You would think that it might be reasonable to assume that good companies aspire to provide great customer service, wouldn’t you. Some companies establish customer service as their primary goal. The bigger the company, the more the focus on the customer, in my view. But how much do we, as customers, help them to achieve [...]
Last weekend my wife and were guests with a friend who is a barrister, and on the way to becoming a judge, all being well. We were talking about the mobile devices that we each had. He does not have one. No iPhone, no iPad, no Blackberry – not even a good old fashioned mobile [...]
Last Thursday I went our for my morning walk with my wife, Robyn. She told me that we had a problem with our washing machine. She thought that the motor had given up the ghost. We have had it for some time so we decided not to bother with calling a repair man and to [...]
Digital technology empowers and it destroys. As the legacy silos entrench themselves and become more polar in their approach the silos start to crumble. It happens in business and more of that later. As is incredibly visible right now, it happens in politics. Sometimes those silos are not really about the leader or the policy [...]
Its a question that anyone who is in marketing will ask at a meeting. Its a question that should help us define how to start a campaign. Maybe its not the only question that we should ask, though. How about, “Why’s your customer….?” Why is your customer going to respond to your campaign? Why is [...]
The movement to mobile is incredible, isn’t it? I have been reading up on data relating to the growth of mobile over the last couple of days so that I can deliver a reasonably coherent lecture on a number of issues relating to mobile to first year communication students at UoW. At the same time [...]
I’ve been at a conference on the Gold Coast of Queensland for the last two days on the commercialization of Intellectual Property. Last night I got talking to a young PhD student who is trying to figure out what to do with his life. He registered for the conference because he is looking for a [...]
Have you noticed that even as we see the power of digitization modifying business and, in my view driving productivity gains into the consumer marketplace, we also see regulation of the worst kind creeping into the system? Lets talk about productivity gains for a minute. The power of the smart phone. New apps are coming [...]
I wrote a week ago about buying Belgian chocolate, and talking to the chocolatier and finding out about what goes into the average chocolate bar. We all know about the Chinese milk scandals involving replacing milk solids with melamine. If you go to your local supermarket and buy garlic, you will probably find that it [...]
Systems evolve over time. Look at the eco-system that drives most of the western world. It has been around for a relatively short time in historical terms. It is a sub-set of capitalism that may now be showing signs of weakness as a continuing driver for wealth creation. I’m talking about consumerism. Consumerism is assumed [...]