IAQs

 

British Airways doesn’t deserve any medals from me.

Now, I’ve been cheered up by the new ad campaign from the last couple of years, it’s true. But unfortunately the idea hasn’t filtered down to one-to-one communication with the airline. I’m still getting the annoyingly twee emails that assume I’m a spoilt 12-year-old - written in the same grating tone-of-voice as the ghastly High Life (which I used to read cover-to-cover with pleasure in days gone by). 

But when it comes to one-to-one communication that’s initiated by the customer, things deteriorate even further. 

I had a question for British Airways last week. Would I be allowed to take my dad’s precious medals in my hand luggage flying from Frankfurt to London? I’d assumed yes, but a couple of days before my flight thought - ah, but there’s that huge pin (all 11cm) of it. See above. 

My dilemma can be illustrated by memories of two unpleasant British Airways experiences.

1. My luggage not turning up at Heathrow with my flight and having to wait “up to two days” before it arrived. 

2. Staff at Heathrow confiscating my son’s round-ended child scissors as a “dangerous item”. This was on his 8th birthday. 

I started with the website and read carefully about what’s classified as dangerous and what not. Knitting needles and crochet hooks are OK, but scissors with blades more than 6cm aren't. Nothing about medals and pins.

OK, I’d have to contact them. I tried the “Chat” first - grudgingly, but you never know, AI is coming on in leaps and bounds. 

Not at BA, it isn’t. The bot had been trained exclusively on the airline’s website, it seems, and was only capable of regurgitating content from that. I asked it for a contact number.

All was going swimmingly until the lady I spoke to got my booking number. Oh no, sorry, I can’t help you. You booked through “British Airways Holidays” and have to talk to them.

Eh? But this isn’t a holiday. And anyway, it’s a general question abut what you can carry in hand luggage - or not.

I can’t help you with that because you booked through “British Airways Holidays” - would you like their number. 

Yes, please ...

Number was unobtainable. Rang back. Just been talking to you, or a colleague, number unobtainable etc.

Got a different number. Also unobtainable.

I gave up. Decided to put the medals in my hold baggage and just pray. In the event, the bag did turn up and I was able to do my father proud on Remembrance Sunday.

But it did make me think. If British Airways are going to position themselves around “A British Original”, shouldn’t they have communication channels in place to be able to deal with the human, original, Infrequently Asked Questions, too?

Synthetic, fake or just sh*t?

Fur, leather, meat - when you don’t want to wear or eat the real thing, there are alternatives. These are often described as “synthetic”, meaning that they’ve been been artificially produced in order to closely imitate the natural product. 

As well as the “artificial/not natural” connotations, “synthetic” also has associations of insincerity or affectedness. Fake. But fake can be a positive too, especially if presented as a clever alternative to using up natural resources, be they animal, vegetable or mineral.

I’m a bit slow off the mark, I admit. I only consciously heard the phrase “synthetic data” a couple of months ago in a seminar about “The Future of Measurement.” It was used in this context for data generated by AI to patch holes. This made me a little uneasy, but I brushed it off - after all, we’ve been patching holes in data via statisitcal modelling and analysis for as long as I’ve been in this business, and no doubt before that.

But the mention sparked a memory from another seminar, or something I read in the marketing press. That market research organisations such as Kantar are busy with R&D on “synthetic samples” which can generate “human-style responses.”

Does the euphemistic “synthetic sample” really mean fake people?

A year ago, Kantar were still moderately cautious about “synthetic samples”.  While AI has some great applications in market research (coding open-ended responses is an obvious example), the article points out some of the shortcomings of using AI as a substitute for human respondents. For example, look at the differences here:

I’m not surprised that the AI is more enthusiastic than real people about statements that sound AI-generated. Who in their right mind would agree to gobbledegook such as “my product is a way for me to bond/connect with others who share my passion”? Particularly if it’s bog cleaner or something.

The article concludes that: 

Our conclusion is that right now, synthetic sample currently has biases, lacks variation and nuance in both qual and quant analysis. On its own, as it stands, it’s just not good enough to use as a supplement for human sample.

And Kantar advise a blended approach based on “real people” and supplemented with AI.

Fast-forward a year and Kantar are far more gung-ho about it all. They’ve launched an AI Lab and appointed a Chief AI Scientist . And there’s a new GenAI marketing assistant, too. 

Competitive pressure, the race to be first, client demands for faster, faster - or genuine innovation and leadership? Who knows - but Kantar are not alone. Mark Ritson has written enthusiastically about his chums at an outfit called Evidenza.AI

Evidenza say “we survey AI copies of your customers to build finance-friendly sales and marketing plans ... we generate hundreds of synthetic customers based on your product category ... we test your messaging with synthetic customers.”

Meaning, I guess, use AI to generate marketing communication and throw it to the customer copies to get a tick on that box. No messy humans involved.

Self-fulfilling prophecy? Can we look forward to “synthetic sales”, too?

Cory Doctorow takes it a few leaps further in his brilliantly-titled critical piece, “The Coprophagic AI crisis.” From warnings about botshit ("inaccurate or fabricated content shat out at scale”) and human-created content sinking in the cesspit ("As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated “content” in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels.”) he goes on to consider the consequences should AI Search really take off:

The question is, why the fuck would anyone write the web if the only “person” who can find what they write is an AI’s crawler, which ingests the writing for its own training, but has no interest in steering readers to see what you’ve written? If AI search ever becomes a thing, the open web will become an AI CAFO and search crawlers will increasingly end up imbibing the contents of its manure lagoon.

Food for thought, and I feel distinctly queasy.

It’s another example of a contained system or black box that’s easy to control. Like home-grown problem: solution advertising.

And the answer is to get out of the system, go back to first principles, get inspiration from the internot. And remember that we are responsible for the data we produce and how it’s used. This stuff does matter.

Everything, everywhere, all at once

 

According to Interbrand, Amazon is the world’s third biggest and most valuable brand. Next year, the company will clock up 30 years in business. I’ve watched it grow from an “internet bookstore” (how quaint) through a destroyer of the small and local to a paragon of customer-centric brand virtue (according to Interbrand). And back and forth again. Amazon nows occupies a position of what I’d call uneasy ubiquity.

My own relationship with Amazon illustrates this perfectly. I resist Amazon as default, in the same way that I avoid booking.com. And yet - I’m trapped with my Kindle. And sometimes, Amazon is the only practical option. 

This is what Amazon have understood. And it’s what they understand by customer-centric (rather than people-centric). When people are in customer mode, when there’s something they really, really, want, and they want it quickly and cheaply, reliably delivered, noble principles go out of the window. Amazon understand the power of “make it easy, make it convenient.”

So, when you already offer “everything”, where can you go from there to make things even easier? You try at “everywhere”. So people don’t even have to leave their favourite social media app, let alone their armchair for (almost) instant gratification. Amazon have partnered with Meta, as well as Pinterest and Snapchat to link your account and shipping address for a check-out without checking-out of the app. 

I won’t be joining in, as I’m old and contrary. But I doubt that’s of much concern to Amazon. They are probably more perturbed that, at this stage at least, TikTok aren’t playing ball, either.

Whose money is it anyway?

 

One of the areas where I’m pretty sure my age is showing is my sadness in the decline of bricks and mortar financial and related services. I’ve written about some of my experiences involving my UK bank here and here, and I fear the situation is going to get worse before it gets better.

The pandemic has provided a perfect hatching ground for yet more fraudsters and dodgy schemes intent on getting their grubby mitts on unsuspecting people’s money. I heard recently about an acquaintance who very nearly parted with a huge sum in the direction of fraudsters doing a very good impersonation of the Allianz. 

The sad fact of the matter is that it’s difficult to trust any organisation when you can’t see their offices, or the people working there. The internet is smoke and mirrors in digital.

The situation in Germany is nearly as bad, although I do at least have an advisor/contact person assigned to my account who I’ve met in person, although I suspect that’s a rare privilege as I’m self-employed. Less cheering is the knowledge that, due to Automatic Exchange of Information, UK institutions are passing all sorts of info about me to to the German tax authorities, which would be all well and good if there was some way of finding out which information was being passed over, and a way of checking if this information was correct and relevant - clue: it isn’t always, as I have found out to my cost. 

I know it’s not easy for the banks. The high street branches are a huge cost drain, and they are kind of trapped between security on the one hand and providing good custmer service on the other. But surely this is the kind of challenge that, if you get it right, you’ll really rise above the others and profit?

My experience of banking is that there are more and more hoops for me to jump through now to get anywhere near my own money, yet it’s also increasingly difficult to get to talk to a human being when I really need to - and no, I don’t want to chat on Facebook about financial matters. With the advances in technology, this makes no sense whatsoever.

I’ve got used to the tangle of user names, passwords and memorable information to get me past Go. I am even coming to accept that every second time I want to bank online I’ll have to utter a four digit code at a machine (and that worryingly often, it’s not accepted). But yesterday, I encountered something new. I wanted to move some money from my bank account to the NS&I, where I have Premium Bonds and a couple of other savings bits and pieces.

As I attempted to do this, a grid with about nine little icons flashed up at me.

"Why are you doing this?” demanded the grid.

I was quite taken aback and had a quick look through the options. “Moving my money” seemed to answer the question. Immediately another pop-up in red told me that the bank would never ask me to move money, which was odd as it was nothing to do with the bank, rather my own free will. But choosing this option resulted in not being able to get any further.

I wish I’d done a screen shot of all this as I can’t remember what else there was, but eventually I picked “Savings and investment” which seemed quite safe, but also came with dire warnings about fraud, and had I checked out the company I was investing with, and so on and so forth. I did think briefly about the guy and the Allianz-masquerade, but really. NS&I?

All in all, what should have taken a few seconds took considerably longer and left me irritated and almost as if I’d tried to do something illegal, or ill-advised, or naughty. 

And, strangely, I wasn’t asked to “rate my experience” on this occasion. I wonder why. 

 

Borders, Boxes, Brexit and Bother

 

My recent visit to the UK as Summer fades into Autumn had its rather wonderful moments - heather against blue sky, for example. But there were more than enough moments of general botheration, summed up by this sort of thing:

 I did manage to get petrol for the drive back without getting knifed or the tyres of my German number-plated car slashed. But one incident which can be filed under “customer service - lack of” did rile me somewhat.

To cut a long story short, the phone and broadband in my UK house weren’t working. I rang the service provider from my German mobile phone to try and sort it out. They let me know that they wouldn’t deal with it directly, but would pass it on to Openreach. I wouldn’t be able to contact Openreach directly, but my provider would send me a text to let me know progress, when appointments were confirmed and suchlike.

- Oh, great - here’s my mobile number. It’s a German one. Hope that’s OK?

- No, sorry. We’re not allowed to take international numbers. Have you got another number we can call you on?

- Well, I have, but it’s not working if you remember. Can you make an exception?

- No, we can’t.

- Then how will you contact me?

- You’ll have to phone us.

- Right. You mean I have to call your helpline via my German phone, and possibly hang on for 20 minutes or so before I get a reply, in order to find out progress on repairing a fault with the service you supply?

- Yes. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

I bit my tongue at that point, but I will be writing a letter, for what good it will do.

I can’t help but wonder how many other people there must be in a similar situation with two homes in different countries through circumstance rather than choice. Banks, utility and service providers would do well to recognise these customers’ needs rather than treating them as an irritant to the system.

Globalism used to be the big dream, but it’s now become a dirty word. I do believe there is a place for both: roots/local and global, with all its advantages. It doesn’t necessarily mean Starbucks. HSBC UK have used this theme in their advertising for a few years now. Some of the ads are a touch cliched, but I do like Richard Ayoade as spokeperson for the brand.

The latest ad, about borders, is here   

As the ad industry becomes increasingly obsessed with identity and putting people in boxes, I hope one day the penny will drop that a box has multiple borders.  

Your customers choose you

Back in the days, when I could sell my books at live events, I’d get into conversation with people at the museum, or bookshop, or school, or wherever it was. Some of these conversations were unexpectedly fascinating, and could have been the basis for new stories in their own right. Then every so often, a customer would say something - express an opinion - that I didn’t agree with. What was I to do? Snatch the book back, climb onto my high horse and proclaim that I didn’t want people of their sort buying my books? Of course not.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a video entitled “Thank You, North Face”, which is part of a wider campaign from Liberty Energy to create provocation/put the facts straight (take your pick) about the oil and gas industry continually being cast as the villain in the climate change and sustainability story. In it, the CEO enthusiastically thanks The North Face for being such a great customer. I think this campaign pricks over-inflated corporate virtue-signalling puffery with a very sharp pin. It’s also a reminder that while you can choose your suppliers (although you may not want to shout to the rooftops about who those are), you have little choice in reality about who your customers are.

This all goes back to the arrogance of brands (or the people behind them) that I’ve written about before. However many idealised personas your marketing department draw up - clean-living, well-adjusted people who share your wonderful brand values of inclusion, diversity and wellness, and are passionate about making the world a better place - there will be countless numbers of people who’ll buy your brand who might smoke like chimneys, drink like fish and hold unfashionable, uneducated views. Some of them may even be Brexiteers.

I’m in the UK at the moment, and read about brands boycotting the new news channel, GB News . I haven’t watched the new station - I’m not particularly interested to be honest - but it would seem to be a rather bumbling post-Brexit channel for the sort of people who comment in the Daily Mail. Fair enough.

But advertisers boycotting it? Unless you’re a bijou boutique exclusive brand-thingy that maybe can hand-pick its customers to a certain extent, this seems to make little sense. Especially for a mainstream brand like IKEA that has always claimed to be “for the many people.”

As Batman might have said: “They may be GB News viewers, but they’re also human beings."

Book binding

The notion of the customer relationship seems to be going out of fashion a little, perhaps muted by the increasing volume of "consumers don't want to have a relationship with your brand"-type clickbait headlines in marketing articles. Or maybe due to the obsessional focus on "the customer experience". But long-term experience, relationship, call it what you will is what this post is about.

Amazon is one of those brands that made a huge difference to my life. I often wonder whether it's the brand itself or the generic service of an online bookstore, but if so, Amazon was certainly the right brand in the right place for me in the late 1990s. No longer did I have to trek into Frankfurt to buy books in English. And in the early 2000s, as my son was young, Amazon was a godsend, both for the latest children's books and for tracking down old favourites from my childhood to read to him.

I started reviewing relatively late into my Amazon relationship - I've tracked down my first review, which was in May 2006. In the following 14 years, I've contributed over 300 reviews, mostly books, with the occasional CD or DVD thrown in. My reviews were always intended more for my own reference, but I was flattered when others commented on them or found them helpful. I had a brief season of fame as a Top 1000 reviewer, and was amassing 30, 40, 50, 60 helpful votes on each review on a regular basis. I felt valued, not just in terms of my custom, but also for my contribution and opinions.

It all started to go sour about six or seven years ago. Ratings, and putting a work of literature on the same level as a piece of cable or a packet of paper napkins, fake reviews, world domination, dubious business practices ... Amazon seemed far removed from the benevolent bookseller of the early days.

I carried on posting reviews, but with less enthusiasm. My Top 1000 crown had slipped, maybe because I wasn't reviewing the popular books, and maybe because I was only reviewing books, and not pieces of cable or packets of paper napkins. I started hearing reports about reviews being deleted if Amazon's algorithms detected a relationship (ha!) between the reviewer and the author.

Since October 2019, Amazon have made it official: ratings are what counts, reviews are by-the-by. And the star rating a book, or any other product, displays is not the simple average of all the ratings. Oh, no. That would be much too clear. Here's their explanation:

Amazon calculates a product’s star ratings based on a machine learned model instead of a raw data average. The model takes into account factors including the age of a rating, whether the ratings are from verified purchasers, and factors that establish reviewer trustworthiness.

Given that Amazon's ethos is about shiny new things, I seriously doubt that ratings are like wine: the age factor is, in all likelihood, a negative one. So the rating accompanying my well-thought out review in 2008 will be factored down compared to a bot giving a one-tap rating yesterday.

And most recently, I haven't even been able to post reviews on Amazon.co.uk at all, where they'd be most relevant, as I review English-language books. I can still post on Amazon.de as I spend more than I'd like to on books for my Kindle - but who is going to read my reviews there? Here's another example of Amazon making me feel like a valued customer, in their explanation as to why "this account has not met the minimum eligibility requirements to write a review":

To contribute to Community Features (for example, Customer Reviews, Customer Answers), you must have spent at least £40 on Amazon.co.uk using a valid payment card in the past 12 months. Promotional discounts don't qualify towards the £40 minimum. You do not need to meet this requirement to post Customer Questions, create or modify Profile pages, Lists, or Registries, or to read content posted by other customers.

It's not one of the world's (or even my) most pressing problems, but it does make me nostalgic for what seemed in retrospect, like a Brave New World in the mid 2000s, where anything was possible.

I'm stuck with Amazon, mainly through my Kindle. I could give up on the reviews, and go back to just doing them for myself, or on a blog, or on GoodReads. I could try and extricate myself, buy a new e-reader and start again. But it's all too much of a faff. Amazon have got me where they want me - just another customer, bound-up and too apathetic to make a fuss. 

And that's what they mean by customer-centricity.

Immersed, wrapped or trapped?

The latest theme or buzzword from Interbrand to characterise their Best Global Brands is "Iconic Moves." It's nothing to do with John Travolta, though, rather that brands today are operating in a world where "people are moving faster than businesses". I agree with some of Interbrand's issues with Brand Positioning as an idea. It does imply a couple of things that don't work so well in today's world of brands - the concept of well-defined categories as well as the notion of static rigidity. However, I wouldn't go as far as to say that "positioning is dead" - rather that brands should take the metaphor of the mobile searchlight these days instead of the lighthouse.

The king of Iconic Moves, for Interbrand is Amazon. Over the years, these include the 2005 launch of Amazon Prime, the 2007 launch of Kindle, the 2014 launch of Echo (Alexa) and the 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods.

But: I wonder - why is Interbrand celebrating this stuff? Presumably because Amazon is No. 3 brand on their list, with a gob-smacking growth of +24%,  and they feel duty-bound to. But outside the impressive statistics and Iconic Moves, there are other stories.

People feeling they've been tricked or trapped into signing up for Amazon Prime.
Amazon taking a 60%+ cut, putting many small players out of business.
What used to be a super opportunity to review books turning into a annoying ratings system.
And that's before you've gone behind the scenes.

And on a personal note, I complained to amazon when a number of tacky-looking soft-porn books appeared under one of my children's books as "sponsored products related to this item." I asked for an explanation in what way these tawdry titles could be "related to" a book targeted at 9 - 12s. I have heard nothing in reply.

Why is Amazon continually held up as a paragon of branding? What Amazon is about is immersing customers in a complete shopping/lifestyle/search/payment ecosystem. There are now over 100m Amazon Prime subscribers in the US alone.

Amazon want to "be the world's most customer-centric company: to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they want to buy online."

"Customer-centric" sounds all well and good, but there's a huge difference between that and "people-centric". It's not just semantics. Amazon couldn't give two hoots about its business customers, or its staff. In Amazon's case, "customer-centric" is looking more and more like the customer trapped in the middle of the ecosystem, with no choice, helpless and unable to get out, while the vultures (or eagles) feed.

Amazon can go on making Iconic Moves because the customer sure as heck can't.

You can't put customers anywhere

The notion of "customer-centricity" has always seemed an odd one to me, and one of the hugest gulfs between what brands and companies rattle on about via their websites, and what they actually do in the day-to-day.

I have nothing against "customer-centricity" if it means providing goods and services that customers need or desire, and ensuring an excellent experience before, during and after purchase (or similar).

But shouldn't businesses be doing this as a matter of course?

Didn't we move on, in the last century, from a production-led world through a sales-led world to a marketing-led world?

Why do companies have to boast about "customer-focus", "true customer-centricity", or "looking through a lens of customer-centricity"?

Possibly the worst cliche of the lot is the one about "we put the customer at the heart of our business." Apart from having an aversion to customer/consumer in the singular (if there is just one, it's easily understood and controlled), I find this yet another example of the arrogance of brands - or I should say, the people behind them.

The whole phrase suggests a glorified game of piggy-in-the-middle, with the (single) hapless customer pushed into the centre of an organisation by an omnipotent brand, then held there trapped while balls fly over their head. The reality is that no organisation can "put" any customer anywhere - they will come of their own accord if you get your marketing right. And then move onto the next thing that takes their fancy.

I mentioned the 2019 Workforce Purpose Index from Imperative last time:

People are more likely to report being fulfilled when they perceive that leadership makes employees a higher priority than customers.

This makes so much sense. With your employees, you stand a good chance of:

Reaching them in the first place.
Knowing and understanding them - at least in certain aspects of their lives.
Building a relationship with them.

And with employees who are not just engaged and satisfied, but fulfilled too, you stand a far better chance of fulfilling your many individual customers' needs and desires, too.

Busy doing nothing

The two most over-used words in emails have to be "sorry" and "busy". Here's a typical example from an email I received the other day:

I hope you  are well. sorry for the delay in getting back to you we are extremly busy at the moment. (sic)


On the face of it - OK. I suppose an apology of sorts and an answer are somewhat better than the wall of silence I've been experiencing lately. When exactly did "no response" become the new "no", anyway?

But let me scratch below the surface of those copy-and-pasted words. And all I can see is a lack of respect. You assume you and your colleagues en masse have got far, far more on your plates than I could possibly ever dream of, silly me, and that throwing in a quick "sorry" will make it all OK. You can't even be bothered to check your spelling or punctuation.

Things are frantic
I'm rushed off my feet.
We're inundated.
I just can't spare the time.

What the heck are all these people doing with their time? Everyone has exactly the same amount of seconds, minutes and hours as the next person.

My suspicion is that they are composing this sort of gobbledegook:

Just a quick reminder - we'd love to know more about the experience you recently had with us during your payment experience.

I am sorely tempted to ask them about their "feelings" during the questionnaire-composing experience. This was all about paying a bill (a necessary evil that takes a few seconds) for goodness' sakes, not a round-the-world cruise!

I read an excellent blog post by Richard Huntington yesterday, about deep thought vs. all this headless chicken-style busyness, presumably prompted by the requirement to be "agile."It's about "getting to the bottom of things rather than staying on top of things."

I know I've been guilty in the past of using the "b-word" but I think I'll make it taboo from now on.

Along with "just", "quick" and "sorry" - when it's not meant wholeheartedly.

Pity the Postmaster

In days gone by, the postman's main fear was being bitten by an aggressive dog. These days, the email postmaster is probably more at risk of being attacked by angry customers, but more of that later.

A new study by consultants Globeone shows that only 18% of German companies communicate a purpose (the benefit to society at large) in their claims. But, as Globeone point out, having a claim with what appears to be a higher purpose expressed in it is not enough:

"However, the use of a strong purpose goes far beyond the development of a brand claim – it must be lived by the entire organization, because otherwise the credibility of such a positioning is not given. "

Quite often, even if the management are behind the purpose, it doesn't filter down to those who are actually communicating with customers.

Take an example: Deutsche Telekom. To cut a long story short, I seem to be unable to send emails to BTinternet users. You'd think that 2 of the largest providers in Europe might actually be able to work out that their users want to communicate with each other, but it seems not.

Here are just some statements from my email conversation with the Postmaster:

"unfortunately, there is no way for us to force other providers or
administrators to accept messages from our servers. We think that BT's
policy is not wrarranted and that "SPF" really does more harm than good.
Thus we do not have an solution for you at this time."

"we are afraid that it will take some time until our customers can send
e-mail to customers of BT again."

"We are familiar with the behaviour of the servers from btinternet.com
and we stay in contact with btinternet. But we can't promise you a fast
solution."

These emails were inevitably signed off with the claim "Life is for Sharing", which I would like to amend to "Life is For Sharing. Except with BT customers."

I don't blame the Postmaster. He/she/they have a fairly thankless job, dealing with problems and customers that make a rabid Rottweiler look like a poodle puppy.

But I do think that people on the customer interface should have training on the implications of what the purpose means for them in their customer-facing role. Of course, there will be problems and hitches.

But it's how these are dealt with that makes the difference.

Hold that status!

Somewhere in an old briefcase, I've got a British Airways Gold Card. Being a Gold Member was certainly good while it lasted, but my status went back to almost zilch with the birth of my son. On my return to work, I orientated myself more towards working within Germany, with at most short trips within Europe.

I was pleased to read that Qantas have launched a Status Hold initiative. Frequent Flyers will be able to hold their status 18 months after having a child. This applies to mums and dads, as well as those adopting or fostering a child, as long as they have taken at least 6 months m/paternity leave. So no more having to rebuild your status, and you can still use all the privileges bestowed on you - lounges, preferred seating and so on.

This is a great idea, and shows the true meaning of a loyalty scheme. It's a long-term reward, with the new parents getting something back. The brand recognises the potential value of those customers in the future, and also gives the new offspring a good first impression of the airline when they are travelling with their parents.

More than that, it recognises the way a new mum who has been a successful career woman may be feeling. She may feel guilty about leaving her young child, she may experience a loss of confidence. She is almost certainly sleep-deprived. Letting her keep her status and all those privileges, just when she needs them most, is something that hardly costs much to the airline, but could lead to increased loyalty in the next phase of her life and career.

Now that's what I call family-friendly!

Life isn't seamless

Hot on the heels of my last post about our smoothie society, I would like to unpick a few seams and see what I find. There is an obsession amongst marketing folk these days with the word 'seamless', and I notice it creeping into general usage, too. Recently, a fashion company promised me a dress which would take me 'seamlessly from Spring into Summer', and I don't think they were talking about the garment's construction.

Typical of the 'seamless' obsession is this article by Margaret Hung, SVP Consumer Dynamics, Solutions and Strategy at Millward Brown. It's called Unifying the Journey. It starts off: Marketers have long embraced the concept of creating seamless and rewarding brand experiences along the consumer journey.

The main point of the article is that digitalisation means that sales channels and media channels no longer have a divide between them, and concludes that: The solution is consumer journey mapping, which helps facilitate an integrated sales and media planning process by revealing which sales and media touchpoints play a role in the consumer decision-making process and how they work together to influence which product and brand is ultimately purchased.

No. This isn't the solution. Or at least, let's unpick that 'seamless' word and see what we are actually talking about here. 

If we're talking about 'a seamless customer journey' (if we have to) - in other words, the way that people find and buy brands through their smartphones, stores, advertising, word of mouth (maybe) - then, I would say in this day and age that this should be as easy as possible as a hygiene factor, if you like. And a brilliant technical team who are skilled in the nuts and bolts (or whatever they have these days) of making that happen should be able to sort that out.

But 'a seamless brand experience'? I'm not sure. Seamless to me starts to imply a few other things. Bland. Mediocre. Uniform. Dull. Predictable.

What about surprise? Richness? Mystery? Charm? Discovery? Curiosity? Surely these belong, too, in a 'brand experience?' As Jung said: The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole.

Which would you prefer for your 'brand experience', metaphorically? The beautiful patchwork quilt by Lucy Boston? Or a seamless robe?  

Piggy in the middle

I do wish that all those companies that rabbit on about being customer-centric would realise that it's not enough as a way of thinking, or a philosophy. It's an outcome: the proof of the pudding is, as they say, in the eating.

In the last week, I've had two instances of large service companies demonstrating a lack of customer-centricity in practice. In one instance, I did at least receive a satisfying resolution, which made me feel more pre-disposed to that company. But the other case still remains unresolved. In both cases, I had that well-known feeling that they were playing 'pass the parcel' with me to the tune of call-centre music that rarely stopped.

With Lloyds Bank, I made the mistake of trying to correct an error (on the bank's side) at my branch involving paper, stamps, letters, paying-in slips and human beings. The call centre system eventually realised that this could only be resolved through people from my branch picking up the phone and calling me. I also took the opportunity when I was in the UK to go into the branch and talk to a very helpful and friendly woman who offered me recompense for my time and trouble. But that's a rare opportunity.

With T-online, I wasn't so happy. I have a couple of email addresses. One is a simple t-online one, while others are associated with my Homepage (which is one of T-online's products and services). Now, get this. When something is amiss with my email, I have to go to completely separate departments to deal with the two addresses - which both come into my inbox - as that's how T-online is set up. I won't bore you with the details of different phone numbers, waiting times, passings around and all the rest. It wasn't just pass the parcel this time, it was piggy in the middle. And I never caught the ball.

There it is. Lack of customer-centricity in action. It shouldn't be so difficult in this day and age, I say to these companies. You have the technology. You have the people. Now, put the two together and get it right!

Googlephobia and other German idiosyncracies

I had a visit from my insurance rep today. A personal visit. He knocked my door, came in and sat down in one of our armchairs. I offered him a cup of coffee and he chatted me through the various changes to my policies. Although I ended up signing on a dotted line that was on one of those nifty digital gadgets, it was otherwise to all extents and purposes like a visit from the man from the Pru, fifty years later and in German.

Yesterday I tried to get into my National Savings and Investments online account. Oh dear. When I set it up I had to remember a picture, a phrase, the answer to five or six silly security questions plus concoct a password containing at-least-one-but-not-all-of-upper-case-lower-case-symbols-blah-blah. It all ended in tears (or swearing) and a wait on a customer call line.

Personal, face-to-face relationships with private customers have not died out in Germany. I am sure that a lot of it comes from the natural German resistance to doing too much online, and a general risk-aversiveness.

Sometimes the bureaucracy, rules and regulations and wariness of just doing it drive me nuts. It must be a horror to try and set up a business in Germany, especially anything that's online-based. Just look at the pickle that Uberpop got themselves into here.

But a lot of it stems from a very real concern over privacy of the individual and openness on the part of companies, which can't be a bad thing. In my encounter with the insurance man, although I invited him into my home, I have the impression that my financial and household details are just between me and that firm, not floating around for all to hack into. And that the company won't have disappeared next year.

Although Germans still seem happy to use Google's services, the company has become something of a bogeyman here, described as octopoid by some. The cynical may say that it's the old-guard Germans, stuck in the 20th century with their reliance on manufacturing who don't want the cool geeks from Silicon valley snatching their business.

But I think we can all learn a bit of cautiousness from a people that spent 60 years under state surveillance of one sort or another.

Brand Bauble?

Bored of Brand Onions? Peed off with Positioning? Miserable about Missions?

Then look no further than this wonderful seasonal antidote to Marketing blah-blah, The *Santa* Brand Book, from Quiet Room.

My favourite pages are the one that discovers that Hagrid is encroaching on *Santa*'s space, based on the dimensions of fattiness and beardiness. And the instructions, with example, in "How to deploy language in the customer relationship."

A couple of choice quotes:

*Santa* - the industry standard for child-cenric gift-delivery solutions

and

Our brand essence is the very essence of our brand

Ho, ho, ho!

Snakes & Ladders

It's All About the Customer Journey from McKinsey Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum

I'm still in two minds about the Customer Decision Journey way of thinking: a model of how people make purchase decisions and what influences them along the way. Of course, the McKinsey model is a vast improvement on those funnels of bygone years. And it's good to see them adapting and updating the model to the digital world, and putting more emphasis on experience and advocacy.

But... as McKinsey themselves describe it, it's about "a series of interactions with a brand where a customer makes a decision or completes a task." This makes two assumptions:

1. It's about a sequence of events, where one follows another. Yes, I know that it's circular and not linear, and that feedback loops are probably implied at all stages but it's still about one thing following another in time. Experience comes after purchase.

2. Brand, product, communication, media, customer, company are all separate and clearly defined entities.

On real journeys, life's not like that. Unexpected events occur, things don't go in sequence and sometimes you end up back where you started - or lost. A wise research agency once compared the purchase decision process as being more like a game of snakes and ladders.

I'm not suggesting that the CDJ is not a useful tool - and I know many people find it a great method of clarify thinking and generating communication ideas.

But any kind of thinking should also be complemented by your own personal experience.

Innocence Regained?

Lloyds Bank is undergoing a divorce from TSB, imposed by the European Competition Authority. The bank was bailed out by the British government aka the taxpayers in 2009 and will now be operating as Lloyds Bank and TSB with the intention of making the market healthier and more competitive.

It's interesting to see how the rebranding of the two "new" banks is going. The head of marketing at Lloyds Bank has said that the "area of focus will be our heritage and our quality of service. We have a long history and customers are familiar with us."

So far, so good. It certainly makes sense to return to where you were before you were bad and dirty and maybe pick up from there. And the cover of the customer brochure I got the other day took me right back to the 70s when my parents opened an account for me at our local Lloyds Bank. Back to the caravanning holidays in Scotland that we had in those days.

But the letter that accompanied the brochure destroyed that first kindling of goodwill towards the "new" Lloyds Bank. Customers may well be familiar with the bank but just how familiar is the bank with its customers?

Not very, if the letter is anything to go by.

"Over the coming days you'll start to see changes on the High Street." Um ... if you look at my address, you'll see I live in Germany and the only changes I'll be seeing on my "High Street" are the graffiti on the election posters, not the kind of changes that you mean.

And then all this "new Lloyds Bank/becoming Lloyds Bank" stuff. I know it's 18 years ago, but I never could get used to Lloyds TSB. The campaign is obviously designed and written by people who were about 6 in 1995.

In the great scheme of things, none of this will annoy me enough to start looking around for a new bank. But for brands that revert, for whatever reason, to an old name have to be careful how this is managed.

It could be the difference between being welcomed as the prodigal son or suffering the fate of Thomas Wolfe's hero: "You can't go home again."

Summertime Sadness

The creativity bar has been raised somewhere to the heavens for UK retailers in the last few years, so no doubt Leo Burnett relished the challenge to develop a Summer Food ad for the Co-Op.

Unfortunately, it seems that the "search and re-apply" tactics applied have turned this particular summer spot into a real turkey.

You can imagine the client brief:

'Let's borrow some of the success factors of the John Lewis campaign - you know, they always build an emotional connection with music, and their Christmas ads are always fab!'

So the creatives scuttle away and pull an old idea out of the drawer - and cut to fit for the Co-Op. It's clever and ironic and the trick is that your ears think it's Christmas, but your eyes tell you it's summer! (And your clever, clever brain picks up little Christmas rituals-restaged-in-summer...)

Sorry, but this is not the way to engage the emotions. In psychobabble it's cognitive dissonance, and it makes people annoyed.

If you don't like psychobabble, you can go for common sense and experience, as the many customers and Co-op staff who complained about the ad did. When do you not want to be reminded of Christmas? In summer, and especially not by a supermarket. Is there anything more depressing than seeing Christmas puddings and mince pies in the shops before the schools have even gone back?

To quote from one of the staff:

'Get rid of the bloody christmas song its driving us demented and sick of customers moaning about it.'

Happy holidays!

Real-icky Show

Like most other companies, grocery retailers bang on ad infinitum in their corporate and other communications about what they care about, what they love, what they're passionate about.

That's all well and good but a retailer especially has to show that they care - in every meeting with the customer. And most of those take place in-store, still.

When I think about our local supermarkets, a couple of them are clear in what they care about via the store experience. REWE, for example - there's caring about quality here (which you can see from their fresh produce and their luxury own label) as well as a human/friendly/local touch, which comes through the people that work there. And there's ALDI, of course. They care about price. They really care, and it shows.

But what of Real, the hypermarket who are part of Metro, the world's 5th largest retail group? There used to be two Real stores within a kilometer of each other near us (a legacy of Real being a patchwork brand, with defunct stores of other retailer brands being bought up here and there.) Real has always been a bit of a mish-mash when it comes to what they care about. The ads and the logo focus on price, but I think the main pulling point was always the range - beyond groceries, as encapsulated in the endline Einmal hin. Alles drin.

But our big Real that really did have "alles drin" has closed and we were forced to visit its poorer, smaller cousin. Oh dear, where can I start? The place was filthy and smelly and it seemed no wonder that the horse meat scandal had hit here the hardest. The sport, clothing and electronics sections looked like a flea market with the best things gone. And as we got outside, we nearly stepped into a splat of vomit.

Real won't be meeting these particular customers again.