iDEA - Link Employee Feedback to Customer Benefits

Space-a-spade, most customer-benefits that are at the discretion of store staff do to placate a kind of customer that, honestly, one could do without. But tell me something, have you been to hotels where you have been nice to the staff and the staff to you? Then when you visit them again, they remember you and sometimes 'pull a few strings' for that upgrade or meal voucher? You probably don't know if the reverse has happened - when you shouted at the waiter and had your soup spat in. 

So what I'll propose here isn't completely new, but it still is, somewhat. 

What about recording the views of your staff against the customer's loyalty record so that you can reward the better people, not just the blackmailers, the churn-risks and the highest spenders (well, rewarding the highest spender happens rarely - loyalty programs  are frequently to reward the worst customers - but more on that some other time). The implicit, anecdotal, ad-hoc, hyper-local version of this anyway works, as described in the beginning of the article, but one could make it organized so that the information, like other loyalty information, is available across the points of service. This may not just reward the good guys, but help identify the serial offenders - those that slip in the strand of hair to get their meals free, those that stain the bed-sheet to get the champagne, those who think waitresses enjoy being flirted with and so on. 

Today these guys walk free of their past, actions remembered only for a short while by the particular people who encountered them till those particular people are in the same establishment and so on. This simple change in the customer record could take away their invisibility. The next time the customer walks into your bank, hotel, restaurant or shop - the screen will flash on the reception. And who knows, maybe in the long run, when you take away anonymity,    

I'm not sure if I've thought of all dimensions. Maybe there's more. Maybe there's potential for misuse, but that's like asking if you would trust your employees to give fair reviews. Maybe this system is against sometimes-nasty-but-overall-nice people or now-reformed people who are, like all of us others, noticed and remembered more for the bad than the good - but that's just a calibration issue. I don't know - sometimes it seems like an idea that should already exist, sometimes as something that needs more thought. 

What do you think?

ps: of-course at the base of it all is still the question around whom does your loyalty program reward - the bad customer (which is usually the case) or the good kind that you want more of. If you haven't answered that yet, read this post once you have.

What constitutes "good" inventory?

Is "good" inventory a lot of things to sell? In a marketplace context, we often speak of one platform having better inventory than the other. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is often a statement that comes out of an inside-out view. Let me try and explain. 

My usual method to feel the elephant in the room, regular readers know by now, is to ask questions. So, when we say a platform has good inventory, do the customers also say that? Is buyer-feedback good enough on this topic or is non-buyer feedback equally if-not-more important? Let's take an example of shirts. If you have a million shirts and none in my size, do you have good inventory? If you have a million in my size but none that I like? What if you have a thousand that I like in my size and like the ones I like, and I'm not able to find them using your search and browse? What if I find what I need but I don't like the price or terms of delivery? Feel the elephant? Isn't it bigger than we imagined? The end of all these paths is no sale. 

But like they say, no two silences are the same since both could be the absence of a different word.

Let's get the basics out of the way. Having a lot of products to sell, on the shelves, is not a guarantee to a perception of good inventory. Second basic, the perception we just mentioned, is reality. There is no other sense of 'good' or 'bad' inventory. Third, all enablers we keep worrying about - having the right sellers or suppliers on-board, getting them to list everything they can - are all just that - enablers, and the customer doesn't think of those as inventory. 

Consumer in, the first thing to build would be Demand. If the consumer doesn't want it, or is not aware that the category exists on your platform, why even bother? The second could be findability. Through browse or search, the consumer must be able to find or discover the product. The third bit could be decision-tools if needed (spec-compare, shade-match, size-converter etc) along with the completeness of range (could mean SKU coverage for standard cataloged products and width otherwise). Then there is the catalog itself, or listing quality if the category is uncatalogued - often a stumbling block for marketplaces. And the picture still isn't complete without the all-important wrappers of price, payment and delivery terms. If all matches, and these don't, it is still, after all the effort, not a sale. 

Before we link a perception of bad inventory to bad sourcing, therefore, we should check for where the funnel is broken. It is possible for customers to, rightfully, feel you have bad inventory for more reasons than that. 

The Fallacy of the Gambler's Fallacy - and Truth on Winning Streaks

I'm sure all of us have heard of the Gambler's fallacy. The Gambler, in short, knows probability but not well enough. If he sees five heads on five tosses of an unbiased coin, he believes the next time will surely be tails since over a large number of tosses, it's supposed to be 50% heads and 50% tails. What he misses is that each toss is independent - completely unaffected by what the previous tosses have thrown up. Motivational angle - if you try something like clear an exam, some event that, say, has a probability of 25%, you have the same 25% shot the fifth time - even if you flunk the first four times.

Wait, something wrong, right? Right.

If you clear that exam the first time, your chances of clearing it again are much better than 25% - it's close to, say, 50%. If you have cleared it four times, it means you really know the stuff they're asking, the probability now is close to 100% I'd say. Taking the same test multiple times, it turns out, are not  'independent' events, and events need to be independent for the Gambler's Fallacy to apply.

Now while we get that, to add to it, there's a very different behavioral, human angle to this.

As long as we carry our past with us, and as long as our attitude has a role to play in the outcome of the event, subsequent events in life are not independent. When we're on a 'winning streak', we approach things differently. We have high confidence, low fear of failure and that attitude inspires confidence in those we interact with, from an interview panel to an investor. When we're, to use a bad word, losers, we do many of these things wrong. We're doing stuff 'designed to fail' then. Arrogance, insecurity, inability to accept, learn and correct, downward spirals - they happen to us then. 

The financial markets will tell you for other stories, of expectations creating reality. Wins bring investments that can bring more wins your way. Failures dry up investor confidence, funding, and shots at success. So there's an external 'expectation' angle too. So, the interesting question is - is the Gambler's Fallacy a fallacy? or better put, what really are Independent events? Go read about the Butterfly Effect, go read Chaos by James Gleik. 

The Fallacy is fine, but do check the fine print on whether terms-and-conditions apply.