An Interview with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs

I had the opportunity to catch up with Francois last month at the NewComm Forum in San Mateo, CA.  I interviewed Francois for a video segment called MENG: 5 questions with an Expert.   At the end of our discussion I asked about a recent post he wrote on the importance of customer experience.  Here are the couple minutes where we discussed cx as differentiator:

Here is a highlight from Francois’ blog post:

“The reason why exceptional service is the new competitive differentiator is not just because it’s easier for competitors to catch up product-wise, but because the news about exceptional service travels fast in the networks that matter – peer and friend networks where the buying decisions are increasingly being made. When people recommend products to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, they do not focus on the features, functions and benefits the way many marketers have been trained to do – they focus on the overall experience of adopting the solution, and the exceptional qualities of that “whole” offering.

So if you are like most companies and operate in a market where it is really hard to differentiate  based on the product alone, you got to focus your attention on WOW service offerings.”

Marketing Takeaway: You need to find ways to differentiate your product or service.  The easiest way is to focus on the customer experience.  Exceed the expectations of your customers by offering those little extras that surprise and delight.

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – Speaking of doing the little things, here is a site that was recommended by fellow MENG member Dan Gersten of Chadwick Martin Bailey.   You need to check out this 3 minute video on ‘Johnny the Bagger’:

Click Image to Play

In Search of Your PURPLE GOLDFISH.  ‘Give your customers something to talk, tweet, blog and post to Facebook about’

Click here to download the FREE Purple Goldfish eBook.

Are you giving a little unexpected extra?

I was just reading a tremendous post by Rohit Bhargava over at Influential Marketing.  As part of ‘Make a Referral Week’, Rohit talks about the 5 ways you can jump start the referral engine:

So the question you need to ask yourself (especially for Referral Week) is how you can make YOUR business easier for someone to share with a friend, family member or colleague. In other words, you need to be easier to recommend! Here are 5 tips you should consider to help you achieve that:

1. Ask at the right moment. There is one moment when your customer is likely to be happiest of all, and that is the moment right after they buy something. The decision has been made, and anticipation is likely to follow. Why not ask them to share their experience with a friend right in that moment? Use a post-purchase survey online or encourage your customer to write a review or even take some extra business cards with them as they walk out of your retail location. The more you can do to get someone to recommend your business right after purchase, the more referrals you can generate.

2. Create different levels. It is tempting to think of recommendations and referrals in strict terms. Say online review, and your mind probably goes straight to the sort of review you might find on Amazon or TripAdvisor. In reality, there are many different levels of engagement when it comes to online reviews, and hand written experiences are the most extreme. A much simpler style is what you may have seen on Facebook … the simple thumbs up or thumbs down. Star ratings are another easy method. The lesson is simple … to create more likely situations where people will share their opinion, try to accommodate for different levels of effort and complexity.

3.Let them save your details. The magnet for your fridge that your real estate agent always gives you is the prime example of this idea. The opposing idea to #1, the philosophy behind letting your customers save your details easily is that you want to be there in the moment when they do get asked by someone to refer a business or service. Aside from fridge magnets, for the growing digital savvy customer, another way you may be able to stand out is to always include important keywords in your email communications (and always send email receipts). Then your customer can search their email account and even if they don’t remember your business name or have your card handy, you’re just a simple email search away.

4. Have a personality. The basic fact is that people don’t generally remember businesses, they remember other people. For this reason, having a personality is of paramount importance. When you can foster a personal connections with your business, you give them a reason to remember and recommend you to others. This is the power of word of mouth referrals, that we will remember working with someone who we respected and will be more likely to actively recommend that person and their business in any relevant situation.

5. Admit failure. This last tip will seem like an odd addition to the list. After all, we are generally taught to hide (or at least never admit) our failures for fear that it may make us or our businesses appear vulnerable. The surprising fact is that admitting a mistake can be one of the unintentionally best ways to humanize your business. We all make mistakes, but how you deal with them is the real question. Nothing can endear your business more to a customer than making a mistake an going overboard to correct it (and not making the same mistake again, of course). So the next time you or one of your employees makes a mistake, own up to it and actively fix it. You may find that in the process you converted an unhappy customer into a brand evangelist for life.

Rohit is talking about the essence of ‘marketing lagniappe’ and the need to incentivize your clients.   Marketing lagniappe or a purple goldfish is the glue for getting customer referrals.

GLUE is an acronym for ‘giving a little unexpected extra’.  Let’s look at Rohit’s tips and see where the glue (not the shoe) fits:

1. Timing - Lagniappe is about giving that unexpected extra at the time of purchase.  It’s the time you want to make an impression.  It’s based on recency and the concept that a consumer will tend to remember the most recent thing before leaving, hanging up the phone or clicking away.

2. Details – The Fridge Magnet is that small little extra that makes someone easy to remember you.  I agree with Rohit that this is important, but I believe you need to think outside of the icebox (fridge).  Take the idea of that magnet to the next level. What can you give that’s both memorable and signature to your business?

3. Personality – To me personality just means ‘purple’.  What makes you memorable?  How do you stand out in the ’sea of sameness’?  CAUTION – Don’t be fake.  Many times it’s about the ‘how’ you give your purple goldfish and not ‘what’ is given.

4. Unexpected - The idea of admitting to mistakes is totally unexpected.  This is a great pickup by Rohit.  I read a piece of advice recently that played off this same idea.  Admit your mistake, ask the customer what they’d like as amends and then always exceed their request.  This is brilliant on so many levels.  First is Dale Carnegie-esque . . . admit when your wrong and do it emphatically.  It takes the steam out of a complaint.  Second is involving the customer to be part of the solution.  Let them be judge and jury.  This speaks volumes about your willingness to make things right.  Lastly you exceed the proposed solution. Within reason you take the solution and notch it up one or two levels.  This gets back to the idea of being totally unexpected.

Where is the lagniappe in your marketing? What’s Your Purple Goldfish? Download the FREE eBook here

What the hell is a schema?

Steve Knox of Tremor took me to school the other day.  He recently wrote an enlightened post in Ad Age entitled, “Why Effective Word of Mouth Disrupts Schemas”.  The premise of the article is how to leverage cognitive disruption to drive ‘word of mouth’.

First off let me admit I had no clue what a ’schema’ was.  It sounds like something Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Ali G’ would say to describe a con artist in his West London Village of Staines.

So here is the real definition.  It turns out that our lizard brain remains typically in a static state. It relies on cognitive schemas to figure out how the world works.  Your brain recognizes patterns and adapts your behavior accordingly.  It basically doesn’t want to have to think.  For example, every day you get into the car and you know instinctively to drive on the right side of the road.  Fast forward and you’re on a trip to the UK or Australia.  The first time you drive on the left side it throws you for a loop.  Its disruptive to your normal driving schema and it forces the brain to think, thereby it elicits discussion (ie. word of mouth).

Steve provided some great examples in his article.  My one favorite was for a new Secret deodorant that P&G was launching.  The deodorant utilized a moisture activated ingredient which kicked in when you sweat.  The brand understood that this could be positioned against a traditional schema, ie. the more you workout, the more you sweat and the worse you smell.  The tagline for the brand became, “The More You Move, the Better You Smell”.  A staggering  51,000 consumers posted comments on P&G’s website about the product.

Here is a Slideshare presentation that talks about schemas and the science behind word of mouth by Steve Knox:

I started thinking how this idea of disruption applies to the concept of marketing lagniappe.  The second ingredient in the lagniappe R.U.L.E.S is the concept of being Unexpected.  It’s that little something that’s an unexpected extra at the time of purchase.  It’s the unexpected ’surprise and delight’ that triggers disruption of our schemas.

Let’s face it . . . most companies fail to deliver an exceptional customer experience.  It’s only when a brand goes ‘above and beyond’ we get shocked.  And what happens when we receive that unexpected ‘branded act of kindness‘?  We tell our friends, we tweet it and we post on Facebook about it.

Do you agree?  Any examples of companies that have provided such a strong brand experience that it prompted word of mouth?

In Search of Your PURPLE GOLDFISH.  Click here to download the FREE eBook.

‘Let’s Give Them Something to Talk, Tweet, Blog and Post to Facebook About’

Coke pours in at #186 in the Purple Goldfish Project

Imagine you are a college student and you decide you’d like to have a Coke.  So you head over to the vending machine in the student union and this happpens . . . .

Need some thought starters on how to create your own Purple Goldfish?

Head over to the Purple Goldfish Project where you’ll find how hundreds of brands are leveraging the power of marketing lagniappe through Branded Acts of Kindness.

What are you working on?  What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

These are the respective questions asked by LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Brian Solis of PR 2.0 is a thought leader that is constantly evaluating PR’s role in shifting marketing landscape.  I absolutely have fallen in love with a term that Brian has coined.  It’s called the ‘STATUSPHERE’.

In Brian’s words with my thoughts in BOLD:

We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time. Attention is a precious commodity and requires a personalized engagement strategy in order to consistently vie for it [How are you engaging your best marketing resource - YOUR CUSTOMER?]. The laws of attraction and relationships management are driven by the ability to create compelling content and transparently connect it to the people whom you believe benefit. [What is your distinctive 'PURPLE GOLDFISH' and is it relevant to your customer?]

The Statusphere is the new ecosystem for sharing, discovering, and publishing updates and micro-sized content that reverberates throughout social networks and syndicated profiles, resulting in a formidable network effect of activity. It is the digital curation of relevant content that binds us contextually and through the statusphere we can connect directly to existing contacts, reach new people, and also forge new friendships through the friends of friends effect (FoFs) in the process. [Getting into the status updates of your consumer exposes you to their vast network]

Twitter, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are driving action and determining the direction and course of individual attention.

So – what does this mean to me as a brand manager, CMO or a business owner???

The statusphere (people updating their status on social networks) has become the new digital watercooler.  It’s increasingly how people are sharing content via word of mouse.  It’s how a vast majority of folks are getting their news.  Your goal is to get your brand into that ’statusphere’. How do you WOW your customer to the point that they want to share their experience?    You need a PURPLE GOLDFISH or three.  You need to give your best marketing resource something to post, blog, tweet or Facebook about.

Need some thought starters?

Head over to the Purple Goldfish Project where you’ll find how hundreds of brands are leveraging the power of marketing lagniappe.

Today’s Lagniappe – Brian Solis talking about the ‘Statusphere’ at the CLIO awards:

Lagniappe is much more than the baker’s dozen

In order to understand a baker’s dozen, we need to go back to its origin:

It dates back to the 13th century during the reign of Henry III, a.k.a ‘Henry the Turd’.  During this time there was a perceived need for regulations controlling quality, pricing and checking weights to avoid fraudulent activity. The Assize (Statute) of Bread and Ale which instituted to regulate the price, weight and quality of the bread and beer manufactured and sold in towns, villages and hamlets.

Bakers who were found to have shortchanged customers could be liable for severe punishment such as losing a hand with an axe (ouch!). To guard against the punishment, the baker would give 13 for the price of 12, to be certain of not being known as a cheat.

The irony is that the statute deals with weight and not the quantity.  The merchants created the ‘baker’s dozen’ to change perception. They understood that one of the 13 could be lost, eaten, burnt, or ruined in some way, leaving the baker with the original legal dozen.

A baker’s dozen has become expected and therefore it is not a ‘marketing lagniappe’.  Now – - if you provided a 14th bagel as part of the dozen . . . that would be a purple goldfish.

HELP me catch another 865 purple goldfish for a great cause.  Click here to send me your example.

I recently downloaded my first presentation onto Slideshare. It’s a slideshow entitled: Marketing Lagniappe – “In Search of Your Purple Goldfish”.

[Note: If you watch the slideshow, plan on manually advancing each slide by clicking the PLAY button to the right of the green PLAY button]

Here is an outline of the slideshow:

5 reasons you need to consider lagniappe
The pronunciation and origin of the word ‘lagniappe’
The two definitions of lagniappe
What is a purple goldfish?
The 4 factors that determine the growth of a goldfish
The 4 ingredients of lagniappe
Five companies that are getting it right
The V4 principle and the power of ‘word of mouse’
The 2 benefits of lagniappe
Where to get started?

Any good examples of lagniappe out there? What other companies are doing it right? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.