Brand Autopsy

Recently Ben McConnell (Church of the Customer) shared his perspective on the distinction between Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and Buzz. (It’s a good read.)

His post rekindled some of my thoughts on Creationist WOM vs. Evolutionist WOM (video clip). The Creationist WOM marketing mindset is about making the marketing activity something to talk about as in attention-grabbing stunts and gimmicks. The Evolutionist WOM mindset is about making a company’s products, services, and or experiences worth talking about.

Creationist WOM marketers believe Word-of-Mouth just a marketing issue. While, Evolutionist WOM marketers believe Word-of-Mouth is an everyday business issue.

We’ve seen Creationist WOM theory at work recently with Denny’s stunt of giving away 2-million Grand Slam breakfasts for free and all the gimmicky commercials shown during the Super Bowl.

Specific instances of Evolutionist WOM theory at work are more difficult to notice. That’s because these marketing activities are not supposed to be easily noticed by customers. These activities are simply how a business does business. It’s less about marketing and more about how an interesting business operates everyday.

There’s a burger joint in Austin, TX that brilliantly practices Evolutionist WOM thinking — Mighty Fine Hamburgers.

No stunts. No gimmicks. No one-off marketing ploys. All Mighty Fine does is earn opinions by serving up remarkable burgers in remarkable ways.

Let me count some of these remarkable ways.

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#1 – The Queue
Total cattle call. I’ve never been to Mighty Fine when the queue wasn’t at least 10 people deep. You go expecting to wait in line. Anticipation heightens the senses. Besides, long lines that move fast mean a restaurant is doing something right, right?

#2 – Fun Language
If you want Mustard, you gotta say, “Yeller.” “Red” gets you Ketchup and “White” gets you Mayonnaise. Mighty Fine could have gone the common, boring route with Mustard, Ketchup, and Mayonnaise. They didn’t. They decided to make the common uncommon. So uncommon that it’s worth talking about.

#3 – Service
Ask a Mighty Fine employee behind the counter how they’re doing and you’ll likely hear, “Mighty Fine.” They smile. They laugh. They look like they are having fun. Which all benefits the customer experience. Mighty Fine prides itself on hiring only “A Players” who are positive, supportive, and cooperative. To attract “A Players,” they pay above-average wages and offer much better than expected benefits. Mighty Fine knows by astonishing employees, they in turn, will astonish customers.

#4 – Assurance
When placing your order, the Mighty Fine employee writes all your requests directly on the bag. To close the order, the employee again goes over everything with you to best ensure you get exactly the burger you ordered. This process takes time but I’m sure it cuts down on mistakes. As a customer, I appreciate the thoroughness because it brings about assurance.

#5 – Picnic Tables
Old-school family-style picnic tables. Nothing fancy. Nothing fancy needed at a burger joint. This family-style seating makes it comfortable for all ages and helps to encourage conversations between customers from different parties.

#6 – Theater
Taking a page from Krispy Kreme's doughnut theater, Mighty Fine lifts the veil on some of their prep work. The window is wide open for everyone to see the ground chuck getting hand-formed into patties. The krinkle-cut fry cutter is always-on with an employee shooting whole potatoes down the cutting chute. The hamburger cooking and shake-making stations are just behind the counter for everyone to see. Mighty Fine has nothing to hide. It’s operations are in full view of every customer. (Unlike most burger joints.)

#7 – Quality
100% natural beef. Ground in-store. Hand-formed in-store. Fresh cut crinkle-cut fries. Sea Salt is the only salt used. Custom-made beef franks. Hand-dipped and hand-spun milkshakes. Quality is everything to Mighty Fine because they believe quality ingredients produce the tastiest food. (Hard to argue with Mighty Fine here.)

#8 – Smiles
Everywhere you look customers are having a good time. I’m a touch cynical; however, my cynicism subsides when inside Mighty Fine. A good hamburger in a family-friendly setting appeals to young, old, and everyone in-between. (Including this hardened marketer.)

#9 – Mighty Tasty
My Dad is a burger aficionado. In his nearly 75 years, Al Moore has cooked and eaten a lot of burgers. He’s burger expert if there could be one. After visiting Mighty Fine in January, he’s been talking about it with his circle of friends. I asked him what he tells people about Mighty Fine and this is what he says, “The place is awesome. Lots of production people, each knowing their job. The product is even more awesome — a top-notch hamburger. To my surprise, the family-style works. I’ll be back.” That’s one helluva endorsement.

#10 – Job Recruitment
Instead of a pamphlet by the soda machine to attract new hires, Mighty Fine uses a classic grocery store number dispenser like we used to use at the butcher counter. This dispenser is prominently located in the entry/exit way area for potential new hires to see going in and going out. A sign above the dispenser says, “Apply Now.” You pull the ticket and it directs you to a website to learn more information and to apply online. Again, Mighty Fine is simply making the common uncommon. Nice touch.

#11 – Clean Hands
It’s a “jacuzzi for your hands.” That’s what the hand washer says used at Mighty Fine. It’s the same hand washer employees use, so you know it is more sanitary than the common hand sink washer. Kids clamor to use this hand jacuzzi. Parents are always seen lifting up their kids in order for their hands to fit inside the washer. Of course, parents use it too because it’s just so unique you have to use it. Yet again … another way Mighty Fine takes something common and makes it so uncommon it's worth talking about.

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Every one of these 11 examples are WOM-worthy. Each one showcases how Mighty Fine turns mundane business matters into something so special that they earn opinions from customers. Because these activities earn opinions, people talk. And because people talk, there is always a line at Mighty Fine. And because there is always a line, Mighty Fine has opened a second location.

Mighty Fine doesn’t need gimmicks to get customers talking. It just does business every day in such a way that people gladly talk about it.

Mighty Fine understands the importance of Word of Mouth. How do I know? This sign displayed in the exit way tells me...

[I'm on a visual kick these days.]

Let your marketing mind wrestle with David Armano's nifty depiction of the ladder up to Brand Heaven and the ladder down to Brand Hell. Good Stuff!

The Simpsons movie tie-in with 7-11 got lots of digital ink last summer. Marketers, like Jake McKee, raved about it and shared photos galore. Evangelists created a blog about it. Even Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield cooed about it.

No doubt ... 3 out of 4 marketers would agree this movie promotion was a creative success. What about a sales success? After all, sales is the true measure of a marketing campaign.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the promotion was a sales success.

"The 7-Eleven chain ... saw major sales lifts at the 11 U.S. stores that were converted for the month of the promotion. The company says total merchandise sales doubled; fresh bakery sales increased sevenfold and customer count went up almost 50%.

Moreover, 7-Eleven says the promotion garnered about $7 million in free publicity. The 7-Eleven Web site on July 11 received 10,420,730 hits. The site typically gets an average of about 400,000 hits a day."

Despite the hype, despite the activation issues, and despite the myriad drawbacks, buyers of the iPhone are a very happy bunch. So says a recent study from Interpret of 200 iPhone buyers.

According to the study, 90% of iPhone buyers surveyed are either extremely or very satisfied with the phone and 85% of them will recommend the iPhone to a friend.

Other interesting tid-bits from the survey include:
>> 30% of iPhone buyers are first-time Apple customers
>> 50% of iPhone buyers switched cellphone carriers
>> 35% of these switchers paid, on average, $167 to make the switch
>> iPhone users are expected to pay $35 more in monthly service fees

Is it unrealistic for us to expect businesses to be perfect? Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment by expecting businesses to flawlessly deliver every single time? As customers, are we expecting perfection when perfection is unattainable? Is that fair of us?

I’m not trying to make excuses for when businesses fail us. But failure happens. No business is perfect. Yet, we seem to expect businesses to be perfect all the time. One poor encounter with a company’s customer service rep sets many of us off into a rage against that business. One misstep by a company spoils everything for many of us. A series of cancelled flights and thousands of stranded customers can trigger a major backlash. (Yep, I’m talking JetBlue here.)

JetBlue messed up BIG-TIME. No doubt about it. They failed their customers in unimaginable ways. We now know JetBlue is far from perfect. But was it realistic for us to expect JetBlue to be perfect?

No business is perfect. NONE. Business is a game of progress, not perfection. No business will be perfect. It's an impossibly unattainable goal. But while that goal is unattainable, the most endearing and enduring businesses seem to always aspire to reach perfection. They always make progressive steps to improve their business and how their business connects with people. Sure, they will stumble along the way. But the true measure of a company is how they recover and forge ahead making progress along the way to overcome their mistakes.

No person is perfect. NO ONE. As people we also mess up BIG-TIME. We constantly make bad decisions that harm others. We disappoint friends. We betray people’s trust. We cannot achieve perfection. Doesn't mean we should give up and not try. The most endearing and enduring people I know make progress every day to improve themselves and their relationships with others. And when people see progress being made, they are willing to forgive mistakes.

Thank goodness people are so forgiving. Otherwise, I wouldn't have any friends. I've pissed off enough people in enough ways to not have friends. Lucky for me, people are forgiving. I still have some friends. Lost some along the way—but the ones I still have are great.

I think JetBlue can recover. I think customers have it in their hearts to forgive them for messing up BIG-TIME. It'll take time though as well as diligent focus from every JetBlue employee to make progress in earning back trust and friendship from customers.

In GOOD TO GREAT, Jim Collins says one factor that determines which companies go from being good to being great is how they deal with adversity. He says that many of the good-to-great companies he studied faced a company-defining crisis. According to Collins, what separates the winners from the losers is how they confronted and responded to the crisis …

“The good-to-great companies faced just as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently. They hit the realities of their situation head-on. As a result, they emerged from adversity even stronger."

JetBlue is considered a good airline. How they confront and respond to this crisis will determine if they can ever progress to becoming a great airline. Time will tell if JetBlue can make the good-to-great leap.

Mark Hurst over at the Good Experience blog posted his 10 steps for becoming the VP of Customer Experience at your company.

He speaks of forming stakeholder groups and offshoot ad-hoc teams, implementing “skunk work” projects, and championing the cause throughout the organization.

Good stuff ... but his 10-step process could use an extra step … a step zero.

For anyone wanting to be a VP of Customer Experience, especially at an offline retailing business, start at STEP ZERO and immerse yourself fully in the role of the front-line employee and treat every interaction with customers and fellow employees as a learning experience.

Experience your business as employees and customers do by GETTING OUT OF THE OFFICE and GETTING INTO THE STORE!!!!

Learn first-hand the nuances of the customer experience from the employee perspective.

Learn the challenges front-line employees experience in delivering consistently good experiences to customers.

Learn how front-line employees can be better equipped with tools, resources, motivation, and training to deliver consistently great experiences.

Learn how to better design store layouts and improve merchandising sets from watching and helping customers navigate through the retail environment.

Learn how to improve upon products/services offered by hearing first-hand feedback from customers and by seeing how customers interact with products on the selling floor.

And when you return to the office to form teams of stakeholders charged with improving the Customer Experience, don’t forget to include the most important stakeholder – THE CUSTOMER.

It’s just as much a necessity, and maybe more of an imperative, to include the Customer perspective in Customer Experience projects just as you include the perspectives of marketers, product developers, and operators.

Steven Bigari, a McDonald’s franchisee, has dramatically increased the efficiency of his 12 McDonald's by reducing its drive-through order time by 30 seconds to a little more than one-minute per transaction. (That’s well below the McDonald’s drive-through average order time of two-minutes thirty-six seconds.)

Plus, this McDonald’s franchisee has increased the number of cars his drive-throughs handle by 15% from 226 cars per hour to 260 cars.

“This transforms my business. It’s bigger than drive-through,” contends Bigari.

What in the name of the Hamburgler is going on here? How can a McDonald’s record such startling order-taking efficiency?

To achieve such efficiency, Mr. Bigari has done the seemingly radical … he has outsourced his drive-through order taking function to a call center in Colorado Springs.

Yes, he has outsourced order-taking at his McDonald’s to a call center.

“Cheap, quick and reliable telecommunications lines let the order takers in Colorado Springs converse with customers in Missouri, take an electronic snapshot of them, display their order on a screen to make sure it is right, then forward the order and the photo to the restaurant kitchen. People picking up their burgers never know that their order traverses two states and bounces back before they can even start driving to the pickup window.” [source: New York Times article from 7.18.04 (registration req’d)]

What has been the reaction at McDonald’s Corporate offices? McDonald’s is intrigued and has started a small drive-through call center test with three locations near its Oak Brook, IL headquarters. However, McDonald’s is focusing its resources more on other customer service improvement areas such as installing wi-fi access in its restaurants and introducing credit card/debit card payment options.

Pleased with the results of his order-taking outsourcing system, Mr. Bigari now offers customers the option of ordering from their table using a phone and parents watching over their kids in the playground areas can phone-in orders and have their food delivered.

Hmm … whattaya think about this? How do you think this would impact your “experience” at McDonald’s? As long as you get your order faster and more accurate, do you care if a “call center” takes your order?

I know one thing, out-sourcing the drive-through order taking function will make the “drive-through incoherent garble” a thing of the past … which is a good thing.

Further learning:
New York Times article on Mr. Bigari's drive-through call center
Brand Autopsy post on McDonald’s testing self-service kiosks
Fast Company article on self-service kiosks

Fast Company needs our help to determine which companies provide the best customer experiences. To find their list of best-in-class companies, Fast Company worked with a panel of customer service and customer experience experts.

(Rumor tells me Brand Examiner Paul is one of their experts. Does that mean Paul was once a pert? I never knew Paul to be a pert. Neverthess, Paul is now an expert. Who know?)

Anyway, click here to learn more about Fast Company's Customer Experience Awards or click here to head straight to the voting booth.

From the recently launched Experience Economy Evangelist blog, I happened upon a trove of “experience economy” articles from the renowned experiential marketing provocateurs - Joseph Pine and James Gilmore.

I perused a few of these 41 articles and Pine and Gilmore never stray from their well articulated message of creating customer experiences. If you are already intimately familiar with the experience economy approach, then you might not learn much new from these articles. However, you are sure to reinforce your understanding by reading some of them.

Click here to gain access to the trove of articles.

If you are in need a refresher course on the Experience Economy, read this article.

In this article, published in late 2002, Pine and Gilmore offer Major League Baseball tactical suggestions on how to better sell the MLB experience. I especially liked the following snippet of advice:

Stop managing minutia, like trying in vain to speed up the game (after all, baseball’s uniqueness is centered on the absence of a time-keeping clock). Instead, strive to get customers to spend more time (and money) at the ballpark—before, during, and after each game.

Baseball is in the experience business, so it should stop acting like a goods manufacturer (talk of the “product” on the field perpetuates this erroneous positioning).

Promotions based on giving away goods are no longer enough. Today, people desire unique experiences that engage them in a distinctively personal way. If Dennis Tito will pay $20 million to labor as a space tourist, what experiences might command fees orders of magnitude above today’s ticket prices from fanatically enthusiastic and wealthy fans, while simultaneously driving increased ticket sales?

Take a few moments and listen to NPR’s Bob Edwards talking with Fast Company’s Charles Fishman about his recent article “The Toll of a New Machine.” (Fascinating stuff.)

In the article and in the radio interview, Charles examines how automated self-service kiosks are increasing efficiency, productivity, and the customer’s experience at McDonald’s, Continental Airlines, and Northwest Airlines.

This troubles me … greatly.

I cannot argue with the extraordinary results these kiosks are having at 48 McDonald’s pilot locations. Sales volume has increased by 20% and the average ticket has increased by 33% from $3.00 per transaction to $4.00 per transaction. As sales have increased, so has the store staff. Every McDonald’s involved in the kiosk pilot program has hired two or three additional employees in order to keep up with rising consumer demand.

Again, this troubles me … greatly.

I am troubled because automated self-service kiosks are one more way that commoditization is seeping into the retail buying experience. While every kiosk experience will be different, I fear kiosks, of this kind, will level the playing field for retailers and drive the human equation out of the retail experience.

But wait … commoditization has already changed the game at airlines, fast food restaurants, and grocery stores. Players in these industries have lost practically all their pricing power already because customers do not perceive differences between most airlines, fast food restaurants, and grocery stores. Installing kiosks will help to differentiate these companies from one another … that is until the novelty wears off and kiosks become standard practice at every airline, fast food spot, and grocer.

Okay … I am not so troubled anymore.

After all, there will still be businesses that focus on high-touch human interactions and not on high-tech kiosk transactions. These businesses will continue to appeal to consumers willing to trade up for a more meaningful one-on-one experience.

I’m 100% fine now. No need for the marketing paramedics. Nothing out of the ordinary going on here. You can all go home now.

But before you go, one more thing. While I've enjoyed getting my airline boarding pass faster through kiosks, I’ve also endured the painful process of being stuck behind befuddled passengers who are clueless as to how to use a touch-screen display. Let’s hope the consumer adoption curve for adapting to self-service kiosks ramps up quickly so we never have to get stuck behind the befuddled and clueless again.