Customer Facing Marketing.

If this were a conference presentation, you might call these case-studies but really they're just personal customer experiences I've had this week.

1) A made to measure order from a household furnishings store. Delivery time 3 weeks "but will probably be ready in two - we'll call you". Four weeks later - no call. The response to my enquiry, "it hasn't been delivered yet, we'll call you when it is."

No apology = No repeat sales.

2) A twenty month old television explodes. It's no longer under warranty and the supplier doesn't accept (yet) that they sold me a defective product. Repair quotes vary from person to person and ultimately a sliding scale discount is offered due to age of product. Throughout the saga, the staff have been courteous and tried to help, but the processes and the incomprehensible paperwork have made it seem adversarial.

No transparency = No repeat sales.

3) A bottle of beer in a case clearly had a defective seal and I suffered a less than enjoyable taste sensation. The other bottles, so far, have been fine. I return the defective bottle to the supermarket complete with empty carton. I barely have to say a word before I receive a complete apology, a free case of beer and a gift certificate.

No arguments = No end of repeat sales.

Sainsbury's - from whom I made the smallest purchase - understand that it's all about customer service and word of mouth (and always has been). The other two don't.

No Claims Bonus.

The sign should obviously have read "Please do not touch. Even clean hands damage surfaces".

And all the others in the gallery did just that - or so I saw afterwards. But this was the first one I actually noticed. What I assume to be somebody's deliberate removal (damage) of one letter made it all the more noticeable.

The original notice delivers a message that goes unnoticed. The altered one is much more noticeable because it is visually haptic - you subconsciously feel it as well as read it.

If you just make claims, they'll be ignored. If you show them to be true, they won't be.

Measure For Measurement's Sake.

At a terrific discussion about Indian creativity this week, (where Vikram Seth was just one of the panellists), Amartya Sen spoke of how economists had spent far too long

"engaged in really silly fighting about how much mathematics to use in economics - it depends on how useful it is and sometimes it's frightfully useful - and other times it's a complete distraction.

Remember that when you're next asked about marketing ROI. And if your finance director doesn't know who Amartya Sen is, tell him or her that he's a Nobel laureate.

In economics.

Let Your Users Fill In The Blanks.

You've probably taken a Myers-Briggs pesonality test at least once in your life. You've possibly reacted with some surprise to the first personality signifier, the E or the I (which labels you extravert or introvert) because you didn't see youself as introverted. And you would have been very wrong because the Myers-Briggs' axis is not the same as the normal societal extrovert/introvert delineation.

Such presumptions abound in the corporatisation of social media. The "media" isn't about indiscriminate broadcasting of messages under the guise of socialising. The "social" isn't about transferring work and costs to you users under the guise of a conversion to collaborative media. But many organisations insist it is.

Similarly, true excellence in user experience lies in facilitating whatever users want, whenever they want it, but all too often user interfaces are about what someone else belives their user wants. They imagine they're providing a blank canvas but, in reality, they're providing their own interpretation of "blank".

If you assume or dictate, you have to be absolutely sure you're right. If you're prepared to be proactively reactive and truly put your users (with all their vagaries and demands) at the centre of all that you do, you're far more likely to find out what it is that is right.

Jangan Buang Yang Lama

Kemarin saya baru mendapatkan sebuah monitor yang lumayan masih bagus, Acer AC711 dengan ukuran 17 Inchi. Monitor ini mempunyai resolusi maksimal 1280x1024 piksel. Ukuran resolusi yang sangat-sangat mencukupi untuk kegiatan desain grafis menggunakan GIMP, dan tentu saja untuk mengerjakan skripsi. Saya sangat senang. Resolusi yang semakin besar memberi suasana “lega” ketika saya bekerja dengan desktop Linux.

Namun ada satu hal mengganjal mengenai monitor saya dan desktop Ubuntu 8.04. Karena saya hanya memakai VGA Onboard Generic (saya tak tahu detilnya, yang pasti bukan Intel), dan menggunakan driver Vesa, alhasil Ubuntu 8.04 tidak dapat memaksimalkan resolusi monitor saya secara otomatis. Ubuntu 8.04 hanya mengenali maksimum resolusi monitor mencapai 1024x768 piksel. Hmmm!

Saya jadi teringat saat dulu saya masih memakai PC PIII 500 MHz, RAM 384 dan monitor butut 14 Inchi serta Ubuntu 6.06, saya pernah menseting resolusi monitor secara manual dengan mongkonfigurasi Xserver-Xorg. Langsung saja saya jalankan lagi trik tersebut :

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

dan ternyata tidak berhasil! Bagian seting resolusi tidak ada! Waduh, ternyata setingnya sudah di ubah dan berbeda. Langsung saja saya Googling dan mendapat penyelesaian simpel, ternyata kita harus menambahkan satu baris pada konfigurasi, yaitu menjadi :

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

dan justru tidak bekerja sama sekali! Bagaimana ini?

Saya pusing, dan saya ambil jalan pintas. Saya masih punya LiveCD Install Ubuntu 6.06. Dan ajaibnya, begitu saya jalankan, Ubuntu 6.06 justru dapat mengenali monitor saya dengan sempurna. Wow! Tanpa pikir panjang, langsung saja saya copy file konfigurasi Xserver-Xorg dari LiveCD Ubuntu 6.06 yang terletak di /etc/X11/xorg.conf ke flash disk saya.

Saya masuk kembali ke desktop Ubuntu 8.04, dan saya copy file konfigurasi Xorg yang saya dapat dari LiveCD Ubuntu 6.06 tadi ke direktori Xerver Ubuntu 8.04.

$ sudo cp /media/flashdisk_saya/xorg.conf /etc/X11

(nama flashdisk tergantung label/nama flashdisk kita)

Terakhir, saya restart Xserver dengan Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, dan eureka! Monitor saya kini bekerja dengan sempurna dan dapat menampilkan resolusi maksimal 1280x1024 piksel.

Akhirnya saya pun dapat bekerja dengan jauh lebih leluasa dengan GIMP, Kolourpaint dan Inkscape.

Pelajaran paling berharga yang saya dapat dari masalah ini adalah : Jangan pernah membuang sesuatu yang lama, karena siapa tahu ada bagian dari yang lama yang dapat dipakai dengan baik pada sesuatu yang baru! Dalam hal ini saya bersyukur karena belum jadi membuang CD Ubuntu 6.06 dan akan saya simpan sebagai arsip berharga!

Happy Tux-ing !

Differentiate By Being Better.

Q. Why are so many new products so bland and derivative?

A. So many companies are competing against each other with similar agendas. Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see. A preoccupation with differentiation is the concern of many corporations rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better.

source

Markets Always Change.

At a seminar about the future of music, I heard a provocative suggestion. If every cellphone owner were prepared to pay an average annual subscription of $10 for unlimited music, the numbers would look like this.

4 billion phones x $10 = $40 billion.

Current size of music industry = $20 billion.

Crisis, what crisis? Of course, the specifics are debateable, but the point is undeniable. Change the way you look at your business and all sorts of discoveries will follow. What's this got to do with marketing. Well not that much if you view marketing solely as promotion, but when you remember that it encompasses the P of place (aka distribution) you'll agree that marketing really has to be approached with a long-term perspective. Its short-term practitioners are the problem, not a symptom.

Markets always change. Always have, always will. It's a crucial marketing discipline to anticipate and, where possible, lead those changes.

Qualitative Research.

We are all customers.

We all know what we appreciate as customers.

We all know what we detest.

So why don't we treat our customers as we would wish to be treated?

Semua Ada Penyelesaiannya

Compaq Presario CQ40

Wirelles bekerja dengan sempurna tanpa instalasi Driver tambahan

Kemarin mencoba menginstalasi Ubuntu 8.10 di Notebook Compaq Presario CQ40. Seperti biasa, semua hardware terbaca dengan sempurna, termasuk Wirelles, dan alhasil saya bisa ber-hotspot-an dengan nyaman dengan Ubuntu 8.10. Dekstop efek Compiz juga bekerja dengan sempurna di VGA Intel. Semua bekerja dengan sempurna, kecuali sound card. Ada masalah suara yang tidak normal pada sound card di Ubuntu 8.10, dan ternyata penyelesaiannya sangat sederhana.

| Penyelesaian masalah sound card notebook Compaq Presario CQ40 di Ubuntu 8.10, selengkapnya baca di sini |

How To Make Spreadable Marketing.

1) Take an understood and loved tradition, something that is already social and spreadable. Like the easter egg hunt.



2) Substitute your product and prime your passionate users ahead of time.



3) Make it simple (but not easy) and include as many people as possible.



4) Let people react to your generosity of spirit.





5) Maintain personal touch until the end.

Yang Cantik dan Elegan

Sistem operasi Mac OS X, yang juga merupakan sistem operasi satu rumpun UNIX dengan Linux, mempunyai satu daya tarik yang tak terbantahkan, yaitu pada sebuah aplikasi bernama DOCK! Dock merupakan aplikasi khas Mac OS X yang berfungsi untuk menempatkan icon-icon aplikasi atau direktori, dan juga sebagai system tray aplikasi-aplikasi yang sedang berjalan.

Karena saking menariknya, aplikasi sejenis Dock banyak dibuat untuk lingkungan desktop non-Mac. Salah satu yang sudah cukup akrab bagi kita mungkin adalah Rocketdock di desktop Windows. Lalu bagaimana dengan aplikasi Dock di dekstop Linux? Ternyata ada banyak pilihannya! Dan kali ini saya ingin bercerita tentang satu aplikasi Dock untuk dekstop Linux yang memiliki kinerja yang bagus, mudah di atur, dan menawan. Aplikasi yang saya maksud adalah Cairo-Dock! Aplikasi ini masih tergolong baru dan belum dimasukan dalam repositori distribusi mayor termasuk Ubuntu. Untuk itu kita harus mendownloadnya terlebih dahulu di | Internet |

Setelah mendownload Cairo-Dock, kita tinggal menginstalasinya :

# dpkg -i *.deb

Jangan lupa juga, kita harus menginstalasi satu dependensi agar Cairo-Dock dapat berjalan, paket tersebut adalah libgtkglext1. Karena paket tersebut sudah ada dalam repositori, kita tinggal menginstalasinya :

# apt-get install libgtkglext1

Setelah proses instalasi selesai, aplikasi Dock ada di menu System Tools. Untuk menjalankan Cairo-Dock, kita harus mengaktifkan Compositing Desktop, seperti Beryl atau Compiz. Tanpa Compositing Dekstop, Cairo-Dock tidak akan mau berjalan.

Untuk mengaturnya sangat mudah. Untuk menambah item, kita tinggal melakukan drag and dropping dari menu. Untuk setting perilaku dan sebagainya, kita tinggal klik kanan di Dock, dan ada banyak pilihan di situ. Untuk konfigurasi, ada begitu banyak pilihan. Salah satu pilihan yang paling saya sukai adalah menjalankan Cairo-Dock bellow opened windows . Secara keseluruhan, menurut saya Cairo-Dock jauh lebih baik daripada Avant-Window-Navigator.

Satu kekurangan Cairo-Dock tentu saja aplikasi ini hanya dapat berjalan pada Compositing Desktop. Bagi kita yang punya PC tua tanpa VGA add-on yang cukup (misal 32 MB VGA), kita tidak akan dapat menjalankan Cairo-Dock.

Selamat menikmati Dock!

Destressing Customers.

I had to register a death last week. An uncommon event for me, but a run of the mill occurrence for the public servants providing the service. So you'd think that the anxiety level of their "customers" would be second nature to them and that any potential glitches would be approached with that in mind.

On the other hand, they might choose to retreat to a default position of ensuring that they covered themselves and their job description regardless of the customer service deficiencies that encapsulates.

It's an extreme example I know, but it has parallels in every business. Ideally, you're making sales and meeting customer needs every day whereas your customers are making those purchases far less frequently. Repetition may cause you to forget that fact. That's only natural.

But it's your job to remember each and every time how stressed your customer potentially is and how long-lasting an impression you can make by easing that stress. Or not.

Are You Talking To Me?

My local library service is changing its online offering - and is doing so by having no online presence for three weeks while they switch it over. Worse still, their warnings about this were couched in terms of the catalogue being unavailable. That might mean something to the IT guys who wrote it but to this user, it certainly didn't suggest that all functionality would vanish and one would have to trek to the library to renew one's loans.

If you're talking to your users, then

1)Speak their language, not yours. Pre-warning is no use if it's vague. In fact, it's worse than useless - it increases the likelihood of irritation.

2)Remember that any project serves the user and not vice versa. Make sure the user experience is paramount.

3)Don't sugar-coat things - detailing the downside will not put people off as much as a nasty surprise further down the line.

In other words, make it easy for them to listen.