What kind of smile do your customers see?

How do you show your customers that you care? In answer to Prof. Francisco Bernardo's question, a student mentioned that you serve them with a smile. Prof. Bernardo wanted to know what kind of smile should we show to the customer. He emphasized that we should not treat this issue as trivial. For a smile to convey that we care for the customer, it has to be 'sincere' and it has to look so. You may not be aware but your smile may be perceived as mischievous or mocking. You can get your people trained to smile sincerely. Encourage them to practice this skill. Other ways to show you care is by keeping a direct eye contact and calling them by their name. Small things like this help build trust and relationship with your customers. Lesson we must not forget.

Would you ignore him too?

On your daily morning commute to your office/school/home, you hear some exceptional music being played at your Metro station subway. Would you stop to listen to him or go on and catch the daily 7:10 before it leaves? ... Would your answer change if I told you that the musician was one of the greatest violinist of our time performing on his $3.5 million dollar worth Stradivarius handcrafted in 1713? You can read the full story on the experiment conducted by Gene Weingarten of Washington Post here.The violinist was none other than Joshua Bell, also the recipient of the coveted Avery Fisher prize for this year.
Seth Godin says that he'd ignore him too. He uses the story to prove the prior knowledge of marketers about context, permission and worldview, what some of us may call 'perception'. But Seth is also bothered (and apologetic) like most people who read the story. As per Gene, this story got the largest and most global response of anything he has ever written, for any publication. You can read some of the responses here. Seth is apologetic because he feels that marketers have created a lot more noise instead of trust and it is this noise that makes us ignore truly beautiful things.

I believe it goes beyond that. I think the noise not only makes us ignore beautiful things, it is making us oblivious of truly beautiful experiences. Gene writes "...the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away". Perhaps this is not statistically significant but it does make me suspect that many of us have lost our natural ability to enjoy beautiful experiences. What can we do to regain the ability? Can the kids help us? What can we do to reduce noise and build trust?

Music, Seth Godin & Steve Jobs

EMI announced yesterday that it will start to sell DRM free music online. Seth completely rejects the idea that it is possible to lock up ideas because they are connected to physical objects. WOW! You can read Seth's thoughts on it here. Steve Jobs established precisely that in his beautifully written 'Thoughts on Music'. Steve says that there is no theory of protecting content other than to keep secrets. Steve describes it as a process of locking and hiding the key on the user's machine. He argues (correctly) that there are many smart people who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get the content (music) for free. Music companies further sell 90% of the of their music DRM-free anyway through CDs. As per the data available with Apple, 97% of the music being played of iPods is unprotected and can be played on any player capable of playing open formats. Therefore, DRM is redundant for music companies as well as Apple and other player manufacturers.

This changes the way people think about the future of distribution of licensed content online. Does it also change the way people think about the creation of content? I don't think so.

Does this also contain lessons for the firms fighting DVD wars right now? A good reason for fighting the wars in the first place was the different views regarding the appropriate protection level built in the standards. I would suggest that they listen to Seth.

YOYOW !!

The entire blogosphere is flooded with views (and counter views) about the Kathy Sierra episode. I must say that I am overwhelmed and amazed by the whole thing. However, I did get exposed to a great concept that I wish readers of this blog to learn. The simple yet profound concept is YOYOW (You Own Your Own Words). I found this on Chris Locke's (aka Rageboy) weblog. We shall all do well to embrace this concept in letter as well as spirit. Chris Locke is the co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. I have not read the book personally but would love to hear from someone who has.