Author: Maria Tamming

I am sure that we have all been sometimes in situations when nature calls on a bad time. It’s a bit embarrassing but I think it shouldn’t be. It is normal and concerns us all. So why does it feel sometimes like no-one else cares about having comfortable public toilets available everywhere where people are?

Not too long ago I had a bit of an extreme toilet experience that made me think more about service design. Don’t worry, I won’t get into the TMI kind of details. All you need to know is that it was the morning rush hour and my body suddenly informed me that I will need to arrange an extra stop on my way.

I arrived at the newest transportation hub of Stockholm. I cannot even imagine how many thousands of people pass it daily. Thankfully they have a couple of paid toilets though it might be in their interest to offer a free service.

You would think that nowadays it should be so easy to just blip your bank card at a reader and continue with your business but in that place it was still a bit old school and I had to interact with a person to pay for toilet. Once payment was approved I was informed about which toilet I can use.

I must give them credit for the traffic light system of lamps above toilet doors which removes the discomfort of having to go super close to see whether a door is locked or even trying the handle. I guess we all have sometimes in a rush forgotten to lock the door or just gotten spooked by someone pressing down the handle. Anyway, all was smooth until this point still.

What surprised me first were the prison style metal toilets. I get that they have to endure a lot there but asking people to pay should reduce some of the risks of people trashing the place.

It looked like all the required elements were there – or at least had been once upon a time – the toilet, a place to wash hands and a dryer. Even hooks for hanging your things though those were long gone and now I was forced to leave my jacket on and put my purse to the floor of a very public toilet. Not ideal.

The saddest and funniest part however was the hand dryer that worked with some sort of sensors which reacted from quite far. While I was trying to use the toilet, the dryer kept loudly blowing hot air on me and overheating me because I also had to have my jacket on. It was just such a funny image of myself in that badly planned toilet.

I guess no-one really tested all the elements of that toilet together because the final result was ridiculous and I cannot believe I had to pay for that experience. Maybe an extra 10cm between the toilet and dryer would have solved it? I am thankful however that there was privacy and paper. Stockholm public transportation system doesn’t need more people peeing on their stairs and in their elevators. Not that I would have done that but I was running out of time too.

All this made me think further about feedback mechanisms for services. I didn’t really want to go talk to the poor guy working at the info station about my experience. I am sure that he was in no way in charge of more than just collecting money and unlocking the doors.

I thought however that it would be so easy to add into each toilet a big sign asking to report problems. The sign could be equipped with QR codes and spelled out links and I would use unique links for each toilet to reduce the mental load of customer who would need to figure out if they were now in toilet 1, 2 or 7. They could just quickly scan the code with their phone and leave their feedback on their way to next train even.

The feedback signs would lead to short questionnaires with pre-filled common options like “out of toilet paper”, “out of soap”, “please clean” and “something is broken” but also enable people to use free text to leave more specific feedback. No-one really wants to go ask for more toilet paper from another person but the next user would be grateful for someone taking a minute to leave this info anonymously and it would speed up problem solving as well as potentially help catch vandals.

What do you think? Have you been there or do you have worse experiences? Maybe one day I will tell you about some of my Indian toilet experiences too. Strange to think but designers should really be involved in toilet planning as well.

When I was younger, I was really interested in working with internal communication. It was fun but over the years I moved more and more towards external and digital communication. Lately I have been drawn back to a similar field – employer branding.

I have worked with branding of course for years, having been a marketer in global companies with well established branding guidelines but also as a small business owner, I got to create the branding from scratch. Mostly however my job has been more about protecting the brand, educating others about its importance and the design system used and finding ways to apply it in new situations/conditions.

Branding however is not only about the visuals. It is also about what you say and do. It’s about the impression it leaves in the minds of others that you come in contact with. Even though corporate and product branding can bring in a lot of money, your business can fall like a house of cards if your employer branding is off. After all, the team behind each business is what makes the wheels go around.

I find employer branding so important and interesting because it concerns so many people and such big parts of our lives. You can have the coolest toothbrush and love the branding around it but you can easily just switch it out tomorrow without thinking twice. But work – that is something that takes up more than a third of our waking hours and changing work can be a time and energy consuming hassle. Does branding fix working conditions? Probably not. But can it help assemble and retain a well fitting team? I truly believe it can.

Employer branding is so much more than recruitment marketing though it is a part of it. It is also what happens after you have signed a contract. Does the first impression as an employee match what was portrayed before? What about when you are a seasoned team member already? Or when you have decided to move on? Does it still feel like the same company that you joined with high hopes? Are they nice all the way?

To me employer branding is very much connected to integrity and belonging. It is about a company standing for its communicated values and keeping its promises. It is about treating everyone the same with respect. Employers can be very different but the important thing is staying true to yourself to find your people. There is no point in branding your company as warm and fuzzy when you really are a rather straight to the point team. And there is also no reason to advertise yourself as daredevils if you try to consider every possible scenario and get everyone on board before making any decision.

Maybe you will get lucky and your new team members are positively surprised by the difference of advertisement vs reality but more likely you will waste a lot of time and money on recruitment and re-recruitment.

I would really like to dig deeper into companies’ values. Not just what the bosses think but what do the middle managers feel and what do the assistants and customer facing staff find as best and worse parts of the workplace. Understanding that would be super valuable though I am sure that hearing the truth might not be easily achieved nor digested. It is however the starting point of creating an authentic employer brand as well as a guide for improvements. Perhaps it is about all loving the company’s mission or the owner’s passion? Or the fun activities and helpful teammates? Friendly competition? But perhaps all that also means long hours and a threath of burning out?

We are all different and that is a good thing but different things attract different people. We might value a variety of things as well as be stressed about different issues. I would rather keep the communication honest but hopeful and let potential new team members know about the company’s strengths as well as weaknesses and how they are dealt with so that they can get a good idea of what they are getting into.

I am getting more and more interested in service design. As a fan of great experiences, I often automatically think of the pluses and minuses of various services that I come across. I would love to contribute to more service design creation and improvement projects and I think communication is a big part of successul services so it just expands on my existing competences. Here are a few ideas that I have based on my own recent service experiences.

One station to weigh, check and search for goods

Christmas shopping. Everyone is stressed and rushed. Time to weigh some goods without barcodes or cannot find the price. Not cool.

Situation A: unclear and unlogical process

In the shop I visited, I had to help myself to some unpackaged products and get an accurate price tag for. Each product had a numeric identifier but on scale the numbers were not in a sequential order and when I finally found the right product button in the list, I was displayed another button for printing the price tag for barely 1 second. I had to repeat the process because I didn’t manage to react in time only to discover that now two identical stickers had automatically been printed quietly out at my crotch height without needing to press that button at all. There was no option to scan the barcode from display screen so the only way to register the price was an unsustainable sticker. I love the shops where I can just skip the stickers.

Situation B: reducing mental load and speed

Products were priced by weight but they didn’t have designated numbers as per standard. Usually weighing and determining specific products is left to the cashiers in that store chain but I had chosen to use a self-scanning handle. Panic hit and I considered abandoning my planned purchase for a second but I needed to buy specific things and didn’t have time to go to more stores. When I found a scale, I was positively surprised because I could type in the category of my product and it was enough to only start typing banana to see related products. It might have been more difficult if they had more than two types like is usual for apples, for example, but I was positively surprised by the experience. Usually when weighting fruits I take them one type at a time to scale because I just cannot remember more numeric identifiers. It is quite tedious but with this new solution I didn’t need to remember anything and could have weighed all fruit one after another. Much smoother service experience!

I recall however an earlier situation where my friend had added to her basket various candy you can buy by weight only to discover that she needs to guess their categories and know their numbers or specific names to be able to weigh and get price tags. That was a nightmare. Imagine buying some candy for the first time and needing to know if it is a caramel, chocolate, nuts based or something else before getting anywhere. It felt like a surprise test. My friend is more patient than me though.

Situation C: too much irrelevant information or missing info

Pricetags of sale items placed all together were missing or displayed all together on one A4 paper with 23 other prices and another 24 prices were on the other side of the paper. To view those, I would have had to walk around the pallet storing all items. I tried scanning quickly the price poster from my side but failed to find the relevant price so I gave up on buying the thing I was interested in because it was just too much work to figure out the price.

In another shop that is famous for missing price tags, they had a permanent price check station that was constantly used by regulars of that shop or that is what I assume because although helpful, it wasn’t very visible. Also I am not sure how many such check stations were available in the big store. How far would you go to check a price? One meter? Five? If you are really invested then maybe 10 meters but if no employee is in vicinity either then most likely that product will stay in store.

Situation D: struggle to find what you need

I was looking for a specific item unsuccessfully and eventually turned to an employee who tried to help but also could not find it. That item was probably out of stock but no-one confirmed. Another potential sale was definitely lost.

Solution

a)One solution could do it all: weigh goods and provide price tags, help check prices, guide to product location and inform of stock count to help and save time. It would require keeping systems up to date about location of products in store but I would like to think that stores already have this data. At least on the level of isle number or fridge number/name.

b)If an app/scanning handle is available, they could also take care of all of the above except weighing via barcode/QR code reading and text input for search.

Part 2:

During one of those Christmas shopping trips, I got chosen for a random self-scan check – which is quite normal when you are not a regular customer – and age check though I had bought only non-alcoholic drinks and food. Apparently a few non-alcoholic ciders triggered that for some reason.

The random check was smoothe and I was offered candy after which was a nice touch but once that was cleared I was once again stoppedby the self-scanning register and asked to wait for an employee for age check. Thankfully they could now clear me from distance but that can be inaccurate.

Ways to improve age check

It would have been better if together with the random check request their would have already flagged the need for age check as well so that those two could have been done at once and be based on ID. It would have saved time for everyone and contributed to a nicer customer experience.

Alternatively age check could have been done based on me registering to use self-scanning because you need to be a registered customer to use self-scanning and they should already know my age. It would still entail some risks.

Taking a quick selfie when paying and uploading via store’s app or inserting a specific password could be good solutions to ensure that children have not borrowed a grownup’s shop membership card to buy alcohol. It would reduce workload for employees and potentially speed up check-out.

The photo version would work well when scanning with store’s app scanning though with proper sync, the customer could still choose to use the self-scanning handle as well. Password should work well even if the customer doesn’t have store’s app.

There are probably other clever solutions out there and I am looking forward to experiencing them but these are my first thoughts on ways to improve.

What do we want to achieve?

Why is it so difficult to keep that in focus? What are we doing, why, how and for whom? I think we all occasionally still forget that and just rush into creating something. We can get stuck also to vanity metrics but that’s amazing compared to not measuring at all and a big step up from not checking the available data.

Anyway, I thought I would share with you a fresh situation from my regular life where I got lost a bit.

We have cats. And cats need food. One of ours is very picky and only likes one specific brand and personal hygiene products. Yes, I don’t understand that latter either. We buy their food usually in big packages which contain four different flavor options but you need to dig to the bottom of a tall thin package and rip some inner walls off to get them all out. Really annoying.

I love our cats very much and used to always tell them like a good waiter what they are about to eat. Now I was also looking for better food storage solutions to provide them with variety so that they would not have to eat 36 packages of food to get to salmon flavor.

I told my dear husband about my thoughts and then he wisely and lovingly reminded me that I am projecting my own feelings and preferences to our cats, forgetting about what the end user wants. And the end user doesn’t seem to care. They just always want more. No flavor stays uneaten, day by day, week and year. All I was doing was solving a problem that existed only in my head. Thankfully I didn’t get around to buying anything new but I could have used that brain capacity for something more beneficial.

When you work with marketing – and probably true also for many other fields – a lot happens behind the scenes. It can be difficult for others to understand what’s the value of marketing or what does it even entail. After many years of being active in the field of marketing I still struggle sometimes with explaining what is it exactly that I do. It doesn’t help that same titles can mean completely different assignments.

So lately I have been writing down what I do during the day – big or small. Probably not everything has gotten written down but in my case it is definitely not a job that works for routine lovers who like knowing exactly what is coming in the next days, weeks and months. Instead I probably don’t know what happens the next day. Sure, there are days with 6 booked meetings and some regular assignments but in a role like mine where I support marketers and field force members from seven countries, no day is the same and the portion of unplanned is high. It can be anything from giving strategic marketing advice to digging into consent data and laws regulating personal data processing; from hands-on creating an email to discussing business processes and how to track that our marketing efforts are paying off. I don’t mind jumping from one task to another usually. But last week when I had a day where I had worked on 18 different things before lunch and that didn’t even feel like a stressful day, I thought that maybe this kind of a job isn’t for everybody. Perhaps though it would be interesting for others as well to get a glimpse of what I do.

Here’s what I did that day:

1. Reviewing emails 15 min
2. Helping a colleague with understanding the nuances of registering an event in CRM and sharing tips 20 min
3. Checking with CRM support that event attendees were loaded correctly, reporting issues and reviewing corrections 10 min
4. Discussing with data support team how to diagnose what caused surrealistic growth numbers for opt-ins 15 min
5. Discussing with marketing automation software support why we seem to default to a not email-safe font in our email builder 20 min
6. Helping a field force member to understand why one customer doesn’t seem to have email opt-in anymore 15 min
7. Putting in a support request to customer data platform owner regarding some email engagement data not showing up as expected after discovering strange behaviour 5 min
8. Helping a marketing colleague understand their local email engagement data 10 min
9. Guiding a brand manager about how to update key messages and its implications 10 min
10. Reviewing emails regarding ongoing projects 5 min
11. Checking in on a project that looks like it might be derailed 5 min
12. Tried to calm down a new marketing colleague about images not showing up in emails for customers 20 min
13. Working on data request definition to further investigate problem with opt-ins spike 10 min
14. Giving feedback on a project 5 min
15. Monthly catch-up with our dedicated digital marketing agency leadership 30 min
16. Had an improvement idea for our email creation tool and shared with team in charge of tool development 10 min
17. Proposing a solution for removing wrongly processed opt-ins. First steps 3 min
18. Continued discussion how to improve the rate of our emails reaching customers 3 min
19. Lunch
20. Looked into a customer whose opt-in didn’t seem to get processed as it should 5 min
21. Meeting with HR 25 min
22. Onsite search optimization training 30 min
23. Training a colleague on how to download new customers 5 min
24. Meeting with country marketer to discuss issues with a service provider 1:10h

There was probably something else in the afternoon because I remember running late to pick up my kids but you get the idea.

How does it compare to your work? Does it look like something you would like to do as well? I enjoy the variety that my job offers as well as being able to help people and pass on some of the knowledge I have gained over the years.

I am on a roll here but one more post today.

Perhaps not so original but I really enjoy good marketing wherever I come across it, be it something as simple as a company’s slogan, a clever word play here or there or just connecting your offers with acute needs of people.

This year it felt like winter will never come to Stockholm and yet, here it is in the middle of March finally. We can go sledding, way past ankles snow crunches so nicely around us and icicles are up for grabs. A proper snow storm alternating with sunny days means however a traffic chaos. While I am enjoying the cool view from my couch, basking in the sun, some people are stuck on the road. And then someone shared with me this social media post by a hotel nearby:

It’s in Swedish but basically it says:

Stuck in a snow storm?
Stay at our place!
And then some price details applicable only to bookings this week made in this week.

They also describe in the post text their facilities a bit.

I think it’s a very clever move by HOOM Park & Hotel. It shows that they are reacting quickly to situations, offers help to those in urgent need for discounted prices and also helps to fill up rooms in the low season while not cannibalising on earlier bookings. Even if I don’t need a place to stay right now, I was left with a very positive impression and probably will remember this next time I am looking for a hotel in that area. Perhaps when we get guests from abroad!?

What do you think? Would you be tempted?

Hello, hello! Signs of life.

Lately I have had so many occasions when I have wanted to come here to talk about communication in my life in different situations. How small details can make a huge difference. 

I have wanted to complain about bad and weird experiences (and I still kind of do) but to not make this very one-sided, let’s start with the positive (kind of). It is harder to find or rather recognise because good is normal, right? It is what we expect. Bad leaves more of an impression.

Anyway, today I wanted to talk about clothing sizes. Without going into details, I think I am quite average looking. The time when I was a size S or Small that it stands for, was a very brief period in my teenage years so basically didn’t exist between wearing childrens clothes and grownup clothes. I suspect that the same is true for many of us despite the impression that the people we usually see in media might leave. Also my period of trying to fit into small sized clothes and looking worse as an outcome is behind me.

Some brands seem to have learned to use sizing to their advantage. We all know more or less what sizes fit us and oh how difficult it can be mentally to go up a size or more. Yet we shop quite successfully online without even trying on clothes nowadays but sometimes… sometimes we get surprised by what fits.

For example I recently measured my feet because I really wanted to try barefoot shoes for the first time but when their measuring result came back not one but two sizes bigger than my usual I lost all interest in buying that brand’s shoes. I am comfortable and blister free with my current shoes too. Especially since barefoot should have extra room too. So that would mean like… going 3-4 sizes up all of a sudden?  It made no sense to me.

The same tendency is shown with wedding dresses. Imagine that you are preparing for one of the most important days of your life. You want to feel beautiful and know that all eyes will be on you. You might look forward to finding your dream dress and then the shop pulls the carpet out from underneath your feet by telling you that you need a dress 2-3 sizes bigger than your usual. Even after the dieting that you have probably been doing as prep. I was thankfully prepared for that because when one of my best friends got married, I saw that happening to her and got the same experience 9 years later. I personally experienced as well how one shop assistant greeted me on the door with saying that nothing except for perhaps four dresses in their well known shop will fit me. The rest are size 34 or what you might know as Extra Small. In wedding dress sizes that must be size Invisible. I felt horrible. My shopping experience had started off negatively already. Now imagine how different that experience could have been if their sizes were generous and if they were encouraging and offering solutions instead of offering a bride a mental ice bucket over the head! I must say, that that was true in most stores thankfully.

In general too, I prefer numeric sizes because if you are a woman and don’t fit into Small then what are you? If you fit into Medium then I guess you can think of yourself as normal. But what if you don’t? I don’t even want to write: if you are large or extra large… It sounds so bad in my head. Yet some clothing producers at some point thought that it would be a good idea to label people that way. Who wants to be a Small man or a Large woman!? Who identifies themselves that way? I bet no-one. We all have mirrors and are probably painfully aware of our weaknesses or in general the parts about ourselves that we don’t like so much but we all need to wear clothes and clothing companies need us to buy their clothes so why would they at the same time add to body image issues? That cannot be good marketing nor beneficial for their bottom line.

But… I promised to write about something positive today so if you read up to this point, thank you! I am getting there soon.

I went back to gym last autumn and am still going which is quite a big thing for me so bragging here a bit now. That resulted in me looking for some new training clothes. Not that I absolutely needed them but I wanted something nice and comfortable which works for me when I work out. And wow how sports clothing brands have figured out human psychology’s impact in marketing! Wedding dress makers, watch and learn!

After browsing online and finally choosing the clothes matching my style, it was time to pick a size. I opened their sizing chart which contained various international sizing systems and explained what matches their sizes so points for that already! Ok, that is not so unique but what instantly made me feel great was seeing the results. I am somewhere between two sizes usually and their chart recommended that I pick the smaller one. Not only that but it also said that if I go another numeric size up, these smaller size pants should still fit. Wow! I instantly wanted them more. I needed them! 

Marketing at its best: make your customer feel good about themselves and they will keep coming back to experience more of that. You might argue that it was more them telling me between the lines that their clothes will make me skinnier which is not true but I don’t care. I am a marketer myself and even knowing some tactics and tricks, this still worked so well because I am a human being first. Extra interesting because you could think that in the sports industry people are often extra fit and they could probably be less inclusive in their sizing. I just think that they have figured out that most people are not size XXS and making clothes that fit well various sizes while subtly giving a compliment with one simple letter or number on the clothing item’s tag, they can sell so much more.

But enough about me. What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts and examples with clothing sizes that have left an impression.

Time to dust off this old blog because I am dying to put some ideas regarding my recent customer experiences on paper because who doesn’t like learning from other people’s mistakes rather than their own!? I definitely do.

If you have been reading up on marketing communication then you have probably come across recommendations to try out the whole existing customer journey to see what works and what doesn’t and where there is room for improvement. Yet, how often do we really take time to do that? I suppose most of us fall in the trap of trying to put out fires – or take care of urgent requests just trusting that the people requesting these have put in the time and effort to analyze that their idea is actually worth executing but that is a topic for another time.

What is also very visible and obvious for a customer is when in a company the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and it is difficult to ensure that all are up to date. Especially in big organisations. Things fall through the cracks.

This week I have felt like a guinea pig for a new(ish) banking service. A tester of their systems if you will except I am not getting paid for it. I have been trying to give them my money instead.

So I decided to move my savings to a new bank – one with a decent interest rate in these crazy times we live. They are all digital so also applying for an account was all digital.

The beginning was smooth – nice user interface, good messages. I started filling in my personal info but then it got interesting. They cater internationally so their system was supporting the way things work in Sweden but I am not a typical Swedish customer. I also happened to answer yes to the question if I foresee any international transactions and then it got confusing. If you are asked about amounts that you plan to move by a Danish bank but as a Swedish customer to a third country, which currency should you use? I still don’t know. Their application didn’t specify.

And if you are asked to upload a scan of your passport or driver’s license, I bet you too grab the little card that you already have at hand. ID card was not an option for some reason. Only after submitting the form I got an email with explanations of what they really want. I as a Swedish resident but not a citizen I apparently cannot use my Swedish driver’s license because it doesn’t show my citizenship. So now the process was already unnecessarily more complex for both me and the bank while if they had thought this scenario through, it could have been solved correctly instantly. All it would have required was a few more words of explanation and of course thinking through some potential customer personas.

Moving on to the 2nd part of my experience, I got an automatic confirmation email after submitting my application. It was very nice with a list of all the good things I will soon be getting by them except someone had not kept track of all the marketing assets that contain info about their interest rates so this email was not up to date.

You already know that the following day I got an information request over email explaining some things that I was supposed to do differently as well as requesting more documents about my finances. It was also asking me again about my international transfers intentions while saying that they don’t really have this service right now but want the info for future. As a customer – or a person in general – I don’t like my time being wasted. I did not sign up for market research survey. If you need to do it for legal reasons, say that. If not, then you should not be collecting any more personal information that you actually need.

I was now asked to share a bunch of documents from different systems and upload via their app. As a digital marketer I feel quite confident about executing such things and yet no matter what I tried, their file uploading just didn’t work. I had to turn to support.

Their app referred me to a chat function which is great when you need to talk to someone fast, but it also had a note that on average they answer chat within one day. Day!!! Answering so slowly means that the chat has no point. No-one waits online that long. Chat is the modern hip thing but is it really a good idea to implement if you cannot guarantee fast responses? Anything more than five minutes seems too long to me, not to mention hours or days. Of course I could not stay to wait. Foodora, a Swedish food courier company is on the other hand a company that really does chat support very well so it can be done.

Since chat wasn’t really working, I responded to the email I had gotten that I was struggling with the app and was then told to email the documents but not to the person I was emailing with. No, I had to send them to another address and then write back to the first person that I had sent stuff. Do you like being made to run around with tasks? Probably not. I went along and emailed my documents to the right place but of course forgot to send the 2nd email about sending documents. Ideally a good CRM system should keep track of all of our communication anyway and customer support personnel should check all previous interactions before initiating a new one. Often reality is quite different.

Soon I was asked for another document over email. I sent that too as soon as I could to the person asking. The day after I got a response that if I don’t answer in 2 days, they will reject my application. I was totally confused because I didn’t know what I hadn’t answered to but I was put off a bit about this threat.

Almost simultaneously I got another email from the same person telling me that they cannot accept documents by email and I should upload the latest document to app.  She didn’t even seem to realise she just sent the same person two emails. Secondly, she had already forgotten about my initial problem with app and uploads as well as her own advice to email them documents. I was getting fed up and can you blame me!? If she had just bothered to read once again through our email conversation which was branched out now between two addresses on their own request, making it harder to follow, she could have easily turned this into a much better experience instead of giving me mixed messages and threats and useless advice. I might sound mad because I am a bit. I am quite a patient customer but I was really starting to consider if it is worth it anymore. Perhaps I could just turn to another bank with lower interest rate but with better service for peace of mind.

They finally received my last document but were still not happy. Apparently it didn’t have my name on it which is another requirement that they didn’t communicate earlier. I was now told to take a print screen of my main bank’s app with my name and account number. A bit unconventional but sounds simple enough, right? And I was appreciating them trying to find solutions now. Yet it was another mission impossible with my home bank. There just isn’t any such view. No “Hey, Maria! This is how much money you have on account X”. No matter how much I would like to comply with their requirements, I cannot really influence how a bank formats their statements nor app.  Had they really not come across that before?

The story isn’t over yet and I don’t know how it will end but I stumbled on so many communication issues already, of which many which have been (quite) easily avoided. Things that illustrate so well how important it is to test customer journey and from different customers’ perspectives if possible. Also, how important it is to test and monitor your assets also after successful launch. And last but not least, how important having a holistic picture of your customer interactions is.

What did you learn?

Do you know how sometimes you see/hear something that keeps bothering you?

Today that happened to me. Somebody said something crucially wrong.

I am not talking about private people saying stupid things to each other nor about what goes on in the comments section of online newspapers. I saw an ad of sorts that made my stomach twist and here’s why.

If you have something important to say, you should really take the time to think what you are saying to whom, why and how. You might also have to take into consideration who says it, when and where but in this case those are less important. If you don’t, however, follow this guideline, then you are in real danger of being misunderstood as well as not reaching your goal(s).

Coming back to this case, in the last days, I have seen several times someone promoting on my Facebook feed some weight loss support group. Nothing about it seemed overly professional nor official, but since they addressed a very sensitive subject and did it so badly (in my opinion), I just couldn’t keep ignoring it though I really dislike conflicts. It was too important to ignore.

The ad itself was supposed to be playful, I guess, and followed a trending build-up where an illustration was used of different body shapes in different colours with comments of target weight loss in kilograms and people were invited to answer with a colour. Perhaps the author of the ad was smart enough to strategize to gather feedback about their target group this way? Perhaps it was a tool to increase the popularity and hence the visibility of the post this way. I personally suspect however that the author just didn’t know much about professional communication. I do however want to believe that the ad author had good intentions and wanted to invite people to support each other with getting in shape and not just lose as much weight as humanly possible while still remaining alive.

 

Here’s the ad itself:

I saw several problems with the chosen approach. The smaller one was that just a number of kilograms that someone wants to lose doesn’t say much without context. At least not about how realistic are the goals. It is however simplistic enough for most people to grasp. A lot less sexy but much more accurate metric to talk about would be BMI – body mass index, but then everyone should have the same, healthy target. They might just have different starting BMIs but that would factor in also their height.

The second problem that I saw was that far from everyone wants to shout on social media that they are not happy with their bodies and exactly how unhappy they are and how many extra kilos (they think) they have. Yes, some people had no problem just putting it out there, but only a few. Even when colours were used for codes. A tag like #livinghealthy might have worked better to gain traction.

The biggest issue and the one that made me react publicly, was the image used in the ad. Two of the body shapes depicted were clearly of overweight people, but one was completely healthy and normal looking and one looked even anorectic and still came with a tag of wanting to lose up to 5kg. It seemed to put a very dangerous message out there for often already vulnerable target group. Eating disorders are more common than many think and often start from the smallest thing – an insult in childhood or why not a picture that seems to say “you can never be skinny enough”!? Especially since people with eating disorders already see themselves always as too big. But that is their disease talking. We should not feed their fears and fuel their disease. I don’t claim to be the expert of this topic. I don’t have an eating disorder though I have never been skinny or at least never felt skinny. I have however felt good about myself and am in peace with my body most days. But the illustrations used were so extreme that it looked like taking off another five kilos would cause bodies to shut down, starting with reproductive organs if those hadn’t already done so. But see for yourself.

I will also show you my reply which was written on the high of my emotion in a rush so perhaps it could have been better. I see myself now that an extra word has found its way there, but perhaps it will be forgiven. I will however explain further why I chose the other words. You already know what I wanted to say and why. I expected that I might draw on myself someone’s anger, but it seemed important enough. As a nice surprise I found supporters first.

Full text:
Hey! I don’t want to rain on your parade here because I understand that a lot of people struggle with weight issues but i have seen this ad a few times right now and this image really bothers me. The first body shape looks anorectic. The second normal. It seems dangerous to hint that people with such figures should still aim to lose weight. I believe that you are trying to do something good as you call it a support group but please consider sending healthier messages.

I started with a colourful saying. This might result in people perceiving my response as sarcastic. Perhaps it was too a little bit, but mostly it came from the heart. I could have probably started more neutrally like I would recommend that you changed… or put it in a positive way like I would like to help you improve the ad. I could also have gone with a more passive/cautionary approach like If I were you, I would have done… or an apologetic approach like I don’t want to offend you/I am sorry to say this… but we can never really control anyway how we will be understood. We can only do our best based on what we know about our audience. I knew nothing and risked it.

As you see, I decided to go with my honest but polite opinion and softened my colourful start with expressing that I believe the author is addressing an important issue (meaning doing good work), but a part of how it is done is influencing me personally negatively (I message). I explained what I perceive, using words like “looks” instead of pushing my opinions as facts (vs is anorectic). I could have improved it with even more I messages to make it clear this is just my perspective. “It seems” is another way of describing possible perception. “Hint” is used because it doesn’t say anywhere in words that someone should do something or someone is overweight. But now we are wandering to the territory of semiotics. I expressed benefit of the doubt from my side and faith in good will by the author to help him/her keep an open mind towards my motivation (wanting to help, looking for greater good) and this was not in order to manipulate someone to get what I personally want. I also wanted to let them know that they are still in charge and this is just a recommendation (“please consider”) instead of, for example, just saying bluntly “take it down” or “this is crap and has to be fixed”.

How would you have responded? Or better yet, how would you have done the ad itself?

Hi again after a long time!

I am back with some thoughts that just wanted to get out of me today.

Have you ever noticed what a difference communication can make – whether it is good or bad? We use communication everywhere and experience it in situations from spotting a fun ad to reading instructions, going through some automated processes to all kinds of customer service.

For me, good communication and hence communication skills are very important. Therefore also, I lose easily respect in people whose communication skills are not that well developed.

I believe that communication has a huge impact on so many aspects of life – whether it is building professional relationships, making friends, deciding which restaurants to visit or which web shops to return to. Nowadays there are also so many tools to facilitate communication, but it is still up to people to use them in ways that actually facilitate things instead of building extra barriers. This is an aspect of communication that I have worked mostly with this year, but that is perhaps a topic for another time. Today I want to talk about some concrete examples.

For example, I was planning to use today after a long time a nice service run through an app, but of course I didn’t remember my password. Who ever does!? They had made password recovery very easy – easy to find link just next to log-in window and the email to reset my password really arrived momentarily. I was so happy because sometimes I have to wait for those for hours and might just give up.

This is however where the good part ended. I clicked on the password reset link, filled in my new password and then faced an error message telling me to start over because the reset link had apparently expired. How? I had literally used it within a couple of minutes of requesting to reset my password.

I decided to try again, but after completing all the same steps, I came to the same result. And not many people – me included – are willing to do something again for the third time. Isn’t there a saying even among the lines of doing the same things and expecting different results is a sign of insanity?

As sad as it is, I cannot use the service today for sure and they lose out on my money. Losing a customer is as simple as that. And they might not even know this happened because I didn’t find an easy way to warn them. If I had, I would have given them some constructive criticism and that might have strengthened our relationship instead.

Can you recall a similar situation where communication changed everything?