It’s Apples and … well, airlines.

I recently purchased an IMac from Apple for my daughter. And I realized that in a world filled with decreasing customer loyalty and foreboding customer experience - Apple is quietly creating a customer revolution. And it’s doing so by going back to the basics.

Here is how that revolution is being conducted

* Knowledgeable team of people who are young, motivated, and intelligent. Once you proclaim that you are there to buy something you will be assigned an expert. That expert walks with you around the store zapping on UPC labels placed on interesting products with his bar code gun.

* This generates a wish list which is printed for you - complete with current offers and promotions

* Highly simplified pricing and promotions. No coupons or rebate forms necessary. If a promotion exists in the Apple world it is printed out for you.

* A fantastic rebate system. All rebates are processed automatically and electronically once you complete the purchase. I received 2 emails from Apple giving me the status of my rebates and received a check for $300 in 7 days. No more cutting out UPC labels, attaching original receipts, and waiting for 4 to 8 weeks

* A product that just works. From the time I cracked open the package (the packaging itself is revolutionary) I had the whole thing up and running in 45 minutes. No blue screen, no CTRL-ALT-DEL keyboard sequence. no “abort” messages, no endless hourglasses, and “device not responding error”, and no clicking on a Start button to Shutdown.

How would our world be if every enterprise defined customer service the way Apple does. Take the ever sinking airline industry, for example. My latest airline encounter was with a near in-tears flight attendant who gave me her business card and asked for help finding a job. Being a single mother living in Seattle she had no confidence that the airline (I didn’t say United, did I) would take care of her and fully expected to be sacked in the next 30 days. That would be the equivalent of my Apple buddy searching for a job online as he demonstrated the computer to me. I couldn’t but help wonder, as I patiently chewed on my pretzel treat, if the pilot was browsing through monster.com as he prepared to land the plane at LAX looking for a job.

Remember, Apple wasn’t in a very different place a few years ago. Financially strapped and criticized as a :has been”. But they turned it around. And they did so by placing the customer in the center. So may be it’s time for some airline to stand up and notice, that instead of putting the customer in the middle seat - try putting the customer just in the middle. Things might actually change. And that beats the heck out of charging $2 for water.

Left Brain or Right Brain?

Ever wonder what it really means when people say “I’m a right brain person but she is a left brain person”? Well I did. So I researched and here is what I found. Both the neurophysical and metaphysical versions of this discovery are worth sharing.

The brain is divided into two distinct halves connected by a bunch (like millions) of nerves. The right side (hemisphere) of your brain controls the left side of your body, and the left hemisphere controls the right side. Although the two sides of the brain look like mirror images of each other, they are different. In most people, the left hemisphere is important for language, maths and reasoning, whereas the right is more important for emotion, recognizing faces and music. In computer terms, the right brain parallel processes and the left brain serial processes. The right brain registers harmony with the surrounding, while the left brain register the self and awareness (”I am”). The right brain lives in the present but the left brain lives in the past and plans the future. The right brain tells you to enjoy and harmonize but left brain tells you to measure and recount.

So what happens when one side of the brain is damaged; like through a stroke and the other takes over?

How do we deal with a change in bias in emotion?

Leading brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor recently spoke at the TED conference and explained exactly what happened to her when she had a stroke on one side. Jill got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story. Check it out by clicking here. It’s incredible stuff.

Insight into the brain (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229)

This raises the metaphysical question. If we were given the ability to activate a certain part of the brain as and when we needed it, which would it be, and when? What would you activate as a parent? As a lover? As a student of mathematics? As a recovering paraplegic? And would the results be satisfying? Or would you loop back and relearn the excess and be back to square one? Would you be able to count songs or smell numbers? And would it allow me to realize that no one really reads my blogs? Now - that would be a no-brainer.

Top 10 things to do before moving on …

I think it’s important that each person has his or her own top 10 aspirational things to do/ places to see / stuff to experience before moving on to another world (ya - whole different blog topic). Here is my Top 10:

•   Parachute out of a plane

        ·       Visit a Tibetan Monastery

·         Spend a week in a wild game reserve in South Africa with my parents

·         Spend a week in a South American country with my wife helping kids for charity

·         Dive the Great Barrier Reef with my oldest daughter

·         Watch an English Premier League game in England with my middle daughter

·         Get to the base camp of Mt Everest with my son

·         Climb Macha Pichu with my brother

·         Teach at a school after retirement

·         Be around to witness India emerge as a global super power

 What’s yours?

 

A whole new world ….

Not sure which one it was … a lust for adventure, a craving for open water, or just crazy mid life crisis. But I got scuba certified - at age 43. Along with my 15 year old daughter. Well, it was her idea. It started at the Atlantis in the Bahamas - where we first went and dove with sharks. Really - in a lagoon with 21 sharks swimming overhead. She wanted to do it alone and I had to go … to protect her. Only to realize that I was as helpless as her 20 feet under with the magnificent creatures brushing by us. All 21 of them. That was it…we had to get certified after that.

The hardest part of the certification is getting started. Starts with 4 pool dives and an endurance test where you have to tread water for 15 minutes without support. Then it follows with 4 open water dives. The hardest part of that being beach entry - breaking the wave line with over 30 pounds on your back. But your first experience of diving 30 feet below the surface is one you are guaranteed to remember for a very long time.

To celebrate our certification, my kid and I went to Cancun. And that was a life changing experience. It’s a different world once you break surface. Each of your senses - taste, smell, sound, and touch get transformed by a new experience. An experience in tranquility and serenity. Where the world slows, the fish pause, and the underwater bursts out into unimaginable shades of color. Your helplessness becomes your strength and your awareness reaches a different plane. The significance of the insignificant is startling.

And of course you have to prepare for the embarrassments. You run out of oxygen before your kid does, you are more disoriented than she is, and she is having a better time that you are. But all in all - what an amazing bonding experience.

If you are reading this blog, and if you aren’t certified - then do consider it. It is a life changing experience!

Welcome to the Experience Economy

Coffee costs less than 5 cents per cup in the commodities market. Yet we pay $5 for a grande latte at a “Starbucks near you” for a slightly burnt, wholly mass produced, cup of java topped with an overdose of 2% milk. The lines today at a Starbucks at any airport rival the TSA security lines. Yet the sight of the green logo with a picture of the stylized two tailed siren mermaid makes us pause. Why? It’s not the price, it’s not the promotion, it’s not the placement, and it’s not the product. The traditional 4 Ps of marketing don’t work here. It’s the Experience, stupid.

Makes sense? No? Well let’s look at a few more examples about the experience economy.

I was in Geneva in March 2008 for a Sage executive conference. Our conference gift was a 2 pen set of Mont Blanc; symbolic because our conference was being held in Evian des bains, in full view of the stately Mount Blanc in the background. So I did what every normal person does when he receives an expensive gift. I googled the pen to check the price!! After multiplying the Euro price several times I arrived at a mind boggling amount of $500 for a ball point pen and a pencil set. That’s more than 100 Grande Lattes! The always-rationalizing-Indian brain that I have been gifted with made the relevant comparison - that’s a lot more money than the Bic pens that I buy at staples which on a good day can cost $4.99 a dozen. Oh my gosh - that’s like buying 100 Bic pens! Plus the Bic pen gives you the joy of chewing on the pointy black cap as you scribble. The Mont Blanc has a inconvenient round metal cap. No chewing and $500? What’s up?? Let’s do some research. The most expensive Mont Blanc costs $4,300. A few years ago on a TV program which showcased the top 10 worst jobs, a woman by the name of Igor who worked at Mont Blanc was interviewed. Her job was testing pens by scribbling curly lines on a page 8 hours a day. She had been doing this for 10 years. When asked how much she hated her job of testing a pen she proudly replied - “I don’t test pens. I guarantee a writing experience using a pen which someday will be used to sign the middle east peace treaty!”. Wow. Igor was guaranteeing a writing experience. So what’s the Mont Blanc pen all about. The Experience!

So you still don’t agree. Well explain this to me.

Why is a family of four willing to stand in endless lines and pay over $300 for just entrace to enter a Disney theme park? The rides are average, the characters dressed in ridiculous costumes, and prices at the concession stands highway robbery. And all this with the aspiration of a mouse sighting. Right - you are getting it. It’s for the Disney Experience. As the story goes, about 10 years ago a family from Australia were exiting a Disney theme park and their daughter was crying as they were leaving. At any other entertainment park in Northen America hardly a soul would have noticed. But this isnt any other place. It’s the Magic of Disney! The guy at the turnstile asked what happened and the mother replied that her 8 year old didnt get to see Minnie. The turnstile operator spoke on his handy walkie-talkie and within 15 minutes Minnie appeared in her regal pink costume. Now - think about the Disney org chart 10 years ago. Micheal Eisner on the top and the turnstile guy almost 30 levels down. And he was able to produce a Disney icon within 15 minutes. Why? Because the Disney experience is more important to that conglomerate than any organization chart ever built. It’s that experience again.

That’s why we shop at Nordstroms, we stay at a Ritz, we eat at a Morton’s and buy Thomas trains for our kids. It’s not the price, not the product - it’s the exxperience!!

So take a look at the products you sell tomorrow morning. And make sure you understand that the you arent selling the customer a product; he can get that anywhere else over the Internet even - you are allowing the customer to participate in a buying experience.

More on this topic later. I need to take my teenage daughter to an Abercrombie store.

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