The Thank You Economy

I’m trying a new thing where I read more books. I’ve worked out that a book on Kindle is less than the price of a couple of packets of cigarettes. If I read a book in two days (unlikely) this will still cost me less than a tobacco habit. And it is much less likely to kill me.

So, today on a whim I downloaded a copy of “The Thank You Economy” after I saw it in Joey deVilla’s blog. I’ve started reading it and it is rather interesting. It makes the point that in a world of connected and savvy consumers, who are going to Tweet, Blog and Facebook any bad customer experiences, a business can’t afford to upset folks in the way that it used to. Furthermore, if you give really good customer experiences you are creating a sales force out of the users of your products.

Apple are brilliant at this. I remember being told an awestruck tale of a dropped (and shattered) iPhone which was ‘Just replaced’ in an Apple Store. This is actually very good business sense. The hardware costs Apple very little, they can write the expense off against tax, and if their delighted customer tells ten people the story and a couple of them go Apple rather than Android then it will have paid for itself.

A couple of thoughts though. Some people seem just born to complain. I’ve stood behind examples of this genre in queue the Post Office, and I’m sure you have too. These folks have presumably got Twitter and Facebook accounts, so I wonder how this policy works with them. With a bit of luck the book will cover this a bit later on.

The other thing I was thinking was how we could apply this to my business, that of education. We work hard at Hull to can give students a great experience, but at the end of the day we also have to give some marks out which will not always be well received. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was to hand out my teacher assessments after I’d given out the results on a course. Some of the students (who had not actually applied themselves very well and done badly as a consequence) took it upon themselves to deliver payback and the comments were so good they got stuck on the staff room wall for all to enjoy.

I’ve not finished the book, but I’m enjoying reading it. Like most good business books it is full of things that make you say “Well Duh!”, but you might not have actually thought of. It is worth a read, and will certainly do you more good than 40 cigarettes.

Comments

[Arjun Taheem]

Paul thurrot often recommends books for audible on his podcast and he often recommends tech focused books when he finds some that are relevant now as there are a lot based on the early side of MS etc. Its a good podcast to listen as well as he talks about the latest thing in the tech industry with a focus on MS which is interesting. His podcast is called Widows Weekly, i think you can grab it from the Zune store.

[Andrew]

I would imagine that in your business of education what you want is for your students to value the classes they took at Hull so that they pass on positive recommendations to other potential students. This isn't necessarily the same as getting a high mark.

Psychologists have proved that people tend to value things that they had to work hard for and discount things that they got easily regardless of the actual value of the item. Mountaineering is a good example, getting up and down a mountain has very little value yet the people who do it value their achievements very highly. You could use this to your advantage by giving out assignments that require a substantial investment in time, e.g. programming assignments that require a lot of code to cover all the requirements.

Corporate trainers also this technique all the time. The actual instantiation varies but it is always something that people will likely find uncomfortable to some degree. Asking people to work late into the night "to get through the material" is a common one because it often requires them to rearrange their personal life. The "fall backwards and have somebody catch you" trust game presented under the "lets all get to know each other" ruse is another classic.

Plus, if you think assigning a lot of homework is just a cheap trick consider the fact that it takes 10 years of purposeful practice to become an expert at anything. You'll just be giving your students a good start on that path :-).

I highly recommend the book Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X). By far and way the best non-fiction book I've ever read. I'm not dexterous enough to be able to use the techniques he describes but the book did inoculate me from other people trying to use them on me. For example no longer do I let the fact that the store only has one of a particular item in stock affect my judgement on whether it is good value or not.