As the customer-focus trend grows it is reaching some odd places–even the funeral home. New York Times describes a growing tendency among baby boomers to request customized funerals complete with refreshments, unique locations, and life videos. Actually, the life videos is a pretty good idea for posterity.
The family of one ice cream truck driver requested an ice cream truck to deliver treats at the graveside. Kinda makes me think of the old John Denver song, “Forest Lawn.”
Pilgrim Notes
Reflections along the way.
Category: Customer Experience (page 3 of 3)
Dandlife is an interesting variation on the social networking. You tell stories and build a web stories that can interconnect with other story webs. Plus, companies can purchase these stories for brand research, case studies, etc. Marshall Kirkpatrick at Tech Crunch is uncomfortable with this idea. I’m not sure what to think. But the site is interesting.
Every day another social networking development. Seems folks are scrambling to jump in this phenomenon while it’s hot. It will be interesting to see what happens in a year or two with this stuff. After the explosion of various networks I wonder if some will fade or if there will be some connections between networks or if another form of tribalism will emerge with networks becoming more and more niche specific.
Last week I ran out to find a digital audio cord to connect my Airport Express to the stereo. Since CompUSA has a Mac section, I ran by there. No success. Plenty of Mac stuff. In fact, plenty of Airport Express products: no cable. Interestingly, when I asked a salesman if they carried the product: no and no offer to try and get it. Not that I would wait but it was an interesting contrast with what was to come.
Before heading home to order online, I thought I’d stop by our mall to see if the new Apple store had opened yet. Success! They were open and packed! I walked in and in just a moment found the cable near the Airport Express units. As I walked toward the checkout, an employee stopped me and said, “Are you ready to check out?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can do it right here.”
He whipped out a little scanner, scanned the item, ran my check card across, got my email address, and told me they would email me a receipt and give me a print out in store as well if I wanted one. Maybe I’m too trusting, but I said email is good enough for me. By the time I got home, I had an email from the Apple store with a printable receipt for my order.
Kudos to the new Apple store. Anticipating a customer’s desire to avoid long lines at a register, they’ve reduced the steps to checkout buy equipping staff throughout the store with that ability.
TechCrunch reports on an interesting development out of Israel. Clicktale goes beyond statistics to provide a movie of users online sessions. It can help detect potential usability problems and other issues with a site.
Iconoculure pointed me to a new portable solar charger for cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and other gadgets. Solio claims to power virtually all hand-held electronics. If you visit the site, check out their gallery for a cool presentation of users round the globe.
An interesting announcement from Hollywood indicates the customer experience may help guide future developments. The MPAA announced today the formation of an online panel called My Movie Muse.
The online panel, dubbed My Movie Muse, asks customers of the movie industry to periodically participate in online surveys about all things related to the movies – from theater attendance to home video rental and advertisements to piracy. These individuals will act as unofficial advisors on matters of interest to the motion picture industry.
I would be interested to see if consumers have the opportunity to critique more than just the films but theatre, ticket costs, etc. If they listen to the online commuity they are creating, this might have an interesting impact on the future development fo movie going.
If you want to be considered for the movie panel, visit My Movie Muse.
Update: Some folks had trouble trying to access the panel. Look at the bottom of the page on the orange bar. It says, Not a Member? Click here to join the panel>>
The wiki engine is now serving a shopping portal. This has potential to takes sites like shopping.com and shopzilla.com to a new level. Shop Wiki searches 120,000+ stores, allows customer reviews, customer shopping tip articles, customer video reviews. And in true wiki format, the content is out there for review and update by the community (though not the videos). Pretty cool.
Springwise highlights a co-creative venture between customers and Vodafone Netherlends. Customers create content in the form of videos via their cameraphone and then submit. If their videos are downloaded off the website, they get 10% of the revenue. Now that’s real co-creation and I salute!
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