The global Toyota car recall has been extensively covered in the mainstream media. Product recalls are not a new phenomenon in the car industry; even the highest quality marques have them. So why has so much media commentary, particularly in the US, been full of delighted glee at Toyota’s misfortune? Simple - they’ve had 30 years of hearing and telling each other that US car makers (and by implication the US itself) are rubbish, having been resoundingly trounced by Toyota in market share, production methods, quality and general admiration. As Dave Segal wrote in the New York Times last week, “Life … is just high school writ large.” Finally the smart Japanese kid who has beaten you year after year has failed a test. Schadenfreude.
However, if past experience is anything to go by, Toyota can turn disaster into success. In the 1980s, Toyota suffered a massive and widespread quality failure in New Zealand. In a country where cars don’t rust much (for reasons I don’t fully understand), it seemed that the entire Toyota fleet was rotting away, and people referred to their most popular models - Corolla and Corona - as Toyota Corrodas. Branding hell. After a slow start, cash-rich Toyota did something very few other companies could have. It offered a free panel repair/replacement to every Toyota owner with a car less than 5 years old (and didn’t quibble if it was several years older). At the same time, Toyota developed and introduced a virtually rust-proof multi-layer galvanizing process to its body manufacturing, and announced a comprehensive long-term warranty on not just the body, but the entire vehicle. A carefully-conceived, long-term advertising campaign shifted the Toyota brand positioning away from technical promotion to emotional connection. The end-result - Toyota became more local than the locals and one of the most trusted brands in the country.
US automakers should watch out. Toyota may be a bit slow to respond at first, but it has huge resources, and when it sorts itself out, then beware. Toyota will be back, and better than ever.
Do you ever shout at the TV, radio or newspaper when a reporter or vested interest representative quotes some superficial statistics and draws completely wrong conclusions. With increasing age, I seem to be doing this more often! This problem isn’t confined to the media. Misinterpreting simplistic numbers because of poor qualitative knowledge is a common business mistake.
I’ve often warned people about this risk, but I often wished I had a simple example to illustrate the problem. Thanks to Tim Harford I’ve now got one. Britain’s Daily Mail shouted this headline:
Cracked it! Woman finds six double yolk eggs in one box beating trillion-to-one odds
The Daily Mail reported a woman’s astonishment at cracking six eggs to find them all double-yolked. If the odds of a hen laying an egg with a double yolk is 1 in 1000, the Mail argues, superficially correct, then the chance of two consecutive eggs being double-yolked is 1 in a thousand thousand, and so on, meaning the odds of all six eggs in the carton being double-yoked is 1 in 1 trillion in traditional British nomenclature (quintillion if you use the more prevalent American scale). The report sparked a flurry of paid media and social media comment on the phenomenon. Some people argued that the statistics must be wrong, because they’d also, and more than once, bought cartons full of double-yolk eggs. This kicked off speculation on a variety of causes, eg. flock genetics - extremely unlikely given the way the egg industry operates (high volume hatcheries are separate from production farms).
The answer is more prosaic. Egg industry workers can spot double-yolk eggs by handling, and put them aside for themselves. If, due to normal statistical variation, they collect too many, the excess eggs tend to be put back into the packing process together.
Good designers don’t just rely on statistics. They observe what really goes on. Toyota uses a technique called “standing in the circle” - literally drawing a circle on the ground and standing in it for hours, silently observing what goes on during a production process and then asking the workers why they did what they did. (That requires mutual trust and shared desire for knowledge and improvement). Before and after designing a new visitor experience, Click Suite’s interactive media designers watch what people do without comment, and then seek explanations.
Too many people use superficial statistics without knowledge of the underlying situation. They make business decisions based on false premises. As Alexander Pope once wrote in “An Essay on Criticism” (1709):
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”
But remember, in business as in life, you can’t make an omelette without cracking some eggs!
I was an early investor in Surveylab, which makes the ikeGPS range of professional hand-held data-capture devices. Their point of difference is that they capture the image and location of an object from a distance, unlike most GPS devices which only tell you where you are. Applications are manifold, in network industries like electricity and telecommunications, in environmental agencies like the US Parks Services, and in military applications such as UN post-war reconstruction. Sales are primarily B2B, either direct or via their major distribution partner in the US. Founder Leon Toorenburg is looking for someone to take on the global marketing role, with a particular emphasis on internet-enabled sales. The business is VC-funded, with another funding round being completed as I write. So if you or someone you know is interested in the job, take at look at the ad on Seek or TradeMe.
Mainstream telecommunications companies needs brands that relate to people as individuals; literally, everyone is a potential customer in their own right, even when they’re acting on behalf of their employer. New Zealand’s largest telco recently changed its very corporate look to this sketched asterisk logo and colour palette. I like it; it’s simple, light and human. Corporate rebadging always attracts critics complaining of waste, insincerity, “a child could have done better”, and so on. Rebadging is also a heaven-sent opportunity for those who hate a particular organisation (or large corporations in general) to replay all their historical grievances. Sometimes they’re justified, sometimes they’re not. However, I’m not commenting today on Telecom in general. I just think their rebadging is a good decision, and I look forward to seeing if and how they apply this lighter personality throughout their business.
Postscript: My graphic seems to have caught people’s attention. In technology businesses, I often joke that the best way to get the sales team’s focus onto a product is to not release it for ages, and then immediately withdraw it!
This weekend, I finally got round to reading Michael Hill’s book “Toughen Up.” For those who don’t know him (US and UK, I’d guess), Michael Hill is the founder of Michael Hill International, the publicly-listed mid-market jewellery retailer which grew from a single store in small-town Whangarei to a multinational chain spanning New Zealand, Australia, Canada and (recently) the USA. Hill’s story is an inspiration to those who think they’ve left it too late to strike out on their own. Hill didn’t do well at school, and he wasn’t talented enough to pursue a career in music or architecture, his early passions. When he was 17, his parents arranged a job in his uncle’s jewellery store where, learning from his salesman father who also worked there, Hill discovered he was good at selling jewellery. For 23 years, he drifted along, eventually running the store despite his uncle’s disdain and repeated refusals to let Hill buy into the business. Everything changed when Hill’s house burned down. Watching the flames, he had an epiphany, resolving to buy his uncle’s business. When Uncle Arthur again refused Hill’s very generous price, Hill announced he would set up in competition; he was ordered to clear out there and then. The rest, as they say, is history.
Michael Hill’s book (co-written with Claire Harvey and already in its third print) is a deceptively simple read. With a light, self-deprecating and chatty manner, he expounds his business insights through his personal and company history. I found myself nodding vigorously at several points, particularly learning not to fight on too many fronts at the same time, keeping things simple, keeping focused on big goals, and being prepared to make mistakes. Several chapters feel like something I might have written myself when explaining business ideas to staff.
Hill’s narrative is interspersed with adoring short notes from some of his staff; some readers may find that it feels too much like a company indoctrination manual. Even so, persevere. There are some golden nuggets of business wisdom in there. And the title? It goes back to Hill’s house fire epiphany at age 40. Times may be tough now, but there is no better time to start something new.
Seth Godin has a knack for capturing a complex idea in a few words. With his permission, here’s what he has to say on those banes of progress, the trolls:
Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s):
1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.
“Can’t please everyone,” isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.
That last point is critical. I’ve said many times that good strategy requires making choices and meaning it. That includes deciding who you want to please and who not. As my Vista pal Mark Di Somma says, “make enemies.” Sure, you want to listen to others - that’s one way to improve - but it’s very easy to get distracted by naysayers, white ants, and stick-in-the-muds who offer little constructive criticism. If you believe in yourself and what you’re doing, stop being so polite, stop listening to the trolls, stop giving them credence. Do it your way.
How do you solicit customer feedback, how do you track it and manage it, and how do you respond to complaints? Probably, like most companies, it’s a Cinderella business process, conducted out of the spotlight. Some online trading sites (eg. Trade Me) have public buyer and seller ratings. But what if you’re a “real” business, dealing with hundreds or thousands of customers? I’m quite taken with how London shirt maker Charles Tyrwhitt does it. I normally buy shirts in-store when I’m in London, but I’ve started using their online shopping site. Once my order was shipped, I received an email linking me to a online customer feedback service run independently of CT by Feefo. I could rate each product and service, as well as post a comment. I could browse all the other (anonymous) customer feedback (overwhelmingly positive by the way), and see CT’s responses to complaints, which within 24 hours typically apologised for any dissatisfaction, explained what had happened, offered no question refunds if required, promised an immediate followup by email/phone to understand more, and so on.
Showing complaints and replies in public, balanced with all the positive feedback, credibly portrays Charles Tyrwhitt as a concerned and responsive company wanting to look after its customers, and making no bones about it. You can also see the other companies using Feefo, and I expect this has a community endorsement effect. I’ve certainly started looking at what those other Feefo clients have to offer.
Is nothing sacred? Shocking news from the UK that Heineken is shifting production of Newcastle Brown Ale to Tadcaster in Yorkshire. How can Newcastle (pronounced NewCAHsel, not NEWcarsel) Brown Ale not come from Newcastle? (Actually, Gateshead on the opposite bank of the River Tyne). Before the Real Ale movement took off, Newky Brown was the aspirational beer for students, and unusual in those days for being in clear glass bottles. I remember the university rugby club being asked to provide bouncers for the university all-nighter concert at The Hammersmith Palais; our reward was free access to 12 hours of non-stop top rock bands and several crates of Newcastle Brown.
On a more serious note, though, when a brand is so intimately associated with a city, especially a city with such strong personality (accent, soccer team, and setting for many popular TV programs), it does seem like a major risk to move all production away from its original home. Heineken justifies the move on the grounds that Tadcaster already produces NBA for export, and with falling national beer sales, rationalisation is necessary. Understandable, and maybe a brand like NBA can survive such a move, but surely a token mini-brewery could have made a buck while keeping the brand roots valid. I’ll not be surprised if something along those lines happens. Other regional beer brands like Monteith (from New Zealand’s rugged West Coast region) have had to resurrect their traditional homes because their drinkers’ identification of the brand with the place invoked passionate protest.
Further to yesterday’s post on the difference between me-too brands and real alternatives, Michael Gregg reminded me of one campaign where being an alternative is an overt strategy. Rabobank arrived in NZ some years ago focused on rural banking, as a way into the wider NZ banking market. Most banks would simply do full-range banking offers and me-too campaigns. Rabobank entered the retail market with a cunning twist: Rabobank doesn’t want your daily banking; it wants your online savings account. The brand personality is “your significant other bank”, with witty ads suggesting an extramarital affair. The strategy worked brilliantly, enabling Rabobank to quickly capture a significant share of cash savings without the high cost of a branch network.
Every brand should be actively looking to put distance between itself and its competitors. And since true difference of offer is now one of the hardest things to achieve and maintain, the most effective and cost efficient way to do that is through difference of opinion… Difference of opinion is the fastest way to move from being an option to being an alternative.
You don’t want to be an option. Because options are like-minded decisions. An option is “I could do this, or this, or this, or this”… Alternatives are different headspace decisions. Alternative is “because I don’t want/like/agree with A (or what I’ve been led to believe A stands for), I’m choosing B”.
Time and time again, businesses try to appease everyone (especially their own people) by fudging what their brand stands for. They try to offer something for everyone, their sales channels try to sell to everyone, and they wonder why they struggle to survive and make a profit. They’ve fallen into the trap of being an option rather than an alternative. Good brands make it clear what they offer, to whom, and why. Great brands also make it clear what they don’t offer, who they don’t want as customers, and why not.
Contrary to popular belief, a wind farm is (barring its manufacture and installation) at best carbon-neutral. So how come my local taxi firm can buy carbon credits from a wind farm to offset the taxis’ use of fossil fuels, and claim to be carbon-neutral? It’s a nonsense.
And don’t give me that claptrap about avoiding carbon-emitting electricity generation. I haven’t seen any power stations closing recently. Even if it were so, the logic is still specious.
If you want to minimise or penalise carbon emissions, tax the emitters or their fuel suppliers. That includes the suppliers of coal, gas and automotive fuels.
Anything else is, to use the French phrase, une usine à gaz or “gas factory”, an unnecessarily complex and bureaucratic mechanism of dubious benefit for the purpose intended. The term seems seems highly appropriate.
Freshjive is a popular US streetwear brand. However, I hear (via The Huffington Post) that owner Rick Klotz has announced he’s going naked from here on, removing the Freshjive name not only from the outside of his products but also from the labels. I foresee this going one of two ways; either the plain black label will itself become the brand symbol, or else the brandless brand will sink into oblivion as it looses visibility, and the Freshjive name will reappear on the product. Gut feel? While the “no label” label looks good and may work for a while, ultimately the latter scenario will prevail as house labels and others knock off the concept.
Unless this idea is just a stunt, it’s a very risky “bet the business” move. Of course, my Vista Group colleagues, with far more expertise than me on branding and fashion, may have a different opinion when I see them next week.
“… the problem is more often the sellers inability to convey the value they offer to the buyer. They don’t really understand the customer’s problem and why their product is a unique solution to it. People don’t want to buy an inferior solution, they just don’t want to pay extra for a solution that doesn’t look much different from the cheaper version”.
Let’s put that another way:
Do you understand the customer’s need? (That needn’t necessarily be what the customer originally said it was).
Does the customer agree with your perception of that need?
Does your proposition offer superior value for the customer’s need?
Can you clearly explain your superior value proposition?
Does your customer accept that proposition?
If the answer to that last question is no, it can mean one or more things:
You need to improve your prospecting, qualification and selling process.
The customer needs to improve their need definition/buying process.
Your market offer needs to be improved in some way so that it does represent superior value.
Your basis of superiority is irrelevant to this customer.
You’re in the wrong business.
Only one of these is a fault on the customer’s part. The rest are down to you. And remember, unless you are aiming to be a monopoly, you shouldn’t expect to win every opportunity. But you can choose customers in the same way that customers chose suppliers. Focus on customers for whom your market offer superiority is relevant, and avoid customers for whom it isn’t. It will save both sides a lot of wasted time, effort and angst.
The Age reports that ANZ Bank is in advanced stages of planning a major brand update later this year and that ANZ’s Indonesian subsidiary Panin Bank was the pilot operation for the new look.
According to a briefing paper doing the rounds within ANZ last year, the bank’s brand did not resonate with women. Even the corporate colour of blue was considered “too male” by some respondents to a survey, thus the logic behind the bank’s high-profile sponsorship forays into netball and the Australian Open tennis, and a flower for a logo.
The Age also reports that, surprise surprise, executives are split over the change. I’ve never seen a branding change with unanimous support. Everyone’s an expert; arguments always rage over the new look, colours, logo, fonts and the need for a change at all.
… the M&C Saatchi-designed logo is meant to be a “three-petalled lotus” that represents the “trinity” of Australia, New Zealand and Asia, which are ANZ’s core markets.
Update: In the comments, Rob points us to this article and preview - better than I earlier thought it might look.
I assume the new badge will be something like this (replace Panin with ANZ). Hmmm.
Regular readers will know that I’m an admirer of Toyota, in particular its lean thinking and unity of purpose. This is not unconditional admiration. Toyota can be bureaucratic; its brand marketing is usually uninspired me-too (the NZ emotive campaigns in the ’80s and ’90s being rare exceptions); and its designs are worthy rather than exciting. However, I’m quibbling; that worthiness has helped Toyota climb from humble beginnings to overhaul the once-mighty General Motors as the world’s No. 1 auto-maker.
Toyota is renowned for incredibly flexible and efficient manufacturing, with a ruthless attention to eliminating waste in all its forms (rework, shoddy materials, unnecessary movement, set-up time, inventory, and so on). But, according to a Bloomberg-sourced article appearing in major newspapers, as Toyota started to close on GM over the last decade, Toyota has been more driven by numbers. It started to build inflexible single-purpose manufacturing plants, not training its people properly, and operating these new plants in a very un-Toyota way. Toyota recently reported its first operating losses since 1950, and has suspended production in many plants. Blame can be partly ascribed to the global recession, but that just exaggerated these other problems.
I usually take such journalistic analyses of companies with a large pinch of salt, but this story passes my “gut feel” credibility test. It isn’t a story of a company being stuck in a mindset that no longer works. That’s the GM problem. No, this is a story, if true, of being blinded by success, of losing sight of what made Toyota great.
However, Toyota’s leadership is onto the problem. After the numbers went wrong, Toyota’s honorary chairman and founding family figurehead, Shoichiro Toyoda gave a stinging rebuke to the company’s top 400 executives. The company has a big job on its hands, although not as big as that facing Bill Ford 10 years ago when he took over the helm at the business founded by his great-grandfather. Unlike Chrysler and GM, Ford’s award-winning product range, operational methods and funding management have enabled it to avoid bankruptcy. That precedent did not go unheeded by Toyota’s board. New CEO Akio Toyoda, a car nut like Bill Ford, is the grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation. He is steeped in the Toyota credo. Expect a back-to-basics Toyota in future, although maybe with a little more excitement added to the mix.
Many years ago, I met the CEO of a mid-size meat company to discuss how he could improve his business - it had always struggled to make much money. Having had the guided tour and talked to the CEO, I had seen a very smart operation. The farmers who supplied the animals were specially selected, as were their breeds, to provide very high quality animals. The killing process was designed to avoid any animal distress (stress toughens the meat). The cutting and packing processes produced excellently presented chef-ready portions. Higher input costs were heightened by small volume; however, their gourmet products should attract premium prices from restaurants, hotels and independent supermarkets in wealthier suburbs. But for some reason, their sales and delivery drivers struggled to sell their product for any premium above the bigger players, who competed primarily on price. They had a good story, so why couldn’t they achieve that higher price?
By pure luck, the small management team - all men - were having dinner together that night, with their wives. I was staying in the small country town overnight, and I was invited to join them. As we got to the pudding course, one of the executives asked me what thoughts I’d had after my short initial visit. This got the attention of everyone round the table. I did the classic consultant trick, and asked them what they thought the problem was.
There was much grumbling about competitors who’d sell at “unfair” prices, “unreasonable” customers not appreciating the value of the product, and “poor” sales skills among the driver reps. After a few minutes of this, one of the women, who’d not said much so far, said very tentatively “The delivery trucks are dirty”. This got blank looks, and the sales director asked incredulously “What’s that got to do with it?” She explained. “The trucks are always filthy outside. You never wash them. You look cheap. Why would anyone pay you any more?” This got some nods. Then another of the women asked “How many of the reps know how to cook?” After some jokes about men and barbecues, she asked rhetorically ” How can you sell a gourmet meat if you don’t know what to do with it?”
You can see where this is going. One the ball was rolling, everyone started suggesting ideas to not only fix the problem but also increase real value to customers. Within a year, the business was transformed. A successful restaurateur joined the board of directors. A consultant chef developed a driver rep training programme, which became compulsory for everyone who worked in the business (their spouses could attend as well). He also developed new cuts and recipes. Customer training days were very popular and earned extra income. Achieved prices went up, as did market share. And the driver reps’ last job every day was to wash their trucks.
They had simplistically accepted their customers’ comments about being “too expensive” without probing deeper. The business was obsessed with product and production, but hadn’t thought to ensure that their sales process was consistent with and enhanced their market offer.
Karl du Fresne writes “I have in front of me a large newspaper advertisement for a firm called Hudson“. Du Fresne then proceeds to take apart the language Hudson (a recruitment agency) uses to describe itself and the advertised role - its own public sector service director. It’s not an attack on Hudson per se, but rather on the prevailing fashion for over-blown, pompous and jargon-ridden language.
The ad said: “Hudson Wellington has reviewed how we can best partner with our public sector clients and assist them to achieve key outcomes. We have done this by integrating our three proven service lines to provide full employment life cycle solutions …”
“Key outcomes” is a glib, empty phrase that’s routine in ads for public sector policy analysts, but can anyone outside the jargon-laden HR business hazard a guess as to what “full employment life cycle solutions” are? Or are these terms merely intended to create an impression of a company that has taken the banal process of executive recruitment to some esoteric, previously unimagined new level?
I also dislike the hyperbolic use of “partner” (verb or noun), implying some kind of special, stronger-than-normal arrangement between buyer and seller. Many customer/supplier relationships are indeed very strong, long-lasting and mutually-beneficial, but whenever I see the term used explicitly, my cynical reaction is that the vendor hopes to imply some exclusive service (rarely true) or insider advantage (rarely given or received), and the customer wants to squeeze some extra concessions out of over-keen vendors.
Anyway, back to Du Fresne, who picks up on “solutions” (for products and services) and other in-phrases:
It wasn’t until the last paragraph that I came across the word I’d been waiting for… Ah! There it was: “strategic”. I knew no self-respecting HR firm could get through an ad without mentioning the word at least once. I see it in executive recruitment ads almost every day and have only the vaguest idea of what it’s supposed to mean. But it sounds impressive.
… Does any of this matter? No, not in the way famine in Africa matters, or peace in the Middle East, or global recession, or violent crime. But in a small way it matters.
It matters if you value and respect the English language and don’t like to see it misused and degraded. It matters if you value honest, straightforward words over flim-flam. And it matters if you’re concerned that in both the public sector and in business, too much energy is expended creating smoke and mirrors; constructing flashy facades behind which business is conducted a lot more expensively but no more efficiently than it used to be before people thought of words like “strategic” and “solutions”.
Du Fresne’s invective is a welcome reminder to use clear, plain language. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
So your marketing people have told you that you should be blogging or twittering. But you’ve heard that most blogs have an audience of one, and most twitterers have only ever posted one tweet. Why bother?
Blogs per se aren’t a cure-all, but they are very cheap and immediate communications channels to reach large and small audiences. Technorati - a blog tracking and ranking service - reports that out of 133 million blogs it tracks, only 7.4 million have posted anything in the previous 4 months (<6%), and only 1.5 million in the previous week (~1%). Hardly a huge activity rate, one might suppose. But that probably represents a shift in who’s writing blogs and why. When blogs first started, they were typically personal online diaries, often with a technical or hobbyist bent. The top public blogs today look more like news feeds, or rather commentary on the news, usually with a particular focus such as politics, economics, technology, sport, hobbies or entertainment. 1.5 million very active blogs is still a very big number. And businesses are increasingly using blogs to inform and connect with target audiences, such as customers or staff (perhaps behind a security screen, and so hidden from Technorati).
Micro-blogging service Twitter is still evolving (not least, it has yet to find a way to pay for itself), but it clearly has several business applications, especially “creating a buzz” around an event, product launch or special promotion. No doubt other business system applications for Twitter will emerge, but I’d hesitate to build Twitter into mainstream business processes until I was certain the Twitter business model is sustainable.
10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content.
More than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.
Most people only ever “tweet” once during their lifetime.
However, you need to bear in mind that to receive Twitter feeds, you sign up to Twitter, whereas most blogs are followed directly using your browser or a generic feed service. That 10% active user rate is actually quite high, compared to blogs where the readership may be several thousands or tens of thousands every month (or even millions for the big-hitters).
So is blogging or twittering appropriate for your business? They are only means to an end. Like any communications, you have to define your audience, what objectives you’re trying to achieve, and for what duration, which may be long or short (for a specific project or event). Blogs and Twitter are just some of the tools you might use. On the question of duration, be aware that to be effective over an extended period requires organisational stamina. Like all those personal blogs, many corporate blogs have withered away after an initial flush of enthusiasm, because the business really had very little new to say over time. Even so, it’s worth experimenting to explore what they can do for you.
Making it easy for potential customers or business partners to contact you is usually a good idea, and in these days of call centres, email, and website contact pages, it is simple to do. But it’s a complete waste of time if no-one answers the message.
In the past few weeks, I’ve experienced appalling bad response from:
A French automotive technology company in which I was (note past tense) seriously interested, who did not reply to repeated multiple messages via their “potential partner” contact form, their “potential investor” contact form and even their “potential customer” contact form; they also don’t have a phone number on their website - it’s “unlisted” with the directory company as well; talk about being hard to reach!
A New Zealand beverage maker from whom I was attempting to buy their premium (subscriber-only) product, despite two requests via their contact form; having received no response, I phoned, only to hear the person who answered tell me to leave a message on the website.
A US computer maker who only connects to the outside world via global e-commerce pages, online contact forms, and off-shored call-centres, but failed to pass on any messages to its local subsidiary via any of these channels.
A UK exporter who lists an email contact for potential importers, but who failed to respond to multiple emails; I eventually got a response by repeatedly pestering one of their office staff to nag the export manager into replying.
For goodness, sake, why bother having modern contact channels if you can’t be bothered to use them properly? Such poor contact processes not only irritate me, they lose you my business, because now you are clearly both rude and incompetent.
It’s not hard to get these things right. Or is it? When did you (personally) last test your contact processes?
Regular readers will know that I’m an admirer of Toyota, in particular its lean thinking and unity of purpose. This is not unconditional admiration. Toyota can be bureaucratic; its brand marketing is usually uninspired me-too (the NZ emotive campaigns in the ’80s and ’90s being rare exceptions); and its designs are worthy rather than exciting. However, I’m quibbling; that worthiness has helped Toyota climb from humble beginnings to overhaul the once-mighty General Motors as the world’s No. 1 auto-maker.