Archives / August 2009

Different age groups respond differently to
how they are contacted by automated systems:

With Gen Yers, you want to send a text message and then follow up with a voice call, which is exactly the reverse of how to deal with a GenXer: call first and then follow up with a confirming text message, while for baby boomers call first and then follow up with email.  And the strategy for seniors is to use voice prompts that speak slower and can be repeated.

... calls that avoided the use of Social Security numbers but could authenticate the account holder with some other specific information, such as an airline frequent flier ID or bank account number, increase the probability of action by 30%.

Three things New York City can teach you about good experience. I just came across these all today and thought I'd share the contradictions.

Over at Herald Square, not far from Macy's, the new JC Penney's gets reviewed by the NYTimes fashion section, with amusingly (and perhaps predictably) snobby results:

J. C. Penney has always trafficked in knockoffs that aren't quite up to Canal Street's illegal standards. It was never "get the look for less" so much as "get something vaguely shaped like the designer thing you want, but cut much more conservatively, made in all-petroleum materials, and with a too-similar wannabe logo that announces your inferiority to evil classmates as surely as if you were cursed to be followed around by a tuba section."

The rest of the article is complimentary, in a faint-praise sort of way, ceding that it's "a clean new space in Midtown to buy affordable clothes in hard-to-find sizes, as well as attentive service from attitude-free professionals."

Lesson: Thin is in.

But over in Brooklyn it's hip to be round - that is, to have a fashionable potbelly. If macho is out, and the recession doesn't allow for metrosexual fashion choices, then "the Kramden" is the way to go. Even if trucker hats are out, the the look (if not the Dude) abides.

Lesson: Thin is not in.

And above all, a good experience is the High Line, one of the best new arrivals in New York City: a completely free public park repurposed from an old elevated train track.

Perhaps a glimpse at New York's post-peak-oil, climate-changed future? Low impact, community-minded, green construction fostering native plants, overlooking an attractively decaying pier, and (just missed it) sail traffic in the river. In the future the air is cleaner - and humid. Anyway, that's what I experienced in the moment below:

That vision is perhaps what the founders of the Water Pod have in mind... a waterborne experiment in art and sustainable living, covered here and pictured below:

Lesson: Out is in. It's cool to be outside!

From an amusing review of a redesign with a less-than-desirable outcome:

Network Solutions has decided that the service called "Domain" was much too obscure and difficult to understand and so it's much clearer if we now call it "nsWebAddress". Huh?

Also, "Web Site" was so obscure that it was better changed to "nsSpace" or "nsBusinessSpace". And you know those "SSL Certificates"? Well, that was way too confusing, so let's call them "nsProtect".

I'm sure that someone in Network Solutions' marketing department got really excited about all these changes. I'm also betting that they don't actually use their own product.

Ironically, Network Solutions announced the redesign with a page saying, "You've spoken. We've listened." Really?

Quoting this column:

The point is not to go ask your customers what they want. If you ask that question in the formative stages, then you're doing it wrong. The point is to go immerse yourself in their environment and ask lots of "why" questions until you have thoroughly explored the ins and outs of their decision making, needs, wants, and problems. At that point, you should be able to break their needs and the opportunities down into a few simple statements of truth. ... unless you put a face and expectations on that consumer, then disagreements about features or product positioning or design come down to who can pull the greatest political will - rather than who has the cleanest interpretation of the consumer's need.

Lots of people avoid Starbucks because it's just one more chain store in the neighborhood, opting instead for a mom-and-pop coffee shop that has more heart, is run by neighbors, keeps the dollars in the community, and so on.

In some of these neighborhoods, Starbucks is responding by removing its logo from its stores, so that people think they're at a neighborhood shop.

A Starbucks PR person says that the undercover strategy is for "amplified focus on local relevance," so that "customers will feel an enhanced sense of community." In other words, Starbucks is pretending to be authentic.

How will customers feel when they inevitably find out who runs this faux neighborhood place? This is no Disney experience. A faux European main street is fine at Disney World, because you know you're entering a fantasy when you enter the gates to the park. It's a totally different matter when someone puts up the pretense in your own neighborhood.

This is a shame, says the Huffington Post article quoted above, because "the company's coffee-buying practices are admirable... and of course CEO Howard Schultz has won deserved praise for providing health-care benefits and stock options to even part-time employees. ... [so] why go into hiding?"