Category: Best Practices

A Best-ter Buy

Yesterday the Strib announced Best Buy’s new customer personas. According to the article, $50 million is dog-eared for reformatting 100 stores to improve the shopping experience of these 5 archetypes.

It seems to me that Ray, Barry, and Buzz already love shopping at Best Buy. Jill on the other hand, can’t stand the place. Perhaps the biggest win is Best Buy formally acknowledging Jill’s aversion to their stores.

The article reads as if prototype stores will be created to specifically focus on these archetypes. An interesting proposition – a $50,000 facelift per store to focus on developing a better relationship with a handful of customer archetypes. It’s that kind of commitment that will drive customer loyalty.

Customer in Training

While a number of supermarkets and discount stores offer “customer-in-training” shopping cart as their primary method of keeping children occupied while their parents shop, Wegmans – a Woodbridge, N.J. supermarket chain – goes one step further offering W Kids Childcare centers .

The videos, toys, and playground equipment found at these centers is part of a larger effort to improve the parent’s shopping experience. Other initiatives include: check-out aisles without candy and changing booths in both the men’s and women’s restrooms. Because of this, Child magazine declared Wegmans the most ‘Family-Friendly’ chain in America.

Improving the customer experience often has little to do with the primary service or product offering, but more with successfully managing our interpersonal relationships.

UPDATE: Marginal Revolution has an excellent article on the experience of shopping at Wegman’s.

Learning from Living – Part 2

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I spent the weekend doing tearing out carpetting from our house and understanding the electrical and plumbing systems. A couple of our plans needed to change once we really got into the house:

  1. Need a new subfloor in the bathroom & entryway
  2. May need to re-wall the bedroom – we find out on Tues.

As a side note, when an electrical engineer says, “That’s scary,” in response to an electrical outlet – you know something needs to be fixed.

Learning from Living

Over breakfast this Saturday, my wife and I discussed various home improvement projects for our new place. Very early into the conversation, we realized how little we knew about the house. What’s under the carpet? Can the toilet be moved easily? How long will it take to remove the wallpaper?

Answers that can only be found inside the space – and tearing up the carpet.

One of the principles of Kaizen is to be in the environment you’re attempting to improve.

Yet, many conversations I have with clients, especially early-stage meetings, take place outside of the environment in question. Many teams feel pressure to nail down times, processes, and schedules before their first step into the space.

Lunch is the Most Important Meal – Redux.

As a follow-up to my earlier post on lunches, I submit this announcement from Duluth, MN’s mayor Herb Bergson.

Bergson plans to visit one classroom each Friday and take a tourist to lunch that day. He also wants to meet with different small-business owners each Friday to see how the city can help them grow.

A very public effort to see his city through its citizen’s eyes. Kudos. If you’re planning a long weekend in Duluth, give Mr. Bergson a call.

Lunch is the Most Important Meal

In my experience observing organizational behavior, especially start-ups, what happens at lunch is a key indicator of an org’s health. If people go out, for a walk, and talk about non-work stuff – Congrats.

If they brown-bag it and eat alone at their desks – something is very, very wrong

Laurent Bossavit agrees with me (courtesy bBlog). Formally expecting regular lunches with the team is great way to say you care about your org’s health.

I remember one “lunch” I had with a creative director – when I arrived to his darkened, barren office, he was in the corner eating a Hot Pocket off a paper plate. No…he didn’t share. Unhealthy in so many ways.