A New Twist on Emergency Alerts

Yesterday my smartphone started cackling like and old witch. I had never heard anything like that before. It certainly caught my attention! I picked it up, looked at the screen, and it was the National Weather Service alerting me to the fact that there were dust storms in the area and for me to take precautions.In the other room my wife was listening to the radio. The radio cackled as well and communicated the same alert.

I initially thought that what I received from the NWS was a text message, and I wanted to figure out how I could attach sounds to my text messages the same way. Alas, that is not possible, because this special feature is part of FEMA's Wireless Emergency Alert Network. The Notifications setting on the smartphone controls when it is activated. Not sure if it is based on my actual location or where I live. I hope it is the former.

What a cool extension of an idea that's been around since I was a kid, the Emergency Broadcast System. It certainly initiated some customer performance around my house.

Royal Nuances in a Subway

A friend just sent me this. The interior of the RER train that takes one from Paris to Versailles has been transformed into a replica of the palace itself. It is a great example of how nuances (Access) like this can surprise customers and set their expectations (Vision) for what is to come. http://trendland.com/parisian-rer-train-transformed-to/#.

How to Listen to Customers

Check out my recent article in The Spark, the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization's resource for entrepreneurs - http://thesparknv.org/2013/06/19/how-to-listen-to-customers/.

Isn't Being Healthy a Good Enough Incentive?

There has been a rise in news stories about new innovations in encouraging customers to stick to taking their prescriptions as directed. The motivation? It seems that Medicare is providing financial rewards to insurers and pharmacies for improving patient compliance. The latest story (WSJ, 5/21/13, p. B7) introduces a whole host of customer performance tactics, such as:

• Big data analytics (scan patient claims and clinical data to identify people with high non-compliance risk)
• Earn points and prizes for taking medicines as directed
• Including sensors in pills themselves that report to a mobile device when a pill was ingested (with reports delivered to doctors and family members)
• Including sensors in pill bottles to assess remaining medicine
• Designing a pill bottle that develops "banana" spots to indicate expiration

Smart Cities, Data, and Coproduction Experiences

It seems that the word "smart" is appearing everywhere these days - and it is no stranger to many posts in this blog. The Economists' recent article in its The World in 2013 report (pg. 85) talk about how cities are mining urban data, and using that data to facilitate the performance of its citizens and visitors. For example, transportation information (buses, subways, and so on) is being analyzed and published to on-street digital displays and smartphones so citizens can plan trips, estimate arrival times, and so on to achieve their performance goals. The article suggests that Londoners are modifying their travel behaviors based upon the advice "big data" analytics offer them. The value of smart cities is clear: efficiency and productivity, which not only makes citizens feel good, but also enhances the economic opportunity in that city.

Big Mother!? Are You Kidding Me?

As reported in this blog, the past couple of years have seen a significant rise in devices, gadgets, and apps that fit the Vision component of the coproduction experience model, specifically around goals and feedback. Well, someone has coined a term for these solutions - Big Mother (WSJ 4/23/13, A1). If you are slouching, driving like a jerk, or haven't brushed your teeth, these solutions will remind you, nag you, nudge you, to change your behavior. Data about your various performances can be uploaded and tracked in the cloud, and if you so desired, beamed to your friends, even your mother, for that extra bit of social support that you need to achieve your goals.

The Beam Brush, for example, tracks the brushing of your teeth and publishes reports to your smartphone. The smartphone app praises you when you've met your goals (it even offers prizes), and marks your calendar with "missed brushings" when you haven't been so diligent.

Filling a Water Bottle For the First Time

Given the revolt of many people (including me) against bottled water, carrying one's own water bottle is slowing becoming a social norm. The trend has been noticed by drinking fountain manufacturers, who now offer water fountains that fill bottles, easily, without having to juggle the valve of a drinking fountain.

When I first encounter one of these bottle-filling fountains, I couldn't figure out how it worked. That's because I have years and years of conditioning that drinking fountains have buttons, and when you push a button, water is dispensed. So my bottle just sat on the platform while I searched for a button. Finally, someone took pity on me and showed me how it worked. You raise the bottle toward the fountain, and an electric eye detects the presence of the bottle and the water flows. Take the bottle away, and the water stops.

Why this design? Why not button? The story is that to avoid germ fears, designers needed to make the fountain touchless. But like me, other users were baffled about how to fill their bottles. So the designers added graphics to illustrate what to do. I think there were graphics on the one I first used, but I was so into button-pushing mode that my mind completely ignored them.

But what is really cool (once you learn how to use these things) is that some models have a digital readout showing how many bottles have been filled (nice feedback for social norming. See WSJ, March 25, B1 for more. 

Get Feedback on Your New Years Resolutions

The strongest method for influencing customer performance is Vision, which focuses on designing experiences that have clear goals and rich feedback. At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, a number of devices that offer Vision to consumers for health and fitness activities where introduced. These devices included wristbands and armbands that measure various biometrics, and an electronic fork that measures how quickly a person eats. If one is eating too fast, then the fork vibrates to indicate to the eater to slow down. And, of course, all these devices enable consumers to upload the data that these devices collect to a computer, smartphone, or cloud-based service so that you can track and display the data, set goals, and otherwise geek out with our own personal big data set about you. About 30 million of these devices have been sold in 2012, with an expectation that the number will rise to 160 million by 2017. See also the WSJ article Marching to a Vibrant Drummer (1/15/13) for an article about related feedback devices.

Monitoring a Driver's Performance

Automobile manufacturers are integrating a variety of sensing devices into vehicles that monitor a driver's performance, with the intention of increasing driver safety. These includes sensors that measure brain waves, sweat, heart rate, sleepiness, heart rate, glucose levels, breathing, alcohol level, and so on on. Based on what these sensors detect, a vehicle could respond to enhance safety, such as turning off a radio, blocking a cell phone call, or some other actions.

Movie Theater Experience - Norming Deviant Customers

My wife and I went to the movies last night, something we rarely do. After all, with a big-screen TV and Netflix, one's home is a movie theater.

Before the movie started, the screen displayed an ad for a new service called CineMode. CineMode is an app for your smart phone that, when activated, puts your phone in a sleep mode. But here's the customer performance kicker. If your smartphone remains in CineMode for the entire length of the film, then you'll earn a reward. - a digital coupon for treats, movie discounts, and so on.

The whole aim of CineMode is to influence customer performance, specifically that of deviants who text and do other things with their phones that impact the quality of the customer experience for other movie goers. Obviously, setting customer expectations didn't work. So some stronger medicine was needed. However, after displaying the CineMode ad, the theater then displayed a stronger message: if you use your phone in the theater during the movie you will be asked to leave. Which incentive do you think will be more effective? The CineMode reward or the threat of removal from the theater?

In my customer experience class, my students conducted fieldwork several years ago that explored this kind of deviant behavior. They set up situations in which a confederate's cell phone rang in three situations: a public area, a quiet room in the library, and at a diner that has large signs prohibiting cell phone use. The "customer norming" in the first situation was none; in the second, it was non-verbal expressions and glances shunning the behavior; and in the third it was both verbal and non-verbal actions by both other customers and staff to shun the behavior.

But the classic theater behavior modification is John Water's short that informs people about smoking policies in theaters. You can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnpofBtijF8.

Sweet Sounds

Buried deep in our coproduction experience model, at the top of the Access pyramid, is an element called Nuance. Nuance is the model's link to the emotional side of customer experiences, specifically in the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. I was excited when I came across the WSJ article on Sweet Sounds that Sell (10/24/12, D1), which examined the various ways sounds are integrated into coproduction experiences. The scritch of a Sharpie pen as it writes. The click of a cosmetic container. The music a dishwasher plays when finished.

From an emotional standpoint, sounds enhance the esthetics of a coproduction experience. But there is also a rational angle to sounds. Sounds provide feedback that help customers recognize when they are performing well (for example, the click a container makes when it is closed, to signify that it is closed properly and won't spill the contents, or the pop of a container to signify that it is open (and that it is sealed and fresh, as well - Snapple uses this technique).

Don't Get Run Over!

One of my students posted this image to our online discussion about the Vision and Access components of the Coproduction Experience Model. It was taken on a street in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It appears that if you want to more safely cross the street, you grab a flag, start walking and waving it like crazy, and then place it in the flag hanger on the other side of the street. Not sure of its effectiveness, but it sure has a lot of customer performance elements.

Okay, can't resist. I can easily see pranksters turning this flag thing into something like Monty Python's "The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights."

You know you have a customer performance issue when...

Your customers have to post a video online that explains how to complete a task with your product. One of my students turned me on to this. http://screencast.com/t/g4jyZMOPTZwg. Enjoy!

Goals and Feedback

I came across this TED talk as I was doing some research for my class to help students better understand the Vision and Access aspects of our Coproduction Experience Model. In the talk, Thomas Goetz talk about the re-conceptualization of medical information provided to patients. The core of his talk is the feedback loop, and around the fringes he alludes to the concept of goals, especially with the speed sign + radar feedback example. But more of what I find interesting about his talk is the connection between the feedback part of our Vision model and the information/nuance part of our Access model. You'll see this in the redesign of medical lab reports. http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_goetz_it_s_time_to_redesign_medical_data.html

Coproduction for Green Consumers

Paul Stern in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 17, 2012 R8) offers six principles for getting people to take steps to save energy. He suggests that changing behavior does not depend on the size of the financial incentive, but other factors as well, which I connect to our Coproduction Experience Model:

1. Get people to think big (in terms of the one or two big changes that have the greatest impact) - Vision
2. Make the savings obvious - Incentive
3. Market effectively - Vision, Access
4. Provide convenient, credible answers - Expertise
5. Keep it simple - Access
6. Provide quality assurance/guarantee - Access, Incentive

Mr. Stern goes on to give an example illustrating these factors, Cash for Clunkers, as well as a variety of private company business models that apply the factors. But he also reminds readers that saving energy isn't a key objective of most households and businesses.

No Phone Zone at Masters

Similar to the cruise ship Paradise which I wrote about in our book Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers, where smoking was banned on the ship with severe penalties if you did smoke, the 2012 Masters golf tournament has a similar policy. Cell phones are banned from the Masters, and if you are caught with one then you are asked to leave and banned from the Masters as well (see WSJ 4/6/12). Here we have the use of an incentive (specifically, punishment) to influence customer performance. What's also interesting about this policy is that it has forced spectators to revert back to other methods to keep in touch with their friends and family at the Masters, such as having a plan (Vision:Plan).

Influencing Performance Through Fear Images Too Scary for U.S.

The FDA's plan for including graphic images on cigarette packages was blocked by a judge. These graphics depict grisly photos of the effects of smoking, using fear to influence customer performance (to stop smoking). WSJ 3/1/12 A6.

Goals, Habits, and Behaviors

An interesting piece on NPR morning edition today (1/2/12) on goals, environment, and behavior change. Key researchers interviewed are Jerome Jaffe, Lee Robins, Wendy Wood, and David T. Neal. Basically, while goals are a key driver of behaviors and behavior change, the performance environment plays a strong role in how behaviors are changed. If the environment in which the behavior or habit was learned/reinforced doesn't change, then it is likely the performance won't change either. Environment change can be as small has changing the hand you use to accomplish a task or as big as moving to a different country.

PartnerCare

PartnerCare is a project I've been involved with over the past couple of years off and on, and I think it is one of the coolest customer co-creation of value examples out in the market, if not the most radical. Basically, PartnerCare is a service provided by STD clinics that is legal in 31 states (as of 12/2011) where a health care provider can treat a patient for a bacterial STD, and then give the patient medicine that the patient can take to their partner(s).

Obviously, this service has a number of customer performance elements to it, as it essentially puts patients in the role of being a dispensing pharmacist (and that's a whole new twist on self-service). My colleagues and I shot an interesting video documentary at Denver Public Health's STD clinic. You can check it out at http://partnercare.org/clinic-case-studies to see how it all works. We even shot videos illustrating "what it might be like" for patients to provide these kinds of medicines to their partners.

Anti Smart Meters

Rebecca Smith's WSJ article (4/27/08, R5,7) provides an alternative view on Smart Meters and feedback devices and whether or not they will really save customers money. The primary challenge is that smart meter systems cost to much money (for customers), and that the cost of programs will wipe out the benefits.