Extending the Customer Experience through Twitter

I’ve always considered myself to be a social media early adopter, but I’m not sure if that’s the case any more these days. I know I’m somewhat of a laggard in the social news space. Delicious, Digg, Reddit – I don’t know anything about that.

But when it comes to social networking sites – sure – I’m more willing to at least try out the service. I got a Facebook as soon as I qualified to sign up for an account, I am on Orkut despite my limited Portuguese skills, I did beta for Gravity, I’m linked in on LinkedIn – and yes, I tweet. I think I’ve been tweeting for a couple years now. I’m not sure when I started doing it, but it’s been a while.

I got into twitter at a time when people were still trying to figure out why anyone should use twitter. I mean, for media companies, it was a given: use twitter to promote their most recent articles. I follow the New York Times (@nytimes), Wall Street Journal (@wsj), Wired (@wired), and the Austin-American Statesman (@statesman) to get news right as they’re written. Obviously, many newspapers have done well to utilize twitter during breaking news. When the shootings at Fort Hood occurred, the Statesman (because of Austin’s close proximity to the station) was one of the first to report on it – and they did well to tweet all the latest information they found. And they very effectively continued to utilize twitter in this way: the gunman shooting at the University of Texas, for example. Twitter, for the print industry, is a godsend. News is instantaneous and it can be promoted to hundreds of thousands within seconds.

For B2C companies selling services, twitter has been used to enhance and expand the overall customer service experience. One case that I have witnessed is American Airlines (@AmericanAir). Their twitter account is used less for brand advertising, promotions, or product and more for answering customer complaints.

For a company that positions and prides itself on being the leading airline in America, this is a great step for them to enhance the overall customer experience. If they had a bad one, they can more than likely resolve the issue through this use. How does twitter enhance CSR? First of all, people know they are talking to a person directly and that a real person will tweet them back. The process also takes a much shorter time than calling a 1-800 number and it bypasses having to go through the call center and waiting for a rep.

Of course, there are some issues to this as well, including management of incoming tweets (is this enough for one person to handle?) and the ability to respond in a timely manner.

To go back to American Airlines: my friend lost his bag on one of his flights, he tweeted American Airlines about the problem while he was at the airport, and within a couple of hours, they were able to locate his bag and route it to the proper location. This happened over a year ago, which is pretty amazing considering the general population haven’t realized that Twitter could be used this way. A couple hours at that time seems pretty slow now, but at that time, it seemed like a very quick response. I expect that the response time in the future will continue to get smaller and smaller.

Pillow Tables; Table pillows

Pillow

Pillows are soft – or at least they should be soft. Otherwise they aren’t really pillows. Some are made with feathers inside, some aren’t. Pillows, surprisingly, aren’t very cheap. I guess the softer the better the more expensive? They’re all typically white, although I am not sure why pillows have to be white, especially when you put pillowcases over them. They’re not very aesthetically pleasing by themselves, but they are very functional. The pillow cases make them aesthetically pleasing to look at. One pillow isn’t enough, two pillows is good. Sometimes, pillows get flattened when you’ve been sleeping on them too long. I wonder why that is? Planned obsolescence perhaps? Pillows are typically rectangular. Some have strange ridges on them, some don’t. Throw pillows, or whatever you call them, are pretty pointless. Why do people put pillows they don’t use on their beds? Circular pillows are pretty cool. Some have tassels. But those are the kinds you put on your couch.

Table

Dark wood, light wood, red wood, oak wood, all different kinds of wood. The first table I think of is the kitchen table. Round, square, rectangular, all different shapes. But there are also coffee tables, side tables, desks, roundtables, and other things like that. When tables start to wobble, it makes me sad. And I don’t think it’s a table anymore. Tables are supposed to be stable in my book. They aren’t infallible to stains though. I remember having to take a sponge to clean my kitchen table when I was a child. Every night I did that. Graffiti etched into the wood. Some roll, don’t they? Wood scratching wood doesn’t sound good. And I mean when the sound of table scratching onto wood floors. Flat top, mesa, plateau, food, center of the home. Under the table, table cloths, table mats, table furnishes. They can be dressed up. I like flat surfaces.

Pillow + Table

· A pillow stuffed with wood?

· A pillow attached to a table (for taking naps, perhaps?)

· A pillow with a wooden pattern printed onto it.

· A table whose legs are built into a massive pillow (for a nice cushy footrest

· A table whose flat surface is not made of wood, but pillow

· A pillow made out of wood.

Oh my god. These are difficult.

· A table with pillows as place mats

· A pillow attached to a small table with adjustable legs – to be used for elevating one’s self

· A table with legs that are made of pillow

· A small square table with a pillow resting on top

· A table with pillow material lain all along the underside of it so that you can flip it over and then sleep there (doubles as a bed and a table)

Viable products?

I believe a small table with a pillow resting on top of it could be called… a chair or a stool, rather. Perhaps maybe, if you made it so that the pillow was partially removable and so you could use it as a table as well, that would be neat. So that’s definitely viable. I would love to have a table that doubled as a bed if you just flipped it over. This would prove very efficient if you lived in a small New York studio or something. But the most viable combination of pillow on table is if you sold a decorative pillow on a nice, small table. I think those would work. Or perhaps a pillow fashioned in a way that makes it easy for a person to sleep with their head resting on the table. Like, an ergonomically shaped pillow that could stored in an office drawer. Pull it out during lunch and take a nap instead!

The Movie Going Experience

I’m interested in a lot of things it seems and I’m not sure if this is good or bad. I’ve heard from two business professionals (one of whom is a pretty major deal) that employers prefer someone who is an expert at one thing to someone who is generally good at everything – a specialist to a generalist. It’s like, I feel that there’s just so many interesting things going on in this world that it’s hard to pick one thing to specialize in.

I found that that was kind of the same way I approached picking my topic for my paper. First of all, I need to actually be interested in the topic. Second of all, it needs to be a topic broad enough that I can write seven to eight pages on it. Third of all, it will need to be a topic for which I can actually find sources, which means I can't pick anything too obscure.

I first decided that I wanted to write on film, which is something that I love, but since it is such a broad topic, I knew I had to narrow it down some. I then started thinking about having recently watched The Social Network and how much I enjoyed the film. I played around with the idea of writing on film marketing – for example, how was it that The Social Network was so hyped-up prior to its release?

But then I came up with a brilliant idea – I want to do my topic on the experience of watching a movie in a theater. How did I come up with this? Well, I had gone to the Alamo Drafthouse to watch it with some of my friends, one of whom is a German foreign exchange student. I explained to him beforehand that the Drafthouse isn’t like other regular theaters, that you were waited on as if it were a restaurant, etc.

One of the things I can take a look at in my paper is the Drafthouse and other theaters (should I find anymore) that don’t have traditional cinema business models and do case studies on them. What elements of the experience make these theaters more successful than others? Some of the things that first come to mind that I can write about include architectural/interior design elements, various services, the events that are put on regularly, the segments/consumers that make these chains successful, and finally, price point.

To start, I found an interview that Tim League did with the Wall Street Journal in which he explains that he will be building theaters in New York and Los Angeles. In it, he also explains that the idea for the Alamo Drafthouse was not an idea that wasn’t ready right out of the gates and that – as we’ve learned in our Insights & Experiences class – the theater launches went through several sort-of prototypical stages before becoming the product that we are all familiar with today.

Backtracking a little, I explained to my German friend that I needed to buy the tickets online earlier that day in order to ensure that we get seats to our 5:00 p.m. showing. I also told him that we needed to leave our place no later than 4:00 p.m. to ensure that we were able to get seats together (as we were meeting up two other friends at the theater). He told me that in Germany, he would buy tickets a week or two in advanced because theaters there have assigned seating, which means he could arrive five minutes before the start of the movie and not have to worry about finding seats with friends.

I think it’d also be interesting to examine the differences in movie going experiences in different markets. Before he said that, I was pretty unaware that there were any differences at all (how American of me). I’ve actually met a lot of foreign exchange students this year, so I think I can get a general idea of the differences in experience just by talking to them – Denmark, Ecuador, Netherlands, Germany, France, The Czech Republic, India, Brazil. I think that should get me off to a good start (although I know I will need to get academic sources for this).

I’d also like to maybe check out the annual revenues of certain chains around the United States. How is the Angelika doing (art house) compared to AMC (mainstream) compared to Imax (enhanced audio theaters) compared to the Drafthouse (um… don’t really know how to categorize this type of theater chain)? Is any one theater growing larger and faster than others in an economy when less and less tickets are being sold? Is one slowly dying? Why? Does it have anything to do with their business model? Does it have anything to do with the design of the theater itself? The experiences that they provide within their theaters? Why the choice of upholstery? How does it feel to sit in the seats for example? I know that I refuse to go into Cinemark theaters unless my life depended on it because I feel like none of them are ever kept clean.

Ooh - just thought of this. One more thing I can read up on is 3D. Is this really a value-add? Making a movie in 3D doesn't mean that it will be successful, as we've seen. When, then, does 3D make the movie going experience more worth it?

It’s an interesting topic and my research could bring me to places that I haven’t yet thought about. We’ll see as it develops!

[Note: I will break up this entry with pictures later – I just wanted to get it posted so that I can focus on my math homework tonight]

Post 3: Customer Experience (LADY GAGA)

Lady Gaga tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m., seven months before she even comes to Austin, TX. At 10:02 a.m., her floor tickets were sold out. None of my friends who tried buying floor tickets were able to purchase them, not even those who clicked the button at exactly 10:00 a.m. What that means is they were all sold out by the time their requests went through, or they clicked ‘purchase’ before the internal e-system made it possible to buy tickets, OR all the floor tickets went on pre-sale and they were already all sold out before today.

In any case, there’s a great demand for Lady Gaga. And it’s no surprise. She’s already a case study in 360-marketing within the music industry. She loves her fans – a great synonym for "consumers" – and she makes it known; she makes these statements very often and very publicly. So it really isn’t a surprise at all that her “best” seats have a price point of ~$177. That seems a little ludicrous doesn’t it? Perhaps. But for all that she “gives” to her fans in terms of extravagant costume changes and set pieces and choreography, I think a lot of them are willing to give back a little more.

Anyways, what I wanted to get at is that I actually went to see her last month when I was in the SF Bay Area. She came to San Jose and I went and it was really, really awesome.

The experience was a blast and most of it was largely due to the fact that Lady Gaga has created a very experiential marketing experience for her fans (remember, these fans are also the consumers of her product/brand). What I mean by experiential marketing, according to Bernd Schmitt is that she utilizes a combination of the five different marketing appeals, which are Sense, Feel, Think, Act, and Relate.

Take that first appeal: SENSE, the umbrella term that refers to touch, sight, taste, sound, and smell. Visually speaking, her set production was exquisite and her costumes very intricate and elaborate. Gaga’s known for having very expensive shows and I definitely saw that with my own two eyes. And I saw the Gaga brand in all of it. The now iconic mechanized orbiting rings, the pianos on fire, the massive shoes that look painful to walk in. Aurally, her sound was so theatrical and so lively that I could feel the bass drum downbeats pulsating through my entire body. It was phenomenal.

FEEL is marketing that appeals to consumers’ emotions and feelings. That said -- and it’s really cheesy to say this but -- I felt a little more attached to her as a fan after the fact. It’s as if I took a two-hour journey with her throughout the concert and got to know her better in a more intimate setting. Listening to her music through headphones doesn't even compare to seeing her live. It’s kind of like instant messaging compared to a real live conversation. The latter in both cases is infinitely better. In any case, her music was joyful, danceable – and I (and the rest of the venue) felt so joyous that all I (we) could do was dance.

RELATE – how do I even talk about that. Gaga’s got such a strong relation with her fans. I mean, she made it apparent throughout the entire show that she puts on these extravagant shows for all of her fans. More specifically, she likes to connect even further with her gay fans. She explicitly stated throughout the show that she is an advocate for gay rights, which prompted lots of cheering from the crowd. I mean, this is more than relate-marketing since she has made herself a member of the community.

All that said, the experience was one of my favorites while I was out in the Bay Area. Although I was not on the floor, I did have pretty good seats in the bottom sections. The tickets cost $175, which is a little too pricey for my taste. But since I did not pay for my ticket, I would to say that this was incredibly worth it. And I think that if anyone has the funds to go and even remotely enjoys listening to Lady Gaga just a little bit that they should absolutely definitely go.

Post 2: Personas

When I first heard the word “Persona” in my marketing class, I thought of the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film about two women who eventually sort of become the same person by the end of the film (no worries, I didn’t spoil anything). It’s one of my favorite movies ever – EVERYONE SHOULD GO OUT AND WATCH IT NOW.

So when my professor first said this word in my class, I was replaying those wonderful cinematic images in my head. But personas, which I understood previously to be a sort of mask that people wear in the world (kind of like a “we aren’t who we really say we are” kind of thing), take on a sort of different meaning when placed in the context of marketing. Yes, it’s still the creation of a new “character,” so it’s similar in that regard. The difference, though, lies in the motivation behind creating such a character.

According to Karen Chen of Procter & Gamble, companies create personas that represent a strategic target. “Prime prospects” is what she calls them. They have specific personality traits, they fit within a specific demographic, and they have certain lifestyles that differentiate themselves from other consumers. This information allows marketers and designers the opportunity to dig up motivations or involvements that lead to insight, which ultimately leads to the creation of a product or service solution.

Now, I’ve been given the opportunity to create a persona for myself, which IS AWESOME. So let’s go. What makes Dave Dave (That’s my middle name. I’m avoiding using my first name because if I do, my blog will be picked up by Google, it will show up in search results and I’m not sure that I’m ready for that)?

So, Dave marks “two or more races” when he fills out his census form. Though he was born outside the US, he has spent most of his life within the states and thinks himself very American. He is 20 years old, but when people ask him how old he is, he replies by saying “I’m in my early twenties.” He feels like he’s much older than he really is.

Since he’s in college, he doesn’t really have an income, but he has taken part-time jobs and loans to pay for his entire education. On top of all that, he interns as he is very driven and ambitious. This drive does have a downside though: he has a tendency to put aside his passions to pursue his career goals. He loves film more than anything, but has not had time to watch as much as he’s wanted to in the past couple of years. He says it’s cause he just doesn’t have any time. When he does, he forgoes the mainstream movies and goes for the indie or foreign films. Though he understands it may come off as pretentious, he’s genuine when he says that he prefers to watch something less formulaic and more stimulating.

He thinks of himself as forward-thinking, but is somewhat of a laggard when it comes to technology due to his lack of income. If he could, he would want to be an early-adopter.

He is health-conscious. He does not lift weights, but he runs regularly. Though many of his friends “look down on him” because he does not run in nature, he does not care because he likes to count the number of miles that he runs and the time it takes him to do them. Unfortunately, he does not have the money to buy a Nike+ Sensor.

Dave is also a vegetarian, not for any moral or religious reasons but because he feels healthier and lighter when he does not eat meat. Although, he does admit that he eats fish every now and then because there have been times that his body will be sore for 2-4 days after a long run. He thinks it’s because he doesn’t get enough protein in his diet.

He likes listening to entire music albums and not just singles. Of course, he owns an mp3 player. He likes to play video games, but not x-box or playstation or wii or anything. He prefers old school N64. He enjoys watching tennis and soccer, and only watches football because of the experience and not because he actually likes watching the game.

I could continue but I feel like if Dave were to divulge any more, he would start feeling a little self-centered (clever little excuse to stop writing, eh?). Dave's also generally a very private person.

Post 1: Design Philosophy

During my internship at Palm, Inc. – or Hewlett-Packard if you want to be technical about it – this past summer, I spent a lot of time figuring out ways in which I could talk to people in building 2 (the ‘”hardware” building). A lot of interesting things took place in that building and I wanted to find out what the engineers there did all day. Of course, much of it is confidential, so I can’t quite divulge what I learned. What I can say though is that I was quite envious of them, particularly those who worked in the industrial design (ID) department.

To conceptualize and create products that will eventually find its way into the hands of the consumer, to innovate with new sleek form factors, to utilize both the logical and the creative aspects of one’s mind – sounds like a job I’d want. I love marketing, but I feel that if I had learned about ID sooner, I’d be in the field right now.

Though I learned about new hardware, I did not get to pick the brains of the engineers and designers behind it. What was their thought process? How did they end up choosing the design they wanted? Fortunately for me, I registered for a marketing class called “Customer Insight & Experiences” in which we have started dissecting this process.

Jeff Mulhausen, a visiting speaker, identified it as 1) problem seeking, 2) problem solving, and 3) implementation. In other words, it’s about seeking out opportunities, formulating concepts, and then figuring out actual solutions. Sounds like the process by which all business solutions are made, really.

Jeff also stated that one of the major problems in design philosophy at this current day and age is that companies like to create product x because their competition has one. The example he gave was Apple’s iPad and HP’s response to it with their own slate. I mean, though this may be bad design philosophy, it is a sort of necessity. Keep up with your competitors or risk looking like you’re miles behind the curve, right? And I don’t say this only because I worked with Palm/HP this summer either.

In any case, this is how I interpret it: the successful companies are those who first identify the needs of the consumer and then subsequently innovate with a product that fulfills these needs. This got me thinking about Google Wave, specifically. Did Google actually take consumers’ needs into consideration before designing and launching this new product of theirs? Or did they just assume that since this was pretty innovative that it would be successful in the market? I feel like more of the latter occurred. Google Wave bombed. They definitely didn’t employ a universal design – the learning curve for that was quite high and the usefulness so limited.

So what then should companies be thinking when they design a new product? According to Jeff, they should be thinking about ways in which they can use their capabilities to improve the lives of others. The most recent example that I can think of where a company does this is HP (surprise!). They made big news last year when they introduced the world to its first web-connected printer. The design concept seemed simple: combine their best selling product, the printer, with their Touchsmart technology and connect it to the Internet to provide in one final design a quick, easy printing solution for the digitally connected.

In doing this, HP is “designing the system.” What that means is that they seek to create an ecosystem comprised entirely of their interconnected products much like Apple has done with its product line. The only difference is that HP wishes to expand their ecosystem so that an entire house can operate with their products. While out in California, I was fortunate enough to visit the HP smart house at their headquarters in Cupertino. The place was decked out – it was really impressive seeing all of that integrated technology. Unfortunately, HP has designed this ecosystem for the elite few – those who have enough money to afford such products – and not for the rest of the world.

While I was out in the Bay Area this summer, I also saw a product design that fascinated me quite a bit – dual-flush toilets! I went to a friend’s house, used their bathroom, and when I went to flush, couldn’t find the little flush handle. I looked around a little before noticing two buttons on the lid of the toilet. One button had a half-filled circle on it; the other button had a circle that was filled completely. I understood immediately that I could do a half flush or a full flush. Why have I never seen these before, I wondered. It’s a simple, yet brilliant design!

It’s green, it’s eco-friendly, it’s simple, it has a low learning curve, and it’s brilliant. That’s all I have to say about that. So, I guess just based on that, the duel-flush design covers three design philosophies: creating the ecosystem (the process), universal design (so that anyone can learn to use it), and designing for simplicity (no changes to the design of the toilet, just the flushing system).

Beside that, I haven’t been fascinated by any industrial design since the swiffer. But I think we were all captivated by that little product, right?