I say yes! I am more ops guy than marketer – truth be told – so this post (Great Examples of how operations can become marketing) over on Zeus Jones blog really resonated. Zeus tells this story pretty well and lists a number of examples worth reviewing in the original blog post.
In our work at Ant’s Eye View, we work with a mix of product and service companies. It struck me that companies that think of themselves as service companies tend to get this more natively – they see the service they provide as a defining opportunity for their brand. Disney is a great example – in particular the parks and resort experience – where the brand really is the creation of an experience – or more specifically, family memories. Zeus mentions Zappos as another great example. That clarity of purpose around experience creates a very natural foundation for social media engagement. It can help you segment what conversations (in the sea of social conversations) are highest priority for engagement. Those conversations that demonstrate the truth of your promised experience hold great opportunity for engagement – likewise, those that highlight your defects can provide clear calls to action for you and an opportunity for customer recovery. While the listening, organizing and engaging process still offers some challenges, the urgency to participate is clear. The advantage here is that service brands tend to evaluate, manage and refine every touch point with their customers and look at their operations end-to-end. In this way, a service brand can build clear social listening and response tactics into their current structure that are incremental in terms of change management. I’d argue that if you took a service brand, say Disney or Zappos or Nordstroms, and told them they had to cut 10% of their costs, they’d have clearer decision criteria for how to approach that challenge that kept the brand front and center. I’m not saying cutting 10% would be easy, unburdened by rigorous internal debate and conflict, or that it wouldn’t negatively impact their business or brand, but it is far easier to understand the process through which difficult decisions would be made.
On the other hand, companies that see their products as the brands often have a different challenge. It’s hard for me not to pick on the brand I’m most familiar with: Microsoft, or perhaps even more specifically Windows – though I think this can be broadly applied. In this case the brand experience is defined by the experience you have with the product (or products) and not with the “company” – Microsoft. This is where operations comes in for a product driven brand. Unfortunately, too often in this case operations are bolted on only as necessary and are DISCONNECTED from customer experience management. Want an example, how about customer service or product support. If you own consumer Windows, who do you call for service? Dell? HP? Gateway? Lenovo? Not Microsoft. Even if you are an enterprise, who do you call? Probably your own IT. The problem here is not that this was a bad model, it was brilliant for a long time. The problem here is that operations represents a set of hardened and individually managed silos. So, not only is customer experience fragmented, but accountability for experience is disjointed and poorly, if ever, reviewed end-to-end. And, let’s face it, in product driven companies, even when reviewed end to end, pay careful attention to who’s at the head of the table – the product/engineering organization. Now, let’s layer on social media / community engagement. Now you’ve got a forum post or blog somewhere that is celebrating Windows or attacking Windows – who is accountable? The answer is either everyone or no one – which is kind of the same answer. And, it’s unlikely you could even get all the parties in a room that needed to be to decide who is accountable – not that a meeting should be needed. Looking at Microsoft as an example, I’d probably offer this competitive assessment. Google, Apple, IBM – these are not the biggest competitive threats. IMHO, the single greatest competitive threat to Microsoft is a deep lack of customers! WHAT? Yes, that’s right. Microsoft has 100s of Millions of users, but users are not the same thing as customers. They are Dell or HPs or Best Buys customers…and Windows users. This is a huge challenge for an enormous brand that will be very expensive to solve and even more expensive not to solve.
The take away here: Operations is Sexy of course! Product driven brands like Microsoft’s portfolio need to triple down on operational excellence and implement clear end to end customer experience listening and engagement processes and ensure they have EMPOWERED audience “czars” that not only own the experience, but have the power and authority to drive product, process, licensing, policy, service and business model changes necessary to achieve success.
What do you think? How might this apply to the product companies you work for or with?
sean