Cities & Public Servants have a Brand too

We in the business world are making an impact – and I don’t mean just in the products and services our companies sell to our customers. Not For Profit (NFP) organizations are getting the message that the techniques and best practices that business uses, can help them run their organization more effectively – to better serve their ‘customers’. I know that is, still, a contentious word even though I include it in quotation marks. Many NFP organizations do NOT believe that that they have customers, or that they should measure.

But there is a product or service in all cases. I should declare an interest – until last year I was treasurer and a board director of a national body, where we went through many of these issues and struggles. I believe that putting the customer – in this case the members – first and forefront in the operational plans the organization instituted each year is the only reason it survives and prospers. The more it applies business and market principles and measures, the better the members are served, and the more satisfied they are.

The next challenge, I believe, is persuading our civic organizations that they too have a Brand, yes with a capital B! I live in a large city, where the budget is close to $1Bn per annum. I don’t know anyone who speaks highly of the services we receive – but does it need to be so? I’ll take as an example the most visible, but not the only, offenders.

One aspect that has always pushed my buttons is the service workers for whom the norms (be they laws or common courtesies of life) seem to be suspended. I’ll refer primarily to our police force – mainly because they are the most visible and have the task of making sure the rest of us DO obey the norms – well at least the ones we have codified into law!

I find it frustrating to see members of our police force driving with a cell phone (often, arm on window) to their ear, turning without signaling and, perhaps most of all, parking in red zones whilst getting or drinking coffee. Yes, they are human like the rest of us, but I want them to set an example I can be proud to follow. They are the ambassadors for all public servants, the best of the best, in my opinion. They have, or should have, standards. And the chief should understand the effect that these modest, human, behaviors have on his Brand. He should understand that the brand promise of the police is to uphold the law for all of us, and to set an example in the simple things, such as I cite above, makes a key difference for all of us.

Maybe I just grew up in the wrong era – Dixon of Dock Green – was the police series on TV when I was young! And no, we shouldn’t return to those times, but perhaps we’ve forgotten how simple things can make a big difference. Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point cites the example of New York transit police chief who clamped down on fare dodging – the lowliest and ‘unimportant’ of crimes. But allowing it to continue signaled that it was OK to break the law. And assertive action to visibly stop such trivial law breaking had a major effect on crime overall.

I believe it is so with Brands. When the small things are right, we feel better, be it a product or a public servant. I live in hope that we can sell these points in public service organizations – and that my interactions with our police force remains as good as it has been!

{Customer Service, Brand}

{Brand, Customer Service}

Technorati Tags: Brand, Customer Service, User Experience, WOM

Amazon Unbox – Copyright really does rule?

I have talked before about Amazon’s Unbox movie download service – primarily about the usabilty of the service at the Amazon end – before. I did try it out (I rented Robin Williams in ‘Man of the Year’ for $3.99) and it was as advertised – the video arrived on my Tivo and the quality was fine. Once you start to watch the download, it’s available for 24 hours to watch as often as you wish (one niggle, it’s actually 24 hours minus the running time of the movie). The service worked well enough that I ventured back recently.

I went to buy something at Amazon and in the recommendations was ‘Master & Commander‘ I can have it in widescreen for $9.99 – pretty good for an avid Patrick O’Brian fan! Turns out that not only can I buy the DVD, I can download it to my Tivo – how can I resist? So I set it to download to my downstairs Tivo (yes, we have two networked on our home wireless system!). So far, so good.

As an aside, you seem to have to set money into a separate account (as you will see later, it seems separate and distinct from my regular Amazon account) in order to purchase. Sort of frustrating, especially as I CANNOT find out how much is in it. I have tried every obvious – and not so obvious – way to see what my balance is. Regular readers might detect a more ambivalent attitude than usual – this is exactly the sort of thing that winds me up enough to walk away – but I’m using $20 of free credits. If I was paying my money, it would be walk time till they get it right – right for me, the user.

Back to the download…..

I check today, and sure enough Master & Commander is on my downstairs Tivo. Woohoooo! As I have had a week of losing data, first thing I do is go to back it up to DVD. I have the Humax Tivo that has a built-in DVD recorder, I love it – and the only time I have needed their service they were very good (even though they lost my machine for 8 weeks)! I get to the relevant screen and get ‘Due to restriction by the copyright holder, you cannot save this program to DVD’). Turns out I can’t do anything except watch it right there, on that Tivo. I can’t move it to my other Tivo, I can’t use it on Tivo ToGo (watch it on a PC or Mac). Nada. Nothing. I can, of course, fill up my Tivo hard disk with it – if I’m smart enough to remember to mark it as ‘Do Not Delete’.

I don’t blame Tivo, I don’t blame Amazon (though the latter could make it clear upfront how restricted the download is), I blame the content providers. The media (RIAA and MPAA) organizations will carp and carp about how their members are selling fewer and fewer copies of their high priced products. No bloody wonder! I paid exactly the same price as the traditional DVD, yet I can only watch this on a single, fixed, device. I’m just glad I didn’t download it to the bedroom TIvo – having friends over to view it would have been a whole new experience!

But seriously, when will the content owners get real? As someone who has made their living in intellectual property for may years, I support paying for other people’s property. I’m anal about having properly licensed software, music and DVDs. But watch this space, the current content providers will have plenty to moan about soon. The availability of devices that enable ‘the rest of us’ to exercise our creativity will change the balance in where and how we obtain content to amuse our leisure time. HD video cameras are now inexpensive, good tools to edit and mix will be available soon (I’ll declare an interest – I’m co-founder of a Silicon Valley company that is working towards enabling all forms of media creativity). Then the majority of content I watch is unlikely to be from people who want to restrict my watching.

YouTube is just the beginning. Yes, there is a lot of mediocre content! But there are also plenty of adverts and content that I CHOOSE to go watch. Already the majority of my music listening is online (which is easily recordable, should I so chose). My watching habits may be next.

I’ll enjoy the schadenfraude of listening to large media wriggle.

{Brand, Marketing, Product, Product Management, WOM}

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Product, Product Management, User Experience, WOM