigns carry little weight if the consumer’s experience is very poor.

So the solution is actually quite simple, even though it may require a shift in retailer’s thinking. For a start, a shift is needed to focus on customer loyalty, not customer satisfaction. Often these metrics are confused or misunderstood. Loyalty is an emotional investment someone would make to a brand, including recommending to others, whereas satisfaction is simply a transactional metric that does not indicate whether a customer will return (finding it cheaper elsewhere would be enough to switch).

Is there an easy answer? Yes.

First of all branches need to encourage people to express their views in as simple a way as possible. This means making it really simple and convenient to do so, not interrupting people having their tea or insisting on answering a 20 question satisfaction survey for example. Secondly, we must ensure this feedback is channelled quickly back to the front line staff to take responsibility for and act upon. By constantly reinforcing positive staff behaviour, responding to customers, and fixing what needs to be fixed, you have a framework for the constant improvements in loyalty that retailers need.

Indeed, this approach begins to mimic the old style of retail whereby local staff were more aware of the thoughts and feelings of local customers and were in a good position to make the necessary changes.

Only time will tell if the UK retail sector would be willing to embrace such a change.

3 Easy Steps to Create Loyal Customers

There's been so much published on customer loyalty programs in retail that it seems very difficult to know where to start. So, here are three easy steps.

1) Start with believing customers matter and you should develop a culture that cares about each one. The Golden Rule "treat others as you wish to be treated yourself" helps anchor this vision.
2) Make it easy to listen to what local customers have to say about their local experience.
3) Make it easy for local staff to hear and act upon those views.

So start off with an effective way of engaging, listening and acting upon 'local' customer feedback in a single branch, and when successful, deploy the same approach elsewhere. branchadvisor.com is a good starting point for free, actionable customer insight.

Retailing - when did it go mad?

9 years ago I started a feedback company. In 2008 I left. In 2009 it went bust. What makes me sad is that it is needed as much today as it was back in 2000 because retailers still have virtually no idea what their customers think from day to day.

Generally retailers seem to have stuck to the same model even now through the economic downturn. The model works like this. Create a bucket with lots of holes. Spend lots of time and money filling it with customers and as long as you can shove customers in the top convince yourself everything will be OK.

Now despite every book on marketing clearly saying the cost of acquiring new customers is always greater than the cost of getting existing ones to spend money, someone somewhere has been ignoring this rule big time. In fact, many, many people have.

So why is this? I've been searching for a simple truth in all this for a while, and it was only after I got married did I hit on some bedrock of truth. The fruit of a relationship doesn't necessarily come easy. Relationships are kind of messy. Most squeaky clean brands seem to try to circumvent this basic truth. Further, people do desire relationships and connections with other things. Not those mechanical, CRM type relationships but what is essentially human.

So perhaps retailers should look at the bucket and plug the holes and try to make their brands more human.

Someone somewhere knows something in Norwich

Have you every had what appears a simple request but to answer it you need to contact some part of a council or local authority set up to service such a request?

I needed a list of local independent retailers, a sector deemed rather important to Norwich. So, I made a call to the city's economic development unit. Then, I was directed to the local Business Link, who never answer their phone, or get back on messages left. Then another phone call, then another, then finally when I thought I came across someone who I thought would have the answer. They promptly told me to call the people who were first in the chain.

So I gave up. Did a Google. 15 minutes later I had the list emailed to be in an Excel table via a company based in Devon.

It does make you wonder. What value are many local authority 'economic development' people actually delivering to the local economy?

Frogs

Aren't frog's amazing? It's March (here in the UK) and standing outside my backdoor, I was listening to two frogs in separate ponds singing their croaky songs trying to attract females.

It made me think. What's going to attract female frogs to one of these males rather than the other?

It's probably going to be what makes one frog different to the other. Female frogs aren't interested (I presume) in what makes them the same, but what makes one different and better than the other.

This made me think about my visit into Norwich today (one of the UK's most attractive retail centres). I am not attracted to retailers that are the same but attracted to those that offer something different. So many of them seem to be singing the song of the frogs. It's the one that sings a different tune that would attract me.

How many businesses are singing the frog song?