Out of My Gord

Chatting with Mac McIntosh

Gord Hotchkiss — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:35:06 GMT

If you haven't had the chance yet, you can still register for my web chat Thursday with B2B Lead Gen Guru Mac McIntosh.

http://pages.enquiro.com/webinar24-managing-b2b-sales-leads.html

There are four basic questions that Mac and I will be covering:

How has technology, e.g. marketing automation, changed the way marketing and sales work together?
What role does search marketing play in qualifying leads?
How does social media fit into lead generation?
What will lead gen. look like in 2015?

One of the fascinating things I've realized with B2B is that the more we focus on technology, the more we realize that this is all about people. Sometimes that's hard to keep in mind in this business, but that's certainly the perspective I'll be bringing. Well, have to go now, as I have a panel to do at SMX Advanced.

Our Indelible Lives

Gord Hotchkiss — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:47:43 GMT

This was last Thursday's Search Insider. As you can tell from the post, I've been spending a lot of time on the road and my blogging has suffered because of it. Despite starting with the best of intentions, I find it impossible to keep up with everything when bounding back and forth between airports, hotel rooms and conferences.

It's been a fascinating week for me. First, it was off to lovely Muncie, Ind. to meet with the group at the Center for Media Design at Ball State University. Then, it was to Chicago for the National Business Marketing Association Conference, where I was fortunate enough to be on a panel about what the B2B marketplace might look like in the near future. There was plenty of column fodder from both visits, but this week, I'll give the nod to Ball State, simply because that visit came first.

Our Digital Footprints

Mike Bloxham, Michelle Prieb and Jen Milks (the last two joined us for our most recent Search Insider Summit) were gracious hosts, and, as with last week (when I was in Germany) I had the chance to participate in a truly fascinating conversation that I wanted to share with you. We talked about the fact that this generation will be the first to leave a permanent digital footprint. Mike Bloxham called it the Indelible Generation. That title is more than just a bon mot (being British, Mike is prone to pithy observations) -- it's a telling comment about a fundament aspect of our new society.

Imagine some far-in-the-future anthropologist recreating our culture. Up to this point in our history, the recorded narrative of any society came from a small sliver of the population. Only the wealthiest or most learned received the honor of being chronicled in any way. Average folks spent their time on this planet with nary a whisper of their lives recorded for posterity. They passed on without leaving a footprint.

Explicit and Implicit Content Creation

But today -- or if not today, certainly tomorrow -- all of us will leave behind a rather large digital footprint. We will leave in our wake emails, tweets, blog posts and Facebook pages. And that's just the content we knowingly create. There's a lot of data generated by each of us that's simply a byproduct of our online activities and intentions. Consider, for example, our search history. Search is a unique online beast because it tends to be the thread we use to stitch together our digital lives. Each of us leaves a narrative written in search interactions that provides a frighteningly revealing glimpse into our fleeting interests, needs and passions.

Of course, not all this data gets permanently recorded. Privacy concerns mean that search logs, for example, get scrubbed at regular intervals. But even with all that, we leave behind more data about who we were, what we cared about and what thoughts passed through our minds than any previous generation. Whether it's personally identifiable or aggregated and anonymized, we will all leave behind footprints.

Privacy? What Privacy?

Currently we're struggling with this paradigm shift and its implications for our privacy. I believe in time -- not that much time -- we'll simply grow to accept this archiving of our lives as the new normal, and won't give it a second thought. We will trade personal information in return for new abilities, opportunities and entertainment. We will grow more comfortable with being the Indelible Generation.

Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps we'll trigger a revolt against the surrender of our secrets. Either way, we live in a new world, one where we're always being watched. The story of how we deal with that fact is still to be written.

Google vs Apple: An Open and Closed Case

Gord Hotchkiss — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:37:25 GMT

Yesterday was a long travel day for me, flying back home from Frankfurt, so for today, I'll just do a repost of yesterday's Search Insider column. The idea sprung from a debate I overheard while in Germany that I thought was fascinating. It also allowed be to blow off some long building steam about Google's increasingly apparent lack of appreciation for design aesthetics:

This week, I was eavesdropping on a debate about open-source vs. closed systems. I found the debate fascinating because two of the most important contributors to what our search experience might look like live at opposite ends of this debate. Apple is adamant about locking down every aspect of the user experience. Google wants to open it up to any and all comers. The third player, Microsoft, sits somewhere in between. The debate was about who might prevail. I was uncharacteristically silent during all this, because I had to think about it before throwing in my two cents. Now, 24 hours later, it's time to toss in my ante.

In theory, open source should win hands down. The open environment allows a cooperative ecosystem to evolve, guaranteeing a rate of innovation simply not possible in closed system. But I think it depends on where we are in the maturity of the market. Open source allows for more innovation, but it's also an open invitation for more things to go wrong. This can be deadly as you try to push along market adoption.

Apple Closes the Loop

There is a reason why Apple is the darling of the early adopter. The company insist on things working. And you can only do this when you can lock down each and every aspect of the user experience. If there's one thing Apple understands at its core (sorry, couldn't resist), it's how to make a user happy. The Jobs BHAG of creating "insanely great" products only works if all that insanity leads to an expected end result. And I challenge anyone who's used both a Mac and a Windows box to tell me that the Apple user experience isn't more refined, more elegant and more delightful.

In the early days of market adoption, this stuff is important. You don't want to drop way more cash than you should on a new tech-toy only to find the interface is clunky, amateurish and full of glitches. With Apple's meticulous attention to detail, you know that whatever is available on your new iToy will work near-flawlessly. Sure, the code-police from Cupertino are overly dictatorial, which isn't winning them any friends in the programming community, but the apps that are the end result are ridiculously simple to use and frequently beautiful to look at.

Google's UX Challenges

Now, look at Google. I tried to find a polite way to say this, but couldn't, so I'll just lay it on the table: Google sucks at interface design. For years we've been lauding the simple, spartan look of Google search. The fact is, simple was all we needed for an ordered list of text results. Google's algorithm provided enough power in the backend to make up for an anemic interface. But today, now that everyone's caught up in the algo department, Google's interface looks like a Grade 8 coding project. The new 3 column search format follows in the footsteps of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendars and most other Google interfaces: it looks like it was designed by an engineer.

In my company, we tried to move to using Google's suite of tools based on the fact that in an open-source environment, we should see more rapid innovation. Well, that and the price was hard to argue with. But the fact is, everyone on our team is completely fed up with clunky Google interfaces that seem full of quirks. It doesn't feel like we're using leading-edge innovation, it feels like we're using freeware. And I, for one, expect more from Google.

Google ... Give me that GUI Feeling!

That's the problem with open source early in the market adoption model. There's not enough maturity in the market to force developers to worry about nuance. User experience is considered the polish -- the last thing to be applied. You can't lock down all the details needed to guarantee a consistently acceptable user experience.

I still have tremendous respect for the innovation engine that sits at the heart of Google, but if I had one piece of advice to pass along, it would be this: Worry less about changing the world, and more about polishing up the Gmail interface. You can always change the world tomorrow, but today I'd like to retrieve my email from something that doesn't look like a dog's breakfast.

More Thoughts on Outside In Thinking

Gord Hotchkiss — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:53:23 GMT

Before I move on to Carlota Perez and her Regime Transition Theory, i just wanted to add some additional thoughts to yesterday's post about Outside In Perspectives.

Strangers Amongst Us

As I mentioned yesterday, sometimes a stranger in a strange land is better able to see things than the natives. For the inside group, what they see everyday ceases to become remarkable. It's just their everyday reality. And, as I said, people in a group tend to conform to the norm of the group. Herds work much better when everyone is heading in the same direction, so we have an inherent drive to get along with our herd-mates. There are multiple ways this plays out, but in the end, our collective behaviors define our culture. However, as we conform to the norms of our group, they tend to become invisible. What strikes an outsider as a quaint custom or odd behaviors is, to the insider, simply the routine of their day. Culture dictates what is remarkable or what is numbingly normal. For example, our noses curl up at some of the dishes from other cultures (China comes to mind, with roasted scorpions on a stick) yet we think there's nothing remarkable about wolfing down a couple of scrambled chicken fetuses on toast. We may even add a couple of fried slices of belly fat from that foul smelling animal that loves to roll in its own excrement. Normal is in the eyes of the beholder.

When I travel (as I am right now) I notice things about a culture that a native never would. I also notice that travelers from different countries tend to have different levels of tolerance for the new and novel. For example, I find Canadian tourists quicker to conform to the customs of a foreign country than Americans. Americans (and realize, I'm talking about averaged behavior here) tend to like to take a little piece of America with them. They are like cultural missionaries, transplanting the seeds of American culture to the destinations they visit. Canadians are cultural observers, taking note but leaving few traces of their home country. Of course, when it comes to hockey games, all bets are off. The maple leaf suddenly sprouts everywhere.

Canadians in Search of a Culture

Americans like the world to conform to them, where as Canadians are more apt to conform to wherever they are. The sheer bulk of American culture spreads far beyond its borders, where as Canadian culture is still struggling to fill the huge empty spaces that make up Canada itself.

Why the cultural differences between Canadians and Americans? Actually, Canadians have a long history of cultural observance. Some of the most esteemed observers of American society all have Canadian roots: Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker - to name just a few. Of course, entertainment is also about observing the foibles of our society, and Canadians have long mined this rich vein - Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Seth Rogen, Ivan Reitman, Rick Moranis, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Michael J. Fox, Eugene levy, Howie Mandel, Lorne Michaels, Leslie Nielsen, Martin Short, Norman Jewison and James Cameron are all Canadians.

Why are Canadians cultural observers and conformists, while Americans are cultural imperialists? In the animal world, Canadians would be chameleons and Americans would be peacocks. I think it has to do with the vibrancy of the culture, its critical mass and also the prevailing attitudes of the inhabitants. For example, there's a strong correlation between the military history of an nation and the aggressiveness of it's cultural imperialism. If we look at critical mass, that presents another challenge for Canadians. The sheer size of our country means we have pockets of population spread across the landscape, rather than one contiguous community. Each pocket has unique cultures (militantly so in Quebec) so Canadians continually conform to new cultures, even as we travel within our own borders. We don't have the same unifying cultural icons that Americans do, in their TV, their movies and obsessions with celebrities. In fact, all those things we import from the US. If you go beyond hockey and Tim Hortons, there are precious few cultural threads to stitch our nation together (and we refuse to believe that our precious Timmie's is now owned by a US corporation - PepsiCo). Before the US, we imported our culture from our British and French founders. As Helen Gordon McPherson said, Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren't British, and to the British that we aren't Americans that we haven't had time to become Canadians.

Carry No Assumptions

My point in this rather long aside is that the less preoccupied you are with spreading your own culture, the more observant you can be with others. Canadians seem naturally suited to this. If you are going to become an effective observer, try to go in without assumptions.

These tendencies also speak to the role of past success in clouding our judgment of the present. It has seemed to me that the more successful an organization has been in the past, the more internally myopic they are now. Indeed, internal focusing of resources is one of the contributing factors to success, but that inward focusing often comes at the expense of an external perspective. Success entrenches group "in thinking" and even when marketplace dynamics cause the once successful company to begin to struggle, the thoroughly homogenized views within the company struggle to identify the problems. They can't objectively benchmark against the outside world because they're blind to their own blemishes.

IDEO and Organizational Observation

IDEO actually has a few processes that rely on an outside view. Here are some examples for the IDEO Method Cards:

Rapid Ethnography: Spend as much time as you can with people relevant to the design topic. Establish their trust in order to visit and/or participate in their natural habitat and witness specific activities.

Extreme User Interviews: Identify individuals who are extremely familiar or (for my point) completely unfamiliar with the product and ask them to evaluate their experience using it.

Unfocus Group: Assemble a diverse group of individuals in a workshop to use a stimulating range of materials and create things that are relevant to your project.

These are just a few of the ways that IDEO helps companies gain an outside perspective. My suggestion would be to develop this discipline, and, as your looking for outsiders to help identify your own reality, consider hiring a Canadian. It comes naturally to us!

A Case for Outside-In Thinking

Gord Hotchkiss — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:53:52 GMT

Consulting as a business practice exists to serve two needs:

To provide subject matter expertise on an "as needed" basis; and,
To provide a fresh perspective on things.

It's the second of these that I want to ruminate on a bit today. Why is an outside look at things so valuable for companies? Why can somebody on the outside see so quickly what is all but invisible to those on the inside? Increasingly, as my consulting career grows, I'm astounded to continually rediscover how different the view from outside-in can be from the inside-out view. Consultants look at things differently. Good consultants can translate that into insight for their clients. Great consultants combine that with their own experience and expertise to deliver what is, dollar for dollar, the best investment their clients can ever make.

Ideas from IDEO

Outside-in is a great business model. One of the masters of this, the design firm IDEO, has built an entire methodology around "design anthropology," helping companies reimagine their products by providing a fresh look at things. They base innovation firmly on observation of real people, basically providing an outside-in view of the world. I've always been a huge fan of qualitative research, with ethnography in particular being an underused secret weapon. IDEO lives, breathes and eats this stuff. Better yet, they're willing to share their secrets. You could do much, much worse than learn about more about the IDEO approach to innovation. Spend some time on the IDEO Resource page.

But why does being on the inside blind you to insights that are instantly observable to people on the inside? It's not that the people outside an organization are so much smarter than the people on the inside. They have no special gift or source of information. They simply have a different view. Why?

Conforming to the Norm

As with most everything in life, I approach these questions from a Darwinian point of view - I seek ultimate rather than proximate answers. I suspect it's because we humans, being herders, have a need to conform to the norm.

I'm in a unique position right now to test this theory as I'm writing this from a different culture - Germany. In the past few years, as I've traveled through different parts of the world, I've been amazed at how cultures shape behaviors. Yes, we have inherent human behaviors, but as you travel from culture to culture in Europe, the difference in national behaviors is almost palpable. Or at least, it is to an outsider. It's probably not a coincidence that the most insightful cultural analyses have come from observers from outside the culture in question, from Alexis de Tocqueville's (France) Democracy in America to Friedrich Engel's (German) The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Canadians actually have a long history of observing other cultures, in particular, America. I'll touch on why that might be more in tomorrow's post

I've written before about Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, a keen observer of culturally driven behavioral traits. His book, Bowling Alone, provides a razor sharp analysis of several cultural trends in America that are altering the very nature of our social bonds. But it's an earlier work, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, that shows how our social connections determine not only our culture but also the effectiveness of everything from commerce to government. Let me veer a little off track to make a point.

The Making of a Clan

Analysis of cultures from mountainous, geographically isolated regions show that they tend to evolve around the power of the clan. These incredibly strong bonds of kinship have been documented in the Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians in the US and Southern Italy and Sicily as well as other similarly geographically restricted areas. There are strong divides between in-group/out-group that hamper the creation of inter-group trade practices and formalized governments. In particular, geographic restrictions on movement of genes in and out of the collective gene pool create even stronger kin selection bonds. Putnam, in his book, documents how this prevailing tribal attitude held Southern Italy back while Northern Italy flourished. There, easy trade routes lead to mercantilism and intergroup trading, reaching a peak in the trade guilds of Florence.

The impact of geography on evolved human behavior has also been fertile ground for UCLA's Jared Diamond. Prevailing attitudes within a tribe quickly spread, bringing behaviors towards the group norm. The more isolated the group, the more homogenous the views and attitude of the group and the more resistant they are to an outside view. Because we conform to the norm, it quickly becomes true that either the members of the inside group are blind to realities easily perceived from outside, or, if they are aware, they cannot effect change because they're stifled by the collective influence of the group.

There are some unique corporate conditions where this internal version of restricted group-think tends to flourish. Ironically, past success is usually a good indicator of future limitations in perspective. But again, I'll get back to that in a future post.

Jet Lagged but Still Posting!

Gord Hotchkiss — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:29:35 GMT

I've just spent 16 hours on various airplanes, so the mental processes are not the clearest, but I promised myself I'd do a blog post before succumbing to the pharmacological effects of mixing Ambien and German beer.

Over the next several posts, I'll be focusing specifically on the challenges facing B2B marketers. While the previous posts this week weren't specific to B2B, the issues of "Wow" service and returning to the Core are certainly relevant in the B2B world, perhaps more so now than ever.

The past few months have been interesting for me. Perhaps because of the release of my book, perhaps because of a resetting of strategies, perhaps just because we've hit the tipping point on the adoption curve - whatever the reason, I'm having a lot of conversations with a lot of people about "getting it". Something fundamental is shifting, and I think the message has finally seeped into the C suite. Not only is the message being heard, but it's being acted upon.

Next week, I want to explore a theory by Brazilian economist Carlota Perez - Regime Transition Theory. According to Perez, there is a massive changing of the guard in business at pretty regular intervals, driven by significant changes in the market environment. These changes are often sparked by technological innovation. And it seems we're in the middle of one of these shifts right now.

I'll also pick up some of the threads laid down in the original BuyerSphere and see how it might tie into this shift. In the past 3 months, I've been talking more and more about the business buyer of tomorrow. I'll be taking a deeper diver there as well.

But for tonight, (because it is tonight here in Germany) I really don't want to do too much in the way of deep thinking, because the deepest I plan to go is to the bottom of the glass of Bitburger currently sitting beside me, then it's off to bed. Auf weidersehen!

P.S. - bummed that Canada self destructed in the World's hockey championship. Ian (Everdell, from Enquiro) and I had bought tickets to the Gold Medal game this weekend in Cologne, hoping that Canada would be there. Oh well, it will still be good hockey!

A Brave New World that's Not So New After All

Gord Hotchkiss — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:53:59 GMT

In this blog, I've been talking about creating "Wow" experiences for customers. In today's Search Insider column, I talked about how technology may bring us full circle to our core purpose and more intimate relationships with our customers. The two ideas are really aligned.

What the hell is happening? Everything is changing, and it's changing much too quickly. We keep hearing that the game has changed, that nothing we knew before is still applicable. Ironically, I'm seeing a different trend. I'm seeing a need to return to our roots. But it's hard to see the truth of that through the technological maze we're currently stumbling through.

There is a reason companies exist. Somewhere at their core, there is something that sets them apart. There was a reason, back in the misty recesses of their corporate history, why the founders thought they could actually make a buck at this. The older the company, the further it is from the original spark that gave birth to a new entity, but it still lies somewhere.

To Look Forward, Look Back

As companies struggle to adapt to the digital marketplace, they tend to look forward, which is a really scary view of things. Everything is uncharted, unknowable and uncertain. There is a sense that we don't know what lurks around the next corner. This also makes it seem that it's imperative to figure out what's changed. "What," I hear repeatedly, "is the thing I need to know about how the world is changing?" The answer, I suspect, is not so much what you need to know, but what you may have forgotten because you were distracted by the onslaught of change.

Let me get less cryptic. There is a company that sells technical innovation. It has been doing this for over a century. That original spark, way back when, was to take its understanding of its core technologies and apply them in new ways to solve customer problems. The entire company was built around that core.

Bigger was Better...

Today, the company is struggling with change. The marketplace is shifting. It seems that it must be time to grasp onto something new. At the very least, the company must be open to trying many new things, and trying them quickly. Like many manufacturers, over time those direct ties to the ultimate consumer of their products have had more and more links forcefully jammed into the supply chain, leaving the manufacturer several steps removed. Size and success used to dictate the creation of a distribution network, because physical proximity to the customer was required. Technology is sending that requirement into oblivion, industry by industry. At a minimum, it's severely altering the importance of the middle links in the chain. Technology is allowing customers to get closer to manufacturers, and vice versa.

This is certainly a change in the way the company has done business over the past few decades, but if we look further back, the company gets back on familiar ground. Technology is bringing it closer to that original founding spark, and I have to believe that's a good thing. This company became successful by having discussions on the shop floor with the people that were doing the job and struggling with a problem. They identified the need because they could see it. It was right in front of their nose. Innovation came from observation. The spark of success was alive and well and could be found in that small gap between the company and the customer. The 20^th century need for infrastructural support stretched the gap, forcing the spark of innovation to become systemic and scalable. And in that, something important was lost.

...But it's a More Intimate World Now.

But technology is closing the gap once again. And, in the process, as it brings the potential to relight all those sparks, it's also bringing the opportunity to have those shop-room-floor discussions in millions of locations simultaneously. If the company looks back to the core reason it exists, and understands why that's important to customers, it will know what to do with technology. The answer isn't in the sea of change that's descending on it - but from remembering why the company's founders decided this was something worthwhile, something that would make it worth coming to work each day, and turbo-charging that purpose with technology.

Making "Wow" Scalable

Gord Hotchkiss — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:33:05 GMT

As I said in yesterday's post…"Wow" is a moving target. As we have more "Wow" experiences, we expect more "Wow" experiences and if we don't get them, we go away disappointed.

Does "Wow" Increase Share Prices?

Every year for the past 3 years, BusinessWeek does a national survey to find the top Customer Service champs in America. Last year, Amazon topped the list, followed by United Services Automobile Association, Jaguar, Lexus, The Ritz-Carlton, Publix Super Markets and Zappos.com. BusinessWeek poised the very pertinent question: does increased customer satisfaction lead to greater equity values. Is being nice to people good business?

In a study from 2006, Claes Fornell and his fellow researchers found the answer was a strong yes. While customer satisfaction is a factor seldom watched by Wall Street, Fornell et al found that a portfolio comprised of the top 20% of companies in the American Customer Satisfaction Index would have outperformed the market (based on the DJIA) by 93% in the period 1997 to 2003. It also left the S&P 500 in the dust (201%) and the NASDAQ (335%). Interestingly, the only time the market indexes outperformed the customer satisfaction portfolio was during the irrational exuberance of the Dotcom bubble in 1999 and 2000.

In 2009, Bruce Cooil and a group of researchers from Vanderbilt did a similar study and added an interesting nuance to the Fornell study. They looked at four different portfolios picked on the basis of customer satisfaction scores and found that the portfolios that performed the best were the ones where the score was rising. Picking stocks based on high satisfaction scores alone wasn't a consistent winning strategy. But picking stocks where the score was rising year over year and where the company's scores were above the national average outperformed the market by over 100% through a ten year period. The worst performing portfolio? The companies where the satisfaction score was dropping, even if it started from a fairly high level.

So, it's not necessarily the high score that generates the loyalty, it's scaling customer satisfaction to keep it on the rise. As I said yesterday, the secret of "Wow" lies in exceeding expectations. This introduces a dilemma for the business owner. How do you scale customer satisfaction?

How Zappos Scales "Wow"

For the answer, let's look at one of the consistent winners in the BusinessWeek Survey, Zappos.com. CEO Tony Hsieh approaches customer service with the ardour of a religious zealot. But the journey he and Zappos have taken there has gone through some twists and turns. In a recent keynote I had the opportunity to attend, Tony shared that Zappos core philosophy has evolved in the past decade. In the beginning, the core goal for Zappos was selection. They wanted to deliver online shoppers the largest selection of shoes available anywhere. Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn started Zappos because he was looking for a pair of boots. He came up empty handed. Surely, it shouldn't be so hard to find the right pair of shoes, in the right size and the right color. Swinmurn's answer? An online shoe megastore.

Soon, however, Zappos realized that selection alone wasn't enough. In 1999 and 2000, people were wary about shopping online for anything, including shoes. Trust was essential in convincing customers to make a purchase online. Enter Hsieh. Zappos built the trust by focusing on customer service. No questions asked return policies. Free overnight shipping. Zappos switched it's core corporate philosophy from selection to satisfaction. Happy customers fuelled word of mouth, which drove Zappos to higher and higher sales numbers.

Zappos retooled their operation to deliver a "Wow" experience. They brought shipping in house, creating their own fulfillment centre in Kentucky and later Las Vegas. They created a symbiotic, joined at the hip partnership with UPS. They re-engineered the process from order placement to doorstep delivery, aiming to knock the socks off their customers. Zappos began to systemize "Wow".

It was at this point that Hsieh and Swinmurn learned their next lesson - "Wow" is best delivered person to person. People are the secret behind the scalability of "Wow". If you hire great people, and treat them well, they'll naturally aspire to deliver exceptional customer service, and because each employee is empowered to respond appropriately to each situation, they can scale "Wow" on the fly, reading a customer's expectations and shooting to exceed it. Hsieh and Zappos switched their core philosophy yet again, from customer service to culture. HR became the primary focus of the company.

"I Just Want a Pizza!"

In his keynote, Hsieh gave us an example of how "Wow" could scale to ridiculous lengths if you let good people do good things.

Hsieh and some friends were celebrating one evening on the West Coast. As they headed back to their hotel, one of the group, an old college friend, mentioned how hungry she was. The group offered to stop for a bite. "No," the friend said. Her heart was set on the pizza she was going to order from room service when she got back to the hotel. All day long she had been dreaming of this pizza. She went on at length to the group about how much she was going to enjoy this pizza. Very soon, Hsieh and company got very tired of hearing about this damned pizza.

They returned to the hotel at a very late hour and the friend phoned room service:

"I'm sorry ma'am, but room service shuts down at 2 am"

"But I was going to order a pizza…"

"I'm sorry ma'am, the kitchen is closed."

"But my pizza…"

"Sorry, there's nothing I can do."

Crestfallen, the friend put the phone down. The group, who had gone up to the room to continue the celebration, looked up.

"Room service is finished. I can't order my pizza. What kind of hotel shuts room service down at 2 a.m.? Pizza's are supposed to be eaten late at night."

At this point, Hsieh, inspired no doubt by some of refreshments consumed over the course of the evening, made a suggestion:

"Call Zappos!"

"What?"

"Call our call centre. We always say how great our people are…how they can solve anything. Call Zappos and see if they can help you."

Soon, the group joined in, all gaining inspiration from the liquor consumed over the course of the evening:

"Yeah, phone Zappos. Let's see how good they are."

So, she phoned Zappos -

"Hello, Zappos. How can I help you?"

"I need a pizza."

"Excuse me?"

"I was out with some friends and all I wanted was a pizza when I got back to the hotel. But I got back here and room service is closed. I can't get a pizza!"

"Ma'am, you know you phoned Zappos, right?"

"Yes…"

"Zappos…the shoe store? Accessories? Clothing…?"

"Yes. But can you help me? I really need a pizza."

"Just a minute…"

A few minutes later, the call centre operator was back….with a list of pizza delivery restaurants in the area that were open all night.

That's how you scale "Wow".

The Great Debate about the Value of Content

Gord Hotchkiss — Tue, 18 May 2010 16:37:18 GMT

Rand Fishkin posted a fascinating email thread that documents an online debate about the value of content for SEO. Participating in the debate were some of the best thinkers in the biz..period - Rand, Stephan Spencer, Thad Kahlow, Eric Enge, Chris Baggott, Richard Zwicky, Lawrence Coburn, Will Critchlow and yours truly. Read through for a illuminating glimpse at the role content might play in search algos....

The SEO industry, like many others, has private forums, chat threads and groups of connected individuals whose interactions happen largely behind closed doors. Today, I'd like to pull back a curtain and share a debate that occurred between a number of CEOs in the search marketing industry over the last few days that I think you'll find both fascinating, and hopefully, valuable, too. - more

The Trouble with "Wow"

Gord Hotchkiss — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:56:22 GMT

There's been a lot of chatter recently about "Wow" experiences. This has been held up as the holy grail of customer satisfaction, an experience so amazing it makes the consumer stop in their tracks, jaws dropping and heart a flutter. But there's a nasty little surprise awaiting any company aiming for impossibly high bar of "Wow."

"Wow" is a moving target. "Wow" never stays in one place for long.

There's a pretty simple equation that defines "Wow" for us:

Experience - Expectation = Reaction

So, Wow depends on our expectations going in. It's only a Wow if it exceeds expectations. And our expectations are constantly changing.

Let me give you an example. Zappos.com is one of the poster children for Wow. CEO Tony Hsieh has tried to consistently deliver Wow to his customers. He gives one example. The Zappos Head Office is located a stone's throw from the UPS distribution centre in Las Vegas. The reason is that Zappos works hard to get orders shipped as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for a batch of orders to come in and be filled from the warehouse, which is more efficient, Zappos fills the orders immediately. The goal is to get the order into UPS's hands as quickly as possible. So, theoretically, a person could order from Zappo's at 10 pm and find the parcel on their door the next morning. One would hope that would elicit a "Wow!"

But once it happens, our expectations get reset. The standard expectation for Wow is now overnight delivery. If Zappos does it again, it's not a Wow, it's simply meeting expectations. And, if the planets aren't perfectly aligned and the parcel isn't delivered in 8 hours, suddenly the outcome is disappointment. In the equation of "Wow", the higher the expectation, the more chance you'll end up with a negative result.

I'm not downplaying the importance of a good customer experience. I'm simply letting you know that always aiming for "Wow" can lead to a never ending escalation of customer expectations. There are, however, some very interesting things at play here that I would like to explore further in the next several posts. I'm fascinated by how customer psychology has shifted now that technology has transformed the marketplace. For example, Tony Hsieh found that for Zappos, the secret of keeping "Wow" scalable lies in something pretty elemental - how you treat people. But that's a topic for tomorrow.