iPads in Wal-Mart

Posted on by RichardAKent

This isn’t a comment about the fact that people will apparently soon be able to pick up an iPad at their local Wal-Mart, it’s more to do with how this makes you feel.

How would you feel buying an iPad from the Apple store (on or offline) as opposed to Wal-Mart? In the same way, how do you feel about buying potatoes from a Jewel Osco, or a Co-Op, as opposed to a farmers market or Waitrose.

How important is price for you? How important is service? What about the warm feeling you get from some stores that you don’t from others?

I’m intrigued.

I think Wal-Mart are making big strides in changing their image. Their green scorecard isn’t just lip service, it matters now.

Of course, Apple must be desperate to secure greater saturation before the Playbook and Android tablets start making headway, but by allowing distribution through Wal-Mart and Target, they are surely taking a risk with the Apple reputation?

What products will Wal-Mart merchanidse alongside the iPad? Will Apple have the same sanctuary they enjoy in Best Buy?

I’ve just noticed this post is full of questions!

What do you think?

Imagine what John might have made of it all

Posted on by RichardAKent

I had one of those, goose bumps moments just now.

John Lennon would have been 70 today.

What might he have made of the world of engaging possibilities now?

Is it bringing people closer together? What might he have thought about tools that at the same time allow people to talk directly to loved ones across the world, yet also to be so cruel to each other through cyber bullying?

I think he was an optimist who might have been a fanatical tweeter.

How many followers would John Lennon have?

Seconds Out!

Posted on by RichardAKent

I am having a row with someone on a Linkedin group discussion.

It’s brilliant therapy! They are moaning about the fact that new Twitter will remove a brands wallpaper and replace it with video, imagery and threads of a conversation that you can only currently see by leaving the main Twitter page.

One quote from my opponent is this:

“How would you feel if you are making a living making custom Twitter backgrounds and you just found out that your profession was made obsolete overnight?

Angry? Hell yes!”

There are people out there who make a living doing nothing but this? Holy moley!

Here’s another:

“What if you have been building brand recognition for a client with their custom Twitter background being central to their brand strategy? How do you now tell your client that you have to rethink their entire brand strategy?

Angry? HELL YES!”

So, some poor business has been told that their Twitter wallpaper is central to their brand strategy, that now needs entirely rethinking?

Wow!

I’d love an introduction….

Perhaps my adversary is realising that they might actually have to write something interesting for their client now and is coming over all peculiar? After all 140 characters is lot these days isn’t it?

Or am I being facetious?

Don’t Let Your Customer Service Get ‘Buried’!

Posted on by RichardAKent

Last month saw the release of a new thriller/horror movie by Spanish director,  Rodrigo Cortés entitled ‘Buried’.

The premise of the movie is (taken directly from IMDB) “Paul is a U.S. contractor working in Iraq. After an attack by a group of Iraqis he wakes to find he is buried alive inside a coffin. With only a lighter and a cell phone it’s a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap.”

The point of this post hinges on you understanding that he has a cell phone, which of course he uses to try and contact the outside world, but that of course, has limited battery life. The movie sounds absolutely gripping, but here is another direct quote from the great Mark Kermode about Buried.

“It’s a film about the horror of being put ‘on hold’. I have yet to see a film that so brilliantly encapsulates the annoyance, the frustration, the terror, the anguish of being ‘on hold’.

Doesn’t that ring true? Excuse the pun.

We’ve all had the opportunity to press 3 by pressing 2 and then being put on hold whilst being told just how valuable we are. So valuable that we can be left in a black hole for 45 minutes – thanks T Mobile!

Customer care is thankfully being redefined. Those amazing CRM systems that were going to rock our world in the nineties and noughties will soon be painful things of the past. All because of the voice that we now have through social media.

I’ve written before about AT&T. They have a terrible reputation in the US. When the iPhone 4 started dropping calls beacuse of the design, who got the complaints – Steve Jobs or AT&T ‘helpdesk”? OK, so Apple took a bad dose of publicity, but on the ground, customers were battering AT&T.

And yet, the great thing about them is that they recognised that the days of leaving people on hold were numbered. They still did it – don’t get me wrong, but by promoting Twitter as a key customer care channel, they have shown that the biggest step in winning on the social web, is accepting the world has changed.

Their strategy for using Twitter to meet their objective is still flawed – nowhere near enough resource and they clock off at 5! Poor Molly, the face of AT&T’s Twitter customer care page seems a lovely lady, with only your best interests at heart, but nevertheless has a thankless task.

If there is a lesson from the last few years experiences surrounding CRM, it’s that peoples expectations are, quite rightly, rising all the time. If your wifi goes down at 3am while working on a presentation, you need help at 3.05.

Customer care can’t take holidays anymore.

Comment on this post and I’ll get right back to you…

Ryder Cup Washout – A Social Disaster and Victory All At Once !

Posted on by RichardAKent

My alarm woke me early this morning. Stupidly early. I was up at 1.45 – why go to bed? The reason was to watch Lee Westwood tee it up at Celtic Manor to try and wrest the Ryder Cup back from the pesky Yanks!

Living in the US gives you a different perspective of these events. Being behind enemy lines makes the event even bigger. Although if things go wrong, (thanks for nothing Robert Green), then it can be twice as painful.

At the time of writing, play has just resumed and the Cup is not likely to be won or lost until Monday!

But the big news of the day, is the rain in Wales. Not just the rain, but the failure of the rainwear chosen by Corey Pavin and the USGA, to keep  the US players dry. Once the news was out that Tiger was soaked to the skin and Phil was dripping wet through, attention turned to the manufacturer of this equipment.

The fact that it was produced by a company called ‘Sun Mountain’, should perhaps have given Pavin a clue that these guys weren’t experts in wet weather clothing! The fact that the team then had to purchase new equipment in Wales, that wouldn’t have been designed beforehand, from a company called Proquip, meant that these two brands were suddenly all over the social web having quite different days!

Here it is happening before our eyes! Everything I’ve written about here before now is coming to pass!

Sun Mountain are suffering the worst possible PR disaster, whilst Proquip are basking in glory. And it’s being played out on social media.

Here are a couple of tweets:

“Probably the end of that company. Certainly the USPGA will never use any of their products again. #sunmountain“

“Let’s get some Proquip”

And it spreads wider – Goretex are forced to make a statement that they ended their relationship with Sun Mountain in 2006! Right now Sun Mountain are toxic!

Google news results for Sun Mountain right now and you can see what’s happening. As I’ve said before, “you are what Google says you are” and “you can’t take piss out of a swimming pool”!

If Sun Mountain employ social media listening tools, they will hopefully be on this, working throughout the night and the rest of the weekend to try and address things positively – quite how they do this, I can’t think right now!

Proquip on the other hand may also be listening in and their positive sentiment report will bulging at the the seams! Lots’ of ‘thanks guys’ and if you’re a retailer carrying the Proquip range, ‘here’s a voucher for online store with 10% off Proquip merchandise if you buy before….”, you get the idea!

Anyway, the players are back out – come on Europe!