Collaboration Works Best: Elephants Can Dance as James Belasco Says

Two decades ago, author James Belasco wrote a business best seller “Teaching the Elephant to Dance.” It was all about helping companies and organizations to embrace change. If it were written today, it would be all about embracing change and how collaboration works in commerce.

Collaboration drives creativity because innovation always emerges from a series of sparks – never a single flash of insight.

Ken Sawyer

Before we continue, let me ask you a question.

Have you tried collaborative commerce design in your business? We would love to hear about your experiences. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.

In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, Bain & Co. partner Michael Mankins estimates that while a typical executive in the 1970’s might have received 1,000 messages a year, that number has skyrocketed to more than 30,000 today and argues that we may “have reached the point of diminishing returns.”

I think just about everyone can see his point. Today, the amount of meetings, emails and IM’s we receive can seem overwhelming and it’s increasingly hard to find uninterrupted quiet time to focus and concentrate. However, the nature of work has changed. The real reason that we communicate more is because, today, we need to collaborate more to be effective.

Before I tell you more about this business book, let me tell you a personal, but related, story a friend shared with me. It is told from his viewpoint.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time? Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well, but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital,” he continued; “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more, and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52, and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

Shackled like powerful elephants, companies and organizations become forever to their past, like my friend in his garage that morning. Like many of us, indeed.

“But, we’ve always done it that way” should be a powerful warning sign, a symptom of impending disaster for us all. It most often robs us of the ingenuity required to meet new competitive challenges and focusing us instead on short-term band-aids versus long term solutions.

Collaboration works … collaborative commerce

I suppose the author chose the elephant analogy to illustrate how big, lumbering companies typically lack agility and don’t respond quickly to change. The truth be known, responding quickly to change in the marketplace is not a problem of just large companies and organizations, it applies to us all, regardless of size.

I doubt that even Mr. Belasco anticipated the kind of changes that would be jolting companies two decades later. How the internet would transform nearly element of business and make their business models much more dependent on all sorts of business collaboration. With the rise of collaborative commerce, corporate elephants not only have to dance, but they also have to perform choreographed numbers in rhythm with other elephants.

What if someone had suggested, 20 years ago, that you share information about your customers, do joint advertising, share information systems, or even totally outsource your supply chain?

Not surprisingly, my guess would be that you would have totally dismissed all those suggestions without a passing thought. Same probably goes true even five years ago.

Now … not so fast! These are precisely the kind of steps that many companies of all sizes are taking today. And even more surprising, these types of alliances are beginning to account for more and more business revenue.

collaborative commerce benefits — Collaborative commerce benefits.

Collaboration and trust in the workplace …. benefits

Our discussions with many companies lead us to these conclusions. Ask most companies and they will tell you why they’ve given up trying to do everything themselves. It has to do with decision-making speed, speed to market, faster expertise, business growth and expansion, and risk reduction.

Listen to them, and they will tell you it is collaboration or suffocation.

So what are you doing to get started in collaborative commerce? Please share a story or two about your experiences.

Need some help in finding ways to grow your customers? Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.

It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

Check out these additional articles on business lessons from our library:

The Business Intelligence Process Part 3 Competitive Analysis

Competitive Growth Strategy … the Story of In-N-Out Burger

Collaboration and Partnerships Are Key to Business Growth

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

For more reading on innovation and adapting to change, click here.

Why Innovation Is Important for Your Website

Nowadays, everything changes incredibly fast; that’s why being static is never rewarded. If you live a sedentary lifestyle for a long time, you’ll likely face health problems. If you don’t act as fast as possible when legal issues arise, you may lose important evidence and your chance at receiving why innovation will cost you.

Your website is also a part of this process, as not updating it or working towards innovating its elements will quickly make you lose your position in the rankings. SEO strategies and the way search engines evaluate websites are in constant evolution, and you should be too. The quality and the content of your home page can make the difference between being successful or constantly losing prospects and profits. New users will come only if you innovate your website and focus on always keeping it up to date.

The Image of Your Brand

You probably dedicated a lot of time to your website at the beginning in order to establish an online presence and give people a sense of security. But a business constantly evolves and your homepage needs to reflect that. If you created your website 10 years ago and you haven’t changed anything, visitors will think you’re lazy, or that your services are unreliable.

Redesigning a good portion of your website every couple of years so it can grow with your company is a must. If you started out as a small local business, like a law firm in Oklahoma City, it’s crucial that you add all the positive outcomes of the cases you’ve handled, along with a review section where clients can get a better idea at how you’re going to deal with their issues.

Your Main Marketing Tool

If an individual is dealing with a legal issue, he’s not going to travel the entire region and look for the best lawyer available. He’s going to use his smartphone and do all the research necessary to find someone who can help him with his case, while he recovers from his injuries. This is where innovation comes into play.

Your website represents the best marketing tool you possess, and it plays a significant role in attracting new customers. New and relevant content will allow people to see you as a professional who wants to keep his business updated and will do everything possible to solve their problems.

Remember, people will judge you and the way you work after taking a quick look at your website. It’s extremely important to make a good first impression by investing in website innovation. Showing old blog posts or outdated links that might not even work anymore won’t be a good look.

A Clear Picture About Payments

Many people are afraid to ask for professional help because they see most services as expensive and unaffordable. That’s why when redesigning your website, you should never forget to include all the information necessary about payment plans. For example, if you’re a lawyer, do you work on a contingency fee? Has something changed over the years and you now prefer hourly payment with a free consultation? Do you prefer fixed rates?

All of this needs to be constantly updated and should be one of the first things a client sees. The ability to remove doubts as fast as possible can make or break a company.

Innovation Improves Your Efficiency

Analyzing and exploiting new ideas is the key to success for any business. Bringing an improved product or service to the market and utilizing your website to showcase it will improve its efficiency and bring you more profits pretty quickly. In this digital world, if you’re not evolving, your competition is doing so. Remember that carefully analyzing the market and constantly innovating the elements that made your business successful will keep you at the top for a long time.

Customer Support: Can We Learn from 3 Customer Service Cases?

David Freemantle quoted: Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced. Have you noticed that you learn best when you examine the work and results of others? We certainly feel you do. In this article, we will examine customer support in three great customer service cases.

All of these offer some excellent points you can apply to your business that will help amplify your marketing.

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

Customer support … case 1 local dentist

I’ve been with the same dentist for more than 15 years. He’s friendly, personal, and generally on time with his service schedule. I have considerable confidence in his abilities and he had my business loyalty, at least until now.

He does what I expect a dentist to do and he does it explaining all the issues and options without having to play 20 questions with him.

For that reason, I never thought about considering a change in service providers.

Then one day my wife and I started spending our winters in Florida. And now the option of finding a Florida dentist became a necessity.

The new dentist changed my entire perspective on the service expectations that I had developed over the past 15 years.

This new dentist was younger and surely ‘less experienced’. But it didn’t seem this way.

He was much more personal, asked important questions, spent more time with me, and did a more thorough job.

That experience opened my eyes to the quality differences with my current dentist.

I had come to expect quality and service that was very good. But the new dentist provided something even better.

Now every time I am in need of standard dentist action, such as an annual checkup, etc., I plan my appointments for our time in Florida. The Florida doctor has won my standard business.

The business lesson here?

If you are any type of service provider, never become complacent. Don’t provide a standard, average or just good enough service.

Always look for ways to continuously improve your service and do things better.

Because the day someone provides better results, service, or quality than you do, is the day your customers’ loyalty will dry up.

Left unchanged and not corrected so too may your business.

Customer support services … case 2 Disney World

Ever been to Disney World? With most of our family living 50 miles away, we often felt like tour guides. Not a bad thing though.

Lots of any business can learn from Disney’s customer experience design and operations. A real difference maker.

Disney puts a tremendous amount of attention to its parks’ customer immersion and customer experience; in fact, one could say the Disney theme park mystique is 100% about immersing the customer in the culture of Disney movies and character history.

Over 150,000 employees are employed ‘on stage’ each day at Disney parks to help create this customer experience immersion.

What are the ways Disney uses its park designs and ‘on stage’ employees to create the best possible customer experience?

Consider Disney’s explicit operations and design principles:

Care for customers

In front of nearly every ride was stroller parking and in the Magic Kingdom, there were plenty of strollers because nearly every group had some small children.

There were areas set aside for stroller parking, and clear instructions for where to park your stroller.

Guess what? Customers still managed to ignore them.

In most places, this might create chaos. Not at Disney, where they have a ‘stroller guy’ whose entire job it was to pick up after lazy customers.

We have seen them organize strollers into lines, put errant Sippy cups back into cup holders, and keep his little area of the park neat and organized.

All customer-facing employees are responsible for ensuring parks remain clean, friendly, organized, and most of all, fun.

Immerse customers in the brand

At Disney, you can’t look in any direction without seeing the Disney branding all around.

In the park, it works to surround you with the Disney experience at every moment, even when some parts of the park are under construction.

Not to mention the side benefit of Disney likely negotiating some discount on the construction work from businesses in exchange for allowing them to put their brand on the signage seen by millions of park customers.

Lots of help and directions

All stage employees are encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly’. They are to seek out those who look like they need help, before they come looking for help.

The parks at Disney are very large and directions can be confusing. The last thing customers need is to not be able to find what they are looking for.

As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another. Disney does a great job keeping their signs easy to understand.

They also have logical layouts for parks and plenty of places to pick up copies of maps as you’re walking around their parks.

Random acts of kindness

Each employee is encouraged to offer random acts of kindness often.

The Fast Pass system at Disney is a work of analytical art that is designed to keep people moving through attractions faster and in a more optimized way.

To use it, you just insert your own park ticket and the Fast Pass will give you a specific time to return to a ride in order to board it without a wait.

Only one active at any one time however. At several, you also got the unexpected surprise of a bonus ticket to a nearby (and usually less popular) ride.

Thanks to this bonus ticket, you had the chance to ride an extra ride in the same time and feel just a little better about your experience all day.

A random act of kindness that costs nothing.

Be flexible with rules

Many of the rides take photos of you while you are on board. Those photos are sold to riders after the ride, a classic amusement park upselling technique.

At Disney, they show you the images and put a person below those images just standing by to answer questions.

Of course, some people will just take a cell phone photo of their image instead of buying one. Many places would put up big signs preventing that.

Disney, instead, puts a person there working under the photos to make it a little more socially awkward to take a photo of your photo, but they don’t outlaw it.

The result is that they probably still get a high percentage of people buying the photo who really want it.

They don’t need to have the typical rule outlawing the inevitable group of people who are happy with a lower quality photo they take themselves.

Educating while entertaining

Many places in all the parks Disney provides educational material on signs around the parks.

This is particularly true in EPCOT and the Animal Kingdom, and special events like the annual garden show at EPCOT.

Can’t be too much of this in our opinion.

Customer service cases … offer reassurance

Everyone ‘on the stage’ has a cast role, and as such, is responsible to contribute to the positive customer experience by being as helpful and assuring as possible.

When we traveled to Australia, we frequently ran into the expression of a ‘nervous nelly’ used to represent a timid or always apprehensive person.

We all know people like that. They check a map constantly even when they are going the right way, and usually find a reason to worry about something.

Disney does a great job of making sure those people feel at ease, with plenty of places and people to answer questions.

Show ready

Each customer facing employee is expected to be ‘show ready’ whenever they are on stage. Everyone has a part to play as a component of the show.

On stage, the show is on and everyone follows costume and customer interface guidelines.

Breaks and relaxing are ONLY allowed in areas unavailable to guests.

Disney certainly knows all there is to know about customer immersion and customer experience, don’t they?

It’s a culture handed down by Walt himself.

Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.

It is awesome marketing isn’t it.

*Customer service cases … case 3 Marriott Courtyard***

I stayed in a new Marriott Courtyard hotel a while back. The situation was that it was recently opened and should not have been opened until the problems were worked out and management was ready.

There were many problems, believe me, and it started as a significant customer failure.

But not only did the staff take care of the issues for me, the manager, once he got me back to ‘even’, continued to build the relationship with me.

His techniques included exceptional, personalized service, using my name in face-to-face greetings, and continued follow-up and attention to detail.

He actually made me believe I was the best customer he had ever had. Not only did I forget about the earlier problems, but I was feeling great about the entire three-day experience.

Service recovery requires remaining with your customer, through follow-up, and through unexpected contact well after the issue.

All customers deserve our best service, but the ones that have a negative experience represent an opportunity to define a business.

Such an opportunity represents an opportunity to turn customers into enthusiasts and maybe even advocates. And that requires going beyond the ‘break-even’ point for that customer.

Research has shown time and time again that customers who reported a problem and were delighted with the outcome have higher satisfaction with the business than the ones who never experienced a problem.

So these results show the importance of turning customer failure into full customer recovery.

Why should any company not want to seize such a great marketing opportunity?

Try it … the next time you have a customer who has had a back experience with your business. You will be amazed at the results.

Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job of growing customer insights and pay for results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:

10 Next Generation Customer Service Practices

Handling Customer Complaints … 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics

7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

8 Everyday Uses of Polymers

Polymers are everywhere! And even if you don’t know what polymers are, you probably interact with them every day. Polymer science is an immensely broad and varied field, but this article will focus on eight everyday uses of polymers. Read on to find out where you can find these useful molecules in your life.

As you read through these uses of polymers, think about how your own life is filled with them. Think about (as a minimum) how many of your daily foods and beverages contain polymers. Then think about how you interact with polymer-containing objects and materials every day.

1) Plastics

Plastics are polymers. Let’s start with the basics. Plastic is a man-made material that is used in everything from construction materials, to toys, to household goods. If you want to make an object out of plastic, first you must make a polymer. Polychemistry.com explains that polymers are made by combining two (or more) monomers together.

Now that you know that plastic is a polymer, you can begin to see how important they are to everyday life.

2) Adhesives and Solvents

Adhesives are yet another everyday use of polymers. Adhesives are useful because they keep us attached to the items we need to be attached to. They have many different uses and can be found in some surprising places.

3) Maintenance Coatings

Maintenance coatings are one of the most important everyday uses of polymers. They are used in all sorts of maintenance applications, including automotive, aircraft, and industrial applications. Coatings also make it possible for maintenance personnel to improve the performance and longevity of their materials by applying them at specific times.

4) Tires

Tires are another example of a polymer that is essential to daily life. Tire manufacturers use polymers in the actual materials they produce because they are tough and strong. Some of the more common properties of polymers include strength, flexibility, and toughness—all qualities that make tires ideal for everyday use.

5) Cosmetics and Personal Care Products

Cosmetics and personal care products are filled with polymers! It should come as no shock to you, then, that cosmetics contain many different types of polymers. Polymers are used in cosmetics due to their strong ability to bind.

6) Textiles and Fibers

Textiles and fibers are also made from polymers. So, what does that mean? It means that when you look at your clothes, you should take a moment to think about the fact that they contain a polymer.

7) Food Packaging and Containers

You know how long-lasting and durable plastics are, which is why they’re so useful in everyday life. The same qualities make them ideal for food packaging and containers.

8) Medical Products

Polymers are important in the medical profession. In fact, they can be found in many different medical products. They include—but are not limited to—adhesives, casts, drug delivery systems, and bandages.

Polymer science is an immense field that stretches across the natural sciences and beyond. It has many applications in nearly every industry and can be applied to solve a broad range of problems for everyday life. There are so many uses for polymers in our society today—it’s clear that without them we wouldn’t have nearly as much convenience as we do.

Trendspotter … What Walt Disney Taught about Successful Trend Spotting

Walt Disney certainly never worried about getting the old thoughts out of his mind, did he? He was always three steps ahead of just about all his competitors and would-be competitors. Very good at being a successful trendspotter. And once spotted, he certainly knew what action was required to take advantage of those trends.

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.

–Dee Hock

Are you into spotting trends? For business or hobby? Or maybe both? It is a very important skill. An important way to start the process of managing business change and adaptation.

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

Most businesses do not manage change. Change takes them by surprise. Not a good thing. What these businesses do best is manage the conflict wrought by change.

Reacting does not equate to anticipating … you must improve your trend watching and anticipating skills so you can change before you have to. A good thing.

How do some people seem to know about the next big thing way ahead of everyone else?

Because they know how to recognize early signs of change.

Entrepreneurs started many successful businesses with an ability to see a trend before everyone else. They were able to take their insight and capitalize on it in a new and creative way. Businesses from Uber and Lyft to Airbnb and HomeAway are just some of the most recent examples of entrepreneurs benefiting from emerging trends. But just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it is easy to see trends first and find ways to capitalize on them.

Let’s get back to Walt Disney and his abilities in trend spotting and rifts. Rift … what is a rift you may ask? A rift is a big tear in the rules we live by. Not a small tear, a fundamental change in the game type of tear. One that creates a small number of BIG, new winners, and bunches of losers who were sticking steadfastly to the old rules.

Walt was a three-time rifter. Can’t think of any others in that category. He was one of the few people who has successfully managed to find a rift in the continuum of business life, to bet everything he had on it, and to then make a great profit in doing it. And, amazingly, he did it three times. Let’s examine these rifts as a way to learn about spotting trends and acting on them.

differentiate a trend from a fad — Differentiate a trend from a fad.

Trendspotter … rift 1, motion Pictures

The first rift, or trend that Walt discovered was the motion picture. He noticed early on that movies would drastically change the world of entertainment. Anticipating that there would be a huge demand for family-oriented entertainment, he pioneered the development of the animated movie. His first film perfecting the form was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. And the fantastic growth of the rift was launched.

But he was not one to rest on his success … not at all. He kept looking for another change in the rules that would create further opportunity for his business enterprises.

I frequently remind clients that the only constant is change. Believe it. Assume that change is coming and look for it. Change can be either social — as in the rise of socially responsible business — or technological, as exemplified by the growth of mobile commerce. Sometimes change can be both. Social media is a great example of that.

Don’t forget the cyclical, up-and-down, back-and-forth nature of business while you are looking. Change doesn’t have to be permanent to provide a viable opportunity for business creation and growth. When the real estate crisis hit in 2008, construction activity shrank, and many people were forced to make do with what they had. But trend-spotting entrepreneurs were able to adjust their plans depending on the market. For example, savvy interior designers marketed their services to those who wanted something new but couldn’t find or afford a new home.

Trendspotter bar chart … rift 2, the automobile

The second rift was in the form of the automobile. Walt speculated that the car was going to change the way that families would get to entertainment. His vision was a strategically located, extravagantly designed theme park could add a new leg to family entertainment and vacations. And take advantage of the new way of family travel rift. So, beginning with California’s Disneyland in 1955, he added a new business around this rift and it has dominated the theme park industry to this day.

The basic tools of the trend tracker are seeing, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. In other words, every sense that can be used to get information about the world should be employed in looking for upcoming changes. Start by reading and watching everything you can. That should include general interest news outlets, trade publications, blogs, government reports and casual conversations overheard in elevators. Be especially alert for problems people are talking about.

Consider using trend-tracking tools like Google Trends, Topsy, and Trendhunter to help you zero-in on trends that are worth investigating further. You won’t be the only entrepreneur looking for business ideas on these platforms, but you can use them to dig deeper to validate hunches.

Rift 3 … Television

He was now a giant in the entertainment business, but he was able to spot a third rift and opportunity: television. Many people regarded television simply as in-home movies. Walt, however, saw it as an entirely different medium. So with properties like the Mickey Mouse Club, he established the third business to produce a never-ending stream of content for this new market.

Walt Disney was a three-time winner, someone who had great vision to not only spot important trends but also to see the opportunities that these trends created.

Like Disney, you need to strive to identify big changes that create lasting problems that lots of customers will be happy to pay to solve. The idea is to wind up with a business model in which revenues are much larger than costs for a long period, not one that limps by on slender profit margins before competitors take even that away.

To filter out fads, talk to the potential buyers of the solution to the problem. The more frustrated they are, the more likely they are to pay for a solution. In extreme cases, potential customers may be willing to fund the development of solutions. Also, talk to experts. While they may not be able to write checks, they can provide insights and point to possible solutions that customers could not even imagine.

So what recommendations can we draw from Walt’s experiences? Here are three that we offer:

spot trends meaning — Spot trends meaning.

Successful trend spotting … culture of revolution

An organization’s culture underlies its ability to adapt and times of dramatic change magnify culture’s importance. Work to create the culture of change of revolution. From this culture, you can spark a new paradigm for creative change from which your strategies will be derived.

Spotting trends and rifts

Innovation and competitive advantage hinge on your effectiveness in anticipating trends and identifying the next big thing. Invest energy and continuously work to improve your abilities to anticipate the important imminent changes. Filter through all the noise and chaos, cull out the trends and identify the opportunities that will be created. Focus your team’s creativity on the most important of these opportunities.

Adaptive Innovation

Our government and the business world have invested billions of dollars and significant time and energy to perfect human creativity. Apply the best of these practices to jump start your teams’ abilities in your field focusing on the end state of new customer priorities.

Is your business devoting enough energy in each of these areas?

Do you have a story about trend watching and business adaptation you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job of growing customer insights and pay for results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:

10 Next Generation Customer Service Practices

Handling Customer Complaints … 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics

7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Are Online Payroll Portals Safe To Use?

Thousands of companies are using online payroll portals as a way to save time and energy while also ensuring they get all of their work done.

These programs can make pay stubs within minutes, saving the time that is usually dedicated to this task and allowing it to be used elsewhere. Pay stubs are important documents that need to be given to employees along with their salary payments.

This document is proof of income, and it contains a lot of important information which can be used in various circumstances, such as obtaining loans and job references.

As it is a big task, a lot of companies are turning to modern technology to help them out. Online pay stub generators can be a great tool to use as they may save time and allow you to focus on other tasks that need to get done.

However, as with all things on the internet, there are some concerns when it comes to their security.

Why Use Online Pay Stub Generators?

Paystub generators can be used to make pay stubs, which will be given to employees along with their salary payments. This is proof of income and an official document that may be required in other circumstances.

Small businesses have a lot of work to do independently. The employees within these companies have to wear multiple hats, which can make it difficult to get everything done on time and to the standards that are required.

This is why small companies are the main users of online pay stub generators, but they can be beneficial in other industries as well.

Paystub generators do the hard work for you. They require some standard information, such as the company name, registered address, and salary schedule, and they will make pay stubs for you within minutes.

By having this process completed online within minutes, you will have more time to dedicate to other tasks that may also be neglected.

Small businesses especially can benefit the most from having their admin tasks, like creating pay stubs, automated online as it allows them to focus on other areas of the business such as reaching out to new clients or organizing other admin systems. All industries can benefit from having additional time, which is the main purpose of using an online pay stub generator.

These programs can keep you organized and allow you to stay that way by automating the process of payroll, ensuring the documents will be completed and given out on time every month along with salary.

Are Pay Stub Generators Safe?

When it comes to online programs, there are always safety concerns, and the same is true for online pay stub generators.

Pay stubs contain a lot of personal information and specific details about the business, so they need to be completed within a secure environment. Security is not the only concern when it comes to this kind of software, however.

Not all payroll portals operate the same, and some of them may make a fake paystub, which is a useless document.

Pay stubs are required as proof of income in all kinds of circumstances, from obtaining loans, getting a mortgage or rental agreement, to even being used as a job reference. This is why they need to be accurate and handed out on time, which is something pay stub generators can help with if they are reliable.

Fake pay stubs are something you need to avoid at all costs, which is why you should only consider reputable generator programs. You can determine whether a generator is legit by looking into the customer reviews and how many active members there are.

This is a good indicator of how reputable the company is and whether it is safe to use.

Fake Pay Stubs Vs. Real Pay Stubs

Some pay stub generators may make fake pay stubs which are useless documents. This is something you want to avoid as much as possible while also trying to save time within the company.

A good way to ensure you are using a reputable generator and are being given accurate documents is to know the signs of a fake pay stub.

There are some key differences between real pay stubs and fake documents, which you should be aware of so you can stay one step ahead. Pay stubs can be falsified and photoshopped to make them look like something else, which makes them useless in all circumstances.

To prevent these issues within your company, keep your eyes out for signs of a fake document. You can do this by making sure to only use reputable pay stub generators, which will be those with good reviews and lots of active users.

Risks Of Fake Pay Stubs

Pay stubs are an official document that provides proof of income which is required in a range of circumstances, from obtaining loans to filing for a mortgage.

If you want to stay on the right side of the law, then you need to ensure that you are providing real and accurate pay stubs to your employees. You can do this by using a reputable online pay stub generator.

Fake pay stubs cause a lot of issues, and they can get you in legal trouble if you are caught with them.

Other risks that are associated with fake pay stubs include:

Your credit line is declined
Being fired or having your job at stake for dealing with false documents
Being charged with fraud or criminal activity
Being fined penalties up to $1 million

It is also possible that you could see jail time if you are caught dealing with false documents, with sentences starting at five years.

This is why you need to ensure you are using a legit pay stub generator to ensure your efforts are being put to good use. This program can help you save time and energy within the company, but only if they are run by reputable brands and provide accurate and real documents.

Change Bank: Why I am Wasting Time and Money on SCCU

Thinking of your need to change bank? You’re not alone.

According to a J.D. Power and Associates survey released in February this year, 9.6 percent of customers had switched banks during the past 12 months.

That figure is on the rise, up from 8.7 percent in 2011 and 7.7 percent in 2010, according to the survey.

My wife and I recently decided to downsize our home and purchase a smaller but newer home.

Therefore, we needed to evaluate home financing and its source.

We were never completely happy with our current mortgage provider and banking service, Space Coast Credit Union (SCCU).

This is a three part series. Here are the first two parts:

https://digitalsparkmarketing.com/worst-customer-service/

https://digitalsparkmarketing.com/measuring-customer-satisfaction/

More to think about: Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics

The clincher came when I called to talk about options and interest rates.

I did my homework: I checked rates online, pulled my credit report, and ran a quick home valuation so I could approach them with solid numbers. Unfortunately, the rate they offered me was nowhere near their best.

Whether for your mortgage, your day-to-day banking, or your savings and retirements, banks are in the business of customer service.

And, when your bank is no longer giving you what you need, it might be time to reconsider your relationship.

And while reasons for switching banks vary, experts warn that certain indicators mean you should leave your current bank, and do so quickly.

There are numerous reasons I have considered in evaluating whether to change my bank:

Change bank … bad customer service

Other than finding a new mortgage provider, bad customer service was the biggest driver for us finding a new banking service.

SCCU offered perks and an adequate experience at first, but customer service has dwindled over the years.

Whatever the reason, if you feel like your customer service experience is lacking, we certainly felt we could do better.

Some customer service features we put on our list:

A wide range of customer service hours, both in-person and over the phone
Positive face-to-face interactions with employees at the bank
Quick resolution of potential issues (for example, canceling your card when you lose it and promptly sending a new one)
Branch amenities, such as ATMs and branch hours, and a wide range of in-house services, such as ordering checks, making deposits, checking balances, transfers, and small business banking
Raise your hand if you don’t have time to stay on hold on the phone for an hour to resolve a bank issue. Customer service like this often has you doing a #facepalm and asking yourself why?

When to move on

If bank personnel doesn’t seem interested in improving your experience, as in our case, we visited the physical branches of a couple of other banks in town and looked at online banks.

Do you find that every time you walk into your current bank, you get greeted (or ignored) by a stressed-out staff?

Are you asked to repeat your account number three times in a 10-minute span?

Do your questions on banking remain unanswered?

A banking relationship is much like any other relationship. If you are unhappy with the way you are being treated, you can do something about it.

That is what SCCU doesn’t realize, or just doesn’t care.

change bank review — Change bank review.

Non-competitive fees

Fees, fees, and more fees

Currently, larger banks seem to be making a push to increase fee revenue to offset the loss of credit card fees associated with regulatory changes.

Apparently, this is the case as we are seeing new charges popping up, such as maintenance fees on debit cards and checking accounts, ATM fees, online banking fees and transaction fees.

While banks vary, we found that local institutions have lower costs and are more hesitant to introduce such fees.

Our study compared our long-term credit union (where we have banked for 40 years) with SCCU (where we have banked for 13+ years).

It was amazing to us how many differences existed in both fee structure and little processes that influenced our customer experiences. I think I will document them all in a future blog.

Bank fees are pesky and downright unpleasant. Plus, checking fees, ATM fees, and overdraft charges can add up quickly.

In fact, in 2016 big banks made a killing from such fees — $33 billion in overdraft fees alone. That was an amazing data point to us.

And, it’s not just the big banks that ding you with fees.

You’ll need to be careful when you open an account with any financial institution.

While we were a big proponent of credit unions, it turns out that SCCU included many fees that were not easily discoverable.

We were moving

Location

Another reason that we wanted to consider changing banks is location.

Some banks have more locations than others, and you want to choose a bank that is the most convenient for us.

Even if they have cheaper fees, we may not be able to justify paying the gas to drive over to them every time that you need something.

In our area, it seems there are banks on every corner.

If you have to drive by several banks just to get to yours, it may not be in your best interest to continue working with them.

No love for long-time clients

Your bank nickels and dimes you to death.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we were talking actual nickels and dimes, but banking fees can be onerous. A report by The Pew Charitable Trusts earlier this year concluded that the median overdraft penalty is currently $35, which means that if you buy, say, lemonade for $5, it could cost you $40.

The one for SCCU is $30, and as we have previously noted, they charge if the withdrawal is 10 minutes ahead of the deposit on the same day.

That fact annoyed me, as this could be fixed with a simple software change.

Your bank isn’t very personable. You probably don’t expect your bank manager to invite you to her birthday party, but you don’t want to be kicked when you’re down either.

A friend of ours recalls when her bank began penalizing her by charging $5 per month for not having direct deposit.

At the time – it was 2012, the friend, then a librarian was between jobs.

She asked for them to waive the fee while job hunting, but the answer was no.

That stung because she had been a customer for 12 years and had always used direct deposit. This wasn’t the only gripe she’d had about her bank, but it was the last straw.

But a few months later, she landed a new librarian job and could have set up direct deposit and avoided the fee.

Instead, feeling unappreciated, she switched to a different bank.

I also get annoyed when I see a commercial for one of the banks I use that’s advertising perks for new customers only.

I want to know, what do the long-time customers get for being so loyal over the years?

That’s why I’m immediately suspicious of banks that constantly offer new bank customer perks – what does that say about how they treat their longstanding clients?

SCCU wasn’t willing to listen to my input and showed little love to a long-time customer.

They didn’t value my 13 years of loyalty and showed they just didn’t care.

So don’t give your loyalty to a business that doesn’t show love/loyalty to you.

Find a bank with better customer service. That is what we did, and we found some of those new customer benefits when we made the switch.

Already bank with another institution?

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with spreading your accounts around, it can get confusing when you’re managing multiples of the same type of account (such as a checking account) at different banks.

Make things less complicated by finding your favorite bank and combining accounts.

We compared our two credit unions and moved 99% of our business to the best one.

Change bank … when you just want more

Sometimes there doesn’t necessarily need to be something wrong with your bank.

In the last few years, I opened new bank accounts because I was enticed by cool incentives and modern features online-only banks were offering.

More to learn: Stunning Customer Service Lessons and Their Examples

For instance, some banks offer easier ways to save money and early direct deposit features.

These days there are plenty of banking options that are in step with your needs and help, not hinder your savings goals.

The bottom line

We all know that breaking up is hard to do, but when it comes to your money, your convenience and satisfaction should be a top priority.

With so many options, from traditional banks to online institutions, there’s no reason to stick with an unsatisfactory bank. Either try to make it right or make a clean break – but do what’s best for you.

Have you ever had to break up with your bank? What was the reason?

Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.

Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience

Customer Orientation … the Worst Customer Experience Mistakes

Customer Experience Optimization … 10 Employee Actions that Lower It

Building a Customer Experience Strategy for Business Success

Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements

10 Ways to Employ Customer Experience for Influence

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Remarkable Customer Insights: Laws of Complaints as Source of Input

K. Chesterton once said: It’s not that they can’t find the solution, they can’t find the problem. Does your business focus on customer complaints and the problems behind them? Customer complaints are an incredibly important part of remarkable customer insights. And therefore the overall service experience you deliver.

Here we will discuss ways to take full advantage of the information in customer complaints. But first, an important question for you:

Have you ever turned a customer complaint into a future opportunity, or better yet, a customer advocate? It can be really rewarding, yes? Often, a negative experience that a customer has with your business can be salvaged and turned into an opportunity to win them over for life. But handled poorly, and you could lose customers for life.

This is such an important element of customer service that we use it a critical element of our customer service workshops.We use it to show the power we all have to give our customers a memorable experience.

Here are some simple recommendations I use in the workshop to help people handle customer complaints. If you and your staff follow these rules, you can turn unhappy customers into loyal cheerleaders for your business.

Listen completely

Give them your complete attention. Don’t multi-task. Don’t half- listen. Write down what they are telling you and get specifics from them. Then confirm that you understand. Focus only on them.

Deal directly and don’t hand them off

Please hold while we transfer you. Your call is very important to us.

Don’t you hate this response? While you’ll experience less of this problem when handling support via email, it’s still important to get people to the right employee quickly.

Never miss an opportunity to briefly explain to a customer why this transfer will be to their benefit. It’s hard to get any customer happy or excited about being transferred, but consider the two choices you have:

You are getting transferred. “Well, this stinks!”

You will be transferred to our ____ specialist who can better answer your question. “Well … okay, then!”

Without this relevant insertion, customers won’t know that you are trying to do the right thing.

Don’t be formal

Customers want to be treated with respect, but if you stop treating customers like regular people and start talking like a corporate stiff, then they won’t interpret the interaction as genuine.

Research suggests that personalization is powerful when interacting with anyone, but especially with your customers.

Remember that you’re not speaking to the Queen of England, so refer to your “chat” with a customer rather than your “correspondence” with them. Remember to speak as if you were talking with an acquaintance. A little familiarity can go a long way toward getting customers on your side.

Let them vent

Don’t interrupt. Don’t explain, defend or justify. They don’t care why the problem occurred, and they don’t want your side of the story. They are angry, and they want to vent, so let them.

Remarkable customer insights … apologize and mean it

This is often hard, especially if you did not cause the problem. When you apologize for this situation, you are not necessarily taking the blame for causing the problem. You are apologizing to the customer having a bad experience. Put yourself in their shoes. Be sincere.

Complete your complaint understanding

There is a fine line between simply following up after handling a complaint and inadvertently inviting customers to complain even more.

Let’s look at the following two responses:

“Is there anything else wrong?”

“How else can I help you today?”

Asking a customer who just complained a leading, negative question such as #1 would lead to compounding the complaint and a mistake to avoid.

Conversely, inquiring about how you may be able to assist further a customer lets them know that you are willing to stick it out if they have any other issues to address.

Be quick in response

We often discuss some pretty strong cases for spending more time with your customers, but you saw the data above … complaints are a slightly different beast that greatly degrades when slowly responded to. Work to close issues as quickly as possible. Benefits increase from complaints being resolved quickly.

A customer leaving a feature request won’t sweat the fact that it took you a day to get back to them. However, unhappy customers wanted resolution yesterday, so you need to make responding to them a priority.

In almost every other instance I would encourage you to slow down your service, but in this case, you need to make moves to right the wrong as soon as possible!

Ask them how you can make things right. Then do more.

To illustrate how this happens, we like to use the following example. We occasionally visit Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch until a disappointment with a KFC takeout order of soggy, unappetizing chicken and fries. We called the restaurant chain’s toll-free number to complain but was told that complaints should be directed to the specific location’s manager. One call is worth the effort for us, but not two … especially if the company shows a lack of interest in the first call. We find it easier, given these two incidents, to find a new place for lunch.

KFC lost a customer without even knowing it had happened. You can bet your customers make “silent” decisions like this on a regular basis …so make it easy for them to complain. Don’t rely on feedback forms. Ask customers for direct, face-to-face opinions. Do it regularly and have them know whom they can complain to if anything goes wrong. The image above is real and a great way to let customers know you are paying attention and care.

Too many employees either have no response to complaints or a generic, stock response, like taking money off the bill. But that risks making the customer even more angry if that’s not what they want to be done. In fact, you might even offend someone by offering them a discount.

Related: How Marriott Courtyard Turned Customer Failure into Service Recovery

A better strategy is to ask them what they want. Most people don’t want much. They usually just want you to listen. But whatever they say, always do it and more. For example, if they ask for their meal free your response might be:

“Mr. Smith, of course, your meal tonight is in the house. But I’d also like to buy you and your family dinner the next time you join us. Would that be okay?”

Assure them you’ll fix the problem.

Because you listened and you confirmed their complaint, you know why they are upset. Take the next step and assure them you will take action to make sure it does not happen again. Otherwise, why would they come back? (You need to fix the problem too.)

Thank them.

Without direct customer feedback, we have no idea if we are delivering the experience our customers want. When they tell us we have failed, they are offering priceless information on how we can improve our business. They are telling us what we need to do to keep customers coming back. So thank them for their help. It’s a rare customer who will take the time and effort to offer feedback. Thanking them will go a long way toward winning them back.

If your employees handle every customer complaint using these steps, you’ll keep 99% of them coming back. You’ll have a healthier business because it keeps getting better. And we all know happy, loyal customers are the foundation of a healthy, sustainable business.

The bottom line

Winning customers back with exceptional service is an important aspect of your business that you should focus on, but when customers already have one foot out the door let the parting be as frictionless as possible.

Customers aren’t necessarily done with you for good just because they cancel their account once, so don’t hassle them as they exit. Remind them what they’ll be missing by simply being sincerely helpful.

Turn complaining customers into fans by communicating with them and fixing the problem.

build value proposition — Does your business have a winning value proposition?

Need some help in building better customer service for your customers? Have you noticed the growing importance of the service you provide? Creative ideas to help enhance your word of mouth marketing?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your customer service improvement and pay for results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas for your service to customers.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:

10 Next Generation Customer Service Practices

Handling Customer Complaints … 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics

7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Promotional Strategies … The Aim of Marketing Is to Sell Without Selling

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product fits him so well the product fits him and sells itself. Awesome thought from Peter Drucker. Let me tell you two awesome stories on how successful marketers use promotional strategies to sell without selling. Both are stories that I experienced firsthand.

Promotional strategies … here is the first story:

A landscape gardener ran a business that had been in the family for two or three generations.

The staff was happy, and customers loved to visit the store, or to have the staff work on their gardens or make deliveries – anything from bedding plants to ride-on mowers.

For as long as anyone could remember, the current owner and previous generations of owners were extremely positive happy people.

Most folks assumed it was because they ran a successful business.

In fact, it was the other way around…

A tradition in the business was that the owner always wore a big lapel badge, saying Business Is Great!

The business was indeed generally great, although it went through tough times like any other. What never changed, however, was the owner’s attitude, and the badge saying Business Is Great!

Everyone who saw the badge for the first time invariably asked, “What’s so great about business?” Sometimes people would also comment that their own business was miserable, or even that they personally were miserable or stressed.

Anyhow, the Business Is Great! badge always tended to start a conversation, which typically involved the owner talking about lots of positive aspects of business and work, for example:

the pleasure of meeting and talking with different people every day
the reward that comes from helping staff take on new challenges and experiences
the fun and laughter in a relaxed and healthy work environment
the fascination in the work itself, and in the other people’s work and businesses
the great feeling when you finish a job and do it to the best of your capabilities
the new things you learn every day – even without looking to do so
and the thought that everyone in business is blessed – because there are many millions of people who would swap their own situation to have the same opportunities of doing a productive meaningful job, in a civilized well-fed country, where we have no real worries.

And so the list went on. And no matter how miserable a person was, they’d usually end up feeling a lot happier after just a couple of minutes listening to all this infectious enthusiasm and positivity.

It is impossible to quantify or measure attitude like this, but to one extent or another it’s probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, on which point if asked about the badge in a quiet moment, the business owner would confide:

The badge came first. The great business followed. And that my friends is the best social business strategy that I know of.

With the advent of the Internet, the number of marketing options available to both budding and experienced entrepreneurs has become staggering.

Mark Schaefer is one of my favorite marketing experts, who usually has good stories and examples to share. I recommend you check out his website.

Promotional strategies for business … here is the second story:

Recently, my wife and I bought several Turkish rugs from Mehrdad Moghadam, Vero Beach’s Steve Jobs of Oriental rug merchants.

If I could run my company as well he could sell, I’d have the most successful marketing agency in the state of Florida.

Technically speaking, Mehrdad didn’t really sell us anything. He simply created the conditions that allowed us to buy. I know many of you think this is really just a clever form of selling, but I would argue otherwise.

Pay attention: How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement

How did Mehrdad work these magic conditions, when we weren’t really sure we were ready to buy a rug, let alone 2?

Sell without selling … establish rapport

He effortlessly … established rapport

He had beautiful rugs … and knew them better than most people know themselves

He loved … what he did

He shared his knowledge … with great emotion

He gave us … all the space we needed

He had a wonderful … sense of humor

He had kind eyes … and a big heart

He conducted the transaction … in the spirit of service

He knew what he was doing … and he did it with the perfect blend of flair and humility

Take a moment to think about the way that you currently sell your product or services. If it’s not going quite as well as you’d like, ask yourself:

“What can I learn from the landscape gardener or Mehrdad the Rug Merchant that could make me a better marketer?”

And always remember … selling is marketing BUT marketing is not selling.

Please share a story about a creative marketing campaign strategy with this community.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts

Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study

Jaw Dropping Guerrilla Marketing Lessons and Examples

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Brake All the Rules To Be Someone to Understand

Do you remember your experiences with selecting a puppy when you were a child? Our family always had a dog, so I remember several such occasions and they included someone to understand. This is a story I was told a while back about one such memory that we would like to share:

I believe that you can get everything in life you want …
if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

– Zig Zigler

A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell.
He painted a sign advertising the 4 pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.

Mister, he said, I want to buy one of your puppies.

Well, said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, these puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.

The boy dropped his head for a moment.

Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer.

I’ve got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?

Sure, said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle. Here, Dolly! he called.

Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur.

The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse.

Slowly another little ball appeared this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up.

I want that one, the little boy said, pointing to the runt. The farmer knelt down at the boy’s side and said, Son, you don’t want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.

With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers.

In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe.

To understand someone's feelings — To understand someone’s feelings.

Looking back up at the farmer, he said, You see sir, I don’t run too well myself, and he will need someone to understand.

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup.

Holding it carefully he handed it to the little boy.

What does it mean to understand someone.

How much? asked the little boy. No charge, answered the farmer, There’s no charge for love.

The world is full of people who need someone to understand …

My takeaway from this story?

Do what you can, with what you have, wherever you happen to be …

Remember … sometimes reality is too complex. Stories do a good job of giving meaning that can be remembered.

Would you like another interesting story? Never Give Up Your Dreams

Do you have any stories from your experience vault that you could share with this community?

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing or advertising campaigns? Looking for creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your enthusiasm?

Do you have a lesson about making your motivation better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics that relate to improving the performance of business. Go to Amazon to obtain a copy of his latest book, Exploring New Age Marketing. It focuses on using the best examples to teach new age marketing … lots to learn. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

A Story About Living as Told by a Six Year Old Boy

Surprising Story Lessons on Making a Difference

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Collaboration works … collaborative commerce

Collaboration and trust in the workplace …. benefits

The Image of Your Brand

Your Main Marketing Tool

Your website represents the best marketing tool you possess, and it plays a significant role in attracting new customers. New and relevant content will allow people to see you as a professional who wants to keep his business updated and will do everything possible to solve their problems.

Remember, people will judge you and the way you work after taking a quick look at your website. It’s extremely important to make a good first impression by investing in website innovation. Showing old blog posts or outdated links that might not even work anymore won’t be a good look.

A Clear Picture About Payments

All of this needs to be constantly updated and should be one of the first things a client sees. The ability to remove doubts as fast as possible can make or break a company.

Innovation Improves Your Efficiency

David Freemantle quoted: Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced. Have you noticed that you learn best when you examine the work and results of others? We certainly feel you do. In this article, we will examine customer support in three great customer service cases.

All of these offer some excellent points you can apply to your business that will help amplify your marketing.

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

Related post: Complaints Are Sources of Remarkable Customer Retention Strategies

Customer support … case 1 local dentist

I’ve been with the same dentist for more than 15 years. He’s friendly, personal, and generally on time with his service schedule. I have considerable confidence in his abilities and he had my business loyalty, at least until now.

He does what I expect a dentist to do and he does it explaining all the issues and options without having to play 20 questions with him.

For that reason, I never thought about considering a change in service providers.

Then one day my wife and I started spending our winters in Florida. And now the option of finding a Florida dentist became a necessity.

The new dentist changed my entire perspective on the service expectations that I had developed over the past 15 years.

This new dentist was younger and surely ‘less experienced’. But it didn’t seem this way.

He was much more personal, asked important questions, spent more time with me, and did a more thorough job.

That experience opened my eyes to the quality differences with my current dentist.

I had come to expect quality and service that was very good. But the new dentist provided something even better.

Now every time I am in need of standard dentist action, such as an annual checkup, etc., I plan my appointments for our time in Florida. The Florida doctor has won my standard business.

The business lesson here?

If you are any type of service provider, never become complacent. Don’t provide a standard, average or just good enough service.

Always look for ways to continuously improve your service and do things better.

Because the day someone provides better results, service, or quality than you do, is the day your customers’ loyalty will dry up.

Left unchanged and not corrected so too may your business.

Customer support services … case 2 Disney World

Ever been to Disney World? With most of our family living 50 miles away, we often felt like tour guides. Not a bad thing though.

Lots of any business can learn from Disney’s customer experience design and operations. A real difference maker.

Disney puts a tremendous amount of attention to its parks’ customer immersion and customer experience; in fact, one could say the Disney theme park mystique is 100% about immersing the customer in the culture of Disney movies and character history.

Over 150,000 employees are employed ‘on stage’ each day at Disney parks to help create this customer experience immersion.

What are the ways Disney uses its park designs and ‘on stage’ employees to create the best possible customer experience?

Consider Disney’s explicit operations and design principles:

Care for customers

In front of nearly every ride was stroller parking and in the Magic Kingdom, there were plenty of strollers because nearly every group had some small children.

There were areas set aside for stroller parking, and clear instructions for where to park your stroller.

Guess what? Customers still managed to ignore them.

In most places, this might create chaos. Not at Disney, where they have a ‘stroller guy’ whose entire job it was to pick up after lazy customers.

We have seen them organize strollers into lines, put errant Sippy cups back into cup holders, and keep his little area of the park neat and organized.

All customer-facing employees are responsible for ensuring parks remain clean, friendly, organized, and most of all, fun.

Immerse customers in the brand

At Disney, you can’t look in any direction without seeing the Disney branding all around.

In the park, it works to surround you with the Disney experience at every moment, even when some parts of the park are under construction.

Not to mention the side benefit of Disney likely negotiating some discount on the construction work from businesses in exchange for allowing them to put their brand on the signage seen by millions of park customers.

Related post: The Story of How JetBlue Turns Customers into Advocates

Lots of help and directions

All stage employees are encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly’. They are to seek out those who look like they need help, before they come looking for help.

The parks at Disney are very large and directions can be confusing. The last thing customers need is to not be able to find what they are looking for.

As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another. Disney does a great job keeping their signs easy to understand.

They also have logical layouts for parks and plenty of places to pick up copies of maps as you’re walking around their parks.

Random acts of kindness

Each employee is encouraged to offer random acts of kindness often.

The Fast Pass system at Disney is a work of analytical art that is designed to keep people moving through attractions faster and in a more optimized way.

To use it, you just insert your own park ticket and the Fast Pass will give you a specific time to return to a ride in order to board it without a wait.

Only one active at any one time however. At several, you also got the unexpected surprise of a bonus ticket to a nearby (and usually less popular) ride.

Thanks to this bonus ticket, you had the chance to ride an extra ride in the same time and feel just a little better about your experience all day.

A random act of kindness that costs nothing.

Be flexible with rules

Many of the rides take photos of you while you are on board. Those photos are sold to riders after the ride, a classic amusement park upselling technique.

At Disney, they show you the images and put a person below those images just standing by to answer questions.

Of course, some people will just take a cell phone photo of their image instead of buying one. Many places would put up big signs preventing that.

Disney, instead, puts a person there working under the photos to make it a little more socially awkward to take a photo of your photo, but they don’t outlaw it.

The result is that they probably still get a high percentage of people buying the photo who really want it.

They don’t need to have the typical rule outlawing the inevitable group of people who are happy with a lower quality photo they take themselves.

Educating while entertaining

Many places in all the parks Disney provides educational material on signs around the parks.

This is particularly true in EPCOT and the Animal Kingdom, and special events like the annual garden show at EPCOT.

Can’t be too much of this in our opinion.

Customer service cases … offer reassurance

Everyone ‘on the stage’ has a cast role, and as such, is responsible to contribute to the positive customer experience by being as helpful and assuring as possible.

When we traveled to Australia, we frequently ran into the expression of a ‘nervous nelly’ used to represent a timid or always apprehensive person.

We all know people like that. They check a map constantly even when they are going the right way, and usually find a reason to worry about something.

Disney does a great job of making sure those people feel at ease, with plenty of places and people to answer questions.

Show ready

Each customer facing employee is expected to be ‘show ready’ whenever they are on stage. Everyone has a part to play as a component of the show.

On stage, the show is on and everyone follows costume and customer interface guidelines.

Breaks and relaxing are ONLY allowed in areas unavailable to guests.

*Customer service cases … case 3 Marriott Courtyard***