Great Service Vs Great Experience

It was a long flight and we were tired when we arrived at our Airbnb penthouse in London. The hosts’ introduction had kindled excitement. They were adventurers, tea drinkers and big conversationalists. That had been enough to hit the ‘Book’ button.

We arrived at their place on a rain-drenched afternoon. The moment they showed us our room, all our tiredness vanished. The breathtaking views from our 9th-floor French windows did what they were meant to do – take our breath away.

Every picture that we had seen on the booking page was a faithful reflection of the original. Beautiful spaces, excellent amenities, and stunning riverscapes.

We had access to the entire floor and that included the kitchen and the main living area with its large balconies and panoramic views of the river, docks, and lights. Our room was bathed in natural light and was large enough to hold five pieces of luggage. Every day we woke up to beautiful scenes of a brilliant, sunny morning or rains slanting across the city. The twinkling lights of the Emirates cable cars beckoned us to take a ride across the Thames.

So, what we were paying for was not just a large, spotless accommodation with very good amenities, but also a million-dollar view.

Access to Central London was a breeze with the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) station being a two-minute walk from our place.

There was a Tesco Express and other supermarkets right across the street along with a couple of restaurants and cafes. A walk to the back-side of the apartment complex revealed a fresh expanse of scenic views. Tourists could enjoy leisurely meals at the restaurants here that overlooked a shimmering tract of water.

The hosts were super-friendly. They opened their home and their hearts to us. Conversations were vibrant. There were spirited discussions on a variety of topics including places, cultures, religion, politics, love, and marriage. Large cups of tea and fruity drags on a sheesha deep into the midnight added to the lingering mood.

This experience was best captured by Airbnb in one of their most exciting campaign lines – ‘Live There’.

It’s the insider-view of a local vs the spectator-view of a tourist that is at the heart of the experience.

Of course, there is a downside to collaborative consumption that will have to be contended with.

Your host is not the hotel manager. There is an invisible line of not imposing that has to be delicately navigated. How does one ask for things that are missing or how freely can you access common spaces? Can you join your hosts to watch television? Or would you hesitate to make a cup of tea, when the host is also using the kitchen? At homestays, the idea of ‘guest is king’ gets busted. Here, host feelings, expectations and house rules are equally important.

No such worries at the hotel. The guest expects, asks and demands. The hotel bends and serves. The guest has an opinion about the hotel. The hotel does not. The old order rules and is comforting.

With world travel and tourism continuing to grow unabated (about 3.8% per year for the next ten years, according to reports), it will be interesting to see how the homestay business evolves and its impact on hotels.

How will hotels respond to an idea that is not only undeniably alluring but one that has so emphatically shifted the paradigm from ‘great service’ to ‘great experience’?

Note: All pictures featured in this article belong to the author of this article taken at a homestay.

 

FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE YOU WRITE THAT COLD EMAIL TO YOUR PROSPECT

 

If you are shooting off generic emails to prospects, your emails will be ignored and trashed. At the same time, customisation does not mean simply addressing the recipient by name. Effective prospect emails are deeply customised at various levels of the prospect organisation.

What will help you to achieve the level of customisation that will evoke a positive response?

The prep begins much before you start writing that email. Here, we share the five crucial steps that you will need to do before you reach out to prospect organisations.

1. RESEARCH THE ORGANISATION

Of course, everyone does a preliminary research about the prospect. However,  few do it to the level of detailing that is required to develop that incisive email.

Know everything about the organisation – product/service; revenues; goals; key executives; partners; competition, mergers and acquisitions and latest announcements. In addition to relying on the organisation website, look at industry articles, annual reports, and analyst briefings to get deeper insights. Make sure you assign sources to quotes, analysis, and data.

Develop a one-pager or 2 to 3 slides that will showcase the key details about the prospect in a sharp and brief format. This will be useful for future internal reference.

2. DRAW OUT KEY INSIGHTS

From the information that you have collected, draw out key insights:

– What are the key challenges for your prospect organisation?
– How will the market evolve for them?
– How will competition change?
– How is competition responding to the changing landscape?
– What are the prospect’s customers saying on social media?
– Is there a government announcement or policy that will impact the prospect’s business?
– What needs to improve or change on their website?
– Dig out research reports for key revelations that will prove invaluable to your communication later.

3. MAP THE SALES/SOLUTION OPPORTUNITY

Create a table with two columns. On the left will be your prospect’s goals and challenges. On the right, map your solutions to the goals and challenges. Be very specific in the mapping endeavour. Ask if your solution will resonate with the client. The gems for your email will be discovered in this exercise. We will do ABC to help you achieve XYZ, which I believe is your goal for this year. It will also help you later during presentation stage to your prospect. The table can be integrated and adapted into a slide to show how your capabilities will be aligned with client requirements.

4. IDENTIFY THE TOP EXECUTIVES WHO BE WILL BE TAKING THE DECISION ON YOUR PROPOSED SOLUTION

Don’t baulk at the thought of writing to the top executive – the CEO, Executive Director or the SVP. Don’t worry if your job title does not match with that of the CEO to whom you are writing. What matters is the depth of knowledge you are demonstrating and the sincerity of your purpose. Focus on crafting a creative, effective and highly targetted email. The person at the top (the decision maker or the senior influencer) not only has the maturity to recognize and respect a creative and customised outreach, but also the authority to make a decision about your email and solution. This will prove to be highly advantageous, especially in shortening your sales cycle.

If you feel that your CEO should be sending out the email, you can take that call. Remember, your CEO is equally busy. So, you will have to provide the final email template along with the prospect email address to help the CEO to simply hit the “Send” button.

5. FERRET OUT DETAILS ABOUT THE TOP EXECUTIVE WHO WILL READ YOUR EMAIL

This is the most important thing you will be doing to help develop a highly effective email.

The Executive bio on the company website is your weakest link. Look for quotes in industry articles; views shared through media interviews and speeches; awards and recognition conferred; books written; insights revealed through executive blogs and articles; interesting snippets and quotes.

Listen. Read. Absorb. Something in there will provide you with a brilliant opening line for your email.

READY TO WRAP IT UP AND WRITE THAT EMAIL?

It usually takes two to three working days to do a thorough prospect analysis and to organize it into a ready-reckoner. All the research you have done will now pay off. Armed with information and insights, you will be able to write an email that the prospect will find it very hard to ignore.

WANT TO SEE SOME GREAT OPENING LINES FOR PROSPECT EMAILS?

Come back here in a few days’ time and we will share some exciting opening lines of prospect emails that have worked for our clients.

 

How unique! Everyone has a differentiator

YOU have set up a new business or a new practice within your existing business.

You think you have something unique to offer.

You find out that:

EVERYONE ELSE has a “differentiator”. And almost everyone has proof points.

YOUR PROSPECTS do not look at your offering as unique.

THE CHALLENGE IS NOT about getting initial customer attention.

THE CHALLENGE IS about breaking their resistance to buy into your story.

IT’S WHERE sales and marketing folks struggle most – to be seen, and to be heard.

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“I’ll see it when I believe it”

The battleground for getting customer / investor attention has shifted. It’s at a treacherous paradigm called “I’ll see it when I believe it”.

Clients/prospects/investors on the other side are surveying hundreds of offerings, promises and differentiators.

To them everything looks the same. That’s the single biggest reason for the stubborn mindset – “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

Communication managers have a real opportunity here to take control and change the filters through which the narrative is being viewed. And it goes beyond clever headlines, enthralling graphics and creative content.

Design thinking for communication

We can have the best innovation designed in our labs.

But how do we get our prospects to have a conversation about it?

It’s only logical that innovation in communication follows innovation in product and process.

When applied to communication, design thinking will transform the way we navigate and get in front of the customers; to get their attention and to get their active participation in our narrative.

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Five key attributes of design thinking for communication

Listening is everything

“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.”  – Larry King

It’s not a new rule and it will never go away.

Executive interviews, client questions, prospect objections, conversations, data, analytics, observations – everything contributes to valuable insights. Teams should place themselves at the intersection of their organisation and the client and listen keenly to both ends of the spectrum – the client end and the organisation end. Design thinking begins here.

“Your problem”, “your customers”, “your outcomes”

Despite all the focus, when it comes to communication, most websites, emails, presentations and collateral will reveal a routine disregard for customer centricity.

Clients may not come knocking on the door, asking for a solution. But the truth is they are looking for answers to their problems.

Nothing can change the deep cynicism that sets in when the communication landscape continues to be littered with stereotype phrases like “our solution”, “our methodology”, “our process”, “our differentiator”, “our success” and “why us”.

Customer-centricity needs to move from being the rhetoric of an annual strategy meet to real action in every sphere of the business.

It takes immense courage and conviction to break away from the focus on “us” to “you”.

In marketing, we hear the oft-repeated phrase “does it resonate?” In design thinking, the first principle is empathy.

When there is empathy, communication will resonate. Empathy also means deep customisation of the communication plan that endeavours to address the client concerns.

Ask the right questions

The process of design thinking requires us to ask questions that will evoke compelling answers leading to a persuasive and well-founded communication plan. Examples:

• Question: What information do we have about the client/prospect
  Change to: What is the prospect mindset?

• Question: How do we showcase our value proposition?
  Change to: What is the client’s biggest problem?

• Question: What communication channels do we use?
  Change to: Where, when and how will the client want to see the communication?

• Question: What call for action should we include?
  Change to: How can we get the client to be excited to have meaningful conversations?

Don’t tell. Show

That golden rule is not just for book writers. It’s where social media has already gone – Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Pinterest and even Twitter.

Visual, tactile and tangible outputs have an incredible impact on storytelling.

Watch the Volvo Trucks video of the Epic Split Feat by Van Damme, Live Test here  and see how spectacular cinematography, a minimal but powerful narrative and haunting music come together in a riveting video that demonstrates the stability and precision of Volvo dynamic steering.

So little said; but so much conveyed in just one minute and 17 seconds.

It went viral on YouTube with nearly 68 million views.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Volvo Truck sales rose 31 percent in November 2013. An email or a page on the website wouldn’t have done that.

Communication teams will need to work with design, engineering, analytics, technology, operations and digital marketing teams to integrate message with channel and create narratives that will defy stubborn mindsets.

White boarding with simple sketches and patterns to design the communication journey is a great place to start.

Call to converse – A different kind of call to action

A call to action can no longer be asking the client to reply with an appointment, download a brochure, make a call, view a film, fill a form or scan a QR code.

Design thinking requires ‘call to action’ to evolve to ‘call to converse’.

It’s about getting the customer to participate in the uniqueness of your innovation and getting them to engage with your solution and having meaningful conversations.

Not a department function, but an organisational strategy

Design thinking for communication will have to be deployed as an organisational strategy. It can work for marketing and communication only when it works for the organisation as a whole.

When done well, the communication plan can break new ground to overcome the existing mindset “I’ll see when I believe it.”

References:

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” —Tim Brown, President and CEO, IDEO. For more, please read here.

“In its simplest form, design thinking is a process—applicable to all walks of life—of creating new and innovative ideas and solving problems. It is not limited to a specific industry or area of expertise.” – Kaan Turnali, Global Senior Director, Enterprise Analytics, SAP. For more, please read this Forbes article here.

The Glitch in the Pitch. It’s back to the basics

Blogs should share deep insights, preferably on new/emerging topics. The more the writer breaks new insights, the greater the equity. Still, here I am writing the kindergarten stuff. What to do? I had a glitch week and instead of grumbling, I thought of sharing some experiences.

I sat through a week of credentials and strategy presentations by five PR agencies on behalf of a client, an international organisation with ambitious plans for this particular market. Here’s my experience.

The brief was inked. The agencies were invited. The stage was set for the credentials and strategy presentations by a select group of PR agencies.  One by one, they trooped in, loaded with their arsenal and determined to impress.

It would have all been very impressive, except that there were glitches along the way.

 The Technical Glitch:

Most agencies arrived on dot or rushed in a minute or two later than the appointed hour. Of course, Murphy’s Law had to prevail. The projector sulked and threw a tantrum and simply refused to talk to the agency laptop. The Managing Director huffed and the Account Manager puffed, while the Account Executive frantically pulled and tugged at the wires. Finally, someone remembered and scurried to get that wonderful little device called the USB stick. The agency presentation was copied and the USB was hurriedly stuck into the client laptop. Lo! The projector was happy to recognise a familiar client and beamed brightly.

Nothing much was lost, except 17 minutes on the clock and some points on the agency score card.

The WYSIWYG glitch:

Anyway, time to move on. Introductions were made and the agency credentials rolled.

When the ‘Our Clients’ slide came up, we relaxed. The projector glitch was forgiven. It was such an impressive client portfolio. The Leaders, the Fast 50, the Top 100, the Game-Changers, the Innovators – they were all there.  Our confidence was reinforced. Then someone from the Client played spoil sport. The agency was asked to pick out the Local vs. Global, Current vs. Past logos. When the exercise was done, the ‘Current-Local’ client portfolio simply did not represent the ‘Global-Past-Present’ list.

What You See, Is What You (Don’t) Get!

The WIIFM glitch:

We shook off the mild dissonance creeping in and resolved to pay attention to the rest of the credentials. In most cases, the credentials presentation was the standard cookie-cutter stuff. It began with an over-arching global slide with ‘geo-presence’ followed by the ‘global team’ slide that had people broadly grinning down from their frames. (I half expected them to wave. The Potter-effect… my bad, anyway…). The slides continued with methodology, client portfolio, strengths and so on.   I couldn’t shake off that feeling of Déjà vu. Ah! Now I remembered. The agency website had showcased all this really well. I made note to ask about the web agency that had designed their website. Good job.

The slides continue to fly in and zoom out. We waited in eager anticipation to see how their story would be aligned to us, our specific challenges, our goals and our requirements. But before we knew, the pitch had ended. “Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity…. We are really hungry to win this account…”

They promised to email the presentation.

The Mobile Glitch:

The shortlisted agencies then returned to present their strategies. The client goals were ambitious and we leaned forward in anticipation.

There were some astute observations and interesting ideas. A favourable murmur went through the client team. An animated discussion was about to begin. Just then, a shiny, smart phone rattled and danced on the table. Of course, the owner had taken care to put in on vibration mode.  Sorry… the presenter punched the red button and pushed the phone in his pocket. Okay, so where were we? We went back to the discussion, determined not to be swayed by these minor distractions. Focus returned, but not for long. In just 10 minutes, another agency phone hopped madly again.

I decided that I preferred the Ring Tone to the Vibration Mode…

This takes the cake Glitch:

Ten days after getting a polite ‘No’ from us, we got a call from the agency headquarters. There had been a communication gap and the practice head was not aware of this pitch ….they had a practice team, with all the experience and expertise to fulfil our requirements….we should really give them another chance to present. Uh? Okay. We masked our disbelief… No problem. These things happen… but we really can’t be unfair to the other agencies. The credentials are done and the shortlisted agencies have been intimated. They persisted and so we relented.

We waited for the domain capability note – sharp, strategic, outlining high value. It arrived twelve days later by email.

It was the same presentation with just three new slides added.

What’s your pitch glitch story?