Great promise. Why are you hiding it?

By now, most Starbucks regulars are aware of their quality guarantee.

They’ll remake any drink that isn’t to the customer’s liking, free of charge.

It's not stated as a guarantee, but it is, and a good one. It would be enough to say that they’ll remake any drink they don’t make correctly, but their promise goes farther to the source of customers’ satisfaction with the experience.

But here’s the problem with this outstanding promise. It's unstated, and almost hidden.

In a local store, this sign was posted in a dimly lit hallway on the way to the restroom. To get even this poor image, I had to move 12 inches from the picture and manually disable the flash on my phone’s (admittedly awful) camera.

Making a guarantee promise so softly detracts from its value to customers. Those that are unaware, have forgotten, or feel too intimidated to engage the promise end up not saying anything, walking out of the store with an ultimately unsatisfying service encounter.

Marketing pros with a finance mind love this scenario, (it’s a form of slippage), the idea being that a large proportion of guarantees on defective experiences will go unclaimed, allowing the company to save money while claiming the value of a guarantee without having to fulfill it.

But customers that walk away disappointed diminish the value of the brand, regardless of whether they enacted a guarantee or not. Companies should be seeking customers with less than stellar experiences in order to recover them, not hiding their guarantees furtively around the corner near the service entrance in hopes that they never say anything.

If you’re going to make a great promise, then make it loudly.

Post the sign in a place immediately noticeable, in a high traffic area where customers are actively engaging in the evaluation of their service experience. Encourage customers to invoke the guarantee, and send them away happy when you get it right.

Rating "Rate Our Chicken."

Successful service encounters start off with well executed marketing as the process of making relevant promises that set the expectations of what will be delivered through the experience.

The Domino’s ad “Rate Our Chicken” is an effective one not just for the promises it makes but also for how it personalizes promise fulfillment for customers.



The ad makes that simple promise that is easy to evaluate - specifically that we’re going to like their new chicken product. But while most advertisements stop here, Domino’s challenges customers to evaluate their delivery of the promise by asking every customer to rate their chicken with a survey on the box the chicken is delivered in. If you’re a fan of Chip & Dan Heath's SUCCES formula for evaluating marketing, there aren’t many promises you’ll see that are more concrete than this one.

But because service encounters are about more than the tangible goods associated with them, and successful service marketing finds a way to express the intangibles of the offering. Featuring the people who make and fulfill the service promise in marketing is a usually a strong execution of the message and the brand.

In this case, Domino’s personalizes the promise by literally giving it a name. I don’t know if Tate Dillow is really the man behind Domino’s chicken, but putting him in front personalizes it as one person making a promise to customers. There’s a good chance customers will feel sympathy when Tate’s boss asks customers to rate the job he’s doing with the new chicken by putting a survey on the box.

As a service ad, “Rate Our Chicken” works because it is a simple quality promise well executed by making it easy to evaluate and including the people responsible for performing it in the service encounter.

Homeaway.com wants to save me from hotel stays.

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves CareerBuilder.com.

Homeaway.com is back for the SuperBowl in 2011, after last year’s ad featuring Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase reprising their roles as the vacationing Griswolds. They pre-released the 2011 ad, featuring a representative of The Ministry of Detourism, a government agency committed to saving vacations.



Interesting about this ad is that Homeaway that isn’t trying to compare favorably to their category, rather trying to convert vacation travelers from a different accommodations services category to a better option.

To pull it off, the ad empathizes with the traveler, both showing and explaining how hotel stays can cramp and otherwise ruin a family’s holiday and paid off with the line, “Space! Privacy! Freedom! Why hotel when you can home away?”

The ad promises that Homeaway will provide a superior experience to what you would find in a hotel at comparable cost., explaining that the Ministry of Detourism is committed to saving vacations by preventing families from “getting swindled because hotels hate your guts.” The reliability message is continued as the family moves down a moving walkway, surrounded by flat screens showcasing the multitude of accommodations options available.

Interactive marketing users find homeaway.com consistent with the service promises made in the ad. Reliability and empathy are reinforce through claims of “The world’s most trusted vacation rental site”, “The world's largest selection of vacation homes, condos, cabins & villas” and reinforcement of the favorable comparison to the hotel experience.

The user experience reflects the same themes and carries them a step further. Browsing for a European rental property for a future vacation with my wife, HomeAway offered more than 17,000 options in Spain alone, sortable by property type, location type, and travel style.

The experience provides further assurance to the quality of the properties they represent through detailed reviews of past travelers, tons of images of the properties and videos showcasing the accommodations and their surroundings.

Homeaway isn’t competing to be the best in their category, they’re trying to redefine their category and compete against what they position as an inferior experience. For me, at least, it was effective. For vacations, I’ve always consumed hotel experience. Homeaway has me considering the vacation rental alternative for the first time. As the company that made the alternative viable, they’ve got the inside track for my business.

"Why yes, Ms. Fossey, we do have a job for you"

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves CareerBuilder.com.

CareerBuilder is bringing the monkeys back to the Super Bowl. It carries on the line of prior Super Bowl ads, and since simians are comedic gold, I’m sure this one will win rave reviews on Monday. But what is CareerBuilder promising with the monkey ads?

A line from a previous version exclaimed, “It’s tough working with monkeys, and we’ve had enough.” A pretty clear play on empathy with the jobseeker - that CareerBuilder understands what it is like to work in an environment where coworkers are non-supportive, disengaged, and even dumb - and that they can help match a jobseeker with a company where all ones coworkers aren't monkeys. Personally, I’ve never worked with monkeys. (Something Matthew Broderick can’t say.) Sure, there is the infrequent gorilla in my midst, but in my experience, anyone convinced that they work in an all monkey environment is usually the person displaying the ape-like behavior.

Their other tag lines promise a little more, but not much:

From the candidate side, “Want a new job? We’ve got the most.” and from the employer side, “Need better candidates? We’ve got the most”. Abundance is a clear promise, but it conflicts with the monkey theme. If you have both the most candidates and the most jobs, it seems that CareerBuilder would be the most likely congregating place for monkey candidates looking for monkey jobs.

They also add “A better job awaits” onto the line. If you buy the “I work with monkeys” theme, this is a much more meaningful promise, that using CareerBuilder services will improve the quality of your work life by reliably finding a better job fit, or at least one with less flying feces.



The interactive marketing on CareerBuilder.com continues the volume promise, claiming 1.6 million jobs on the site. After I registered, I immediately started receiving updates of positions – both on the site and emailed to me. The quality of fit for almost all would have been suspect, but the activity reinforced the promise that, “hey, there’s lots of stuff here for you to be interested in.” If I were looking for sheer volume of postings, I might be very happy with CareerBuilder. It’s possible I’d still be working with monkeys – just in a different barrel.

Empathy and assurance are key service aspects to a job seeker. So is reliability. Through advertising and interactive marketing, CareerBuilder offered little of any. What they promise, and deliver on, is volume. It’s a flexibility promise that implies because we have the most, we MUST have something for you.

You may just have to get used to monkeys.

GoDaddy makes ads people love to hate, but how’s the service?

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves GoDaddy.com.

GoDaddy.com is a Super Bowl mainstay. Every year, they prominently feature a tacky ad featuring one of the GoDaddy girls that everyone claims to dislike, yet everyone will be talking about the next day.

But are the ads effective? Before you answer, quickly name 2 other web hosting sites.

I don’t question their efficacy. When I began consuming domain registry and web hosting services, I went straight to GoDaddy without considering anyone else. They were the only provider I was aware of, and so they got my business.

Purchasing top-of-mind awareness can be an effective strategy for gaining customers, but if it isn’t accompanied by quality service, it can be an ineffective one for keeping them.

The first in the Jillian Michaels series of commercials gives some insight into the promises GoDaddy makes through advertising, placing emphasis around the purchase process, describing it as fast, easy and low priced. Only after these purchase benefit promises are made do they mention quality of their hosting services.



If the ads are a tacky way to gain eyeballs, the website is a tacky way to convert them.

Yet the promises made in the ads are consistently reinforced through the interactive marketing. The site is a mess of deals, claims, exclamation marks and asterisks, mostly messaged around the purchase process being fast, easy and inexpensive. The only departure in their interactive marketing is the promotion of a variety of GoDaddy services, which may be more by accident of trying to sell every service on the home page.

Godaddy makes few promises through their ads, and those they make are consistent with their interactive marketing and paid off in the experience. But while they make purchasing easy, my own post-purchase service experience has been less than ideal due to a confusing interface, made more confusing by near-constant up-selling of additional services. Godaddy never made any promises in that regard, so I can’t criticize the advertising for making promises the experience didn’t fulfill.

But due to the ongoing service experience I’ve, chosen an alternative provider for domain registry & hosting. Improvements in the Go Daddy service experience might increase customer retention to the point where all of that expensive customer acquisition isn’t necessary.

But then again, they may be too having fun acquiring customers to care.

Telefora experience delivers more effectively than their Super Bowl ad.

In preparation for #BZBowl, I’m experiencing as many of the SuperBowl advertisers’ products & services as possible, comparing whether my service encounter lives up to the promises they make through marketing. Today’s #BZBowl Week post involves Teleflora.


I had completely forgotten that 2011 that Teleflora advertised in the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2010, which is to say that it hadn’t been effective, at least on me.



Both ads were intended as humorous jabs at boxed flowers as inferior products that get inferior results with recipients. The main promise was around experience reliability, that hand-arranged, hand delivered Teleflora arrangements would result in a successful reaction from the recipient. There’s only so much you can do in 30 seconds, but Teleflora tried to go long on humor and missed much of the opportunity to make a complete and meaningful brand promise to potential customers.

But when I used the Teleflora site to purchase flowers for my wife, I noted that the promises made through the interactive experience were different and much more extensive.

They started with the same “fresh flowers, personally arranged and delivered daily” message that reinforces reliability of the experience. However, they placed a heavy emphasis on responsiveness, making a promise of same day delivery on all orders and offering floral suggestions flowers for all occasions. (“Just Because” & “Thinking of You” categories overlapped about 90%, so they may have tried to force the “every occasion” angle a bit. Much)

Teleflora shows empathy with the sender, offering help to those who may find it difficult using their own words to elicit the right emotion. (I decided to rely on my own masterful prose, leaving my spouse with, “Just because I’m thinking of you.”)

The post-order process was full of assurance that my service experience would be executed as I had requested it. A confirmation page & email reiterated the order and set specific expectations about the service to be performed. When the flowers were delivered, I received delivery confirmation from Teleflora even before my wife called to thank me.

At the end of the experience, Teleflora reinforced the commitment to reliability by soliciting my feedback for a product review.

I’ll be interested to see what Super Bowl ad for “The Collection” by Faith Hill brings, but for the 2009 and 2010 versions, the Teleflora interactive marketing and service experience vastly performed the promises made by Super Bowl advertising.

How do you show your promises?

A nice surprise from CVS this weekend. On my way to pick up a prescription for my under-the-weather wife, I noted a small note at the top identifying prescription ready time by the word, “promised”.

They could have used different verbiage to describe when they told my wife her prescription would be ready. (In fact, they could have just called it “prescription ready time”.) I’ll bet very few people even notice this text on the top of their package.

But they specifically use “promised”.

It’s both a reminder to front line employees about what they’re making and to customers about what CVS and its people are delivering.

I’ve said in this space that all businesses are service businesses. A corollary to that is that all services fundamentally are promises that are made to be fulfilled.

Making those promises explicit – as CVS does – makes the expectation clear for everyone involved, and when it is fulfilled, reinforces the performance in the eyes of the customer.

Many companies have made high art of being noncommittal on what they will deliver to customers. It’s a malady that keeps them from being exceptional. If more businesses made their commitments clear - easily identifiable for front line employees and easily measurable for customers - we wouldn’t have nearly the chasm between the service that companies have the opinion they're providing and the service customers percieve.

Score one for un-planning

I had my first taste of Chicago’s famous Manny’s Deli earlier this week. Proof positive that a service experience doesn’t have to be overly planned and positioned in order to be successful.

In simplest terms, if you know a customer you want to serve, create an experience they find compelling and execute consistently at a high level, people pay attention, and you will develop a following.

Manny’s provides high quality deli fare with deep Jewish roots in irreplicable atmosphere to the Chicago lunch crowd – from blue-collar to politico alike. If you don’t believe they are artisans, Google “Manny’s Deli” & see what comes up. From their website, “At Manny's you don't diet. You don't snack. You don't nosh. You come to this landmark lunchroom to pile your tray high and eat like there's no tomorrow.” They’ve been so focused on their target, it took more than 6 decades to open for dinner.

The bricks & mortar could be replicated. Melamine, formica and laminate aren’t hard to come by, even in 2009. But the atmosphere couldn’t be recreated anywhere. The staff (Manny’s is a 4th generation family business.) knows their clientele from decades of interactions. Even if you’re a newbie, they know why you’re there. The customer-to-customer interaction is great, everyone in a better mood because of where they’re eating.

It’s possible they’ve never had a planning session. Never touchpoint-mapped their customer experience, never ideated around core purpose and vision or what the organization needs to look like in 3-to-5 years.

Maybe they have by now. The website is professionally done, they’re active in social media, and they serve customer-fans by shipping nationwide. But they didn’t become a local and national landmark through countless hours spent in service development and market planning.

They did it though dedication to solid service fundamentals. Making a service promise that people found attractive, making the promise available, and delivering on it every day, for almost 70 years.

It’s that easy. And that difficult.

Paper Covers Rock. Service Beats Sales.

Just finished having some work done on the outside of my house. I chronicled some of the provider selection process, but wanted to provide an update on how the family finally made our decision.

The significant factor that determined who we selected was how the companies presented themselves.

Those that lost, lost because they were selling a product.

They sent salespeople who came equipped with sample-filled valises. They handed out glossy brochures with pictures of showcase houses that looked nothing short of aspirational for our humble home. They spoke about vertical integration with their suppliers and made every effort to make their companies look as big as possible. They used jargon to try and make what they did sound more complex. They used high pressure, car-dealership tactics that suggested that if I didn’t fork over money on the spot, I would lose out on a dramatic discount. They were (mostly, but not always) more expensive, likely because of all the product support they needed to fund.

The company that won, won because they provide a service.

They sent a project manager / job foreman, who wanted to talk about the state of my house and the work it needed. They gave me a single quote, and guaranteed it. They offered referrals of homes they’d done in my neighborhood, and gave me their URL for research, rather than a brochure.

The time of the product-based approach, supported by high-pressure sales tactics, has come and gone.

People know enough, are wary enough and expect enough that they don’t want to be sold to.

They want to interact with someone who is legitimately interested in their situation, treats it as unique (even if it isn’t) and provides quality work product in return for their money. Only a person or company that views what they do as a service can fulfill that promise.

“Tin Men” or Scarecrows?

Is fear still a viable sell?

We’re in the market for long term home exterior solution. (It’s not just siding anymore) Though wrapped (literally) in a product wrapper, siding qualifies as a service because just as much value as the product is the notion that someone else will install it and maintain it over its lifespan.

I’m looking for a service company that can give me peace of mind that my family will be safe, my dwelling has the best chance at maintaining or appreciating in value, that my project won’t dramatically contribute wear & tear on the environment, and that I have made the best fiscal decision possible.

I’m theoretically at a disadvantage as a service evaluator. I’m not remotely handy, and my understanding of what impacts a structure over time is novice at best.

That said, the availability of information has increased dramatically over the years. No longer stuck with “just” traditional media such as consumer advocate magazines, in-store experts and word-of-mouth, we now have online product reviews from companies, consumers and media, price / product comparisons, and blogs and other social media where consumers detail their experiences directly with other consumers.

So why in 2009 does every salesperson / company that I’ve talked to try to use high-pressure tactics and fear to get me to buying from them on the spot in a 1st meeting? Surely they know that I’m not going to make a $10-50K purchase decision on the basis of how I felt in a 45 minute introduction. The part where you tell me you can save me 20%, but only if I commit / sign today? Laughable.

Siding is a product that, if you believe the collateral, most people will only have the opportunity to purchase once in their lives. The company-customer relationship will consist of a visible product installed in a large service project, and maintained through years of service experiences. An entrenched product focus is behind the Paleozoic-era high-pressure, fear-based approach. Today, information is too readily available for that sales tactic to work.

How would / could the business model change, if these companies were to approach the interaction as the start of a decades-long relationship with home & homeowner, rather than a $25,000 product sale to be made in the next 60 minutes and never considered again?