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Signage says it all

 
 

I came across this signage yesterday in one of high street markets in Delhi. 
There are very few innovations by Indian retailers when it comes to signage. At most of the places we see some posters with a lot of words on them which fail to cut the clutter.
However, I found this signage brilliant and bold that it stands out and catches your imagination immediately. I found this whole concept simple but very effective. 
The number of words used are minimum as picture drives home the most important message i.e. Kazo has men’s range as well. 
Though they could have done this job a little better by not putting 33% Sale offer in front of this innovative signage. Here's a link to some more innovative and interesting posters and billboards.

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Problem ownership and WOW! experience



On a New Year’s Eve, one of my team members got a call from a customer wishing her a Happy New Year.  She did not recognize the customer in first instance but after the customer told her complete incident, she recognized her.  
Apparently, the customer had to struggle a lot to get her concern resolved until she got in touch with my colleague. My colleague helped her in getting her concern resolved. And the customer remembered this act of hers and related her interaction as a WOW moment. This is why she decided to call her on New Year Eve and give her wishes. 

What made this interaction stand out? I think the problem solving approach of my colleague. I agree it is her job to resolve the customer’s concern but she could have easily passed the buck to some other entity, department, person or whatever. So many times we have seen and observed that people simply pass the buck and do not own the problem. With no one taking ownership, customer’s frustration increases and thus the chances of providing great customer experience is lost.  

In a report published by Knowledge @ Wharton emphasis is on this point. The report examines the ways and means of providing wow experience in retail stores to customers. Biggest challenge faced by retailers is lack of problem ownership.  
Courtney stresses it is important for retailers to have a clear, simple problem resolution process. "The biggest issue is problem ownership," she says. "If all you can do is train everybody on one thing related to problem-solving it would be getting people to own the problem and not pass it off." Hoch says that while problem resolution was not as great a factor as some of the other five elements, one common thread emerged from the research: "A person stepped up to the plate and figured out how to solve the problem." Having that experience changed the consumer's state of mind from helplessness to, "'Boy, somebody came up and helped me.' We all like a hero, but it doesn't happen very often," Hoch notes.

Every retailer can have best quality products and can create great ambiance, but it is the small gestures that make a difference.

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Hope sells


On way to Sangla, there is a small temple on the road side called Taranda Maa Mandir. Every vehicle on its way to or from Sangla stops at this mandir and the travellers pray at this temple. 

People pray and hope that they complete their journey safely. Once they reach safely, their faith starts building in the mandir. More number of safe journeys and faith gets stronger.  

In the whole process, they start sharing their experience with others. They also listen to others, who also echo same kind of faith in mandir. After numerous such safe journeys faith is established permanently. But this whole process has taken years to establish. 
 
For ages, marketers have been selling hope.  

Consumers try new products in a hope that it will fulfill their want or need. In a hope that product will make their life simpler. In a hope that product will change their life. Once hope is a fulfilled, customer develops faith in the product. This is the tricky part. This is also the difficult part.  
Products are sold on hope but brands are built on faith. Faith gets stronger when people share their experiences with others and others echo same sentiments about the product. This requires lot of patience. This also takes a lot of time. This also means products continue to deliver value that is expected out of them. This is not easy, but if it can be established, nothing more is there to worry about. 

Selling hope is easy but building faith is difficult.

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Sunday tit-bits

Sleeping on job is more productive, reports this article.

The world is quickly waking up to the power of the nap. In New York, wellness centre Yelo rents private sleeping cabins out at $22 per 30-minute nap. At Munich Airport, a solution called Napcabs offers glowing sleeping stations for about 15 euro an hour. And in Japan where not working is not cool, executives slip away to napping salons or tight 2m x 1m x 1.25m spaces in capsule hotels to snore.
A good interesting read.

Another inspirational and informative article about Narayana Murthy's thoughts on leadership, running Infosys and some other business aspects.

You need leaders who are courageous because you need leaders to dream big, you need courage of conviction, you need courage to take bold steps when there are so many naysayers. Second, you must have high learnability because you have to take decisions quickly (snaps his fingers). Third, you must be able to communicate reasonably well, because leadership is all about creating a wonderful image of [the] future of the company and unless you can communicate reasonably well, you cannot rally, get behind people. Third, you must have a good value system and you must lead by example, because without [a] value system people won’t buy your dream. Leaders must be confident, which is the ability to admit I could be wrong, it is the ability to recruit someone smarter than me, it is the ability to participate in team work. Leaders must be human, in other words they must show emotions and not hide mistakes, they must not seem synthetic or flawless.


Hopefully you will enjoy these as much as I did. 

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United breaks the guitar

This video is funny and highlight the poor customer service rendered by United Airlines. Dave's guitar was broken by United Airlines staff and airline refused to give repair charges to him. He followed with airlines for close to nine months and then hit upon the idea of recording songs about his ordeal and put it on YouTube.com. Song became instant hit.



After the damage has done, United Airlines budged. They have also decided to include this video as a training module.

I think they are little late in accepting their mistake and damage has already been done.

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Recession-era effect

Recession has impacted three things majorly - employees, brands and consumers. 
Recession changed the way consumers spend their money. It changed the way consumers shop.
Recession also changed the way brands see themselves. More and more brands are projecting themselves as value brands.  

Recession also changed the way employees look at their jobs. Job market has become employers market wherein high salaries are difficult to come by. 
I have jot down few characteristics which define recession-era employees, consumers and brands. 
Recession-era employees
  • No increments required
  • Ready to do the job of 2 or may be 3 employees
  • If need be, ready to take pay cut
  • Job profiles does not make any difference
  • Networking, interpersonal skills are in reckoning
  • Job security – what the heck it is?
  • Working conditions are a myth and hard work is all that counts
Recession-era consumers 
  • Vice like grip on purses
  • Plastic cards are lying unused in some corner
  • Learning to live hand to mouth
  • Second hand stuff is good but free is best
  • NO to any new loans
  • Postponing all unnecessary purchases
  • Paying EMIs is biggest concern
Recession-era brands
  • We sell cheap
  • We are cheaper
  • We are the cheapest
  • We give products free
  • ????
Your suggestions are welcome.

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Friends...


The other day I was having a conversation with my friend who was seeking some kind of information on cars. I told him proudly that one of my blogger friends is a car enthusiast and we can seek his opinion. “In this changing world, our categories of friends are increasing by every passing day. The life is becoming amazing.” He replied. 

I was hit by the word ‘categories of friends’. I thought about these categories of friends and decided to jot down. As I started to think, my list of friend categories went up to 8.    

My list is as below (not in any particular order): 
Running friends – Friends whom I meet once in a month for a 10 KM run. All are amazing people but our conversation starts with a run and ends with run. We have exchanged our phone numbers, email IDs but most of the conversation revolves around preparation of next run. 

Drinking buddies – We get together once in a week or once in two weeks and drink ‘away to glory’. We discuss everything under the sun. We try to remain in touch. Most of our drinking programs are made and finalized just a day before actual ‘event’. 

Blogger friends – We share knowledge, help each other and stay regular in touch through blogs.
 
Other Social Network friends – Huge list of friends and connections on Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn wherein my friend’s friend is also my friend. But it stays there only. 
College friends – Some good college friends who care to stay in touch or with whom I wanted to stay in touch.  

School friends – Same as above 

Elevator friends – These are my friends whom I meet regularly or irregularly in elevator. We exchange Hellos and generally discuss jobs, life, weather and society. Meeting time is less – sometimes as less as 20 seconds but fruitful.
Office friends – Need not to write much. Most of the conversations revolve around office happenings only.   

Family friends – These are friends which are passed on to me by my parents. I do not know them well but need to ‘mark my attendance’ whenever required.  
When I was a kid, I used to have a best friend, some good friends and then the rest. This was a kind of trend with everyone at that time. I knew this small set of friends very well. I knew their choices of games, and their choices of toys.  I knew their parents also. Their brothers and sisters were my brothers and sisters as well.  

The number of friends was less but all of them were special. They were like extended ‘me’. 
Above listed friends are special in their own ways but the domain of friendship is limited. Each category a small extension of my personality. 
Please do share if you also have similar kind of friend categories.

 

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