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Seth Godin (briefly) on the ‘it’ retailer: The Apple Store

Seth Godin writes yesterday about his recent trip to the Soho Apple Store and how it is really, an “it” store. This is my paraphrase of the ‘it’ girl: Apple Stores have become the young, hip retailer, famed for the good presentation, charm of their staff and customer magnetism. 



“Here’s an update, five years later: I spent an hour or two on Saturday at the Soho store. The obvious difference, other than how incredibly jammed it was, was who was there.


Couples.
Fashionistas.
Women.


“They’ve crossed the gender barrier and made people of both genders passionate about what they sell.”


That’s certainly true for the people browsing at the stores. But the customers are also buying, as you may’ve read in Fortune that Apple Store sales per square foot in New York are more than four times Best Buy…



“Apple stores make $4,032 per square foot per year. For comparison’s sake, Saks, whose flagship is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy (Charts) stores turn $930 – tops for electronics retailers – while Tiffany & Co. (Charts) takes in $2,666.”


So, what makes it so appealing?


For one thing, people are welcomed and hardly ever shooed out of the store for playing on the computers or iPods. Try that at a Big Box retailer… if you can find anything worth playing on the demo PCs in the major retailers, or find even a single machine with an Internet connection. (Note: I did find a PC with Internet connection at Best Buy recently, which I used to browse the web and run a quick price comparison and read a review on a new consumer HD video camera.)


See a this post of a visit last year to my local Apple Store and here from April when I took a look Apple TV.



“ComputerWare set the bar for retailers, and now the Apple Stores follow the recipe: employees know their stuff, can get your new machine up and running, load software and help you figure out most any problem you might run into with your Mac, no matter what the vintage.


“And — just like ComputerWare — the answers at the Apple Store don’t just come from the staff: answers come from other customers. It’s a community.” 


It’s time to trek down to Bellevue Square this weekend and see what’s what…


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Studios leaking torrents of an upcoming sitcom: what does Anne Sweeney think about this?

I like it when a meeting ends early and up pops an IM on Office Communicator from a friend in media and entertainment (with a link no less) on something just too strange that you have to ask: “what the heck were the thinking when they did that?” 

This is just too much.

I’ve noted previously how ABC distributed free ad-supported TV episodes via the web, and now this: Lifehacker linked to Smaran’s post on Torrentfreak.com, “an anonymous executive at Warner Bros. admitted to purposefully leaking torrents of the upcoming ABC sitcom Pushing Daises to create excitement about the show.”

“In a recent interview for the Seattle Post, I speculated that it seemed likely that TV executives and writers were purposefully leaking their yet-to-air shows to BitTorrent to build up hype and an audience. It looks like I wasn’t too far off.

“An anonymous Warner Brothers Television executive has admitted he helped leak the pilot of “Pushing Daisies“, an upcoming TV show. His reason? He wanted to make sure the show “got out there,” and wanted to “help the cause.” The executive didn’t upload it himself; he got his neighbour’s kid to do it. And the kid was delighted to, because it pushed up his ratio on some private network.

“You might think, as I did, that someone made this story up. Turns out, the executive used his work e-mail ID (yep, @warnerbros.com or whatever) when he contacted Rick Ellis of AllyourTV.com. When asked about what made him leak the pilot, he replied:

“I just thought it was a good idea. Even though […] I don’t have any direct stake in the show, it’s a really great project. It’s tough to describe, though, and while it makes great sense once you’ve seen it, it’s one of those shows that will only work if people do tune in at least once.

“Which, by the way, is one of the reasons that ABC and Warners are promoting the show in all sorts of venues. The pilot has been screened at everything from auditions for ABC reality shows to Comic-Con. We all believe in the show. And if I can do something that might in some small way help…I can live with that.

“One last thing…some of this is also about building pressure with the network. I don’t think anyone here involved with “Traveler” was exactly thrilled with the treatment ABC gave the show. But it didn’t really have any champions inside either company. And I suppose all of us are hoping that this show gets the support it deserves.”

Think about this statement: “… some of this is also about building pressure with the network…“

Amazing.

Is this marketing gone awry or an interesting way to get viewers to look at a new show?

And I wonder what Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks, thinks about this? Sure, viral marketing is one thing, but losing the draw to your portal (not to mention the advertising dollars that support free episodes) and potentially losing the support of advertisers and local affiliates are all together bigger issues. 

Back to work.

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Missing Samsung screws, poor customer service and fake blogs (with CNBC’s Jane Wells)

I enjoy Jane Wells’ blog and live reports on CNBC. 


This week she looks at poor customer service (sorry, she labels it “hellish “). A friend of Jane’s Andy signed up with satellite internet service provider WildBlue.net…


“Barnett signed up in May of 2006, and the equipment was guaranteed for a year. Eleven months in, it died. Thus began one of the most mind-numbing attempts to get repairs that I have ever heard. He’s made repeated calls to the company only to learn that the piece of equipment he needs is no longer in stock. A company rep told him over the phone they’re completely out.



“Yet they continue to charge him for monthly service THAT HE NO LONGER HAS. And, according to Barnett, during this time WildBlue sales reps continued to tell prospective customers they could get service within a few weeks, even though the company allegedly didn’t have the necessary equipment.”


That’s amazing. Many consumer companies I have worked with throughout my career prescribed to the notion to keep spare parts on hand (or reasonable replacements and alternatives) available to customers for five to seven years. This means that, as a customer, you should be able to find replacement parts long after the latest gizmo has gone the way of the dodo. I found this to be true with major firms such as Canon, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung.


Wait a sec… hold that thought on Samsung for a moment.


Let me be clear on one thing: in order to get good customer service, you also have to be able to get through to the company. Lately, I had a heck of a time reaching Samsung, to obtain a replacement part for a monitor. I like their LCD monitors, having several at home (from an old SyncMaster 770 TFT to the latest 19″ widescreens). Turns out that a mounting screw (connecting the base to the bottom mount of the monitor) was too short to make the connection. No problem, I thought, a quick call to their customer service centre should solve that problem.


Not so fast.


Several calls to their “customer care” 800 number resulted in being disconnected while I waited on hold. And when I dialed their offices on both coasts (on my dime), I left messages and never received a response. And my emails sent to the company were never answered.


Sheesh.


Let’s just say that due to the lack of support, I resorted to my own devices. I hopped in the car and shot over to Lowe’s hardware, where I met a retired contractor now working in hardware customer service. In less than a minute, he found the replacement part (a metric screw, M4 .70 x 16) that solved my problem. I’ll let you know if I ever hear back from a live person in Samsung’s monitor division.


Thank you, Lowe’s.


Also this week, Jane takes a look at all of the fake blogs popping up (such as fake Steve Jobs)…



“With all the talk about the “Fake Steve Jobs” at www.fakesteve.blogspot.com, (including on this blog), followed by the “Fake Gene Munster,” the Piper Jaffray analyst who covers Apple, at www.fakegene.blogspot.com (Jim Goldman alerted us to this one yesterday), it seems to me all the attention goes to the fakes.”



Jane also spend time last week reporting on LinkedIn… which I’ve found is a great way to reconnect and stay connected with friends and close business associates.


On CNBC, I also read Jim Goldman’s blog – I enjoy his reporting style, watching him originally reporting on Bay Area news channels.


 


Tags: Samsung, Jane Wells, customer support

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Seth Godin on lambchops, and I don’t mean food

This week Seth Godin writes about lambchops, specifically “The lambchop theory of success.”


First, his definition:



Lambchop: “A kind, thoughtful person. Someone who keeps her promises. Someone who does great work but doesn’t always brag about it. Someone you’d like to work with again.


“It used to be that a real jerk who got results was exactly what you needed. Today, in a world that’s a lot more connected and a lot more permeable, lambchops win out”


I run into people that fall under these definitions. Today, I ran into a Lambchop. I took my son to get a bunch of new items and uniform pieces for his latest endeavour: Cub Scouts. Traveling to the Scout Shop in downtown Seattle, I realized only when we arrived that I’d left my wallet at home. Knowing that they’d soon close, I told the man behind the counter – smartly dressed in a Scout Master uniform – of my forgetfulness.


“No problem. If you want, get the information from your wife and we’ll send you on your way with everything you need today,” he told me.


Huh? I was surprised.


And then he stepped from behind the counter and proceeded to help us collect all the various items my eight-year-old would need to fit in with his other Bear Cub Scouts at their next meeting, explaining all of the ins and outs, the detailed info on each item. This was Nordstrom’s-class customer service, and coming from a man wearing a kerchif. (OK, maybe he wasn’t… but he had the official uniform on.) A few minutes later we were on our way, my son happy that he had all his gear, and me happy that I didn’t have to drive round trip twice to Seattle.


At Microsoft, we talk a lot about a focus on improving the experiences that our Customers and Partners have with us, corporate citizenship and generally remembering what it was like to be a customer of Microsoft. Talk is cheap, as they say. So as employees, we tend to be our own worst critics and supporters: we not only use our own services, software and hardware products, but we deliver feedback to product teams on the good and the bad (and sometimes the ugly ;).


And when we do this, the people that command the most respect — and frankly get the best feedback from the product teams — tend to be the ones who offer constructive and thoughtful feedback, rather than Seth’s described “real jerks” as noted above. There just seem to be more connected people working on behalf of our customers and partners these days, doing the right things.


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Take a whack at it: you might be surprised

All summer long, my eight-year-old son has been struggling to complete a five-minute math quiz sheet, thinking that he would never be able to complete the 100 subtraction questions in the time allowed. All summer, he’s inched up from 60 questions out of 100 all the way to completing 90 within five minutes. But he was frustrated that he would not be able to complete all 100, without even bothering to try, he’d utter the classic phrase “I’ll never be able to do that!”


I explained to my son that he could do it, as he had overcome “incredible odds” (at least in his mind) when tackling addition at the beginning of the school year. “If you believe you can do it, you just might surprise yourself and find that you can do it.” 


As we discussed the quiz sheet, I thought about  Roger von Oech’s creative thinking books, “A Whack on the Side of the Head” and “A Kick in the Seat of the Pants.” In particular, this pane from his web site on believing in yourself:


Believe in Yourself. (c)1999 Roger von Oech.“What concerns me,” remarked the philosopher Epictetus, “is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.”


If you think you’re creative, you’ll act that way — and vice versa. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. As you think, so you are.


In what ways are you creative?


What strengths do you have that you can apply to your issue?


– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –


So I explained that if you think you’re going to complete the sheet, you’ll go ahead and do it. “As you think, so you are.”


Still unmoved, with lots of excuses, lots of delays… classic eight-year-old procrastination. I explained that he would just have to do it.


Nothing. Classic dog-staring-into-a fan-moment.


Finally, I explained in terms that he could understand, in the immortal words of Yoda: “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”


This evening, he completed the sheet, with nearly half a minute to spare. And he did it a second time as well, just to show that he could. Sometimes, you just need to take a whack at it: the results may surprise you.


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