The UK's Liveliest Small Business Newsletter
Old archive | New site
|
|
Brick No146: How To Be Human
By Matt Weston, Thursday 26 May 2005 Smoothie Does It Andy Davies emailed in last Thursday. The first item in the bric-a-brac at the bottom of the last newsletter had caught his eye. He quoted my words back to me: ** "(1) I borrowed the phrase "enjoy by" date from the lid ** of an Innocent "Blackberries & Blueberries" smoothie. ** Why is it everyone else talks about "use by", "expiry", ** and "best before" dates? Proof word power works." And added a few of his own: ** I think [Innocent] borrowed it too as I could remember ** Tom Peters talking about someone using it. And a google ** search turned up this: http://snipurl.com/tp_1992 The link is to an old Tom Peters column, date stamped April 03, 1992. TP's schtick predates mine by 13 years. And Andy was right -- unbeknown to me, a juice company called Odwalla coined "enjoy by" way before Innocent. Great minds, eh? How Tom tells it: "Recently, I bought an Odwalla fresh fruit drink. As I was knocking back the last, luscious drops, I noticed the expiration date: "Enjoy by March 12." "Why fuss over "Enjoy by" instead of the normal "Expires on"? Simple. It's the very essence of humanness -- and superior service and quality. "Enjoy by" brought a flicker of a smile to my face -- and that flicker could mean hundreds of dollars of lifetime business for Odwalla on my behalf, plus 10 times that via word of mouth (thanks to this column, for instance)." How To Be Human A sampling of products from my kitchen shelf: USE BY 28 MAY; Best before end OCT 2006; Do not use after the best before end date (EXP) on base; Best Before 31-12-2009; Best before end: see lid; Use by 04 JUN Q. But "Enjoy By 26 MAY"! What a difference two "teeny" words make! The main body of Tom Peters' 1992 article is about an insanely bad customer experience he had with US phone firm GTE, now part of Verizon. His argument: (1) mostly we dehumanise, demean and demoralise our customers; and (2) this sorry mess makes the teeniest good deed stand out in bold relief. 13 years on, it's an even sorrier mess. Inarguably, customer experience is more dehumanised now than in 1992. But, of course, that means that the smallest show of humanness carries even more kudos. This can mean anything from printing poems on your receipts to replacing canned photos of paid models with real photos of paying customers. But it boils down to this: if you humanise your customer's experience, you stand out an extra mile. Bric-A-Brac This is probably a timely moment to explain why I include bric-a-brac at the end of most Bricks. I've found that people read BB in very different ways. Some people only want the big idea, above. But others like the miscellany, the eighth-baked ideas and the links that weren't quite on-message enough to work-in above. So I list them separately: (1) How To Use Words. I'm compiling a list of great examples of word power in business. For starters: "Enjoy By 26 MAY"; "I Used To Be A Plastic Bag" (see Brick No119 ) ; "It Will Grow Back" (see Brick No131); and Wanda Loskot's Best 100 Headlines Ever Written (2) Jason Fried of 37 Signals shares a hiring tip: "If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill your position, always hire the better writer. I don’t care if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, whatever." I happen to agree. Remember to sign up: back to top |
|
|
Link to us | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | ©2005 Business Bricks Ltd
Designed by Mint Digital