links for 2008-04-27
links for 2008-04-25
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great list
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“As Michael Kingsley said on Charlie Rose the other day, perhaps we have come a long way in this country if the black candidate in a presidential race is the elitist.” From the Comments
American Airlines: Listen!
Earlier this week fellow St. Louisian Bob McCarty who writes the blog Bob McCarty Writes sent me a link for some photos he had taken at Lambert St Louis Airport of the American Airlines pilots who were apparently picketing for their cause, customer service. Bob also posted about this.
Bob asked in his post whether protests like this do more harm than good. Finger pointing in the middle of a crisis often does more harm than good.
As everyone knows, this has just been a really bad week for the airlines business in general; especially American.
But that customer service sticky wicket.…
As American Airlines canceled flights last week, Hitwise noted a 74% increase in visits to social networks and forums. Customer service was most likely a hot topic.
As Internet Marketing Blog by NonanNight notes on April 16th , there were 134,000 results for “American Airlines sucks” on Google. Perhaps a data point for customer service.
Bruce Temkin at Forrester gives American a D+ for customer service as it related directly to their website. For his grades, he refers to his four componenets of good customer service, ACES:
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Accountability (take responsibility for fixing the problem)
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Communication (clearly communicate the process and set expectations)
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Empathy (acknowledge the impact that the situation has on the customer)
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Solution (at the end of the day, make sure to solve the problem)
American launched their own blog and assured the public on April 13th that AA Service Had Returned to Normal. If I were giving grades for blogs, this one would get an “F”. As passenger dissatisfaction continues to be expressed, they quickly moved on from “normal” to another topic, airline consolidation and then nothing on their blog since April 15th.
American Airlines and those folks on their own blogs and social networks may have a different definition of “normal.” Read what Janis Petit, Julie McManus, and Terry Maxon among others have to say.
So, calling all airlines including American, pilots, employees and management: this is made up of lots of messes; listen to what is being said.
Finally, I really do have a question for the picketing pilots: Have you all ever heard of Eastern Airlines?
Thanks for the link to your photos, Bob.
AT&T: It Doesn’t Look Good, Girls.
AT&T announced layoff of 4600 workers yesterday. The article in today’s Wall Street noted that AT&T explained the layoff as mostly “white collar” jobs because consumers are dropping their AT&T landlines.
They also announced that a similar number of new jobs would be created in more promising businesses such as wireless, television and broadband.
AT&T spokesman Mr Sharp explained to the WSJ that jobs would not be found for their laid off employees”for a variety of reasons” because the new jobs were different.
To paraphrase that other BOSS, the jobs are gone girls, and they ain’t coming back.
Or as John Hodulick, an analyst for UBS explained clearly,
“There will be quite a bit of cost savings in this plan since it will impact a lot of senior executives and white-collar workers, who are generally more highly paid, and replace them with guys in trucks getting U-Verse into peoples’ homes,” he added, referring to AT&T’s television and high-speed Internet offering.”
So, gentleman…..start your engines!
links for 2008-04-18
links for 2008-04-17
Amazon MP3 Store, ITunes and Strategy
Wendy Davis writes today, “Around 90% of the people who purchase MP3s from Amazon have never used iTunes, according to the NPD report, as per Ars Technica. Additionally, the stores are attracting different customers, with men accounting for 64% of Amazon buyers, but just 44% of iTunes buyers.”
She notes that the good news for Amazon, MySpace and other existing or new digital music stores because the market has plenty of room to grow. True. She also mentions the DRM-Free debate which is a whole other but related subject.
What I found noteworthy about the NPD finding that the digital music market is bigger than the current ITunes demographic is the lesson about strategy, targets, and technology. Not that Amazon needs a lesson in where to fish or strategy; just that it seems to illustrate the importance of having a strategy, defining a target and introducing technology that is appropriate for your target and your strategy.
Although the NPD data on the subject was not available first hand and the data reported by ArsTechnica didn’t really say what percentage of Amazon MP3 users were Amazon customers, I think that it can be implied that they most likely were a significant percentage. Amazon has been built on consistent customer focused strategies.
A recent Fortune article quoted Jeff Bezo as saying, “Customers want three things: the best selection, the lowest prices, and the cheapest and most-convenient delivery. ” OK, you start with book, lots of books at low{er} prices, ship quickly (quick, even with free option), great experience design and service which brings a satisfied loyal customer base. Expand from there.
The Amazon MP3 Store is an alternative version of the “fish where the fish are” strategy; Amazon fishes in their own customer pond ( CDs, book buyers) but stocks it with different kinds of fish.
As quoted on Ars Technica, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said, “Based on US CD sales, Amazon is among the largest sellers of physical music and boasts a substantial and loyal buyer base—many of whom may not be in the iTunes market sweet spot.”
“90% of those purchasing MP3s from Amazon have never purchased from ITunes” sounds like a positive outlook to me. Extremely positive. Conventional wisdom might have said that Amazon would be competing directly with ITunes because that’s where the pay for tunes crowd is.
But maybe Amazon focused on their own customer and applied their “three things”model and their strategy went something like, leverage Amazon Brand equity and offer DRM-Free music downloads to current customers who
visit Amazon.com because of positive past experiences or new customers who heard about Amazon mp3 through positive word of mouth.
As Bezo said in a Business Week Interview in 2004, “We work hard at being very customer-obsessed and expressing that through innovation…we see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts.” Amazon is able to expand the market for digital music downloads because people trust Amazon and want to do business with them.
And let’s not forget the strength of the Amazon recommendation system, “recommended because you purchased X”, “people who bought X also bought Y”, “You may also like”….this is behavioral targeting personified. Of course they also have peer reviews, ListMania, author blogs and product picture uploads. And if you are an Amazon customer you have an Amazon profile page. The elaborateness of it and the privacy settings
are up to you. But Amazon is a social place; by design. Which brings me to the strategy, targets and technology lesson I mentioned earlier.
Marketers seem to know that they are supposed to have a copy strategy to create advertising and objectives and strategies to build a marketing plan. Yet, it frequently seems that when it comes to social media, the strategy rules are not applied; not necessary. Wrong! Scott Donaton at AdAge courtesy of Ted Defren’s blog called it the GMOOT (Get Me One Of Those)Syndrome…a desire to do something in new media, strategy not required.
And I have met too many marketers; some of them are clients (I am reasonably safe in saying this because although they want a blog, they don’t want to actually read one even though I tell then people are talking about them on line) who take the GMOOT path to social media….aka Ready, Fire, Aim.
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write about their P.O.S.T method for building a social strategy on their blog and in more detail in their book, Groundswell; POST stands for people, objective, strategy and technology. It’s “Ready, Aim, Fire 2.0″.
With the POST method you begin building with People; by determining where your target customer is on the social adoption curve or the social technographics ladder. In other words, in which pond should you fish.
O means you need to have objectives such as you want your customers who are already in the Amazon pond and who are interested in music, have an MP3 player or who are currently buying one, and therefore tech savvy enough to download music at the Amazon MP3 store even though they are not necessarily downoading at ITunes. The Strategy will be about enhancing the relationship with your customer; in Amazon’s case by offering a huge selection of MP3 downloads with Technology that is easy, quick, less expensive than ITunes and DRM-free.
I think their strategy completely explains why Amazon will grow the digital download market. They have the pond. The fish are ready to bite and the bait is of the highesy quality for the lowest price; and no DRM. And 90% is about as big as you can hope for. So aim. And read Groundswell.
You can buy it at Amazon….and review it, tag it and get other recommendations based upon its purchase.
links for 2008-04-15
links for 2008-04-14
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I will be better tomorrow.
links for 2008-04-11
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