Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

General

Social Media management …

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is just like Service Management

In a recent article in S+B “Brand Transformation on the Internet” Aaron Shapiro, CEO of the digital agency Huge explains the shift from customers to users – also the title of his new book – Users, Not Customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business.

A key point he makes is that most business will need to see themselves as two business. Their original core product / service and then the online version of that same business – which is an interesting thought – makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

But what really caught my attention was this :

To be effective in social media, you have to empower junior people to be brand ambassadors, to communicate online rapidly. That seemingly tactical, small move can lead to massive organizational shifts. Somebody 20 levels down in the hierarchy who’s responding to a tweet has to know and understand the whole company’s strategy around things like pricing and social responsibility. There has to be a tremendous amount of training and a very big cultural shift.

This is no doubt true – but it is also the essence of what it takes to run a great service company.

Only when front line staff see themselves as brand ambassadors in everything they do, do we get that very special customer experience.

At the heart of a great customer experience is the sensation that the person who is looking after you has the knowledge, skills and authority to do what ever it takes to provide a great experience.

But that requires leadership who understand what it takes to put that in place

Copenhagen Food Safari

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You must be joking!

At one time it was considered a bad joke that the best restaurant in the world – The Fat Duck at the time – was located in the UK, a country not exactly known for its culinary tradition. The joke is still the same, it has just moved geographically.

The basic culinary tradition in Denmark was never much better than what you would find in the UK. It is a meat and potatoes kitchen – possibly with the one exception that did gain international notoriety, the Danish open-face sandwich.

Now Denmark does not only host the world’s best restaurant, Noma and the world’s best chef, Rasmus Kofoed (Bocuse d’Or 2011) – it also has more Michelin stars (11) than any of the other Scandinavian capitals, with Stockholm is second with (8), Oslo (6) and Helsinki (5).

But Noma and the other high profile establishments are just the top of the iceberg. Copenhagen now also offers a multitude of creative and inspiring food service venues in every imaginable category. This has clearly also caught the attention of the international foodie establishment. The New York Times wrote: Eating in Copenhagen? Lucky you!. And the Guardian wrote “Copenhagen is truly in the foodie spotlight”

So how does a small country that has a population that is smaller than Hamburg’s and a ‘village’ of a capital that would fit within two Parisian arrondissements, pull that off?

For more on that as well as my very personal guide to the Copenhagen Restaurant Scene please download the file Copenhagen Food Safari

You will find it in two versions

Copenhagen Food Safari – Pdf version

Copenhagnen Food Safari – Epub Version
( works great on iPad or iPhone if you want something mobile)

The article was first published in Food Service Europe in a shorter version – you will find that version here

Gamestorming service design

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30 years ago we called this moments of truth – Dave Gray calls them touch points but the idea is the same. None the the less this is a great way to map out your customers journey through your service experience. It is also a wonderful way to make the whole team understand what the critical touch points (bottlenecks) are in the customer experience:

Se his blog here

The future of learning

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I just love this whole concept:

A MOOC is not for credit, it’s for (networked) learning. You participate in a MOOC because you want to learn about a particular topic or subject. A MOOC is an alternative (attractive?) mode of learning in a flat, technologically interconnected world and supports life-long networked learning.

See the article and further links here

There are great teams and not so great teams

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Here is a great blog post from Brandon Curry

There are great teams and not so great teams. The best companies are networks of great teams. When you look at organizations, there is a huge range in performance team by team by team. There are differences within high performing teams compared with underperforming teams. These differences impact not only business outcomes, but lead measures like the ability to attract and retain talent that create the valued product or service that customers trade money for.

This is just so much up my alley…

Read the rest on Brandons blog it is well worth your time

Unique and personal works wonders for RevPar

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Here is a great post from Xhotels on what it mean to be a disruptive hotel :
Hotels need to be more Disruptive.

It once again reminded me of the classic marketing model that so clearly shows what this is all about that oh’ so tricky move from new to perennial with out falling into the trap of becoming stereotype.

As long as you can maintain uniqueness – you can also hold your price – but if you slip up and fall in to the trap of becoming stereotype – then you have taken the first step in entering what the Americans call ‘the race to the bottom’. And we all now what that does to our bottom line.

Read the 3 great examples of uniqueness on the Xhotels blog here

This is also a theme that I have developed extensively in my book: Best! – no need to be cheap if... The overall idea his is to use the frame work of the Service Profit Chain to understand build that uniqueness over time.

I would be more than happy to offer you a copy if you are interested – just drop me a line and i will send you a download link.