Archive for the ‘Aviation’ Category

Don’t give your customers a product or service, give them an experience they will never forget

In recounting a recent – and somewhat memorable – taxi journey, Matthew Harrison is reminded of how a product or service can really differentiate itself from the rest of the pack by becoming an ‘experience’.

I must confess to being one of B2B International’s less tolerant air travelers.  The 6 hours I spent imprisoned in a 747 on a Shanghai runway…the 7 course ‘meal’ served up by the good staff of Aeroflot (6 of the courses were salmon)…my interrogation by a wild-eyed immigration goon at Newark Airport…the dimwit who confiscated my cases at Rochester because I allowed said cases to complete two laps of the carousel without collecting….these and other events have been crow-barred into company folklore by my incessant moaning.  As a result, it is a relief both to me and to anyone unfortunate enough to be my travel companion when my flight touches down, and all that remains is to catch a cab to my final destination.

A couple of weeks back, my colleague and I returned from Pittsburgh to New York in good spirits.  The journey had gone ahead without a hitch, our meeting had concluded successfully, and both of us looked forward to the weekend.  We drank a couple of beers and took the opportunity to examine the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which was reporting on Bill Clinton’s liberation of two journalists from the clutches of Kim Jong Il.  Oddly, the official photograph to mark the event (see below) featured a rather kitsch 1980s wall frieze, which had been dropped onto a Tellytubbies set and gate-crashed by the cast of Madame Tussauds.

To return to the matter in hand, my colleague and I had forgotten that the efforts of the airline industry to make the general public’s life a misery extend far beyond aircraft cabins and indeed airport walls.  Whatever medicine the world’s aviators take to ensure unrivalled levels of inhospitality and indolence, it would appear that the New York taxi industry has been raiding the cabinet.

The warning signs that B2B International was to experience a nadir in land travel were there from the beginning.  The passenger window of the cab was jammed open and the back seat about as comfortable on the posterior as a broken Rubik’s Cube.  My colleague and I had naively taken the driver’s rather blank grin upon being asked to drive to White Plains as proof of his willingness to take us there, rather than his inability to find his own backside in the bath with both hands and a personal assistant.  Within 2 minutes of leaving the taxi rank, and well inside the airport perimeter, we drew despondently to a stop underneath a graffiti-speckled flyover.

- “Where you go?”
– “We were rather hoping to go to White Plains, New York.”
– “Norway?”
– “We’ll give Western Scandinavia a miss for tonight, thanks.  The wife’s got the dinner in the oven.  White Plains please.”
– “No Norway.  You know way?”
– “Oh I see.  No we don’t know the way.  Isn’t that your job?  If you don’t know, put the address in your GPS.”
– “No GPS.”
– “What do you mean no GPS?  This is an American taxi in 2009.  How can you not have a GPS?  Do you have a map?”
– “No problem, I find White Plains.”

Our driver lurched into gear, trying but failing to convince us that he had the slightest idea of where he was going.

Three laps of the airport’s inner perimeter and 25 minutes later, we finally find our way onto the open road and were heading north.  Disconcertingly, the driver had been steering with one finger, most of his other 9 digits clasping a telephone, through which he received nonsensical directions from someone who also had no idea where we were or where White Plains was. Over the ensuing 2 hours we stopped and asked, we shouted at passers-by, we waved, weaved and guessed our way through the streets and back yards of Southern New York, before finally, mercifully, we arrived in White Plains city center.

I dragged my weary body out of the cab and headed for home.  And as I trooped through the streets I was hit, not by a Friday night drinker but by a kind of Eureka moment.  I was happy!  In fact I was exhilarated.  I HAD ENJOYED THAT TAXI RIDE.  The speed.  The bumps.  The danger.  The nausea.  The sense of the unknown.  The laughs.  The memories.  I had experienced an adventure that evening – an adventure I am recounting to you now.  An adventure I will recount to my children, and my children’s children.  That useless man, that anti-navigator with whom I had shared two hours of my life had (unwittingly) met a need that few suppliers can meet.  Rather than sell me a tangible product or service, this disorientated scatterbrain had given me a holistic experience that will live with me until my dying day.

The savvy marketer recognizes that providing a simple product or service puts the organization on a route towards low prices and commoditization.  In order to add value, and therefore raise prices and profit, it is critical to look beyond the tangible.  In other words, sell a concept and provide an experience.  Our taxi driver, of course, made two mistakes:  firstly the basics of product and service were so intolerable that most customers would be uninterested in any ‘experience’ related to these.  Secondly, he sold us a basic service (to drive us home) meaning that the thrill-packed tourism experience we endured was unexpected and therefore not paid for.

So, I will not pretend that our driver’s marketing strategy was flawless.  However, I thank you, Mr Clueless of LaGuardia Airport Taxis, for the memories.  Your product is substandard, your service despicable, and your attentiveness to my needs non-existent.  But, for a mere $90 (plus tip and tolls), you gave me an experience that was both thrilling and addictive.  You, Sir, in one (and only one) respect, are an inspiration to all marketers.

Posted in Aviation, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction Research, Customer Value Proposition, Marketing, Matt Harrison, Thursday Night Insight, USA |
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Less Is Definitely Not More

In the latest Marketing magazine e-newsletter, bringing us up to date with the top marketing stories from the U.K. and around the world, two stories caught the eye.  They focused on two very different industries – food & drink and airlines respectively – but shared a common theme.

In the first article, we were told that Mars and Snickers have reduced the size of their chocolate bars, while retaining the same prices.  Both have shrunk 7.2% (from 62.5g to 58g), but a Mars bar will still retail for 37p and a Snickers remains at 41p.
The second story, coming after months of press speculation, is the news that budget airline Ryanair has confirmed that it plans to charge for the use of toilets on its aeroplanes.

Nobody is denying that many major corporations are under pressure at the moment.  In fact, Ryanair last week reported its first loss for 20 years.  But this low-cost airline could easily have decided to increase the price of all its tickets by just a couple of pounds without most customers noticing; instead it has chosen a controversial move which has caused uproar, will deter some customers from even considering flying with the airline in future, and does not position the company particularly favourably.  Similarly, the Mars/Snickers strategy is being put in place to help these brands absorb the rising commodity costs they are facing, but their competitors are facing the same challenges and, as yet, have not resorted to such seemingly drastic measures.

Never forget how important your customers are.  However tough the environment might be for you, things will be just as bad – if not worse – for your customers.

Certainly nobody wants to feel they are getting less for more – or even less for the same price – especially at the present time.  The most successful companies when this recession ends will be those who have continued to research, understand and satisfy the needs of their customers.  This may not mean offering your product at a cut price, but it almost certainly will mean offering value for money.

Posted in Aviation, Credit Crunch, Food, Marketing, Recession, Reducing Costs, Transportation, UK |
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Business buyers do not want to be delighted

Matthew Harrison this week lets off steam about the airline industry, arguing that organizations must concentrate their efforts on satisfying core needs before attempting to delight the market with extras.

I left the office three hours before my flight, having cut short an important conversation with a client and having left a report incomplete.  On my way to the airport, I called the office 3 times to discuss all of the things I hadn’t done that morning.  This was becoming stressful.

Thankfully, I arrived at the airport two hours before my flight was due to leave.  Surely this wouldn’t be necessary?  Surely no airport, no matter how inefficient, needs two hours to get a passenger from the front door of the terminal to the door of the plane?  At the age of 7, I remember myself and a classmate completing the 100 metres three-legged race in one minute and 20 seconds.  If this place was run even half as efficiently as that Sports Day back in 1983, then I should be at my gate within 30 minutes, even if I tied myself to another passenger.

Unfortunately yet inevitably, it quickly became clear that most of the next two hours was going to be spent lining up with other naïve, unfortunate souls, being hurried, harried and heckled by the uniforms and droning announcements that inhabit these awful places.  I joined the first of many line-ups and tried to suppress my rage.  One faceless lump of dejected humanity, we trudged through aviation hell.

90 minutes later, my misery seemed to be coming to an end.  I had checked in my bags.  I had removed and put back on my coat, jacket, shoes, belt and watch, and brushed the dusty foot-print from the back of my coat.  I had thrown my newly-bought Coca-Cola into the bin.  I had bought another Coke five minutes later and drunk it before the Fizzy Drinks Police could stop me.  But most of all I had stood and waited with my fellow travellers, wondering why it had to be this way.

But now I was free!  Just half an hour until my flight!  Time to stroll down to the gate and experience the wonders of 21st-century air travel!

If only.  I looked up at the screen and almost self-combusted.  Glaring at me, taunting me, was the 7-letter word dreaded by anyone who wants to extract a little enjoyment from their short time on this planet: D-E-L-A-Y-E-D.  I treated everyone within earshot to an old Anglo-Saxon word with rather fewer letters and decided to head to Borders for a magazine.

As I stomped angrily towards my favourite retail outlet, it struck me that I could spend days in this sorry ‘transport’ hub if I had wanted to (in fact, knowing my luck I probably would be doing).  I could buy a suit from some of the finest designers in the world.  I could wile away the hours in one of the several bars, or indeed each of the several bars, like many Englishmen before me.  I could choose from 50-odd of those things that girls put in their hair to make a pony tail.  I could buy a football kit, a hideously expensive hideous watch, my own weight in donuts, a pink iPod, the national flag of 10 different countries, a plug adapter, a mobile phone, or a haircut.

But as I wandered through this neon-lit abomination, it struck me that this airport and the aviation industry in general have got it completely wrong.  Rather than making business travel the stress-free, time-efficient process it should be, all they want to do is sell me things I don’t want during the ever-increasing time it now takes to get anywhere.  You see, when I go to an airport I don’t want to buy a Ralph Lauren suit.  I don’t want to be massaged by a faux-leather chair.  I don’t want to add to my music collection, win a Lexus, buy a bikini, have a romantic meal for one, or go to the pub.  At most, I want a café that sells cheap coffee and sandwiches quickly, clean washrooms, something to read, and a socket for my laptop.  But I’d be more than willing to forego even these small luxuries in exchange for an aviation industry that didn’t waste days of my time each year.

In short, I don’t want to be delighted with extras.  I want to be satisfied with the core offering, and air travel is the perfect case study of an industry that has – in my view – lost sight of its core offering and core objective.  The key purpose – to transport customers to a given place, by a given time, and for an agreed price – has been supplanted by an altogether less ambitious one: to provide money-spending opportunities to those who are still waiting, holding their fun-sized toothpaste in a transparent bag, for a satisfactory core offering. 

The industry reminds me of a flashy sprinter limping down the track in gold shoes, waving flamboyantly at the crowd before coming in last.  Or, to use an example from my own industry, a market research company that turns up late for the final presentation but organises a lovely dinner for the clients whilst they are waiting.

It seems to me that business buyers are simple creatures with simple requirements.  OK, we may make decisions in a complicated way, involving the views of all and sundry before arriving at a decision.  We may even have technically complex needs.  But our requirements are essentially pretty simple – good quality, competitive price, timely delivery and availability, from a company we can trust before, during and after the transaction.  We don’t seek novelty, we tend not to be impulsive, and we are focused on what we want.  The simplicity of our needs, combined with the fact that others in our organizations are expecting us to make the right decision, makes us quite unforgiving when we don’t get what we paid for.

We all like to delight our customers, but this is an extremely difficult thing to achieve in the unglamorous world of b2b marketing.  Far better to focus on meeting the key needs of the key customers.  Only once that has been achieved should we spend time and resource on measures that at best delay frustration with your core offering, and at worst simply irritate and alienate your client base.

Posted in Aviation, Customer Satisfaction, Market Research, Matt Harrison, USA |
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