Uhaul Features Ratings/Reviews

The other day I had to reserve a Uhaul truck for moving some furniture. Despairing at what I envisioned to be an exercise in frustration, I was surprised to see how easy it was to reserve my truck online.

Uhaul clearly laid out the various trucks that were available, and then added a few pages designed for upsell (do you want to add a moving dolly or furniture pads?). Nothing special here, until you got to the page highlighting local labor that you could also get to help you with your move.

Depending on your zip code, which they've requested early in the reservation process, Uhaul then shows you local moving firms that could help AND ratings on those companies based on customer reviews:



So while they didn't add ratings to their own trucks or other Uhaul offerings that I could find, the fact that they were able to provide this additional service is a great move for them and much more helpful for me as a customer (not to mention something that would lead me to recommend their site to someone in the future).

Starbucks -- Hold that Latte for the Next 3 Hours!

This evening from 5:30 - 9pm this evening Starbucks closed ALL of it's retail stores.

http://tinyurl.com/26xfks

Is this mourning for the 600 employees that will be let go this year, in addition to the planned closing of 100 under-performing stores?

Not exactly. According to Howard Schlutz's "Howard Schultz Transformation Agenda Communication #8" (dated Monday, February 25, 2008), it's a time to stop, reflect on, and celebrate where Starbucks is at, how employees and partners should revel in the fact that Starbucks is the #1 global coffee company, and (in typical CEO-speak), "we are just getting started."

http://tinyurl.com/2wfa93

I have to admit this is first time I've seen anyone close an entire store like this for this long and bring all of the employees together. The only evidence I ever even remotely saw along these lines was stopping in a local Blockbuster around shift-change time and seeing the 16-year old store manager addressing a motley group of equally young and uninspired employees how they were going to do a great job that day, and for everyone not to forget to upsell customers on their download program so everyone could meet their monthly quota.

But apparently not so for Starbucks. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall earlier this evening, but I'm sure it was a good time had by all (all, of course, except for the latte-obsessed customers that would have had to head over to Dunkin Donuts or (worse) McDonalds to get some burned beans in hot water.

But there's just one thing that struck me about Mr. Shultz' posting. He says:

"We are at our best when we are entrepreneurial and courageous, push for innovation and reject the status quo."

I agree with the philosophy of this statement, certainly nothing tied solely to Starbucks. But with a company of this size and scope, and the rate at which new Starbucks can be deployed on the ground in any number of countries and still serve up a similar tasting experience every time, you HAVE to run on systems, not ideas.

So the question is this: How can you maintain the creativity, freedom, and the spirit of an entrepreneur AND still grow (and stay) big? How do you rise above the standard processes and KPIs and quarterly filings and jump off the cliff with the NEXT BIG THING?

Product Comparisons...It Could Cost You a Sale!

We're recently moving into a new home. Not being familiar with the area, I knew I'd need to do some research on available options to cover things like cable, internet, and phone. And to be honest, I put it off for as long as I could, fearing the inevitable frustration that was bound to come up.

After finding local providers, it was a toss up between DirecTV and Comcast. DirecTV's site (at the time of this posting) offered a pretty easy tabbed navigation element on the homepage featuring writeups on each of their packages:

Zappos Reports 40% growth in 2007...WITHOUT adding cool web features!

According to Internet Retailer, Zappos (the web-only retailer of shoes, apparel, bags, and accessories) saw 40% growth in 2007, hitting $840 million in gross merchandise sales.

http://tinyurl.com/ytpev3

40% growth by any means is a pretty staggering accomplishment. What makes this feat much more interesting, though, is WHAT drove the growth. According to CEO Tony Hsieh, this was "largely based on its emphasis on customer service, including its free shipping on all orders and returns and a contact center open 24/7."

What I find interesting is that statement is relatively devoid of any technology.

I'm sure it's safe to assume that there are technologies enabling the systems and processes that support customer service and returns processing operations. It's very possible that some of these systems and their supporting infrastructure were built out to support the business operation. But the fact remains that this growth is NOT tied to some of the more routine, front-end web improvements that typically get a lot of press (examples: adding features like ratings and reviews, offering multimedia elements to your products, improving cross-sell/up-sell merchandising capabilities, upgrading search, etc).

These results make for a great case study addressing a common misconception that a company's web sales are not where they need to be because of a lack of features. The better, more sustainable view is ensuring that the mechanics and processes BEHIND the website (customer service, pricing, billing, returns processing, etc) are firmly established and are there for the long haul.

Your website is a giant magnifying glass. It looks in and highlights the processes your organization provides (and also what it DOESN'T provide). Just because you can click and zoom in on a product image on your website doesn't mean that your business' web capabilities are top notch. Then again, NOT having this feature also does not mean that your capabilities are grossly lacking (though depending on the nature of your business, it's still a great idea!) and are the root cause for disappointing web sales.

Generally speaking, it's having the operations in place BEHIND the scenes that make or break your business, and it's these factors (which some may argue are not the most glamorous-sounding) that you need to have firmly in place if you're looking for similar, sustained growth!

To Blog or to Email? That is the Question...

A friend of mine had a client pose an interesting question: Why should I do a blog? Why not run an email marketing campaign to my customers instead?

It got me thinking; here’s five points I’d probably respond with:

1) Blogs are viral. Technorati today tracks over 110 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of social media content. With all of those blogs out there, that's a huge amount of content, and your challenge will always be rising above the tide. When your subject matter is interesting, engaging, provocative, blogs become a great medium for taking off and being passed from person to person or picked up by aggregator sites like Technorati and put in front of a mass audience (much broader reach than any email marketing campaign).

Emails can get forwarded to friends, true, but when you consider the fact that email filters are out to catch this kind of activity AND people as a whole are (mostly) trained to treat messages that have been forwarded from multiple sources along the way to you as suspect (i.e., “Please forward this to 5 of your friends in the next 24 hours and you’ll have good luck” anyone?).

Blogs can take off easily around the internet, and the fact that sites like Technorati can aggregate these ideas and get them in front of a bigger audience increases the likelihood that someone could find out about your idea/product/service/etc. This coupled with the fact that they can take on a life of their own through user commenting ensures that an idea can grow and mutate into something bigger and better (or worse) as it gains velocity makes for a very power viral tool indeed (especially when it becomes a conduit for bringing in new customers that otherwise never have heard of you)!

2) Blogs can have voice; email is a marketing message. People’s trust in corporations or corporate messages is on the decline, and it’s fair to say that in the Information Overload Age we’re constantly honing our own personal B.S. and filtering meters. The fact that ratings and reviews are so popular on e-commerce sites is based on the fact that consumers are willing to trust peers rather than a carefully crafted marketing message from a company (do a Google search on the Edelman Trust Barometer and you'll see some interesting results from a research firm that monitors trust online and its implications).

People come to blogs (especially those from businesses) looking for voice and a personality, and honesty. Done well, this can humanize your business. Your readers are seeking something that's more direct and personal rather than finely polished PR statements that are edited and sanitized for Wall Street investors.

Personality and honesty should always be the goal, of course, but it’s also fair to say that this can often be easier said than done (one reason many CEOs have a hard time doing blogs).

3) Email Marketing is selling, but blogging is branding. Along the lines of #2, your blog reinforces your brand. It's not just how honest you are, or how frequently you contribute to your blog (although these are important), it's also the way in which you respond to feedback. Since your blog offers the ability for your customers (existing or new) to comment back to your message, there's an implied responsibility to respond back and maintain an open dialog. This back-and-forth dialog will establish yourself and your company’s position as either being responsive to customer needs or, sadly, not responsive. The way in which you’re responding will speak volumes to who you are and what your company represents.

A classic case (and probably the #1 fear businesses have that prevent them from starting a blog in the first place) is customer complaints. If you’re open and honest in your dialogue, others that are reading your blog but not necessarily contributing could have their opinion swayed. And the person with the compliant could turn from a detractor to a supporter, or even an evangelist and lifetime customer. Why do blogs have this power? Because they’re all about building your brand’s perception in the minds of your customers.

4) Blogs have history. An email campaign by its very nature is a snapshot in time with (generally speaking) a defined start and end, and (hopefully) a purpose. I’m on Borders’ mailing list and have numerous email offers like “40% off for the Next 2 Days Only”. It’s a drive to get people to their site and get them to purchase quickly, but after the 2 day window expires the promotion ends and we all go about our business. Those of us with weaknesses for books have ended up with a heavily discounted book added to their collection. If all goes according to Borders’ plans, we’ve also added something else as an impulse buy and will come back again.

But a blog is a timeline and has history over time. Each post you make builds over time, and with it comes content that remains and grows. This very point helps give your blog weight (if you’re posting regularly over time, you’re sending the message that you’re serious about this and you’re looking at it as a true communications tool, not a hobby that you try out for a week or two and then abandon. Your readers can search your blogs over time as you build your body of content, and the longer you’re around, the more content you generate, the more people will find your content, the more people will link to you, which increases your chances of attracting new customers.

5) Blogs have great search benefits. Consider that with an email campaign, I’ve got a number of hurdles to get through before my message gets to the actual recipient. Even if I can get my legitimate email address through AOL, Yahoo, MSN, or Google, I’ve still got individual spam filters to contend with. And despite the fact that my content is valid (I’m not selling Viagra or naked celebrity photos, unless of course that’s your business model and you’ve got legitimate opt-ins that you’re mailing to!), people’s spam filters may trap your message and you may never see it.

Not so with blogs. Since they live out on the web, your readers choose to read your content or not, and can be alerted for new posts with things like RSS alerts that can dynamically update web-based RSS aggregator sites like iGoogle or Netvibes. And since the content you’re generating lives on your site, you’re building a mountain of content over time.

It’s fair to say that the more content you’ve got, the better your chances for getting found on Google, but it’s a more accurate statement to say that the more content you create, the more legitimate you establish yourself to be, the higher the number of people that will link to you, and therefore the higher your overall search rankings (all without paying any additional money to search engine optimization firms to improve your rankings).

"Socialommerce"

Just came across this article, which has some really interesting points about the intersection of ecommerce and the social networking craze.

"Social Media and Online Commerce: Birth of Socialommerce"
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3628497

This is the first time that I've come across this particular team (made up of "social" + "commerce"), but the general theory hold true: you'll trust your recommendations from your peers, and more and more will look to this information to drive decisions in your life.

The article's focus on Google's interest in buying Bebo (owns 65% of social networking market in the UK) is okay, but it's really the theory behind how these forces are changing our buying patterns that are far more interesting.

Here's a quick excerpt:
"Nielsen reports 78 percent of people trust their peers' opinions. This is neither a new concept, nor new to the Web (e.g., epinions.com).
What is new: social networks make so much easier to disseminate the information. And people want to disseminate information."

But consider that the dynamic with peer reviews is not just go-to-Amazon-and-get-the-highest-rated-MP3-player. It's also about making lifestyle choices, which is where the real power comes in.

Now you can look to these networks to answer bigger questions like:

What should I spend my tax refund on?
Where should we go for vacation this year?
What's the most fuel-efficient hybrid out there?
What's the best school I can put my kids into?

We're a classic case; the new school that we chose for our daughter was decided in large part due to GreatSchools.net, which profiles schools in the US based on statistical data (test scores) and layers in personal reviews (from others that have attended or currently attend). Granted it's not apparent who these people are that have put in these ratings, but at this stage it's a great barometer for the feedback out there (and again, was a critical tool for us in making the decision where to settle).

Consider also that one of the biggest vendors out there providing rating and review capabilities Bazaarvoice (powering reviews for Walmart, Best Buy, and Office Depot) also enables you to syndicate your review to sites like Facebook, you can see how these companies are looking to increase the power of a user review by syndicating it out to these far more powerful newtorks.

It's not just a question of what you thought of a product, but how to get your review to as many people as you can. And then it's a question of how to find that info, which I suppose is where Google fits in.

The times, they are a-changing!

Doors Are Officially Open!

At long last, our doors are open and we're taking the first trek on our own summit journey. It's been long in the making, with considerable preparation and planning, but we've now officially left the safety of our tent parked at the base of the mountain and are headed up the winding path to the next camp. Everest, here we come!