The Customer Mission Andrea Olson

We love numbers. We're quite obsessed with them. Everything we do in business has to be measured and tracked in a nice, neat metric, often color-coded with a red-yellow-green indicator. We also pick numbers that are easy to capture, typically pulled from a report already being generated for another purpose. And oftentimes, performance bonuses, raises, and other incentives are tied to these dashboard numbers. So needless to say, we live and breathe by them. However, this information never tells the whole picture, and frequently fails to provide the organization insight into threats and disruptions from left field.


---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

While RevZilla uses a variety of tools and platforms to manage their customer communications and track purchase behavior, their engagement strategy is what puts them in a category that rivals the well-known Zappos.


---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

I recently had a conversation with a local retailer, struggling to generate sales through this pandemic. They were exhausted and stretched thin. They had been through the ups and downs of managing cleaning, metering patrons, to having to move their entire business online. Still, sales were continuing to slump.

Knowing that survival depended upon having an online presence, they went all in. They set up a full e-commerce website. They set up Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest presences. They posted multiple times a day. They boosted posts. Yet, things were still looking bleak. The discussion centered on one question - "What should we be doing that we're not doing?"


---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

We often think a lot about what helps us connect with customers, and focus on marketing messages and communications that relate to and draw in customers. What we overlook is often the most obvious. Humanization.


---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

There was a great book published back in 2001 called "Positioning" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It emphasized the importance and impact of companies taking a unique position in the market, albeit through now outdated examples. However, the principles of this idea have gotten lost over the years, and the time is ripe to bring the concept back.


---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Dutch philosopher Alexander den Heijer said, “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” Not surprisingly, many organizations try to fix the flower. This happens all the time with culture-change initiatives or even brand strategies, where the veneer is the focus of change and not the behaviors that underlie it.


---

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app