Eggblogg

Whose data is it anyway?

Online data seems to be a hot topic this week in the marketing press...

Next month sees a new amendment to the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive requiring that UK businesses and organisations obtain consent from visitors to collect and use their data. This might put a lid on the heady growth of ad retargeting (the phenomenon of being shown ads based on pages you have browsed, when you then visit other sites). But in reality all online advertising relies on 'passive' data collection, mostly unbeknown to the website visitors, so it will be interesting to see whether the new legislation makes any difference. If members of the public don't know it's going on, they're not likely to spot if it stops, so who will police it?

Meanwhile, in the true spirit of social business and the rise of consumer consciousness, in this week's Marketing a report on customer data reveals that people are now being offered the chance to sell their personal data, so that it's they who make the money, rather than brands. Whatever next?! Marketers paying for the privilege to sell their wares to people? Sounds good to me - if they can't earn people's goodwill and trust by treating them properly then they can damn well pay for it!

In the same edition of Marketing, Andrew Walmsley reminds us that we shouldn't be worrying about a few targeted ads when in fact our personal data is being shared with alacrity by the likes of Google with government departments.(I would link to this article but it's behind their paywall).

The last word should go to Simon Waldman in New Media Age, with his story of how Interflora targeted him with Mother's Day messages 18 months after his own mother had died, and did not respond to his request to stop. His point is that 'this incident lives somewhere on a marketer's spreadsheet as a fraction of a percentage point on a conversion rate: an infinitesimal detail to be glossed over'. In other words, brands don't care about individual experience, they care about the data.

I've written before about the dangers of setting too much store on data and metrics. Nowadays there are plenty of tools available to brands who are prepared to monitor conversations, pay attention to individual customer requests and treat people as individuals rather than part of some aggregated number. I hope one day that will be the norm, not the exception.

 

Why we all need to sing around the piano from time to time

It was only a joky reply to a comment from @juliachanteray, but why not? What if those of us who are permanently glued to our computers/phones/iPads suddenly had to cope for a day without the internet?

There was a time when all self-respecting middle class homes had a piano, and at least one person who knew how to play it. And if not at home, at the pub, singalongs round the joanna. And what about that lovely scene in Meet Me In St Louis when the family are brought together round the piano in song.

It builds bridges! Encourages teamwork! Challenges us (especially those who claim to be 'tone deaf' - funny how that never used to stop people from singing)! Gets the endorphins pumping! Gives us a sense of achievement! Makes us laugh, and cry!

For the sake of the human race, can we all please have a sing round the piano every now and then, before we lose the ability to do anything when the power goes off and the internet goes down. I thank ya.

 

Delivery is the thorn in the side of ecommerce sites

Apparently, ecommerce sales in the UK were up 25% this Christmas (2010) compared to 2009. Bad weather was one of the factors - both the unattractiveness of venturing out onto icy streets and shops reduced opening hours due to staff absence. Buying online seems the obvious answer.

Unfortunately, courier firms were hit with the same problems, so consequently many people will have suffered from late deliveries, inaccurate parcel tracking and 'sorry we called but you were out' cards through doors.

In our household we have an ongoing issue with Virgin Wines, whose couriers regularly fail to deliver. On the Virgin site, they allow you to specify where to leave the goods if you are out when the courier calls. This information is clearly displayed on the box when it arrives.

But Virgin also state that if your wine is stolen from your doorstep they will replace it.

Despite our contacting Virgin every time this happens, the delivery folk still refuse to follow the instructions (leave round the back of house). This is one big fat fail as far as Virgin is concerned, and they have never explained why it keeps happening. However, we think we've figured it out.

The delivery driver, when asked, said they are only allowed to spend a certain amount of time at each delivery location. If they go over that, they can't make all their deliveries and they are penalised. Taking the box round the back of the house would take too long (2 minutes), so they leave a card instead.

Leaving a card counts as a 'successful delivery' for many couriers in reports to clients, as reported by Andrew Walmsley in a recent post on the subject in Marketing. And guess who pays for that box of wine if it goes missing from the doorstep? Not Virgin Wines, I would hazard!

So with these two factors top of mind I can see why there's no incentive to live up to the Virgin Wine customer promise, and this is big problem for firms running ecommerce sites.

Apologising is only good the first time. If you keep making the same mistake, if your courier company continually fails to deliver on your customer promise, then all your touchy-feely marketing and warm customer service is undone. Customer retention, in short, goes out the window.

Of course it comes down to economics - but I for one would be prepared to pay more for a delivery service that follows instructions. There is usually an option for 'next day delivery' - at a premium - so how about charging a premium for 'guaranteed delivery to your instructions'?

Why we set so much store on metrics (and why we shouldn't)

I read a nice post from Tim Kastelle today about the problem with metrics. Over-reliance on stats is something I've blogged about here before and it continues to bother me, particularly as we live in a country where we seem to have become obsessed with measurability and stats of any kind. As a result, it feels like we are losing the ability to make decisions on any criteria other than numbers, and often dodgy numbers at that.

Of course, one of the glories of internet marketing is that it's measurable. Unlike traditional offline advertising, the indisputable facts are there in all their Google Analytics glory. Click through rates, conversion rates, shopping cart drop-out rates. It worked, it didn't work. It produced X pounds-worth of business which equates to a XX% return on investment.

Things have got a little fuzzier now that the web has gone all social. For heaven's sake! Just when we'd got everyone chanting the 'online is measurable' mantra, along come the humans, messing with technology and making it all a bit, well, more human. Now we're all arguing about the value of a Facebook friend and clamouring for algorithms to measure online influence.

Why do we need to measure everything in this way? Humans are capable of great wisdom, of calling on their experience, using their judgement in astonishingly sophisticated ways, far beyond the crude crunching of numbers. If we exclude all that cannot be measured, replicated or extracted to a common denominator, aren't we in danger of making gross generalisations and even terrible mistakes?

Iain McGilchrist in his sublime The Master and His Emissary argues that how we make sense of the world around us depends on a delicate tension between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and he illustrates how in the West our culture has reflected this tension, played out on an evolutionary scale.

According to McGilchrist, our elevation of (and reliance on) physical evidence, measurable data and that which can be proved to be true is symptomatic of left-brain dominance and a worrying imbalance between the hemispheres.

Are we too reliant on stats? Have we elevated science to such a level that we no longer value the things that used to hold equally good: wisdom, experience, the subtleties of human judgement? Or worse still, have we perverted scientific method to such an extent that we prefer to invent measures and stats simply to avoid admitting 'we don't know'?

Customer service, or 'Big Brother is watching you'?

A tweet from Chris Applegate this morning brought this article to my attention: 'How BT Sarah spies on your Facebook account' - the Mail Online getting all outraged about BT doing a bit of pro-active customer service by monitoring negative comments online and jumping in to respond.

It's easy to dismiss articles in the Daily Mail as being, well, not exactly the height of reasoned, critical comment (see the rather funny Daily Mail Song...) but it raises an interesting point.

I've seen many good examples of companies using Twitter for customer service, and I've also been the 'victim' (in print media speak) of these kinds of approaches, not only when I've moaned about a firm but also when I've asked something of my twitter followers.

Personally, I don't feel my privacy has been invaded because what I say on Twitter, or on my blog, is in the public domain, and anyone who thinks that what they say on the internet is NOT observed or noted by others (for whatever reason) is naive. Attending to privacy settings, learning how to use the tools (eg the difference between @ and D on twitter), and understanding the transparency of the internet is down to the individual. It's the old responsibility issue - it's easier to rail at others than to recognise one's own failings.

If I had sent a (private) direct message, or email, and then had an unsolicited approach, that would be a different thing altogether, because it would suggest that a private conversation had been intercepted. Surely, THAT would be 'spying' - not the use of freely available and well-documented tools to look out for disgruntled customers and offering to help them?

Clearly pro-active customer service of this kind is in its early days -  people don't always expect it, so it perhaps makes us feel we're not in control of the situation. Ironic really -  we complain about how hard it is to get through to customer service call centres, and yet when they come to us, we don't like it!