“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” Warren Buffet’s famous axiom is in all too frequent use in these times of financial Armageddon but it still remains a useful one for online marketers as they trade through these exceptional conditions.

A great deal is made online of differentiating functionality and experimenting with new features, which is great if your main objective is brand differentiation. However spend too much time tinkering with your costume as the tide goes out and you won’t have any water to swim in at all – if you’ll forgive the extended metaphor.

The place to focus budgets right now isn’t on developing brand differentials through experiential marketing, but on the conversion funnel.

In the midst of the financial crisis that enveloped the country during the second week of October 08, We carried out an email campaign for one bar and restaurant chain that generated over 5000 new enquiries within three days, representing a huge leap on prior performance. The reason – well the offer was great but the campaign allowed customers to easily make their enquiry and because of this, it was quite literally like turning on a tap within their eCRM system.

Of course the communication process has to be good and automating large personalised campaigns is never easy, but the investment will pay off several times over if it’s done well.

So even while the tide is going out, some savvy operators online are seeing large percentage increases in their online trade simply by focussing on customer service delivery and loyalty schemes for their existing and new online customers; in measurable campaigns that add to the bottom line. 

On our recent trip to the US we stayed with friends in Summit, a prosperous suburb of New York where the police force has taken an unusual approach to improving community relations.

Historically it has been difficult for the boys in blue to get to know their community as citizens drive everywhere in the US and so do the police. There’s no ‘bobby on the beat’ type opportunity to chat informally with people which, as anyone who’s watched  Dixon of Dock Green will know, is an essential part of community policing.

So what they’ve done is introduce the equivalent of a Panini football card game for children where they can ask, say,  Sergeant O’Mally for his card if they see him or if he doesn’t have any cards on him, he can drop them round to the house later on – thereby becoming known to the parents too. Due to the popularity of the scheme, they even have open mornings at the police station where kids can go and swap cards with others.

Looked at through the eyes of someone who does customer relationship management for a living (i.e., me) this is just a great example of how some lateral thinking can massively improve the relationship an organisation has with its customers, creating a dialogue and trust around the product so that when the time comes that you have a need (or need a policeman) you know exactly where to turn.
In a time when our relationships with organisations are dominated by call centres and automated telephone menus, the sight of Sergeant O’Mally at your door just dropping off a card for your children is heartening indeed.

If there are just two words embedded in the DNA of brand Aardvark Media, they would have to be customer service. Everything we do online, however technical, has to first tick the box saying that it makes life easier for the customer.

Being focussed on this in my work life, I’m probably quicker than most to voice dissatisfaction as a consumer but recently I’ve had such a jaw droppingly bad experience at the hands of Virgin Airlines that it demands a public airing.

 I’m flying with the family to the US soon and as I have a couple of young kids, I decided to take advantage of an offer to upgrade to premium economy so you get a bit more room on the long haul flight. To do that you have to ring the Virgin customer services line which starts with an automated menu (which disqualifies it from being a customer service line in my book) and ends, eventually, with a call centre overseas.

My first call was fairly straight forward, I made the booking and was informed that an e-ticket confirming the upgrade would be emailed to me within 48 hours. It wasn’t, so I made a second call. I was on hold for 10 minutes while they checked the booking – “no problem, the e-ticket will be with you tomorrow sir.” Tomorrow passed and still no e-ticket so I made a third call and spent 40 minutes on hold this time. As I hold longer than this for no man I hung up and called back when my patience had returned.  Twenty minutes on hold again and when I got through I was informed I had to pay an extra fuel surcharge for my booking but that the e-ticket would definitely be with me in 48 hours. It wasn’t. I called back again and held for 15 minutes.

When I got through this time - my fifth call, they asked me if I knew who I had spoken to last time – as if it were my responsibility to record this rather than there’s to keep notes on the system. I had the name but this meant they tried to put me through to that person who was, of course, engaged. When I got through I was rewarded with notice of a further fuel charge but by now desperate to conclude matters, I paid up and pleaded that they just get me the ticket. “Certainly sir, it will be with you in 48 hours”.

And of course it wasn’t. I did eventually get the ticket but all told, I reckon it took about five hours to upgrade me  – that’s upgrade, i.e., pay them more money.

What’s astonishing about this experience in 2008 is that it still exists. We have the technology and we have the skills to create happy customers who keep coming back and yet this automated, chaotic nonsense remains. And from Virgin, formerly the consumers’ champion.

By the way, if, by any chance Virgin pick this up on their blog monitor and want to call me to apologise, they’d better be prepared to hold. 

I had the good fortune this weekend to find myself in France, invited by the owner of an ancient vineyard to sample the barrels he was considering blending for the UK market. His family had never sold Beaujolais outside of France before and was keen to get some UK opinion. We were pleased to oblige and left with a few cases and the intention of telling all our friends about him.

In the marketing world this falls into the category of ‘brand influence’. Some research by OMD which came out at the end of ’07 which showed that amongst our European neighbours, Brits are the most likely (63%) to offer an unprompted opinion online and we are also the most likely to pass a negative comment (26%).

What this says about the UK psyche is a large topic, but suffice to say, we’re not backwards in coming forward when we don’t like something, but also, we’re more motivated than most to share a good customer experience.

And with 38% of UK online purchasers taking other customers’ opinions into account before purchasing, UK online retailers need to think more about strategies to recruit repeat customers as brand ambassadors – ensuring that good news about the restaurant or hotel for example, is actively promoted.

I’m not suggesting they take them out to France and ply them with wine – though that would be a nice idea – but simply asking repeat customers if they would consider telling other people about their experience (via the established review sites) on the basis that if they’ve come back, they must have had a good time.

With more brand ambassadors you recruit more new customers which in turn means even more brand ambassadors and so on. A virtuous online marketing circle.

Or, if my new French friend is reading, the more promotional Beaujolais sent to me = more customers = more brand ambassadors = more customers and so on.

Our clients occasionally ask us how we come up with the cost breakdowns in our estimates, and since we’ve just changed our process for that, we thought it might be an opportune time to explain how we arrive at them.

Estimating is an art, not a science, and honestly, a lot of the time, it really is just plucking a number that feels about right from the air. Yes, you’re guided by hard-won experience, but every project is different, and they’ve all got hidden pitfalls. Estimating is hard, and takes time and skill.

Until now, anyway. Now, the bright sparks at A Few Men Internet Solutions have come up with a typically brilliant idea that will revolutionise the business of providing time and cost estimates, making estimates both easier to produce, and much more accurate, so we’ve decided to switch over to using it. Now, instead of holding laborious planning meetings, trying to put hard and fast times and costs to vaguely understood requirements, we’re going to do something much simpler and easier, which should result in savings that we can pass along to our clients.

We’re going to ask a badger to do it.