The Bubble of Optimism

There’s a bubble that surrounds Silicon Valley.

It’s not the kind of the bubble that is about to burst and cause markets to crash and people to lose fortunes.

Rather it’s a bubble of optimism that drives innovation, creates jobs and represents everything that is right and great about America.

While the rest of the country was going through the great recession the people who lead and work for the companies in Silicon Valley refused to participate in the recession.

They were too busy trying to change the world.

While companies and businesses around the country were closing their doors and people were losing their jobs and homes, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google and thousands of other innovators and start-ups were changing the way we communicate, connect, learn, read, search, interact, live and work.

In Silicon Valley there is a bubble of optimism that is filled with a collective belief that anything is possible. If you have a great idea it gets funded. If you are willing to innovate and work hard the American Dream is very much alive and available to you. If you believe and you can execute and turn this belief into a reality, you can change the world.

The innovators of Silicon Valley are alchemists who turn ideas into gold. Where others see what is impossible, they see what is possible. While others see them as crazy, they see the future.

When a new idea or product fails they come up with a better idea and a better business. Failure is accepted as a part of innovation and growth. Ideas are tested and the best ones win. When old management techniques no longer work the innovators create new practices to make meetings productive (Jack Dorsey at Twitter and Square), engage employees (Duarte), and extract the genius and ideas inside each of their employees (Google).

Silicon Valley embodies the can-do spirit, creativity, drive and courage that made and will continue to make America the birthplace of ideas and innovations that change the world. But you don’t have to live in the valley to embrace their approach.

Amazon and Starbucks have created a bubble of optimism and innovation in Seattle. Zappos has found happiness in Las Vegas. GM and the big auto companies are powering forward with new ideas and making world class cars in Detroit. And thousands of technology start-ups located in cities and universities across the United States are dreaming of ways to change the world.

Every business, wherever they are located, can create a bubble of optimism that inspires them to think differently, act differently and lead differently.

And you don’t have to be a technology company to surround your business with a bubble of optimism. Whether you are a traditional big company or a small business there is a new idea or a better way of doing something waiting for someone to implement it.

The question is, are you bold enough, optimistic enough and even crazy enough to do it!
If you are, you just might change the world!

"The People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think They Can Change the World, Are the Ones Who Do" -Steve Jobs

 Do you agree or disagree with this article? Why?

- Jon Gordon

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Creative Problem Solving Can Lead to Amazing Customer Service

The story you’re about to read is a five-star, scale of one to ten – give them an eleven – amazing customer service story.

First, some background. It’s obvious we’re in a tough economy, but somehow there are businesses that continue to charge higher prices than their competition. Department stores like Nordstrom’s and Neiman Marcus are not known for bargain prices, yet even in these tough economic times, they pack their stores with buying customers. A fancy upscale restaurant somehow always seems to be busy. How do they do it? Their value proposition is simple. Combine a quality product with excellent customer service. Focus on those two areas and a business can increase their chances of success, regardless of the economy and competition.

As an example, here is one of the best customer service stories I’ve heard in a long time.

Whole Foods is an upscale chain of grocery stores known for fresh, organic and higher-end food choices. Along with those higher-end choices comes higher prices. When you charge more, you have to up your game. You not only have to offer higher quality products, your customer service has to be strong enough to help make the price less relevant.

My friend Kim Tucci went to Whole Foods to buy some groceries. He couldn’t find the whipped cream. He went up to a food counter and asked Zifa where he could find the whipped cream. Most employees in this situation would have said something like, “You can find it halfway down aisle four.” That would have been sufficient. However, Zifa is not like most employees, and Whole Foods is not your average grocery store.  Zifa came around the counter and actually took my friend to where the whipped cream should have been, but there was no whipped cream to be found. Apparently the store was out of whipped cream.

At this point a smile and an apology would have been sufficient, but remember, Zifa is not like most employees and Whole Foods is not your ordinary grocery store.   Zifa asked my friend, Kim, if he had anymore shopping to do, and to come back to her counter in five minutes.

As Kim was telling me the story I’m thinking that this is similar to the legendary Nordstrom story, where the salesperson went to another store in the mall to buy the customer an item that they were out of and resold it to the customer. This was not the case. Remember, Zifa is not like… Okay you get it.

What Zifa did puts her into the Customer Service Amazement Hall of Fame. She went back and made Kim a container of fresh, “homemade” whipped cream. When Kim came back he was… Amazed!

The Lesson: Customer service is more than saying, please, thank you and being nice. When Zifa came around the counter to take Kim to where the whipped cream should have been, she was taking an extra step. Yes, that’s great customer service, but she did even more than that. When she realized the store was out of the product, she became a problem solver. To sum this up, here is a question: What initiative do you (and your employees) take to solve your customers’ problems?

YOUR FAVORITE CUSTOMER SERVICE STORY:  Do you have a favorite customer service story?  Please post on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/shoppersinc

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Better Strategic Decisions Via Customer Feedback

How customer satisfaction surveys are helping companies to avoid bad decisions

A recent retail study by ForeSee Results points to a key error being made by retailers during the down economy.   Their finding that retailers were acting without solid customer feedback — by assuming that price was the key competitive factor — was leading to erosion of revenues where price cutting wasn’t required.

More than anything, this points to the fact that customer feedback — in a highly actionable form — is no longer an option for companies in their business infrastructure.   The “expert” input of customers (who knows your customers better than themselves) is a mandatory part of your company’s decision making processes.

The dangers of not leaning on customer feedback are obvious — take the tendency to get into pricing wars during a down economy — where some customers are more concerned about getting a clear perception of value rather than simply getting the lowest price.  All this confirms that if customer feedback systems can deliver actionable data to the right members of your team, it can play a key role in maintaining growth during challenging economic times.

A recent post on the 1 to 1 Media blog points to IVR experience as a key factor in customer satisfaction. Aside with the frequency with which customers interact with IVRs, they are often poorly conceived with limited customer input (more focused on internal company process requirements).  Companies we work with expressed surprise that IVR systems could play such a significant role in their customer relationships — again pointing to the importance of end-to-end timely and actionable customer feedback across the entire range of interactions between companies and their customers.

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Gauging Customer Satisfaction

  

A customer satisfaction survey can help you dramatically improve your products, your service and, ultimately, your business.

May 1, 2009

Are your customers happy with your products and services? If you don’t know, just ask them. Developing a customer satisfaction survey doesn’t have to be complex. In fact, the easier you make it on both yourself and your customers, the more likely you are to receive the honest answers that can help you dramatically improve your products, your service and, ultimately, your business. According to business information resource CCH Business Owners Toolkit, there are really only two key areas to think about when creating a simple survey:

1. Ensuring that it covers all the key business activities — This generally includes products, services and support, delivery, ordering and billing and interactions with you and your employees.

2. Making it easy to complete — Keep it free of rankings of quality (e.g., a scale of one to five) and lengthy questions, and stick to key business activities with space to respond. You should also be able to keep it to one page, which increases the likelihood that customers will take the time to respond and makes faxing easier.

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