Companies that refer to themselves as Global do so to illustrate their ability to operate around the world and of course to give the impression of size, reliability and capability. However, I am constantly surprised at the number of companies that refer to themselves in that way but really mean they have operations in other countries. Operations that have no integration, no common systems and no ability to work together, so much for Global.

Global Companies: A Tale of Two Countries

I recently wanted to fulfill a wish from one of my daughters for her birthday. She had found a necklace sold by Tiffany & Co. It was her 21st birthday and given that the necklace was very reasonably priced I wanted to get it for her. I live in the US, she lives in the UK. Usually this is not a problem. I either have whoever I am ordering from ship direct or I go to their UK website and order from there. I do this all the time with Amazon and it works without fail.

However the Tiffany US website, having led me through their checkout process, doesn’t allow for international shipping addresses. Ok no problem I’ll use the Tiffany UK website, I go through the same checkout process only to find that their payment screen doesn’t allow International billing addresses. Undaunted by this I phone the Tiffany helpline, where a very helpful support person informs me that they are familiar with this issue, that they are working on a solution and that they are sorry to have caused a problem. She then tells me the solution is to phone the nearest store to where my daughter lives in the UK and have them ship it. She even provides me with the telephone number – great service.

I phone the UK store, explain what I am trying to do only to be told that they can’t take international payments, her advice was to go to my local Tiffany store buy the item there and ship it myself!

Tiffany fails on being a Global company in my book – they definitely need to be able to transact across borders.

Global Companies: A Further Tale of Two Countries

So I bought the necklace at my local store and then headed to Fedex, because after all they are an global shipping company. I filled out the requisite paperwork and then discovered that the Fedex could not find the city that the package was going to. In fact the assistant in the store referred to the destination as “some small country”!

Fedex failed because their people are trained to believe what the system tells them and not use their initiative. In the end I took my package to the Post Office, who within minutes had it addressed, labelled and on its way to the UK – also for a lot less than Fedex would have charged me.

Global Means Integration

So the lesson here is, if you are going to refer to your organization as Global or anything else for that matter make sure you can actually deliver on those claims. If you are going to be a global company then you need a lot more than a store in another country.

What are your experiences with global businesses?

Image used under CC license from Gerry Balding

What happens on the internet stays on the internet – or so they say, how many times have you been warned that posting things on websites might come back to haunt you in years to come? Once again this week has disproved that to me. Two of the services that I have been using for more than 18 months have announced they are closing down this month.

The Internet: Temporary Happens

Earlier this year one of my favorite social location sharing apps was closed down. Whrrl which was created by Pelago and subsequently bought and shut down by Groupon – I wrote about my disappointment at the time – took with it a great community, of course I am still connected with some of those individuals on other platforms, but not in the same way.

This week Yap – a voicemail management app I have been using for quite sometime shut down. They sent out an email earlier in the month and within weeks had closed their doors. I will miss reading the sometimes hilarious transcripts of voicemails the service emailed me. Their premise was that they were more accurate than Google Voice in their transcripts – a claim which never really panned out – but nonetheless I really liked the service for its ease of use and the way it allowed for really deep personalization of what is, for the most part, an impersonal service – voicemail.

Also this week I discovered that Retaggr is closing up shop. Retaggr does what About.Me and other similar services do, except that they do it (or did it) in a more professional less ‘me too” way and they were around earlier. The link on my Twitter profile has gone to my Retaggr page for a couple of years now and I met the team at SXSW a couple of years ago. Their announcement says that the principals have all moved on to other projects and that they just don’t have the time to sustain the service anymore.

The Search For Alternatives

Of course when a service you have been using for sometime decides to close up shop you are left with the problem of finding an alternative. With web services that is becoming increasingly less difficult because good ideas are usually copied quite quickly. The problem is that finding an alternative that is more likely to last than the previous one you chose is not easy. As solid as they seem we, as users, have little insight into the dynamics inside a company and whether or not there is any sustainability.

Yap I have replaced with Google Voice. I am undecided about what to replace Retaggr with (suggestions welcome), I’m not wholly sold on the about.me model to be honest. Whrrl was irreplaceable and will forever be just a fond memory for me.

With Great Audiences Comes Great Responsibility

What the stories of Yap and Retaggr tell is that people with great ideas often can complete the early execution, but fail to realize that the sustaining their idea is hard work. It isn’t glamorous, it can be, and for a lot of the time, is digging ditches. You have to not only love the idea but want to commit to it. It’s the difference between dating and marriage. For what it is worth, I think the guys at Retaggr could have easily sold their site on Flippa and at least allowed the service another chance to continue.

But when you are done, you are done and you move on. Leaving behind the detritus of that period – the trouble is that the detritus often includes users with long memories. When the creators resurface with another new “service” they have lost trust from potential users who remember their last encounter. Why should they support your reincarnation? Its a lesson that many an entrepreneur would do well to learn early.

What are the services you can’t do without?

image used under CC by Peter Kaminski

There are a lot of people who will tell you, in great detail if you let them, about Social Media ROI. These people do not know what they are talking about. If you hire a consultant or have an in-house “specialist” who insists on talking in these terms I, with all respect, suggest you fire them immediately.

The Myth of Social Media ROI

Let’s clarify here, while I do not deny that there are returns to be made from making an investment in social media, social media ROI does not exist in the terms that it is usually couched in. ROI or Return on Investment is a financial term, usually defined in the following way:

In terms of social media what the “guru’s” will tell you is that if your investment in social media leads to, say an increase in the number of “likes” on your Facebook business page, that equates to social media ROI. You have invested a certain amount of time and in return you got a certain amount of gain in the “awareness” of your brand – ROI, simple. I have one word for this, however, out of respect for you the reader I won’t use that particular word, instead I will say, rubbish.

“Likes” are not Social Media ROI

So how should we define that number, the number of “likes”, the number of new “followers”, the number of “blog posts” written? The correct term for this is engagement metrics. Engagement metrics are definitely a valid form of measurement and something that should be tracked over time, trended, analysed and folded into the broader marketing analysis. What they are not is a way of making it seem like the social media plan is revolutionizing the bottom line analysis.

Unless you can specifically measure money earned - money spent /money spent from your social media campaign, don’t try to convince people that you have an ROI number. Of course there is the argument that you should in fact be building this type of tracking into your social media campaigns anyway. Unfortunately in a lot of organizations social media sits somewhere between PR and Marketing and is therefore allowed to get away with “well its hard to tell” in terms of bottom line impact. This type of excuse used to be associated with Out of Home advertising, where the rough measure was automobile traffic that went past the billboard – even this area has become much more sophisticated, especially with the advent of digital signage and tracking has become less of a finger in the wind measurement and much more of a real number.

Show Me The Money In Social Media ROI

If something as vague as a billboard can be measured in real terms, then how much easier is it to track your social media efforts back to the point of sale, given the number of channels that social media marketers can exploit it is and should be a lot easier than many would lead you to believe. So the next time someone tries to convince you that the numbers they are showing you are social media ROI ask to see the currency symbols in front of those numbers.

Walmart has changed the way a lot of companies do business. From being accused of stifling local competitors to changing the way electronics giant Apple sells its products. From selling groceries the chain, the largest retailer in the world, sells everything from automotive parts, through clothing to the latest in electronics. They offer banking services (through local partnerships), automotive servicing, have McDonald franchises in-store, offer low cost pharmacy prescriptions. So what would your job look like if Walmart moved into your space and offered the services you offer?

Walmart as Role Model

I know a lot of people will be horrified to see that headline. Walmart as a role model is not the image that most companies want their people to think of. Certain sections of the media lambasts the “people of Walmart” using their customers to highlight things that are wrong with the overall population in the US. But take a step back from that for a moment and consider how the retailer has grown in many different directions. Five years ago could anyone have imagined that Walmart would be selling iPads or be the first retailer to sell iPhones outside of an Apple store?

More and more businesses are realizing that if they want to bring their product to a mass audience then partnering with Walmart is the way to do it. Apply that thinking to your business, what do you bring to the table that would make other companies want to partner with you and have you offer their services or have them offer your services?

Walmart As Your Competitor

Imagine you woke up this morning to the news that Walmart was now offering the same services as you provide. What is your response? How are you going to change your business model to adapt to the fact that the world’s biggest has moved into your space? This might sound like a ridiculous proposition after all is Walmart really going to offer what you do? Maybe not but consider who the Walmart of your industry is and think of it in those terms. In a tough economy it is not that unheard of for large organizations to start spreading their net wider to capture smaller accounts, ones that they would have ignored in the past.

Do you have a strategy in place or even a few random thoughts about how that would impact you or would you just give up? Planning for something, even if it is extremely unlikely is a good exercise in improving your overall business. What are you not doing for your clients that you could be doing. Who could you partner with to expand your offerings, what products or services exist that are complimentary to your core offerings that would make your clients even less likely to move away from you as their provider?

Walmart and service

While the level of service varies from store to store and the lines at checkouts vary in length, what can’t be disguised is that Walmart wants to help it’s customers. It’s even written on the back of their staff vests. Are you that obvious with your customer service? Do you truly wear your love of your customers and clients on your sleeve? Behind closed doors I don’t know of a single service or product provider who hasn’t railed against their customers – some days are just like that, the frustrations, the complaints that are unjustified, those difficult people that you just can’t seem to please. We’ve all been there. How you handle them and how you leave the situation is what counts.

Think about that for a moment, would you honestly wear that vest to your next networking event? Can you honestly say that you want what’s best for your customer or do you just want the next invoice paid? In tough economic times it can be hard to find the balance between your own needs and that of your customers. Doing so however can lead to huge rewards, placing you as the go to place for your customers. Suddenly, at least in your corner of the world, you become the Walmart for your customers, a provider of all their needs.

So how would Walmart do your job?

Like millions of others around the world I watched the Super Bowl last night. I watched for two reasons, firstly, on Friday of last week I predicted that the Green Bay Packers would win using Social Location Marketing data from MomentFeed. I did this more as an experiment but the point of the experiment was to show firstly what you can predict with the right data and secondly to show that mature data sets exist for Location. So I had to see if my prediction was correct. As you know, it was. The second reason I watched the Super Bowl was for the ads. Now I know that is a bit like the guy caught with a copy of Playboy who says he only reads it for the articles but seriously I like ads so the Super Bowl is a great opportunity to see what the best creative minds are coming up with this year. I think a lot of people had high expectations for the Super Bowl XLV ads.

The Super Bowl XLV Ads

Overall I have to say I was somewhat disappointed. The ads consisted of either flat jokes or rehashes of someone elses ideas. This of course made the few standouts easier to spot. Here are my favorites by category and then my overall favorite.

Automotive Category

Without a doubt VW stole the show with their Darth Vader kid ad. It combined the cutesy, the informative, and the unexpected. It had great appeal. I don’t think it will be particularly long lived but I do think it worked very well as a Super Bowl ad.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN41zcXJjmk

Runner up for me was Kia’s One Epic Ride. I loved last years rapping hamsters for the Kia Soul had VW not done what they did this would have been my winner.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGj6iSZvak

Electronics Category

Best Buy definitely gets my vote here. For nothing else than the humor of their ad and the use of Ozzy Osborne with the classic line “What’s a Beiber?”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS9sUm5Y0sg

Motorola Xoom made an appearance but sadly opted to go the route of positioning themselves against Apple users and trying to indicate that Apple users are all clones. I’m not an Apple fan but seriously if you want to win market share I don’t think trying to alienate the largest user segment in the market is the way to do it. I would have preferred them to show off the awesome capabilities of the device. Definitely disappointing.

Consumer Category

Of course Doritos is on the lips of everyone this morning (pun intended) they produced some humorous and at times slightly disgusting ads that definitely appealed to the audience. Here is my personal favorite of the Doritos ads.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0UHDIJyJhA

I honestly think that Doritos dominated this category and left little room for others worth mentioning. Career Builder with its monkeys continued a theme they have used before. GoDaddy tried hard with the Joan Rivers version but left people wondering with the naked Jillian Michaels /Danica Patrick ad.

My overall winner has to be the VW Little Vader. It positioned the product exactly, it focused on the family not the product but still communicated the core values of the product. Overall I would say this was a winner.

What was your favorite of the Super Bowl XLV ads?

Times are tough, so they tell us. The economy is in trouble and we are, for all intents and purposes weathering a depression. That is the word from the media and supposedly from those who know. It is certainly true that it is no longer business as usual, but does that really mean that we are all sunk?

I say not, what I say is that now more than ever, those who are willing to be creative, to look at things differently and search out the opportunities will win, just as they always have. The difference is that the opportunities are now existing in places that they haven’t before or at least they are in areas that previously businesses have shied away from. Those that did explore these opportunities were often considered akin to the “untouchables” or “scheduled caste” of the hindu system in India, outcasts from the mainstream of that business group.

I read a story today on NPR of some real estate agents, who against the general trend are achieving real success in a very down market. They are doing so by working with divorce sales. This is of course a highly emotional and difficult area to work in. The selling of a home during a divorce as part of a settlement is never an unemotional event and the real estate agent will often end up being drawn into the battles that are going on between the couple. Not an area for the faint of heart. Even with existing home sales recovering this is still a tough economy to be a real estate agent in and especially if you haven’t decided to focus on something specific.

The same is true for any business. Without focus, without being prepared to break new ground or at least to explore areas of your industry that others have eschewed in the past then you are very likely to find yourself losing market share and missing out on real revenue opportunities. The question you have to ask yourself is are you prepared to get your hands dirty? Are you looking for the opportunities that your peers have decided are outside of their comfort zone?

Which niches are you exploring for new business?

Small businesses, especially those still in the startup phase understand the value of each and every new customer, I recently came across Bauble Bar who definitely show this understanding. They are grateful and they are hungry. As businesses grow they often lose sight of that initial gratitude they displayed when someone took a chance on them and bought something from them in their early days.

Last week I ran a competition for people to win a copy of Customer Service:New Rules for a Social Media World by Peter Shankman. Customer Service is without doubt the key to the culture shift necessary for businesses to achieve Social Media success. So often I am asked at presentations, conferences and by prospective clients what the secret is for them to “leverage” social media and achieve increased sales, visibility etc through its use. I continue to tell people social media is a communication channel. If your product, service etc sucks then social media is not going to save you, good customer service will.

Bauble Bar Customer Service

This week I was fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of exceptional customer service from a startup called BaubleBar. I came across them in an article on Business Insider, I liked their story, checked out their website and decided to give them a shot when I was buying a gift for my girlfriend. I should point out here I am a complete shopaholic, I love shopping and in particular I love shopping for my girlfriend, more so than she does. It’s often me that drags her around the clothing stores.

Bauble Bar and the Personal Touch

Not only did the item arrive on time, was exactly as described on the website – which is after all what you would expect but there were some great little extras. Firstly the gift, which is a bangle was shipped in a velvet bag with the Bauble Bar logo on it – a very nice touch. It was inside a box with plenty of tissue paper to protect it and included with it was a handwritten note complimenting me on my choice of gift and hoping that it went over well. It was signed by the owners Daniella Yacobovsky & Amy Jain. You know what, I’ll be back to buy more from them.

Of course the trick is that Amy & Daniella have to keep this up or replace it with something equally fantastic in terms of customer service. However, I’d say that Bauble Bar is on the right track and providing they continue to do so I think we are going to see a lot more of Bauble Bar in the near future.

If you are in the market for some jewelry (hint guys, Valentines day is coming up) then you should put Bauble Bar on your list of places to visit.

How Shopping your network helps you

Networking is something that many of us are involved in today. We have different motivations for it, some are trying to establish connections for their career, some are establishing networks in the hopes of selling something, others are establishing networks of people with common interests. Whatever the motivation, tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have made it incredibly easy to build large networks of people, some of whom are only connected in an online way.

One thing that you might not have considered yet is that your network probably includes many individuals who operate what I call “just me” businesses. Solopreneur’s is another term for them. Often these are people with incredible skill sets that run very successful small businesses that have skills that can meet your needs but you just haven’t discovered them yet. I am extremely fortunate in the network that I have. From it I have been able to find a Technical Editor for my book – Tom Myer, who is himself a best selling author. A Graphic designer – Ilene Haddad who has done great work for IncSlingers on some of our client projects and most recently Jennifer Cunningham who creates wearable art and has an etsy store who is making me a Twitter pin so that I don’t have to keep writing my Twitter handle on conference badges.

Without my network I would never have met these and many other very skilled people. When I have either a personal or professional need my first thought is always “who do I know”. The great thing about shopping your network is that often people will then return the favor later, either by buying from you or recommending you to others in their network. I’m not saying that is the only reason to go shopping your network but it is certainly a benefit. I find that because you have a connection with those individuals they try harder put more effort into a project and you see great results. Usually you have already communicated with them at some level and therefore established a rapport that takes a lot longer with vendors that you arrive at via Google or some other non-personal search.

Are you shopping your network?

Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World is the latest book by Peter Shankman. I was honored when Peter asked me to be the technical editor on this book and really enjoyed seeing the book come together. Now it is available in bookstores and online for you to buy.

As most of us know and all of us should know, today everyone is in the customer service business regardless of your actual job title. The Social Consumer doesn’t care about your job title or the internal divisions that your company has taken so long to craft so that the accounting works out just right. What they want is a company that is responsive to them, who gives them the best service at all times and makes them feel valued.

In this book Peter explores what makes for good (and bad) customer service in a world of Social Media and how those social technologies have impacted the way organizations do business. I honestly can’t recommend this book enough to anyone in business, whether you own a Mom & Pop operation or work at a Fortune 500 you should read this book.

To make that easier for you, I am going to giveaway a copy of  the book in a very simple competition. Here is all you need to do:

• Go to Peter’s author page on Facebook – “Like” the page and leave a comment with the following tag #ShankmanBook

Or

• Send a Tweet with the same hashtag – Click here to have it done for you
• Leave a comment here telling me your best or worst customer service experience

On Friday 14th Jan I’ll pick a winner at random to receive the book, make sure you leave your email or twitter handle in the comments so I can contact you and get your mailing information. See simple. Oh and I’d be really grateful if you would tell your followers and friends about the competition.

How many of us receive discounts, specials, offers, new product promotions etc. from merchants with whom we have a loyalty affiliation?

Join and receive great offers, it’s free. “Why not” we think at the time. Then they start to arrive, either in your inbox or your mailbox. The offers.  I get several a week and I would estimate 99% of them go straight into the trash can, either real or virtual. Why? because they are of no relevance to me. Given the amount of personal data any one merchant with whom I have a loyalty card has about me, I find this amazing.

The fact that I present my loyalty card at the point of purchase or as is often the case, get the store representative to look it up based on my phone number, the store knows many things about me at that moment. They know my location, the time of day, the day of the week and of the month. They know whether I paid cash, debit or credit. They know the product or services I bought. They know if these are “capital” items, e.g. non-consumables or consumables that will require replacing and of course they know when they will need replacing. They know my zip code and therefore how far I traveled to their store.

With all of this information any business that continues to send me irrelevant offers becomes suspect to me. It dramatically increases the likelihood that I will simply junk all communications from them. You might notice that I am not using the term “personalized” here. Honestly I really don’t care if the offer comes with my name on it as much as I care that it has relevance to the purchases that I make or might make in the future with that store.

Relevance also covers timeliness of the offer. I don’t want a coupon for money off the appliance I just purchased from you. Of course it is impossible to identify all purchases within days of a bulk mailing being sent, either physical or electronic. But if I made the purchase within two months that should be reflected. This is where relevance comes in. Of course the store, especially large brands can’t make the offers exclusive to individual customers. However, grouping offers can be achieved. This not only makes them relevant but also allows for the cross-sell/up-sell opportunities. So if you are sending someone who bought a computer offers for computer accessories, also sending them offers for Home Theater is a relevant offer, however one for a vacuum cleaner is probably not.

image used under creative commons license by sdc2027