In the spirit of New York Times Magazine’s annual Year in Ideas, I’ve compiled an alphabetical digest of ideas, from A to Z, that I wrote, spoke, and passed along over the past 12 months.  The following are excerpts — the original pieces linked. 

By assembling this collection of preoccupations, provocations, and predilections, I realize how random my ramblings may seem at times – but I hope they’ve been helpful to you in some way.  So here we go:

All You Need Is Love – Love is a driver of business — when businesses are grounded in love and when leaders love the people around them, the result is growth and goodness and success and strength. (my op-ed published by the Greenville News)

Belief Repositories – “Belief repositories are fueled by hard evidence but can lead marketing teams to make investments where no experiment or marketing mix model has yet been run.” (Joel Rubinson in a guest post on my blog)

Culture Isn’t Enough — A vital, vibrant culture unifies, aligns, focuses, motivates, and propels.  But it is not enough to produce a profitable business.  Culture must be linked to, and pursued with the same rigor and vigor as, the customer experience. (blogpost)

Decrease Your Deal-Dependence with Differentiation — Differentiation is really the best way for all businesses to address consumers’ new value mindset. (my bylined article published by Franchise Update Media)

Embrace (and Enforce) an Inspiration Policy –  Clarify why inspiration is important to the company, and how people will be supported and encouraged to develop it.  (one of the top10 things i’m going to use from Andy Stefanovich’s book, “Look at More Stuff”)

Failure Is a Gift – “I think of my failures as a gift. Unless you view them that way, you won’t learn from failure, you won’t get better.” (from my three-part recap of Harvard Business Review’s Failure Issue which quoted former P&G CEO A.G. Lafley)

Grow As Slowly As You Can — Growing slowly allows you to make sure you have the right people and allows you to personally foster your culture. (learned from talk by Jason Fried, CEO of 37signals)

Health Is In the Eye of the Beholder –  Health means different things to different people — and that variation is actually good news for restaurateurs. (my bylined article published by SmartBrief for Restaurants)

Innovate Around the Person, Not the Technology — The temptation with any development in technology is to use the new capability as the starting point for innovation.  But this often leads to developments which fall short of or are off base from what end users want and need. (my guest post on CEA’s Digital Dialogue)

Just Because… “Food is served fast, doesn’t mean it has to be the typical fast food experience” – (from my recap of the reality TV show, America’s Next Great Restaurant, quoting Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle)

Kodak Tries to Bring Its Digital Revival into Focus — Kodak is not giving the consumer a reason to purchase. I don’t know that a good brand halo helps if you don’t have the ability to convert it into sales. (my POV quoted in Bloomberg Business Week)

Less Is More — “Trader Joe’s may offer customers less choice. However, in terms of ease of choosing and relevance of choice, it is definitely where less choice is more.” (C.B. Whittemore in guest post on my blog)

Modern Brand Names — Brand names reflect the business climates they’re developed in — modern brand names need to tap into the differentiating power of values and personality. (blogpost)

Not 360 Degree Marketing – “The goal shouldn’t be 360 degree marketing.  Find 10-20 degrees that give the most leverage.” (advice from Tim Maleeny, Ogilvy’s Director of Planning)

On-Stage Leadership – “Leaders are always on stage… it’s a metaphor [to explain] role modeling is the key element. They’re always in the spotlight.” (the philosophy behind Sharp Healthcare’s leadership training, as explained by Director Mark Tomaszewicz)

Progressive Brands Should Turn Their Backs on Sustainability – “Brands have a far more important – a far more exciting – role to play in helping us all move towards becoming more sustainable in our lifestyles.” (POV of Guy Champniss, Managing Director of Meltwater Consulting, as relayed in my blogpost)

Quality… of engagement is a better measure of brand strength than quantity of followers (from my piece “Leveraging ‘Like” Into Loyalty” published by Franchise Media Update)

Remarkable Retail — What makes a retail store an experience so compelling that customers will tell others about it?  Interactivity, a personal and local feel, and an editorial voice. (my e-newsletter recapping a series of Brand Experience Briefs)

Storytelling – “If you’re curating really excellent thought-provoking content, and then sparking conversations around that content, you can build that kind of equity…so that people naturally develop a relationship with you.”(recommendation from Sam Rosen, Creative Director and Co-founder of ThoughtLead)

Take a Crap – I told a CEO to “take a crap” – that is, go sit on the toilet in her restaurants — so she could see how much the details of the customer experience get overlooked.  (blogpost)

Use Your Fear – Survivors aren’t fearless.  They use fear:  they turn it into anger and focus. (one of many business leadership lessons from the book, “Deep Survival” as relayed in my presentation)

Visibility – A logo must achieve impact and contact. The former is about visibility, stating what the brand is and stands for; the latter connects the brand to the customer, making a personal, emotional connection. (my Brand New Perspectives column in QSR Magazine.)

Wallets…are becoming as unnecessary as watches.  Smart phones are easier to use, provide more functionality, and offer greater security.  (blogpost)

X…as in TEDx San Diego – spoken word artist Sekou Andrews opened this year’s event with an inspiring declaration:  ”When our ‘ready’ is ‘able,’ our will be done.” (from my slideshow recap)

You Need More Competition — More competition is a good thing because it generates increased demand, gives customers confidence, builds up infrastructure, and helps you get better. (my bylined article published by SmartBrief on Leadership)

Zappos — CEO Tony Hsieh says, “Every employee can affect your company’s brand.  Not just the front-line employees that are paid to talk to your customers.” (quoted in my speaker video)

Thank you for following, reading, re-tweeting, liking, commenting, and sharing me and my work this year!  See you in 2012 for another year of ideas!

(Welcome to the latest “brand experience brief” — insights from my audits of new and interesting retail and restaurant concepts.)

What:  ihop express

• test concept from the 1500-unit casual dining chain, IHOP
• targeted to “Millennials who don’t do breakfast,” the format is intended to give the younger target “an on-the-go option” since they don’t go to IHOP because they don’t have time, according to a spokesperson

Where:  One location so far – in downtown San Diego

What worked:

• Brand look and feel – A fun, hip brand personality was expressed throughout the concept.  From the signage to the “Flip Kitchen” moniker to the décor and fixtures to the table stands to the crew uniforms, ihop express came across as smart, funny, and stylish.

• Menu – This wasn’t the standard pancake and waffles menu.  In addition to those standbys, the menu included hearty egg dishes, creative sides like “Crepettes” and “Cup O’ Pancakes,” and full lunch and dinner offerings such as Paninis and ciabatta sandwiches.  Ingredients and combinations seemed trend right and branded offerings like Arizona Ice Teas in cans were a great fit for the brand.

• Location – San Diego’s famed Gaslamp area has a flourishing nightlife and is popular among tourists.   The location seems perfect for attracting late-night diners and hotel guests alike.

What didn’t work:

• Food – The food quality and preparation were just OK — not nearly as exceptional as the brand.  The Dough Bites were a little doughy and the strawberries on the Rooty Tooty Fresh n’ Fruity Pancakse were still frozen.  A little more attention to detail should fix these issues.
• Details – Speaking of details, two disconnects stood out.  First, plastic utensils detracted from the value perceptions of the experience, not to mention made it hard to eat.   Also, the coffee bar counter that seems intended for the stay-awhile-and-work-on-your-computer crowd needs to have convenient electrical outlets.  Neither of these are deal-breakers, but the details do matter.

• Syrup bar – The Syrup bar concept is a brilliant idea but the execution was half baked.  Only two kinds of syrups were offered and each was dispensed from separate spigots.  A true “bar” with several different types of syrup and the option to mix them (a la Coke Freestyle) would have been more consistent with the fun brand personality and a more memorable, distinctive experience.

What I’d change:

• The name – “ihop express” undersells this concept, as it only connotes a scaled-down, sped-up version of the full-service chain.  Instead the name should evoke the fresh, distinctive personality of the concept.  For the Millennial target, the concept appeal has less to do with the speed of service and more the relevant brand and menu.

Also most people don’t associate IHOP with lunch and dinner (even if the chain has been serving food for these meal occasions for ages) and so there’s an opportunity for the name to promote the full menu/multiple occasions.  Flip Kitchen, the name of the kitchen area, seems like a great option – perhaps using an endorser brand approach to link it to the parent ihop brand, “Flip Kitchen by ihop” would work.  Alternatively, “ihop eatery” suggests a full menu with a retro-cool feel.

Bottom line:  The concept has a lot of potential – and certainly more appeal than the chain’s core concept.

(Interested in learning how to improve your in-store experience?  Sign up for a Brand Experience Day. We’ll head out into the field to experience retail concepts — good and bad — and then regroup to identify and apply the insights to your business.  Learn more.)

other brand experience briefs:

• Subway Cafe
• Walmart.com
• 77kids

The holiday shopping season is upon us and retailers are trying to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the new retail reality.  As a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article observed, “Americans don’t shop the way they used to.”

Between developments in social commerce, mobile apps that facilitate shopping on the go, and increases in multi-channel purchasing, retailers are faced with a multitude of possibilities for engaging customers.  They need to create a cohesive brand experience across all touchpoints.

A Customer Experience Architecture is a tool that retailers can use to optimize, prioritize, and unify all of their customer experiences.  It’s a framework for describing and delivering the optimal experiences to different customer segments in different channels.

It’s an “architecture” similar to other strategic architectures like a brand architecture or an information architecture that are used as planning tools.  Plus, assembling a Customer Experience Architecture is like building a house.

A few years ago my husband and I got the crazy idea that we would build a house.  That delusion didn’t last long, but we learned a lot about the process of designing a house — and I learned a lot about the process of designing customer experiences.  After all, a house is more than the materials to make it – we were really building our desired home experience.

So here are the steps for building a Customer Experience Architecture:

1. Brand platform — Our first step was to hire an architect and the first thing he worked with us on was our vision for the house – did we want a mission style?  Modern?  Spanish?  etc.  That vision is equivalent to your brand platform, the first step in developing a Customer Experience Architecture.  You start by defining what you want your brand to stand for, the overarching idea that represents you.

2. Customer experience strategy — We then worked on translating that vision into the overall feeling of the house we desired – e.g., did we want a cocoon to rest in or a clubhouse for our family to gather in or an entertainment hub for our friends and neighbors?  That’s the second step – articulating your customer experience strategy, the overall experience you want to deliver across all channels.  Perhaps you want to create a “place” to discover and try; or perhaps you want to deliver legendary service.

3a.  Channel requirements and objectives — Next we broke our plan down into the specific considerations and priorities for each room – e.g., a wide-open kitchen; a walk-in closet in the bedroom, etc.  We had to factor in the limitations of the property we had purchased and the budget we wanted to stick to.  In the same way, in a Customer Experience Architecture, you break down your plan by channel.  Outline the business requirements and objectives of each and factor in your operational capabilities and assets.

Your website may use sophisticated filtering technology, for example, that makes it easy for the customer to find whatever they’re looking for, so you may specify that channel for carrying a very broad assortment.  Or, the location and layouts of your brick-and-mortar stores may be perfect for grab-and-go purchases, so that channel may be all about speed of service.

3b.  Segment needs and drivers — At the same time in our home-building process, my husband and I defined our different needs so the architect could tailor his designs to address those differences – e.g., in the living area my husband “needed” a large area for watching TV on a big screen while I needed a sightline to the kitchen.

Similarly, your target segments have different needs in general and in different channels.  Some may value convenience over price; others may be looking for an entertaining experience.  Whatever they may be, outline those different needs and drivers of their purchase decisions and brand perceptions.

4. Customer experience — Then like our architect, outline the ways you are going to meet those segment-specific needs in each channel.  Use all the levers of customer experience – product, service, content, community, value, facilities, etc.  What product categories will you feature?  Will you do sampling and demonstrations?  What added value services will you offer?  What information is provided and how?

5. Assessment and integration — Once your Customer Experience Architecture is assembled, assess it as a whole “house” – is the brand strategy delivered throughout?  Do the discrete experiences ladder up to the overall customer experience strategy?  Do the experiences complement and enhance each other, or do they conflict or detract from each other?  You may need to go back to the drawing board a few times.

You also need to show how you will integrate the experiences.  A map that shows how different experiences feed into and from each other will ensure customers get a seamless shopping experience.

6. Prioritization — The next step is to value the different segment/channel intersections and prioritize them.  Use criteria like profit potential, fit with your long-term strategy, differentiation, and value to the customer to determine which experiences are the most important.  You should also look for synergies between the intersections, meaning if you focus on one, you might also be improving another.

7. Description – Finally once you’ve set your priorities, use narratives, images, idea boards, videos, etc. to convey your vision for each priority experience and the granular details that comprise them.

Creating a Customer Experience Architecture isn’t rocket science.  And believe me, it’s a lot less painful than trying to build a house.   It simply requires discipline and a deliberate process.  Great customer experiences don’t just happen.

But the return on your investment is significant.  One retailer used a Customer Experience Architecture to get all of its employees, executives, and vendors on the same page about how it would increase its competitive advantage.  It showed how the company was going to get more business out of their existing channels and how to appeal to growing segments.  The framework increased marketing efficiency by helping the company target the right people in the right way.  And it improved customer satisfaction.

As the number of brand touchpoints grows in today’s retail environment, retailers need to focus and unify their customer experiences. A Customer Experience Architecture enables you to deliver a cohesive experience that builds your brand and your business.

(To learn how to use a Customer Experience Architecture for your business, to request a custom proposal, or to book a workshop, contact me at mail AT deniseleeyohn DOT com.)

Culture is quite the hot topic in business these days.  The adage “Culture eats strategy for lunch” has been acknowledged for ages, but it seems the importance of culture is being emphasized now more than ever.

Perhaps it’s because people think questionable business ethics are to blame for the recent economic collapses around the world.  Or perhaps corporate belt-tightening has led to lean workforces which challenge leaders to figure out how to motivate and retain them.  Or perhaps business is experiencing a spiritual awakening of sorts as Baby Boomer leaders reach the age where meaning becomes more important than money and as Millennials join the workforce with expectations of responsibility and significance for themselves and their companies.

Whatever the reason, business leaders are now inundated with exhortations to focus on the culture of their organizations.  The New York Times bestsellers list is filled with books on the topic:  Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, and Start with Why – the latter written by Simon Sinek who explains, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Pundits like Seth Godin, Jim Collins, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter has amassed huge followers with perspectives on culture – the latter recently writing, “In organizations that I call ‘supercorps’ — companies that are innovative, profitable, and responsible — widespread dialogue about the interpretation and application of values enhances accountability, collaboration, and initiative.”

With such emphasis on culture, people might conclude that it should be a company’s #1 priority – but they would be wrong.  Culture is not enough.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am a huge believer in the importance of purpose, values, principles, and beliefs to organizations.  A vital, vibrant culture unifies, aligns, focuses, motivates, and propels.  But it is not enough to produce a profitable business.  Culture must be linked to, and pursued with the same rigor and vigor as, the customer experience.

The contrast between Netflix and Zappos makes the point.  People have held both companies in high regard for their emphasis on culture.

Back a few years ago articles like “Other Companies Should Have To Read This Internal Netflix Presentation” and “Netflix Does It Right” outlined the company’s cultural practices — like not having a vacation policy (employees are encouraged to take the time they need) and offering employees high salaries instead of bonuses so they can decide how they want to spend the money.

The culture at Zappos has also been esteemed as evidenced by the piece in Booz Allen’s strategy+business publication, “At Zappos, Culture Pays.”   The popularity of the company’s approach has led to many keynote addresses and interviews by CEO Tony Hsieh, tours of their headquarters by executives from around the world, and subscription-based content available through the Zappos Insights website.

While both companies have remarkable cultures, though, they differ in the integration of their cultures and the customer experience.  The culture at Netflix seems a separate endeavor from customer experience, while at Zappos the two are closely and clearly linked.

Netflix’s “Reference Guide on Our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” reads like a human resources piece.  Its first page declares, “Culture is How a Firm Operates” and asks “What practices give Netflix the best chance of continuous success for many generations of technology and people?”

In outlining the company’s values, the document explains, “We Particularly Value in our Colleagues these Nine Behaviors and Skills…” including:

• Judgment – “You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do.”
• Communication – “You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand.”
• Innovation – “You re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems.”

At first blush, these are indeed admirable qualities to seek in employees and to embrace as company values.  But if you consider what it takes to make a successful business, they seem too internally-focused and almost academic – especially when compared to Zappos’ Family Core Values.

Zappos’ website explains the company has 10 core values “from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies.”

• Number one is “Deliver WOW Through Service.”    “To WOW,” the company states, “you must differentiate yourself, which means doing something a little unconventional and innovative…We are not an average company, our service is not average, and we don’t want our people to be average. We expect every employee to deliver WOW.”
• The link between Zappos’ culture and customer experience is also explained in its value “Create Fun And A Little Weirdness.”  “We want the company to have a unique and memorable personality…One of the side effects of encouraging weirdness is that it encourages people to think outside the box and be more innovative.”
• “Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication” is another value the company embraces internally and externally.  “We value strong relationships in all areas: with managers, direct reports, customers (internal and external), vendors, business partners, team members, and co-workers…It’s important to always act with integrity in your relationships, to be compassionate, friendly, loyal, and to make sure that you do the right thing and treat your relationships well.”

At Zappos the connection between culture and customer experience fuels the business.  It may be that Netflix also applies its values externally, but the connection isn’t obvious.  And that can make all the difference.

In fact, the absence of that explicit link may be part of what caused the company’s recent debacle.  I haven’t analyzed the situation closely enough to know this for sure, but I suspect if CEO Reed Hastings had applied the values listed above (i.e., clear articulation of intent, careful listening, practical solutions) to consumers and the customer experience — not only employees — the separation of the company’s streaming and rental businesses of Qwikster might have been executed and accepted differently.

It doesn’t make sense for a company to develop purpose or values to inspire and engage employees if those aren’t inextricably linked with how the company inspires and engages its customers.  Without the alignment and integration of culture and customer experience, at best you end up with employees who are well-meaning but don’t produce the right results.  At worst, you confuse employees as well as customers and cause both groups to question your integrity.

In a future post I’ll introduce tools and approaches that successful companies have used to prescribe optimal customer experiences, but for now let me end with some of the remarkable results Zappos has achieved by integrating culture and customer experience:

• sales growth from $0 to $1BB in less than 10 years
• a rich acquisition by Amazon
• hundreds of thousands of loyal customers who pay price premiums and promote the brand
• employees who express their commitment to the company with comments like, “In one word, Zappos Culture is AMAZING!…Zappos makes us WANT to come to work.  Every day is something different…I am proud to say that I work for this company and cannot wait to see what the future holds for us.”

related posts:

• how to succeed in small business
• circumvent a HR crisis with employee brand engagement
• experiencing the sharp experience

(This is the first installment of “brand experience briefs” — insights from my audits of new retail and restaurant concepts.)

What:  the Walmart.com store

• two stores in shopping malls — one store is 3,000 square feet (roughly 1/60th of the size of a typical Walmart supercenter) – the other is even smaller at 1,000 square-feet
• “a small test we’re conducting during the holiday season to offer local customers easier, more convenient access to products” according to a Walmart spokesperson
• open from November 1 until December 31

Where:  two stores in Southern California – I went to the one at Horton Plaza, a mall in downtown San Diego popular among tourists

What worked:

• Assortment – The selection was gift-appropriate — primarily toys and electronics.
• Hands-on displays – The game consoles and devices were available to try.
• Bright lights and modern fixtures – The store definitely had a more upscale feel than a regular Walmart store.

What didn’t work:

• How to shop – The sign at the lease line was long and confusing (I stopped to read it but no one else seemed to) and the staffers didn’t explain the store (they greeted shoppers with a “Welcome to Walmart.com” but it was several minutes before one of them feebly explained “all of the products here are available to purchase online” as she gestured toward one of the PCs.)  The Apple-esque set-up with PCs and tablets was confusing – are customers supposed to use the devices to place orders or are they supposed to buy the devices?  Most of the customers looked confused and I overheard one ask another, “What is this place?”

• Displays – Other than the game consoles and devices, most products were not available to try or play with.   Plus, the PC and tablet set-up dominated the space so the rest of the store seemed crowded.  The products seemed packed in and the displays were standard-issue mass mechant.

• Staff – The employees seemed more interested in figuring out one of the products themselves than in interacting with customers.

What I’d change:

• Clarify the purpose – Make it clear what the store is for and how to shop it.  A descriptive line like “Try it here; buy it here or online” used liberally throughout the store would go a long way to helping customer understand and navigate it.
• Align the experience with the strategy — If the point of the store is for people to experience products first-hand, then products should be out of boxes, displays should invite customers to try them, and employees should demonstrate them.  If the point is for people to be able to buy products while shopping at a mall vs. making a trip to a Walmart store, then don’t waste so much space promoting online shopping (and don’t sell TVs.)
• Hire differently — This kind of store requires different kinds of workers than a typical Walmart – they need to be salespeople, meaning they need to actively engage customers, soliciting questions and suggesting items.
• Make a statement – Promote the hands-on experience and gift-giving purchase occasion with an editorial voice and visual strategy.   Right now the store doesn’t have a distinctive point of view or personality.

Bottom line:  Good intentions but poor execution.  Plus, while a showcase store for an online retailer is a concept with potential, I’m not sure Walmart needs one.

(Interested in learning how to improve your in-store experience?  Sign up for a Brand Experience Day.  We’ll head out into the field to experience concepts — good and bad — and then regroup to identify and apply the insights to your business.  Learn more.)

I’m guessing most of you don’t frequently have the opportunity to tell your CEO to go take a crap, but that’s essentially what I did last year – and ever since, we’ve had a fruitful and rewarding relationship.

This, of course, requires some explanation.  The background is that my partner (Shawn Parr of Bulldog Drummond) and I had been engaged to kick off a brand revitalization effort for a restaurant chain.  As is the case with many of my clients, the challenge was less about setting the right brand strategy and more about engaging all stakeholders to execute it with excellence in the customer experience.  We decided to start with a worksession for the executive leadership team – our goal was to help them take an honest assessment of their brand execution in the customer experience.

For most of the worksessions I lead, I assign pre-work for the participants.  Sometimes it’s reading briefing materials, other times it’s doing research on competitive brands or consumer trends.  The value is the participants come to the session more focused and primed for discussion.

For this worksession, the pre-work assignment was to do some restaurant visits. But there was a catch: we gave them specific instructions to follow — including visiting the same location at various times of the day/night (to help them assess the consistency of the customer experience), to taking a friend along and asking him/her to complete an assessment (to help them see things they might miss), and to going to the bathroom and sitting on the toilet (to get the full experience of using the facilities, not just looking at them).  We believed this last step – essentially telling the CEO (and the rest of the executive team) to take a crap — would be a real eye opener — and indeed it was!

The participants came to the worksession armed with stories and pictures (part of the assignment) revealing how poor the customer experience was.  The CEO reported learning so much from the exercise because her m.o. was usually to go through the drive-thru, rarely going inside the dining room and never going to the restroom, much less sitting on the toilet.

It was uncomfortable for the executive team to give their sobering reports from the restaurant visits, but their collective frustration served as the foundation for the rest of the worksession.  The exercise aligned them with a common understanding of the customer experience problems and united them with a commitment to develop solutions.

Since then, we’ve been on a journey of developing a brand strategy that’s more focused and executable, and engaging the rest of the organization with the vision and their roles in delivering the brand throughout the entire customer experience.  The company is well on its way to regaining brand equity and its key business indicators have been improving.

It’s been a terrific engagement — and it all started with a simple exercise:  go sit on the toilet.  It’s amazing how much the details of the customer experience get overlooked.  Other eye-opening assignments I’ve given include:

• For an e-retailer, order a product online and get it delivered to your home.  Most executives buy – or are given — their company’s products in the office and then take them home with them to try out. Many are surprised to see what their product and packaging looks like after getting shipped from the warehouse, taking a cross-country ride through the USPS, and getting dumped on a doorstep.
• For a restaurant brand, order the items with the lowest sales mix.  Most executives try the newest products on the menu and have their favorites they always order.  But sampling some of the least popular menu items gives a sense of what a product is like when the ingredients have been sitting around for awhile and the chef or crew don’t have the proficiency that comes from making and serving the product frequently.
• For a services company, make a complaint.  Corporate executives set and review service procedures and some might occasionally listen in on service calls, but there’s nothing like dialing up that 800 number themselves.  A CEO learns a lot from enduring the hold time (a 60-second wait time doesn’t sound that bad until you have to sit there listening to bad hold music), to trying to converse with a live representative (who may or may not have the skills, tools, authority, or inclination to fix the problem), to seeing how the complaint is (or isn’t) resolved.

There are plenty of other ways to illuminate a company’s opportunities to improve the customer experience – and some CEOs might not respond as graciously to explicit instructions on bathroom usage.  But I always try to work in a way to personally and deliberately engage in the customer experience the people responsible for making changes to it.

(This post is part of the Bathroom  Blogfest, a fun series of posts from a community of bloggers organized Christine B. Whittemore, chief simplifier of Simple Marketing Now. This is my first year participating in the series and I’m so excited to hear the different perspectives on this important aspect of customer experience.  Below is the list of all the other posts – happy reading!)

Last week one of my clients kicked off the journey to operationalize its brand with a fantastic Leadership Meeting! I thought I’d share what the meeting entailed in an effort to pull back the curtain on how I help companies operationalize their brands to grow their businesses.

Let me set the stage a bit. I’ll call the company “M” to honor our confidentiality agreement.

Earlier this year, M, a $350MM B2B company and a pioneer in its industry, introduced a new brand platform. Another firm had taken M through the standard brand research and strategy process to develop the new platform and had developed a new visual identity to express it. But then the creative firm’s engagement ended and M was left with a new brand identity, but very little else to substantiate the new platform.

The CEO, Executive Leadership Team, and the head of marketing wanted so much more. They knew they needed to integrate their new brand into the company’s culture and customer experience, in order to realize the brand’s full potential and to achieve their corporate vision and mission. And that’s what led them to me.

We’re in the midst of planning a comprehensive, multi-year plan to operationalize M’s brand. Our first step was to get the top leaders of the organization aligned and engaged with the new platform. So we turned their annual Leadership Meeting, a gathering of the company’s top 250 leaders, into an immersive brand experience.

Here’s how the day unfolded:

- CEO Kick-off – The CEO started the day with a review of the company’s financial performance and an update on the corporate strategy — and then he re-introduced the new brand platform. Although many of the attendees had participated in the conference where it was first launched earlier in the year, very little had been done with it since then, so we needed to refresh everyone on the content. Plus, we had simplified the platform and integrated it with the company’s core values in order to make it clearer and give it more traction.

(That last point is significant — I’ve found that most brand platforms require some refinement after their initial launch. As more people get exposed to the new brand and as the organization begins to work through its implications, the need for some fine-tuning usually arises.

That’s why I usually advise my clients to first launch a new platform internally as a working strategy, and to solicit feedback from key stakeholders that can be incorporated and addressed before it’s finalized and fully launched externally. That way, from the beginning the emphasis is on the brand as a management strategy to focus, engage, and grow the organization vs. simply a marketing message to communicate externally.)

- Keynote – I delivered the keynote address which covered the why, what, and how of operationalizing their brand. Starting with my cheeky video, “What Can Brands Learn from Lady Gaga?,” through to a quiz replete with some friendly competition and prizes about how brands create value, followed by examples of brands ranging from Apple to Zappos to IBM and GE as well as an introduction to some proven tools and approaches, and ending with a challenge to consider what business M is really in – my goal was to get participants to think differently about the company, about the brand, and about their role in interpreting and reinforcing it.

- Interactive Exercise #1: Models of Success – We had assigned pre-work to everyone, instructing them to research one of 6 companies we wanted to learn best practices from. They were asked to note:

• In a word or phrase, what does the company want its brand to stand for?
• What are the company’s defining brand values (beliefs, ideals, principles) and attributes (descriptors, characteristics)?
• What does the company do to bring those values and attributes to life? Look for specific practices, policies, programs, etc.

In cross-functional small groups, the participants shared the insights they gleaned from their research and identified the ideas they thought might be applicable to M. As each group reported out the highlights of their discussion, it was clear participants had been inspired and challenged by these Models of Success.

- Interactive Exercise #2: How Are We Doing? — The goal of this session was to raise everyone’s awareness of the gaps in operationalizing the brand at M. The participants completed a brief survey on how the brand is currently used and perceived and then shared their opinions in cross-functional small groups.

When it came time to report out to the large group, we showed the combined results of everyone’s surveys and several small groups were selected to share the “why’s” behind their survey ratings. People learned where there was agreement on how the company was doing and where there were disparate opinions.

(The side benefits of this exercise are that we can compare the internal results to external surveys and also have a baseline for measuring our progress in the future.)

- Breakthrough Sessions – Participants spent the majority of the afternoon split into different rooms by SBU and we asked functional groups to work together to identify how they can align their work and culture with the brand.

They considered specific questions on how they could deliver on each aspect of the new brand platform and the resulting discussions were rich and rousing. We also challenged each group to commit to one thing they would start doing now to align with the brand and one thing they would stop doing, since we wanted them to walk away from the day with tangible steps they would take right away.

After comparing notes within their SBU rooms, the entire group reconvened to hear some of their peers’ “start” and “stop” commitments. The heads of each SBU talked about what their groups had learned and shared — it was clear they had been impressed by both the quantity and the quality of the opportunities that had been identified.

- Roadmap for Change – To wrap up the day, we presented the overall brand operationalization plan which includes undertaking several strategic initiatives, incorporating the brand into 2012 objective setting and performance planning, deploying a communications and engagement plan for the rest of the organization, and more.

The CEO shared the personal commitments he and the Executive Team members had made to align with the new platform and asked each participant to make one of their own. As the group made their way to cocktails, the lively discussions about the new M brand platform continued.

The results? Even though it’s only been a few days since the meeting, we’ve already gotten really positive feedback and several folks indicated this was the best Leadership Meeting they had been too. I was encouraged to see that everyone remained engaged throughout the 9-hour day and the quality of the small group discussions I monitored was excellent.

I’m working on a synthesis of the meeting to capture what we covered and the key outcomes. The working groups’ ideas and start/stop commitments, as well as the participants’ personal commitments, will be socialized through the company’s intranet and tracked via accountability mechanisms. And then, the real work begins!

As I told everyone in my keynote, this is the beginning of a long-term journey for M:

“The scale and scope of change needed isn’t going to happen in one day – but it all starts right here, right now with you.  You have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead and coach The M Way.

Thousands of men followed William Wallace faithfully into battle because he had the courage to lead them. Leaders are role models – people are watching you – your employees, your peers, and your bosses – and they’re all going to be looking to see whether or not you are going to get on board with the future of M.

By communicating your convictions you inspire people; by acting on them you demonstrate best practices; and by teaching others, you enable them to be successful.”

I can’t wait to see how the journey unfolds!

For the retail industry, the Great Recession has become the Great Malaise.

Last week, Karen Talley reported in the Wall Street Journal that most retailers missed expectations for May. While there were some bright spots, the 25 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters posted 4.9% growth in May same-store sales, instead of the expected 5.4% gain.

Retailers have a lot reasons for their current lackluster performance. Gas prices and food costs are on the rise, while consumer confidence is down.  Then there’s the weather – Mother Nature has not been kind to retailers.

As Janet Hoffman, managing director of the retail practice at Accenture, says, “The cards are stacked against the consumer right now and retailers will have to work hard to bring them into stores.” I’m guessing that for most retailers, “work hard” will translate into aggressive promotion.

But sales and price promotions are a short-term, reactionary approach that usually denigrates the brand, crushes profitability, and trains customers to only buy on sale. The path out of the malaise and into sustainable brand health and business growth requires a far more customer-centered approach.

To thrive in the long-term, retailers must remember they’re in the business of doing more than moving product out the door. Retail experiences must fill customers’ rational, tangible, and emotional needs.

Intimacy, a women’s intimate apparel chain with 15 stores, and Hot Mama, a 17-unit chain selling designer clothing for moms, provide excellent examples of retailers who are doing more than selling product – they’re filling customers’ needs and their shopping bags.

rational needs

Nearly 20 years ago Susan Nethero created Intimacy to meet a very rational, very common problem – most bras don’t fit right. Ask most any woman and she’ll tell you, her bra either doesn’t look good, causes back pain, and/or renders her clothes ill-fitting or unattractive.

Hot Mama was founded to solve a different, but just as common rational need – it’s hard for moms to shop for themselves. CEO Megan Tamte knew all too well from personal experience the challenges of shopping with fussy kids in tow, strollers and diaper bags that make a sport out of navigating store aisles, and a hard-to-fit post-baby body.

The needs that gave birth to these chains make them relevant and compelling retail ideas to customers.

tangible needs

But these retailers do more than resonate intellectually with customers. Both have designed their store experiences to address customers’ needs tangibly.

For Intimacy, that means fitting all customers for their bras. Fitters go through a week-long “bra boot camp” which trains them how to make women look like they’ve lost 10 pounds or regained the lift they had 10 years ago.

Hot Mama takes a similar approach to employee training. Their “stylists” go through three certification programs – denim, body type, and maternity. As a result, “Our stylists can outfit any woman, aged 25 to 65, based on her body the minute she walks through the door,” says Hot Mama President Kimberly Ritzer in a Fast Company article featuring the chain.

Eighty percent of Intimacy’s inventory is European designer brands that are hard to find in the U.S., so their exclusive product mix is another tangible way Intimacy meets their customers’ needs. Also each of their stores carries approximately 15,000 bra styles in over 90 bra sizes so they have the right style and fit for every woman. And, as Intimacy’s website explains, their dressing rooms are “state-of-the-art” and “lit from floor to ceiling in an effort to give each woman a beautiful and unique glow.”

Each Hot Mama location has video games, movies, toys, and coloring books to entertain children and puts them in the center of the store so Mom can keep an eye on her kids. Every aisle is wide enough to accommodate a two-seat stroller, and sales employees often take on babysitting roles as their customers try on clothes.

Clearly the in-store experience at both retailers fills their customers’ tangible needs.

emotional needs

Most importantly Intimacy and Hot Mama fill their customers’ emotional needs.

A BusinessWeek write-up talks about how “bra psychology” has fueled Intimacy’s growth. A half-hour of pampering at one of their stores shows customers how properly fitted lingerie “transforms their figures, style, and, more important, self-image.”

The chain’s website features an emotional declaration: “A woman’s confidence will soar with a bra fitting…She is amazed by the new level of confidence she never believed possible. {intimacy} creates intensely powerful relationships among women by encouraging each woman to love herself first.”

For Hot Mama, giving a mom 15 minutes of shopping peace fills her emotional bank. So does finding cool clothes that flatter her new body type.

Tamte’s website message concludes with an uplifting statement: “Each mom is a Hot Mama, but it’s easy to lose sight of that in the midst of motherhood. My greatest hope is that moms walk into our stores feeling like we are a store just for them and out our doors CONFIDENT that the Hot Mama within them has come alive again!”

the results

The rational, tangible, and emotional resonance created by these two retailers has produced remarkable business results. In 2010, Intimacy generated $35.5MM in sales, which was a 27.5% increase from the prior year. Hot Mama hit $15.1MM in 2010, a 62% YOY increase. (The industry average was less than 3%.) Both chains are continuing to open new locations this year.

These retailers demonstrate that filling customers’ needs extends beyond having a good product. It means truly understanding their pain points, lifestyles, psychology, and values. This kind of customer intimacy is the only way retailers are going to get themselves out of this current funk.

related posts:

• can anything retailers do, manufacturers can do better?
• doug stebbins on the retail outlook
• the lost art of selling

(Welcome to the second in a two-post series on how retailers manage the choice conundrum.  This is written by C. B. Whittemore, Chief Simplifier of Simple Marketing Now, a marketing communications consultancy focused on simplifying customer interactions with social media and content marketing.  The first post, REI Makes Choosing Easier, which I wrote, can be found on her blog, Flooring the Consumer — part of my regular reading repertoire along with C.B.’s Twitter gems. .)

Trader Joe’s considers itself an intensely committed product driven company. Unlike traditional grocery stores, Trader Joe’s takes product to a new level with a carefully managed product line of approximately 4,000 SKUs [vs. the more traditional and overwhelming 50,000 SKUs]. Products earn the right to be included; few items get added without a lesser performing product being eliminated. Talk about careful product curation! [see Trader Joe's - Where Values Drive The Brand]. You will find no redundant and confusing options to choose from!

What might be construed as limited product selection does not mean that Trader Joe’s is an unpleasant or boring store to shop in. Quite the contrary! The careful curation of products combined with a Zappos-like Wow!-customer-experience-commitment makes for a store that reinvents the notion of discovery, engages shoppers, instills in them confidence and enthusiasm and creates a comfortable environment for making sense of product choices and indulging in impromptu experimentation.

Humor doesn’t hurt either! Look in the Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer – described below – for the statement “…For mental consumption only.”

Have you visited a Trader Joe’s? You won’t yet find them in every state in the US [see http://www.traderjoes.com/pdf/locations/all-llocations.pdf], but each new opening is a major event worth celebrating given how involved each store is in its community [see http://www.traderjoes.com/stores/neighborhood-involvement.asp] and how each reflects the neighborhood it lives in. Trader Joe’s takes seriously its tagline as “your neighborhood grocery store” [see Trader Joe's Neighborhood Grocery Retail Experience].

These images from the Trader Joe’s in Wayne, NJ, reflect the local William Patterson University Football Team.

Trader Joe’s relies on two primary means for communicating with customers about products:

• The monthly Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer which you can sign up for online. It’s a 20+ page brochure filled with stories about products, about the product selection process, about the product discovery process, etc. You’ll find quotes, whimsical images, valuable information and even a ‘Handy Flyer Shopping List’ that you can cut out and take with you when you shop to remind you of what to buy… It’s also the kind of brochure that you hang onto rather than file away in the circular recycling bin.

• Radio ads where real Trader Joe’s crew members [including CEO Dan Bane!] tell real stories about Trader Joe’s products.

Once in-store, the story-telling takes place through signage

and tastings that bring featured products to life.

The crew member conducting tastings offered us generous portions [enough so you really know what it is you are trying], and didn’t begrudge a 9 year old coming back for seconds [and possibly even thirds!]. When asked, she explained that she loves her job and Trader Joe’s. For real. Wow!

There’s more product discovery to be had… If you’re willing to try something new, but want to learn more about the product, hand-written signage [a trick ‘borrowed’ from Disney] offers information relevant to a cheese-lover:

I look forward to visiting a Trader Joe’s store. The scale is human, even if I’m visiting Little Italy!

Grocery shopping is a basic need. As a child, I loved visiting the small Parisian specialty grocery stores on the street where my grandmother lived. None was huge; each was filled with surprises and delights – I can still remember smelling ripe peaches and being astonished at the many different kinds of pears. All seemed very real and human.

Trader Joe’s has that quality. Every product offered has meaning. The overall selection and presentation reflect intelligence and respect for me, the shopper. It’s a store where how a product tastes still matters, where what goes into a product has been considered, and where product information is readily available [see http://www.traderjoes.com/products.asp] as many friends with specific dietary needs frequently tell me. Unlike traditional grocery stores, it also exudes warmth.

Trader Joe’s may offer customers less choice. However, in terms of ease of choosing and relevance of choice, it is definitely where less choice is more. No wonder it’s one of the hottest retailers in the US, with sales of approximately $8 billion and on par with Whole Foods. Wouldn’t you want to go where choosing is easy?

related posts:

• the fundamentals of choice
• fan of joe’s
• six best practices in retail

DLYohn America’s Next Great Restaurant 04.24.11 Episode 8 Recap from Denise Lee Yohn on Vimeo.

other insights from the show:

• targeting and focus are more important that size and mass appeal — episode 7 recap
• attention to detail can make or break a business — episode 6 recap
• the adage “the customer is always right” isn’t always so — episode 5 recap