How Was Your Day as a Customer?

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

Whatever You Did Today

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Whatever you did today — enjoy a cup of coffee reading the paper, watch TV, work on your computer, clean the house, go to the mall, drive a car, eat lunch, read blogs, take a shower — you used a product. You were a customer.

How was your customer experience? Did anything about it leave you wishing that some business knew you better?

What percent of your experiences leaves you feeling more than satisfied, makes you want to tell people what a great experience you had?

It’s hard to miss when you’ve bumped into a business that values a customer. It’s hard to forget the name of their brand.

Brand you and me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Feeling a Customer’s First Response

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

An Opportunity

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A customer’s first response runs deep and lasts long. One way I keep myself close to customers is to monitor my first response to new information whenever I can — you know, that initial response that occurs without thinking. I’ve made habit of looking for such responses as I move through my life.

Information has no positive or negative value until I respond to it.

This morning I encountered information that you might use in the same way. Ready? Read more

Getting Customers to Stop by to See You

Filed Under Content, Customer Think, Design, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

Walking the Trade Show Floor

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Yesterday walking the trade show floor, I felt I was in a 3-D blog world. Aisles and aisle of blogs sitting side by side with real people in and around them. They were all in the same market, different niches. Some were not easy to tell apart. I was scanning the signage to get a clue. Oh my! 60% were woefully inadequate. Here’s what I saw.

  • Company names with not a hint of what they do.
  • A list of what the company does, but no name to pull it together.
  • Taglines that said abolutely nothing, i.e. making things happen — good things? bad things? It didn’t say.
  • Taglines that said the same five buzz words that I found at most every other booth.

It seemed clear to me that the folks who designed these books — 3-D blogs — were thinking of what they thought the customer should know rather than thinking of what the customer might have come to find out. Standing outside each booth that I’m talking about I only had one question. Read more

Quality, Schedule, Budget

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Taking This Show on the Road

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In an hour or so, I move my computer downtown to a hotel in Chicago while I attend a literacy convention. I know. I know. I live here. I could stay at home.

It’s a bit of a financial hit. Convention hotels in Chicago aren’t particularly inexpensive, but I see it as an investment in my customers and myself.

It’s hard enough to give my clients my undivided attention at a convention of 15,000 attendees. I want to have the flexibility to be at their exhibit booth when meetings inevitably are rescheduled. I want to be around for the after-hours events when relationships become real.

An adage in publishing, perhaps in every business, says:

Quality. Schedule. Budget. Pick Two.

If I choose for my customers and for myself, the only right choice I can see is to pick the first two.

Besides it will be fun, sending you notes from the convention. Any advice you have for me while I’m there?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Customers and Credibility

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Two Words

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Two words I guard ferociously when it comes to my brand — customers and credibility. They, in fact, mean the same thing as Brand You and Me. I cannot think of better brand promotion than valuing customers and earning credibility.

Darren is running a fabulous series on Credibility. If you’ve not been there yet. You need to be. There’s nothing else like it on the Internet.

Come back and tell me what you think of it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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