We hope you've been enjoying your Monday Morning Motivator. If you've received this issue for the first time - welcome aboard! It only takes a couple of minutes to start your week off right with the MMM! Be encouraged by the success or great ideas of others in your business community.

The New Truths About Your Customers

This week we want to enlighten you to the New Truth's going on in your customers minds.

Finally. The customer really is king. Several economic and technological forces are propelling a revolution in buyers’ expectations and empowering them to find better service, price and selection with little or no effort. To continue to prosper in today’s marketplace, you need to understand how this revolution has created the seven new truths about your customers.

1: Customers won't give you a second chance

Once upon a time, you could walk into your corner grocery store and the clerk, who knew you by name, would smile and ask you how your day was. At the checkout, she’d count back your change and place it neatly in your hand. And when you were leaving the store, she’d never fail to thank you for your business and ask you to return—which, of course, you would, regularly.

In stark contrast, shopping today is often fraught with clerks who avoid eye contact or pick up speed when you approach them, are indifferent to your complaints and shove your change in your hands while already pushing the next customer’s purchases through. If a simple trip to the grocery store leaves you feeling frustrated, join the crowd.

Consumers are doing more than getting upset. In fast-rising numbers, they’re taking their business elsewhere. And the proportion who are doing so after just a single bad experience is soaring. According to the 2008 Customer Satisfaction Survey by global consultancy Accenture, a New York-based global management firm, 23% of Canadian consumers said they would quit doing business with a company immediately after a bad experience, twice the level (11%) in 2007. In the same period, those who said they would speak to a supervisor before taking their business elsewhere tumbled from 49% to 36%.

2: Customers control the conversation

In 2005, New York-based journalist Jeff Jarvis, dissatisfied with Dell customer support’s attempts to resolve several problems with his new Dell laptop, started ranting about it on his now- famous blog BuzzMachine.com. Before long, other slighted Dell customers were flocking to read his “Dell Hell” account, share their own horror stories and swarm Dell’s own discussion board with complaints. Within weeks, BuzzMachine.com was the top Google search result for “Dell.” Yet the Round Rock, Tex.-based company took more than a month to respond to the online storm. By the time Dell announced it would start monitoring and responding to comments made on blogs and other social-media outlets, its reputation had taken a big hit. A firm that prided itself on its commitment to individuals and customization had become widely associated with faulty products and lousy customer service.

Unhappy consumers used to have few means to tarnish a company’s name: word of mouth and their inner circle of family, friends and colleagues. All that has changed with the sensational rise of social-media channels such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and of Web-enabled mobile devices that make it easy to complain in real time about a lousy customer experience. And the Internet’s archival nature means a bad review lingers in cyberspace. Even a fairly moderate complaint about a faulty software program or the time it took to be seated at a restaurant can leave a digital trail for other Web users to discover for months or years to come.

3: Customers expect to be heard

Gone are the days when you could bury your feedback form somewhere on your “Contact Us” page—or, heaven forbid, have no feedback form at all. Never before has feedback, and the ways in which you collect it, mattered more to your customers and, therefore, to your reputation. Web-savvy consumers, especially those who grew up with the Net, are used to providing feedback constantly. If you don’t offer them a range of channels through which they can share their frustrations and concerns (or compliments), they’ll soon find their own, often more destructive, outlets. (See Truth No. 2.) Virtually everyone has an emotional desire to be heard. The company that fulfils that need will have a huge leg up over competitors who ignore it.

4: Customers will bail if you keep them waiting

Back when your firm was in its startup phase, you probably took pride in your ability to respond to each customer enquiry as soon as it came in. Indeed, your livelihood might have depended on a fast response. But it’s time to rethink your strategy if, despite major growth in your business, you’re still personally responding to those pings on your BlackBerry at 1 a.m. (Yes, you know who you are.) Swift response time has always mattered. But in our wired, 24/7 and globalized economy, speed is king. If you can’t get back to customers quickly enough—whether by phone, blog, e-mail or face to face—someone else will.

“Ten years ago, you could take three or four days to solve a problem,” says Alice Reimer, president of Evoco Inc., a Calgary-based developer of software for managing construction projects. “Today, it’s instant coffee. Our clients [want] an instantaneous response.”

5: Customers know more than you do

It seems odd to think that your customers would be better informed about your product or service than your own company is. Yet, according to a 2007 study by New York-based market research firm Yankelovich Inc., 31% of consumers surveyed agreed that “I often know more about the products and services being sold than the people who are selling me those products and services.” That was up from 27% in 2006.

Thanks (again) to the Web, it has become far easier for consumers to do their own research and shop around before even entering a bricks-and-mortar store. Just look at the auto industry. A survey by Westlake Village, Calif.-based J.D. Power and Associates, the gold standard for consumer ratings in the sector, shows that fully 75% (up from 70% in 2007) of new-vehicle buyers do online research before setting foot on a car lot, typically visiting several automaker and consumer-ratings sites.

6: Customers see transparency as the key to credibility

The bleak economy likely has you feeling even more inclined than usual to keep your cards close to your chest. Yet it’s tough to keep bad news secret in an ultra-wired world, and if it leaks out online, the damage to your firm’s reputation can spread far and fast. On the flip side, consumers—especially younger ones glad to share on Facebook things most people used to keep private—are willing to cut you some slack if you’re forthright about your internal goings-on, including your mistakes. Being open will build the kind of “Web Cred” that makes customers interested in helping you out by offering ideas and critiques.

Dell showed how powerful transparency can be when it staged a comeback from the “Dell Hell” fiasco (see Truth No. 2) by launching Direct2Dell.com, a blog aimed at giving the firm a credible—and human—voice. Dell has used this blog to discuss problems it is having with products, including posting recall lists. The strategy quickly paid off. Just a year after the blog’s launch, Dell’s internal tracking of customer satisfaction with its brand, which had dropped to a record low of 58%, rebounded to 74%.

7: Customers insist on individual treatment

Companies have relied on Demographics 101 to distinguish among target markets since there were markets to distinguish among. But a cookie-cutter approach that analyzes consumers based on broad measures such as age, sex and income doesn’t cut it anymore. As customers become increasingly diverse, the gap between what they want—more personalized, customized service—and what companies are delivering is widening. The Accenture survey measured this gap. Customers rated “having customer-service people who know me and my history based on information I have previously provided” very highly, at 4.3 on a five-point scale. But they rated the average provider’s performance in this area a mediocre 2.9.

How is your company or business positioned to handle these truths?

Have a great week unless you choose otherwise.

Drago

PS - When the people at Green Wash Ball approached us to produce their infomercial, they requested several scenes to be built in 3D. Once scripting and story boarding was approved, we began by modeling the Green Wash Ball itself using Cinema 4D modeling software.

The scientific portion of the commercial required us to zoom into the ball to see how the ceramic beads work together to soften the water. This, of course, is only possible using 3D animation, and, is a great example of how using 3D animation to explain such a process can be very powerful and engaging. Click here and enjoy!

We also wanted to say Thank You for allowing us to meet with you every Monday Morning. The MMM has experienced incredible growth with a subscriber base of 17,323 people. We are truly grateful and humbled by the positive comments we receive weekly. If you enjoy the MMM please pass it along and let others know about it. To see our newsletter archives Click Here !

Success Profiles

This week's Success Profile is Steve Lamontagne and his company Pacific Search Group. PSG is a boutique, full service employment agency based out of beautiful South Surrey, British Columbia. PSG place's people in permanent employment roles in all sectors. They place people in the following types of roles:

Office Administration
Secretarial/ Legal Admin
Sales and Marketing
Accounting and Finance
IT & Engineering
Health Sciences
Mid Level & Senior Management

PSG does things the old fashioned way. They pride themselves on their inviting, approachable and highly personalized service. To find out more go to PacificSearchGroup.ca

The Adam Advertising Group is proud to play a small role in the on-going success of many of the companies featured in the MMM.

Can The Adam Advertising Group help your business, or do you have a success story we should hear about?
Contact Drago Adam at drago@AdamAdGroup.com
or call 604 937 -8886 or 1 866 923 - 6477

PS : We wanted to say Thank You for sharing your Monday Mornings with us. The MMM started three years ago with 35 subscribers, today's issue is going out to over 17,323 Weekly Subscribers.

Click Here! for our newsletter archive.