Monday, October 31, 2005

Crisis in Cancun

In a recent post, I discussed how Wal-Mart's positive response to hurricane Katrina improved their public image. The response of the largest company in the world to the most high-profile natural disaster in the history of the U.S. is bound to generate lots of headlines. But beyond the Fortune 500 there are thousands of companies with limited resources who must also respond well to a crisis.

Cancun_2 One of those companies is the Royal Sands, the newest property of Royal Resorts in the hurricane-ravaged city of Cancun, Mexico. This came to my attention because my wife and I have a vacation planned at this resort in the near future. After seeing and reading news coverage of the devastation wrought by hurricane Wilma in Cancun, I naturally became nervous about my planned trip.

With the revenue for Royal Sands depending on me and thousands of other nervous vacationers, the resort is facing a real crisis and effective communication could limit their loss of revenue. In that light, it is interesting to note that Royal Resorts has set up a blog of sorts to issue daily progress reports on the hurricane recovery. Their first post on October 28 tells of their decision to close the resort until November 25 for clean up and details the (comparatively) minimal damage to the resort.

Today's post gives a progress report on clean up at the resort and informs readers that life is returning to normal in Downtown Cancun. It also reports the return of inbound flights to Cancun International Airport.

The updates are exactly what's needed, but the execution could have been better. First, the information is only accessible from the front page of the Royal Resorts web site. There are no links on any of the other Royal Resorts pages and no link anywhere on the Royal Sands web site. Second, the hurricane update page has no contact information for guests to get more information. In a crisis such as this, when a company's revenue is in jeopardy, every effort must be made to communicate to potential customers.

The hurricane also provides an example of why it is so important for companies to communicate during a crisis. If consumers aren't getting information from the company, they will seek it out in other places; especially on the Internet. Sure enough, although it took Royal Resorts one week to post their first information on the web site, TripAdvisor had their first review up in five days...and it isn't good news for the resort. A site member from Washington, DC lambasted the resort for failing to communicate with guests prior to the storm. Here's an excerpt:

The resort staff and management had not sent, or posted any notice of impending danger about the hurricane as late as Wednesday (9am), Oct. 19th when we left the resort for the airport. At this point it was pretty clear that it was coming right at Cancun. If we had not have looked at the weather channel for an hour so late Tuesday night, we would not have know this record hurricane was coming toward us.

Later on in his post, "DC" puts it all in painful perspective:

What makes me so angry about it is that I had a 30 minute discussion with a concierge and a salesperson Tuesday at 6pm and they just said it was going to be rainy. They did not say, "you might want to think about the fact that a powerful hurricane is coming this way," or "we just want you to know what's going on." I understand that them telling everyone to leave or that a big hurricane is coming there way would mean the loss of money, but not telling their members to a loss of trust. Which one is worth more do you think?

That, in effect, is the question every consumer is asking during a crisis: 'Do you care more about me or my money?' If they perceive that a company is more concerned about them, consumers will give that company both their trust and their money. A company they perceive to be more concerned about their money, won't get either.

Friday, October 7, 2005

Good enough...or remarkable?

Where were you when good enough stopped being good enough? Maybe you weren’t even aware that it had. Maybe you’re still stuck in an (insert organization type here) that’s good enough…and dying.

Enough already! If your customers don’t leave an interaction with your company/product/service and rave to others about it, you won’t last. If your customers aren’t talking about you, no one else will. To get them to talk about you, you have to wow them…you have to be remarkable.

“But,” you say, “we make bicycle seats or hair brushes. We’re not remarkable.” You’re right. Ninety-five percent of what you do is NOT remarkable and you know what? All of that can be done from India for one third of your cost. I came across a listing on Adrants with the subject line: partnership with your ad agency for creative design from India. The body of the listing read:

Our ad firm can dish out good creatives for any kind of advertising. Very innovative when there is a specific need. We cover Print campaigns, posters, any other kind of POS merchandise, hoarding designs, invites, magazine page layouts for articles, backdrop designs, You should find us cost effective with jumpstart of half a day after your brief due to the time zone. So if you want some peace now drop us a line… (Emphasis mine).

Cost effective. No kidding. And you thought only customer service and manufacturing jobs were moving overseas.

Because 95 percent of what you do is no different from the designer in India is precisely why the last five percent is so crucial…because that’s where you can become remarkable.

Moocoverlittle_1_1 THE BIG MOO is Seth Godin’s clarion call for businesses to start being remarkable or start dying. It’s not a handbook or a textbook and it doesn’t have a 12-step process to becoming remarkable. If you think that exists, then you also probably still think you need an MBA to succeed in business.

The book is a collection of 33 individual essays on becoming remarkable. Each essay will inspire you and show you how easy it is to become remarkable.

Yes there are extraordinary features: none of the essays are credited, proceeds go to charity, blah, blah, blah. (I cover some of the features in an earlier post that explains how I came across a copy of the book). All of that is secondary to this: THE BIG MOO will force you to think about how you can become remarkable. I had to reread most of the essays, because halfway through each one I found myself thinking about similar things I could do and wondering why I hadn’t done them already.

This book will engage you. Stop being good enough and start being remarkable. Start with THE BIG MOO.

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