“Nails and More”

“Mailboxes, Etc.”

“Not Just Nuts!”

Who has seen “More” and thought, “That’s what I’m looking for!”?

Has anyone ever looked under “Etc.” in the phonebook?

When I’m buying candy, do I think “A nut store that sells other things”?

These are lame names.

Where’s the story?

Your interactions with customers define their perception of your product’s quality. The best designers in the world cannot overpower a jerk salesman or inept tech support worker. People will become confused, and things will break – they will call. Having a knowledgeable, empowered person to take their calls is what turns an ordinary product into an extraordinary experience.

Linksys is amazing at this. Networking is tricky – standards change, passwords get forgotten, and devices interfere. No problem, every time we call, someone (yes, in India) picks up and walks us through to a solution. Taking a customer from raging to raving in 5 minutes seconds – can your call center do that?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Build a vast, easy to navigate knowledgebase. Enable customers to use and update this database, at least by interacting, asking questions, and rating answers.
2. Train your employees to use the knowledgebase as humans, a point of reference – not a script!
3. Empower your employees: Let them take a customer’s number so they can call back if needed, let them investigate the issues and ask questions of the user (Linksys reps make us follow steps we take for granted – they are always right).
4. Go beyond – solve problems caused by systems other than your own. If the client thinks it’s related to your problem, then in their mind, you’re the problem. Fix that. Companies that help their clients, get helped in return.

“Gurus” around the world are blogging on why people don’t make the logical choice to switch from incandescent to “compact fluorescent” bulbs.

This is retarded. Since when do people make logical choices? Nobody hires us to help them reason with consumers – you have 3 seconds to convince some overworked, under-informed housewife or apartment dweller that she should buy your product. Logic can’t get up off its bum in that time.

Here are the problems with the compact bulb:

1. The swirl – is this an ice cream parlor? Why would I want that shape in my fixtures? It looks like something you’d find in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.
2. The packaging – if I need to stab at a package to extrude a fragile glass contraption, someone is an idiot. The guy who designed the package, or me for spilling the inevitable glass shards.
3. You cannot dim the things and they blow if you accidentally do!
4. The glass shard producing bulb – seriously, have you tried to unscrew one of these things from its socket? (Perhaps because it wont dim?) The glass snaps off the fat plastic base! Please try not to bleed on my lamp shades.
5. The fat plastic base: The ballast (square)! doesn’t fit into designer lamps, which were created for normal lightbulbs (round!). Overhead sockets are also iffy.

The first three problems describe why you wont buy one: they look odd, are a pain to open, and lack the versatility of a regular bulb.

If your message is “It’s as easy as an ordinary bulb, but will save you $60”, MAKE IT LOOK LIKE AN ORDINARY BULB:

1. Put it in a cardboard box! For crying out loud, nobody wants to see that swirl – it’s scary.

2. Better: blow a round bulb around the swirl – just like you hid the filament, hide the swirl.

Then, tax incandescent bulbs. Really, if they’re costing everyone so much through pollution, why not recoup the costs? Consider it a gas-guzzler tax.

Then, stay at the drawing board, because, really, saving money is cool, but these bulbs are ‘beta’ at best.

“Remember, it’s not a TiVo unless it’s a TiVo.”

So says the woman on the radio commercial selling that brand of digital video recorder.

I wonder if her script was Xeroxed on a Toshiba copier, or if she refreshed her throat with a cold glass of something from her GE Frigadaire. Maybe she brought her lunch in one of those new Glad-brand Tupperware containers.

All of the italicised brands had their names turned into commodities - because everyone else sold the same thing!

If a product is not a TiVo unless it’s got certain exclusive features, then every DVR becomes a TiVo. The line should be: “Remember if it’s not a TiVo it doesn’t have Feature-X”.

When product design is lame, the lameness flows through to their marketing. This type of advertising is, well, a Band-Aid.

There are many messages out there telling you to click for a prize. They’re digital Ed McMahon’s. You don’t believe them, and you wouldn’t share them with friends. Here’s an e-mail that’s different:

Dear all:

In honor of World AIDS Day, Bristol-Myers will donate one dollar to the National AIDS Fund for every person who clicks the link below and moves the match to light the candle. There is no cost to you in doing this, other than the brief amount of time it takes.

https://www.lighttounite.org/

I hope you will take a moment to light one, and pass the word on.

Thanks for your time,

You should remove all pets and birds from the area.

You shouldn’t re-enter the area for fifteen minutes after you’ve sprayed.

These instructions on the Raid brand bug-killing spray make it clear:

It’s poison. Don’t inhale it.
So why does their label advertise it has an “Outdoor Fresh” scent?

And why (try to) give it such a fragrance?

A long-time lactard, I was thrilled to see new Lactaid Sliced Cheese in the dairy section (side note: why does the dairy section have pickles and chumus?). A few folks had an important ingredients question for the maker, so I submitted a ticket at Lactaid’s website.

Following Rule One of Lame Customer Service: “shifting blame”, Lactaid told me to contact the licensee, a Mid-Atlantic Cheese, and gave me a phone number. Already Lactaid looks bad - if you agreed to stick your name on a product, shouldn’t you be able to tell me what’s in it? Lactaid can’t.

So I called Mid-Atlantic. Repeatedly. For all the evidence, Mid-Atlantic Cheese might be a row of cows and an answering machine. Cows cannot answer phones (the buttons are too small for the hooves), so after a few days of a machine telling me to fax in an order if I want human contact (grrrrr!), I sent another note to Lactaid.

They doubled their efforts! That’s right, this time they sent back TWO numbers – both to the same machine! Nada.

I sent a third note… I got back: the same response!

This is how to kill a brand.

The only reason I picked up that item was because it said “Lactaid”, not “Mid-Atlantic Cheese”. It was their name that took the loan out on my trust, and it’s their name that’s defaulting. Mid Atlantic can fail to pickup their phone, make someone sick, and it’ll be Lactaid’s name in the news. Lactaid either needs to handle the customer service for all Lactaid products (that sounds obvious) or demand reasonable performance from their licensees.

I just picked up $7.85 of items at our local Duane Reed. My receipt is 16 inches long. 5 items 16 inches.

Half the receipt explains their “Dollar Rewards” scheme. First, who is reading this? Not enough people to justify doubling your paper output. Also, the ink is all grayed and streaked – the result perhaps of printing twice as much receipt as anyone needs.

To save trees – and money – Duane Reed should instead print their sales pitch and disclaimer on a nice color flyer, something people can and will read because it offers them actual value, perhaps by notifying them of items that will be on-sale next week. It should be optional: if you don’t want it, the cashier doesn’t stick it in your bag: more trees and ink saved.

In fact, the receipt itself should be optional. I’m not going to return a bottle of water, so I don’t need 8 inches of receipt memorializing my investment in Poland Spring. It’s like they’re saying ‘here, throw this out.’ What a waste.

This isn’t meager tree-hugging, cutting their receipt printing in half would not only save them thousands of paper rolls and ink refills, it’d cut the time wasted post-sale while everyone waits for the receipt to be printed. Time, Money, Customer Satisfaction.

not modified
not frozen
not preserved
not processed
not dyed
not concentrated
no MSG
no hormones
no sugar added
no artificial flavoring
no fragrance

Funny, don’t the ingredients start that way? We are paying more for companies to do less to our products. We are paying a premium to eat, wash, and wear healthy – when that’s how food starts!

Is it any wonder consumers don’t trust food producers?

Everyone thinks they’re unique. More than 50% of us think we’re above average in intelligence, looks, and wit. Then there are businesses and their products:

“There are 345,000,000 Google matches for ‘ultimate’. ‘Best’ is way behind at 300,000,000, while finest only can score 119,000,000. Unique gets 664 million.” (Seth Godin)

It’s usually a turn-off to call your product by these names, or add meaningless taglines like “Great”. Perhaps there’s one exception: Fantastik. (more…)