Just arrived in Sydney, Australia after - and I can’t believe I’m going to say this – an enjoyable 14.5-hour plane ride from Los Angeles. 

 

Here’s my conclusion, flying internationally is what flying used to be, while flying domestically has become the bus trip of years gone by. 

 

My first plane trip took place in 1966. I was 7 and I flew with my grandma to St. Louis to visit my aunt and uncle. We dressed up, we flew with other dressed up people, and we ate a very civilized meal of silver dollars pancakes and sausage, which was served by a very attentive and nice stewardess. We left on schedule from National Airport in Washington, DC and we landed on schedule. The size of the plane fit the duration of the journey and I recall being quite comfortable. The experience was exciting and grown up. I loved it.

 

We have a lot of small business clients, and they were getting pretty scared and depressed following the financial crisis last October. It occurred to us here at DIG that they were almost paralyzed by that fear, unable to move forward, only to hunker down to wait it out. So we came up with our little slice of optimism, the DIG Marketing Minute. It was designed to get people thinking about something other than impending disaster and focus on the opportunities that still exist today. Brevity was a necessity because we knew we couldn’t achieve our objective if the length scared people when they opened it. We try to keep it to less than 150 words so it can be read in less than a minute. This is no small trick. A lot of editing is required to get something powerful about customer service, social media, competitive advantages, strategic planning or brand management into 150 words or less. The open rates are great compared to newsletters, and we have received tons of anecdotal comments extolling its virtues. Other companies liked it so much that we developed a product so it could be rebranded for those who wanted to offer the same strategic thinking to their clients. http://www.digcreative.com/index.php/dig-marketing-minute.html 

 

One of our differentiators is our focus on results, and we practice what we preach. Watching the statistics, I noticed recently that the open rate had declined slightly. Someone within our group hypothesized that it was stale and needed to be revamped. I looked at the data and came up with another hypothesis. We have a lot of printing companies in our database and this industry has been particularly hard hit by the recession. Perhaps, I wondered, they were stretched too far due to staff cutbacks and didn’t have time to read. Or maybe, some of the large number of sales people in our database had lost their positions with only an open and now full email box as the last vestige of their former glory.

I developed a strategy. If people didn’t think the Marketing Minute was valuable, they probably weren’t a good fit for us anyway, so why not mutually disconnect? They get rid of clutter in their email inbox and we rid ourselves of recipients who don’t fit our profile. Win/Win. So I sent an email inviting those who hadn’t been opening to let us know if they want to continue. Action was only required if you wanted to stay on the distribution list. With no action, we would remove them and make their lives a tad less cluttered. 

I have a pretty strategic view of customer service: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Last week something happened to illustrate just how damaging it can be when you screw this up.

 

About 15 years ago, while at Xerox, I took over a territory consisting of commercial and quick printers. Just as I started, one of the franchise printers went out of business. Basically, he just locked his doors and walked away leaving the equipment in place. He did not sell his franchise but a brand new owner with the same franchise name moved into the location. Understandably, the new owner wanted the other company’s equipment removed so he could set up for business. But try as I might (those of you who know me know that means a whole lot of trying and a whole lot of creativity trying to solve the problem), I could not get Xerox to pick up the equipment. It seems the previous company had defaulted on their lease agreement and until that dispute was settled, they could not or would not pick up the equipment. It didn’t seem to matter that the lessee was no place to be found and not likely to make good on the lease payments, especially now that he had shut his doors. Finally, the owner of the new business moved the equipment out into the alley. He took a picture of it next to the dumpster, pinned it to his bulletin board and talked about it to anyone who would listen. I was known as the Xerox rep that went back on her word or the Xerox rep that couldn’t get anything done.

 

Flash forward 15 years. I am presenting at the national conference of owners for this franchise and guess who is in the audience? And what’s the first thing he says to me? You guessed it, “Remember when you didn’t pick up that machine and I had to put it out in the alley?”