Tag Archives: experience

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What is Customer Experience and How Do You Deliver It?


Customer experience is everything your brand does for your customers, everything your business processes to do them and how it makes them feel. Customer experience design is the art and science of shaping experience for customers so they appreciate it, remember it, and share it with their friends.

The for part includes those services that make life easier for your customers—the smiles that leave them feeling better and the outcomes that leave them better off. When a business is designed to maximize service, customers receive value and feel good about the brands that serve them. The to part is when business processes make customers do things they don’t want to. It often includes filling out forms, standing in lines, waiting for call center representatives, and repeating themselves. When business processes dictate the customer’s experience, costs (measured in time, money, effort, and emotion) go up and satisfaction plummets.

Before you deliver a great experience, you have to learn what your customers want most, design the experience that delivers it best, and (here’s the hard part) adjust the way your company works on the inside so that your teams, processes, and technologies are capable of delivering on the next expectations.

The next posts in this LinkedIn exclusive series will make customer experience easier to understand and deliver in your own organization.

Please share your comments and help shape the content as we go!

Posted by:Mike Wittenstein

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Top 5 Marketing Tech Predictions for 2014


Technology adoption has become a competitive differentiator for CMOs who strive to out-innovate their competitors. There is so much opportunity for brands to strengthen consumer engagement through their digital channels. So, with 2014 upon us, it’s time to look at how websites and digital experiences will change in the year to come. What is the future of the branded website? How will technology change customers’ online shopping experience?

Here are my top marketing tech predictions for 2014.

1. CMOs Will Take Back Control

Over the core components of the digital customer experience that is. Many of these digital customer channels, like websites, mobile devices and social networks, were offloaded to IT in the past. But in 2014, CMOs will take back the control over this content to ensure the brand image is accurately portrayed on the customer facing end.

2. Evolve or Die

Ok, this might be a bit of an overused statement, but it does hold some truth. Stemming from taking back control from the IT teams, CMOs will put a greater value on agility and integration over single vendor solutions in 2014. In today’s digital age, CMOs must embrace the shift to digital or risk being phased out in favor of digital natives who understand how business and technology meet.

An entirely new job title —Chief Digital Officer — has emerged because marketing leaders, to date, have not fully embraced the disruptive nature of digital. CMOs who don’t evolve will face the harsh reality of marketing in a world where digital experiences are customer experiences.

3. Content Meets Commerce

Recent data from Forrester Research shows that Web Content Management and e-commerce are the top two priorities for digital executives. Next year, I believe the lines between these two priorities will blur. Customers want the opportunity to review great content while shopping online, and visa versa.

Companies will strive to blend content and commerce so customers can learn more about a product, read reviews and interact with other customers or customer service representatives before making a purchasing decision.

4. The Store-Like Website

It’s no secret that brick-and-mortar stores are evolving, and stores as we know them are becoming a thing of the past. But as brands boost up their web experiences, we’ll see web developers and marketing teams start to replicate the most successful elements of an in-store experience on the web.

These new “store-like” websites will enable customers to do more than just buy a product — they’ll be able to chat with customer service representatives, view video and other visual demonstrations, and easily find reviews and similar products from that brand. Ultimately, the experience will be much more personalized and easy to navigate.

5. Taking Back the Brand

CMOs that learn how to be agile to drive toward an integrated customer experience across content, community and commerce are the ones who will succeed in 2014. Delivering an integrated digital experience requires the ability to integrate social business into the customer journey across websites, mobile devices and customer communities. When done effectively, this integration allows the brand to own their story and the customer experience, from the information gathering phase through to the purchase decision.

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To Succeed, Growth Hacking Has To Focus More On Product Development Than Marketing


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Editor’s note: Justin Caldbeck is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and invests primarily in the Internet and mobile sectors with a focus on social media, e-commerce and enterprise software. Follow him on Twitter @caldbeckj.

I can’t think of a buzzier phrase in the tech industry these days than “growth hacking,” and in some ways I also can’t think of a more dangerous trend to glom onto. Sure, growth is good. But only if it’s real growth.

If it’s a marketing campaign that goes viral and wins you a bunch of one-time “users,” it can actually do more harm than good. If it’s a product that is growing through spammy unsolicited social “sharing,” the growth numbers will massively misrepresent the health of the business. The really great growth hackers out there — people like Andy Johns, who helped Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora all reach record user numbers — understand that it’s not just about getting as many users as possible, but about helping to get the product experience right and ultimately amassing as large a user base as possible. Those are two very different things.

Take what happened with Formspring as an example. In 2010, the Q&A site experienced the fastest growth of any site ever (as its top brass were quick to point out on Twitter when TechCrunch awarded that honor to Pinterest last year). But within a year that growth had trailed off and eventually the site traffic/usage began to decline. Why? Because of its integration with social media sites, Formspring was able to generate rapid growth, but once visitors had taken a look at the site once or twice, they realized that there was very little value in the underlying product and, as a result, the vast majority of “users” that touched the site didn’t ever come back or engage in a meaningful way.

I am starting to fear that Zynga is destined to be another such example: They did well early on by leveraging very aggressive viral marketing techniques and combining them with what was, at the time, cutting edge in-game monetization. However, it appears to me that the company has lacked something that I always look for as an investor: Product Soul. By that I mean a founder’s vision for the products he or she wants the company to create, a strong belief in the product’s ability to change the lives of its users for the better, and an unrelenting focus on making those products great and easy to use.

rocket2For Zynga, this has never been the case. The focus on growth and lack of true product innovation (the company has largely been one that has created knock-offs of other games) has resulted in a company that appears to lack real direction and whose relevance has largely faded over the past year.

Social video app Viddy is an even better examples. It was jockeying with Socialcam and others to be “the Instagram of video” in early 2012 and its growth appeared to be exceptional. From May 2011 to March 2012, the company registered 10 million users, and by May 2012 it had 30 million. By December 2012, it had 40 million registered, but only 675,000 monthly users.

In a six-month span the company’s growth plummeted 95 percent, not just because Facebook cracked down on spammy apps that required users to install them in order to view content, but because the underlying product didn’t resonate with consumers from an ongoing usage standpoint. As a result, tens of millions of users had “tried” Viddy and were left with an underwhelming experience. As any good entrepreneur will tell you, it’s much harder to acquire a user a second time after a bad product experience than it is to acquire them the first time.

There’s no inherent problem with growth hacking, of course. Growth is great and ultimately can be a big driver of enterprise value. The problem is that right now, far too many entrepreneurs are focused more on that than they are on what I believe to be the most important thing of all and, ultimately a more successful driver of sustained growth: When a user touches a product, do they love it? Do they come back and use it again? And, overall, do they have a good experience with it?

I recently had an entrepreneur that I really respect talk to me about the fact that he was considering hiring a growth hacker. They have a strong team, a great company mission and are the early leaders in a large addressable market with a product that is attempting to solve a major pain point for a set of users. But they have a growth problem. Why? First, their early growth has been driven by marketing spend as opposed to organic growth. And second, the vast majority of users who have tried the product aren’t engaging with it on an ongoing basis (even though the product is designed for repeat usage).

Those are two key issues for me, and ones I don’t think a growth hacker can fix. When evaluating the “quality of growth” early on in a company, I look for companies that are growing largely through organic channels (in other words, 85 to 90 percent or more of growth is being driven by free channels). That sort of growth tends to mean that users are choosing to tell others about how great a product is. I also look at a company’s engagement metrics over time to see if users are trying a product or service out once and leaving, or if they’re choosing to engage with the product over and over again.

Given what I heard from this entrepreneur, I strongly suggested that he improve both word-of-mouth endorsements and user engagement before trying to accelerate growth. Once the product is growing organically, and users are voluntarily engaging with it on an ongoing basis, then, sure, by all means hire a growth hacker to help ramp things up.

rocket3The problem right now is that many companies seem to be operating under the total misconception that growth fixes all. That leads them to bring on self-proclaimed “growth hackers” who rapidly acquire more customers through spammy viral techniques, but when those customers don’t engage, or — worse — have bad experiences and tell their friends about it, that growth curve crashes. By that point your growth hacker is on to his or her next gig, and you’re left with what you had to begin with: a product that either hasn’t found its audience yet or hasn’t yet given people a reason to engage with it.

So if you’re thinking about hiring a growth hacker, find someone who’s a great product person and who really knows user experience and understands user value, not just someone who knows all the tricks to ratcheting up your growth curve.

To Succeed, Growth Hacking Has To Focus More On Product Development Than Marketing

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This is how Google is killing the Web


On our Desktops & Smart-devices, everything is just one touch away. So why on the browser do we solely rely on Search?

For the past 7 years I have been on an ongoing search to present the best new sites, services & apps to my readers. Every week I find at least one site that blows my mind. I get excited about how this service could evolve into something big, it’s potential to grow into a billion dollar business, and how it can change the face of the Internet.

But you won’t find these great sites on the first page of Google results—you might not find them on the first 10. As a result, these services, some of them genuinely life-changing, get lost in the dark recesses of the Internet. Even when you find these gems, you probably won’t think to access them the next time you log on. Their biggest challenge is finding a large enough audience to create a habit around their product.

Creating a habit around a product is limited by the way we browse the Web.

Take a moment and think about the browser user experience. It hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years and since the days of Netscape, we’ve been confined to a search box. We need to know exactly what we’re looking for, either through a search or by typing in the exact web address.

This experience is based on an intention, one that is transformed into a search query. But what happens when we don’t have a specific intention in mind? These moment of non-intention define our daily Internet routine.

How many times a day do you procrastinate with one of the big services available to you? Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, NYTimes or HuffPost you’re limited to only the “top of mind” services that pop into your head at that specific moment. When we want to shop online, one or two sites pop into our mind. When we’re looking for news, a few publications pop into our mind. With any given topic, you can usually think of one or two services that provide it.

But what about the hundreds of other websites available in that specific topic? While you certainly don’t need hundreds of options, it’s useful to branch out and explore different directions (especially when they are just a few clicks away). Even when we do find useful alternatives to our tried-and-true sites, it’s difficult to form a habit and start using them more often.

This habit is formed by bookmarking the site, adding it to a list, sending an email to yourself about the site, sharing it on Twitter, or whatever you do to try and save an interesting service. No matter what you do, when you need it, you can’t find it. You are still limited.

Lets say you came across an interesting website for boutique hotels called ‘Stayful’. You save and share it somewhere online. A few months later, you have a trip to plan. Now begins the search through endless lists in order to find that one service whose name you can’t even remember. This is no easy feat for most people.

This is where Google reaps the benefits. Chances are, you won’t find this site again while searching for a keyword such as “boutique hotels”. You start refining the search, all the while seeing tons of ads and maybe you even click on a few. Google makes a profit. Sounds legit right?

One might say, including me, that Google provides such a great service. I don’t mind if they make a profit over it. Of course… but what I ask for, don’t force me into searching, provide me with an easy way to access my Web.

Just take a brief look at all of our smart devices.

On our desktops. Every application is just a click away…

Microsoft / Windows 8

On our tablets, all our apps are just one touch away.

Google Nexus / Android 4.2

On our smartphones, just a touch away…

Apple iPhone / iOS 7

So why on the browser are we confined to a search box?

The browser experience is deliberately forcing us into searching everything. These browsers make most of their profit by keeping this experience alive. So, who cares? The ones who care are the millions of startups, businesses and content providers out there, trying to get the world’s attention.

Apple, Google & Microsoft built amazing app stores for mobile and desktop. They made it as simple as possible for their users to access these products. However, on the Web, they don’t have control over what we are doing. So they provide us with a lousy experience. Forcing the user to only a handful of websites that he can remember by heart.

Due to the difficulty in marketing a Web product, developers turn to the platforms provided by these companies because they offer an “easier” marketing platform. This provides the companies with full control over these profitable platforms. They control which apps are approved, they control the profits and they control the content.

This control over our lives is dangerous!

Before we look at net neutrality issues over bandwidth, we need to look at our favorite companies and their control over our virtual world. The Web should be an open platform allowing anyone to enjoy and take part in.

We deserve a better browsing experience; an experience as easy and intuitive as we have with our smart devices.

“You affect the world by what you browse.” Tim Berners-Lee

I’m the co-founder & CTO of Wibki. Our aim is to advance browsing into a new era. You can read more about our vision here.

If you like this post, hit “Recommend.” ↓

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From Lawyer to Startups


How’d you get that job?

That’s a question I’ve wanted to ask hundreds of people over the last twenty years. I would’ve loved to have heard their stories to help me make better decisions when managing my own career. In the last several years, for the first time, many people have asked me that question. And, I’ve been answering it every time, often in person, even when it comes from someone I don’t know, because me five years ago would have done anything to meet me today. But, that approach isn’t scaling well. So, to help the many people who are figuring it out like I was, here’s the short version.

But before I tell this story, I have to thank the people who came before me and built this country in which we prosper. One of them is my grandfather, who survived the Holocaust while saving lives, found his way to America, and then literally built parts of this country working construction to support his family. Because of that, I received a great education and could try out a few careers until I found a job that was challenging, fulfilling, and meaningful. I can’t overstate how grateful I am for the opportunities and happiness that I have. I don’t take a day for granted. And, I try to work hard, keep perspective, and give more than I get.

And now back to the story…

After working at some of the biggest companies in finance, consulting, and advertising, I went to law school and then followed the parade to a big law firm. I planned to work there for a couple of years, repay as much as possible of my $150,000+ in loans, then move on. My experience was better than I expected, so I stayed for longer than I thought I would. During my fifth year there, I decided it was time to transition into something that was more interesting and meaningful, something in a growing business, where I could learn more about the internet and technology, and feel like I’m building something and moving the world forward.

Most of my professional experience was in the law, including employment law, so I first tried applying for mid to senior level jobs in law and human resources at startups in NYC. I didn’t really want to be in either of those departments, but I also didn’t want to start over. I figured I’d start there. I’d prove myself. Then, I’d transition.

I wrote typical, forgettable cover letters. I attached my resume with good schools, grades, and jobs. An application that I was so sure would make me special. The kind of application I’ve now seen a thousand times.

Dear Company, here is a narrative restatement of my resume. Attached please find my awesome resume in resume format. Please hire me. Sincerely, Jared Cohen

I got the response I deserved: almost none.

While I felt like I was getting nowhere, I was actually making progress in a sense. The process of researching and applying had convinced me that I’d be happy and fit in well at a startup. So, I decided I was going to do whatever it took to get a job. I experimented with cover letters and resumes, making them more creative and less typical. And, I applied to almost every entry level job at any startup on either coast. If they had no jobs listed, I applied anyway. I figured I’d prove myself and work my way up.

Eventually, I got one.

I took an almost 90% pay cut, packed two suitcases, and moved from New York to San Francisco. As I sat in the back seat of the taxi to the airport that morning watching the sun rise, it became very real. I felt like I was watching someone else’s stupid decisions.

The first month or so at the job I was reading documents and typing data into Google spreadsheets. But I quickly moved up in the company. I built and managed a data team of twenty people and joined the executive team.

I also decided I was going to try coding. I told the engineers, who I had become friends with, that I wanted to learn and had always liked working with spreadsheets. After they stopped laughing, they directed me to Ruby and some resources.

I dove in and quickly fell in love with it. I dedicated nearly every spare second to teaching myself about computer science and web development. The engineers coached me, and celebrated when I wrote out Fizz Buzz on the white board without any trouble. I started grabbing engineering tickets out of the assigning system and doing them. I ended up spending half of my time at work on product and engineering.

A year later, it was time to move on. I had learned so much. My resume had been transformed. I applied for product and engineering roles in NYC. I even got a couple without too much trouble. I was about to accept one when a friend told me Kickstarter was looking for a Director of Operations. I applied, interviewed, and got the job.

My first couple of assignments were to figure out payments so we could expand internationally, and figure out what to do about our shrinking office space. While no one told me to, I also took out the garbage when it was full, killed mice when I could catch them, replaced the doorknob when it was broken, and plunged the toilet when it was clogged. As people began to see me less as the scary corporate weirdo, and more as someone who was sincere and helpful, I started doing so much more in so many areas. It was amazing.

In the last three years, Kickstarter built a payments system, went international, bought a beat-up old pencil factory, built a building, and has become a smooth running, growing, profitable company.

And, I’ve found a career that’s challenging, fulfilling, and meaningful. My transition is complete.

If you have any feedback or questions about this post, please comment or Tweet at me.

Coming soon: the lessons I learned during this transition and how to do it more quickly and less painfully.

disclaim.in

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If You Can’t Explain it Simply


Discovering your product identity beyond formulas.

There’s an identity crisis in the startup world. Startups have absolutely no idea what they do any more, or at least that’s how it seems. There are far too many startups using the “X forY” formula for describing themselves, causing an apparent lack of individuality in the industry. If you can’t describe yourself without name dropping other startups, do you really know what you’re selling? And if you don’t know, who does? And how is your customer supposed to know? It’s truly awful to think that the amazing startups out there, which represent such unique work by such amazing talent are selling themselves so short to their investors and most importantly, their customers.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

If you can’t describe what you do in a simple manner, you really don’t understand what you do. Understanding the “what” of what you do is easy. That’s where the “X for Y” formula comes in and is relatively effective. It’s the feature list, the market you’re in. But selling a product using the what is incredibly ineffective. If someone’s looking to buy your product, chances are they already have an idea of what you do. Determining and selling on the “why” and “how” are so much more effective. Standing for things, be it good design, simplicity, a particular experience or something else is what customers buy into.

The most successful companies in the world don’t sell the sum of their parts. They sell on the experience, the individuality. If BMW sold cars by advertising that they’re a car manufacturer first and foremost, would they sell many cars? Why would one buy a BMW over an Audi, or even a Chevy. They’re all car manufacturers, what separates them? Now, what if they sold cars on the premise they’re the “Rolex for Automobiles”? It’s more descriptive, but what separates a BMW from other luxury car manufacturers? Why would one buy a BMW over a cheaper Cadillac? The reason BMW sells so many cars is because they don’t sell cars. They sell the“experience” of their cars. Nest doesn’t sell thermostats. They sell feelings. Apple doesn’t sell computers, they sell an ideal. Facebook doesn’t sell information on your friends, they feed our nosiness and curiosity.

If Facebook sold itself to initial users as a “Better Connected Myspace”, how far do you think they’d have gone? Sure, using another company to describe what you do is easy and effective at painting a quick sketch. But it doesn’t go far, it doesn’t motivate action or paint a portrait of your brand and the service you offer. It doesn’t illustrate what makes you different. It doesn’t answer the most important question in marketing. The “Why”. Why should people want your product? Why do you exist? And more importantly, why do you deserve my business?

By not answering the why, you’re producing a dictionary definition of what you do. Remember, dictionary definitions are almost always boring. They don’t sell products using dictionary definitions. You become just another company doing X. If you can’t convey to the customer what you’re doing differently, can’t sell them on what you represent, and can’t find a way to convey all this to them simply, you have no idea what you’re selling. And frankly, you don’t deserve their business.

When customers buy your product, they should be subscribing to something unique, original. They should be buying it from someone with passion for what they’re doing. If the best you can do is tell them “You’re the X for industry Y” you’re not trying hard enough. You don’t deserve their business, and in many cases, they won’t give it to you. Anyone can combine ideas, anyone can be an “X for Y”. To survive, you have to be something more. You have to sell an experience, you have to sell something unique. Not unique as in not having existed before or being an entirely new type of product, but a unique experience. BMW wasn’t the first car company. Even if you are the X forY, what does that make you? How are you really different from all the other Ys out there? What does that mean to your customers? If you can’t answer those questions, you’re either going in the wrong direction or haven’t thought hard enough about it.

If you haven’t figured this out yet, and it’s okay if you haven’t, think hard about it. Determine what makes you unique, what takes you beyond the “X for Y” formula into something that truly deserves to exist and makes a lasting impression on customers. Make that your mantra. Your customers deserve it, and so do you.

PS: An easy way to measure this is by how many people hate you. If you’re not making anyone mad, you’re probably not standing for anything. Look at the brands mentioned and think of the number of people who absolutely despise BMW, Apple and Facebook. Whether you like them or not, they’re successful because they represent something greater than the sum of their parts.

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Start upper from Toronto. Developer, designer and drinker of too much Diet Coke. I also like trains. Twitter @connerfritz. Web www.connerfritz.com

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Information is overrated


Amazon delivers.

Amazon delivers.

Communications as Experience Design: Memory and Information.

As communicators, we often mistakenly think our role is to manage the flow of information. We think, “If only the world knew,” and so we focus our energy, communications and strategy on relaying information. We forget that people, for years, have outsourced and automated their factual and informational memories. Because we can. Why remember, when we can look up anything.

Communications as experience design is about creating memories.

We remember experiences. True brand is measured by the sum of all experiences, positive and negative, that people have with it. To design great experiences start by being conscious of impressions you’re creating. How do you make people feel? That’s the first step to the necessary analysis of every single touchpoint of contact, of your overall company’s interface with clients, vendors, employees, competitors. That’s the first step to finding your own feet and, as a company, standing for something.

Focus on communicating your truth, instead of covering the smell of decay with perfume. As a company, focus on creating great experiences and learn to care about people, because it’s just not optional anymore. It’s not enough to feed me information. Not enough to just have a great product.

Crash course on creating experiences

Here’s some examples of interesting ways to create experiences today:

  • Arcade Fire imposing dress code on concert goers — Arcade Fire asked their audiences to show up in “Formal attire or costume — MANDATORY. (Formal wear = suit, dress or fancy something)” Why? Because dressing up and taking photos is an integral part of the concert and Arcade Fire wants to give you a reason to dress up.
  • Dinner en blanc — white everything + food. Simple and beautiful concept, that is easy to communicate with visuals.
  • D.I.G.I.T by Teehan + Lax — visualization of how machines see humans, reflected right back at us. Beautifully done.
  • Starbucks baristas misspelling your name, or getting it right. Both experiences absolutely work and make Starbucks seem more human and fun. It makes people want to take photos.
  • Apple. The whole company is one unified, beautiful experience. Most of the time.

Transform your product into an experience. That’s how you create memories — the only thing that counts.

Written by

Elena Yunusov | Consultant: Communications, Experience design | HoHoTO & Toronto Maker Faire co-organizer | elena @ communicable.ca

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How We Reinvented NYC.gov


8 lessons from creating a government website that doesn’t feel like one

Mayor Mike Bloomberg recently unveiled the newly relaunched nyc.gov, the official website for the biggest city in the country. This was the site’s first redesign in a decade, and the new user experience is unlike any other government website out there. This was our goal.

Overhauling the website wasn’t simple: it has over one million pages, integrates with more than a dozen applications, and serves 35 million visitors a year. We learned an enormous amount in the process. And because I’ve discovered from conversations with digital leaders in other cities and across industries — media, finance, fashion — that our challenges were not unique, we’d like to share a few of the most important lessons that we learned.

  1. Your user is the center of the universe. Large organizations have a tendency to create websites in their own image. Over time, a digital platform can begin to reflect the company org chart or a list of product groups. But this doesn’t necessarily translate into your ideal user experience — as jargon and acronyms can replace common search terms, or information architecture becomes less intuitive. It is critical at the outset of any overhaul that everyone at the table agrees that the user comes first. It will also make your job much easier, as establishing this approach puts everyone on the same page for decision-making down the line.
  2. In God we trust, everyone else bring data. This is a favorite expression of Mayor Bloomberg, a deeply data-driven leader. Designing any digital experience can become an emotional debate, especially when you have lots of smart stakeholders at the table and a diverse and varied user base. Data is a great tonic to subjective conversations. For the City of New York, traffic metrics and search analytics informed our information architecture, navigation, terminology, and content placement on the homepage. For evidence, check out the “Today” bar that displays Alternate Side Parking, schools and garbage collection status on NYC.gov. This information is the top driver of traffic to our website, so now it’s front and center, and reducing call volume and cost in our customer service operation. And we’ve embraced data post-launch to measure success and constantly analyze user response.
  3. Make mobile your first consideration. Another insight gleaned from our data is that 25% of traffic to NYC.gov comes from mobile devices, and that number is constantly increasing. Regardless of what you are building on the web, mobile will be key to the future of your growth. For NYC.gov, this metric led us to create the first fully responsive government website in the US. Whether you are on a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer, you’ll find a great experience when you access NYC.gov. It’s harder to build this way up front, but it’s the right investment if you’re serious about delivering a consistent, user-centric experience. And long term it’s also smarter, as we will maintain a single code base that responds flexibly to how our users access NYC.gov.
  4. Focus on service. For years, nyc.gov and 311 Online, the City’s customer service platform, were considered separate products. But when we looked at the data, we realized that most people were going to NYC.gov in search of 311 info and services. This led us to a no-brainer: deeply integrating 311 customer service tools for the first time on the NYC.gov. Now users can start a 311 request right from the homepage with the accordion-style 311 Booker, something almost no other city enables. Our focus on service also led to the launch of My Neighborhood, a tool that lets users enter an address and instantly find police precinct, school district, library, garbage collection schedule and community board info.
  5. Don’t skimp on search. On NYC.gov, we found that search is the primary way that our users navigate the website. To overhaul internal search, we leveraged Google’s search technology and worked with experts to optimize it for our users. Now search results are more closely in line with what our users want, and we are constantly tweaking our search to improve the experience.
  6. Every page is your homepage. We found that most users arrive on City government content pages primarily from search engines like Google, not through our homepage NYC.gov. With this in mind, we created a universal navigation that assumes every page is your first entry to NYC.gov. For example, the footer displays a changing list of top 311 requests, so that if you haven’t found what you’re looking for by the time you reach the bottom of the page, the site might guess the reason for your visit. And if you’re still confused, a second search field is waiting for you.
  7. Show your users what’s in it for them. We transformed our storytelling process for the new NYC.gov, moving away from traditional press releases and embracing the content formats that work best online. On our homepage, this means larger visuals, live video streaming, shortened summaries, bigger fonts and a call-to-action for every story that helps users understand how an announcement can add value to their life. To achieve this, we appointed our first-ever NYC.gov Editor in Chief, Amanda Konstam, who leads content strategy in partnership with the Press Office, agencies, and our Digital Communications Director Ivy Li.
  8. Get fresh perspectives from the smartest people you can find. To kick off the process of overhauling NYC.gov, we hosted a hackathon — the first of any city government. To attract talented developers and designers, we partnered with tech and creative educational institution General Assembly. After 48 hours, the 12 prototypes created by over 100 participants challenged our conventions and helped us to visualize NYC.gov anew as a platform for customer service.Learning from the hackathon, we realized that it was critical to engage design experts with experience and independent perspectives to fully overhaul the website, and through a competitive process selected Brooklyn-based HUGE to lead the charge. The result is a government website that doesn’t look or act like one, which we hope helps to set a new standard for digital civic engagement.

Our work has just begun. In the next phases of NYC.gov you’ll see the launch of agency websites in a new, fully responsive template, and a toolkit that helps New Yorkers get more out of their City. For now, we are grateful to the hundreds of individuals who contributed in ways small and big to the overhaul of NYC.gov, and remain committed to making sure it serves the residents of the greatest city on earth.

Written by

Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York. Founder of GroundReport. Committed to tech in the public service.

News

It’s the experience, stupid!


When Is the Right Time to Start a Company?

In 1999, when I was selling my first ever company to Prokom (one of the largest quoted IT companies at the time) after literally a couple of months, I wasn’t jumping for joy…

A few days later, when 80 thousand zloty made its way to my account, I figured I’ve simply deserved it. I was 25 years old and I really believed the whole world stood open before me. “What do you do for a living, my dear son?” “Well, I work on the Internet”, I used to reply, bringing astonishment during family dinners. Nobody knew what I was doing but the money (already on my account) was impressive.

I was 25 and barely little experience with simple jobs. I concluded that this kind of money isn’t that huge (since I made it so fast). Back then, there were no such popular IT blogs or the cult of startup culture. With the money I made by selling the Nuta.pl shares, I bought a car and joyfully blew the rest. Live fast and spend money even faster.

“Portal headers were announcing astronomical valuations of Web ventures. And we were just the ones developing one of these ventures at that time. And what plans we had!”

Apart from the money for our salaries (quite high for the realities back then: around 7 thousand net), we received around 1 million zloty for setting up the company. We rented a neat office, employed about 8 people full-time and were blowing the investor’s cash happily.

The editors traveled to the UK to conduct one-page interviews with stars and we ourselves started selling CDs and concert tickets. At last, we “were in the show business, baby”.

We had no idea as to how to make money, apart from the magical mantra: “we’re sure to sell the advertising”. 1999 was a time in Poland when there was no single leader in terms of music sites and Nuta.pl had a chance to become the largest in its kind.

We (me and Wojtek Chojnacki) used to play “Unreal” online almost professionally while the sales department arranged meetings with clients and the editorial staff brew up the news. Dolce vita.

Soon after, the American market collapsed (or the dotcom bubble burst, depending on the definition assumed) and our investor concluded that we have to economize. We all politely left the company, leaving our friend as an operative in order to reduce costs (the investor would otherwise cut off the financing).

I was 26 years old and had experience in selling a website to an investor in the trade (Prokom has also invested in Wirtualna Polska) and creating one of the largest music sites (a few things of our invention were well ahead of their time and they became the standard in the trade no sooner than after a few years). I just lost a venture, my living money and I “earned” debts.

In conversations on setting up companies, there is a dispute that constantly returns once in a while: “who has a bigger chance of establishing a prospering and profitable company — a young founder in his early twenties or an old hand way in his late thirties?”

We presumably read the same blogs and portals, we’re fascinated in stock market debuts of the same ventures that eventually reach extortionate valuations and their founders become billionaires.

Let me have my say in this discussion basing on my case’s example — I’m sure that in 1999 I would be capable (not only me, by the way — there were four of us Internet Wizards partners back then) of blowing every kind of money.

We had no experience and no true leader, we didn’t know the market realities nor the investing backstage and intricacies. We were green bogeys who were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. It seemed to us that the sun rose and set just for us.

Now I’ll need to start generalizing. If somebody asked me whether I believed that a 20-something year-old could establish an awesome company, I’d answer “yes”. Whether I believed that he’d run it, avoid a whole load of mistakes and bring it to full bloom, I’d answer “rather not”.

From my experience, I’d say that a person in his twenties hasn’t had his important stages of life such as serious relationships, starting a family and having a child (or children).

A person in his twenties hasn’t experienced his parents’ death, betrayal caused by money and slow dissolution of ties with his friends of young years. He has no key decisions such as moving to another city, taking up a job or making his and his close ones’ living under his belt.

Usually at this age, there is no possibility of assessing (or acquiring) the skills related to responsibility for employees, maintaining a company and dedication to the common goal’s good.

Without such experience, an individual entering the world of adults, their games and problems not as much stands on a losing position as he simply starts off with an enormous deficit.

I recently turned 39 and now I see numerous issues in a different light. I have great business partners, a family and a child — I am happy both professionally and in family terms.

“Looking back at the 25-year-old Artur, I smile and feel slightly sorry for him — the boy will have to take a beating a couple of times. Oh my, that’s gonna hurt.”

Nonetheless, this is just what makes us better people and lets us develop — the experience we gain on the battlefield called life. Not book stories, not wisdom and quotes of Great People We Read Books About.

Why am I writing this? Because you might be in such a moment of your life right now. Maybe you failed at something, it got messed up. You have the feeling of defeat and only see the negative side of it. You think you’re not suited for it, that others are better and everyone around you is laughing at your slip-ups.

Screw that, to say the least. Maybe you didn’t make it now because you don’t have the right experience yet? Don’t give up and do your thing — the most valuable thing is the lesson you get from your own falls and rises.

I hate such neat formulas and quotes but what I’m going to quote here is the best and most true: “just stay hungry, stay foolish, my friend.”

Written by

Dad, entrepreneur, fire starter. Founder & CEO of Fokus (getfokus.com — smarter analytics)

Published January 6, 2014
News

Working at the World’s biggest startup


How IBM is hacking its way into the future inspired by entrepreneurs and startups

The background

Big corporations are taking a new approach to innovation that originates from the tech startup-scene. Think about some of the hottest and most growth aggressive startups out there like Dropbox, Evernote, Airbnb, Facebook, Spotify, Podio, Zappos (and even Motorola in its new shape). Companies coming out of nowhere and seriously threatening established businesses.

The common determinator for those successful companies is growth hacking. The idea of growth hacking is bascially to make stuff people actually want to buy and share with their friends and family and then make it easy for them to do so — building virality into the product instead of as an add-on. In practice it is done by constantly, learning iterating and developing new elements based on user feedback collected through analytics that derives new insights.

I like to refer to it as data-driven creativity.

The mindset of growth hacking makes it easy for brands to get closer to the customers. As more and more products and services have some sort of digital component or touch, usage of it can be tracked, learned from and optimized unbiased. By actually understanding what customers like about your offering presents the opportunity to not only be more creativity and make a bigger impact, but also make greater products and in the end happier customers.

If you study the concept and mindset of Growth Hacking you will find that it is most often applied to startups.
The reason for this is simple. They do not have the money or experience to do what is consider traditional marketing. That is spending millions on advertisements and being influenced and restricted by textbook thoughts. Meanwhile they achieve better results and ROI than companies that has the luxury of million dollar budgets and they manage to compete against major and well-established players within their industries.

What if you took the very same mindset and techniques and applied it to a major corporation like IBM?

In the heart of New York City, the center of some of the most exciting developments within technology happening right now, on Madison Avenue we opened the IBM Design Lab (now M&C Lab) in 2012. The perfect place to redefine how marketing is done – taking it back to its core; whatever gets more customers can be considered marketing.

As the discipline of marketing is shifting from gut-centric to data-centric, but still with people at its core (not just treating them as numbers) we have approached a new way to corporate marketing. Design Lab was established as a joint-venture between the CMO and CIO parts of the organization recognizing the importance of a cross-organizational partnership as data and analytics are becoming a part of the main foundation of marketing.

“The Lab”, as it is called amongst my colleagues, functions as an incubator for internal startups (scrum teams) working on a variety of digital projects. Each scrum team consists of different skills like content strategists, designers, developers, information architects, data analysts, social business managers, along with experts of any other relevant business area required for the project. They are given almost total autonomy to spot new trends, adjust to changes and try new ideas, while focusing on designing experiences that enhance the customers’ interaction with IBM and ultimately form a scalable system of engagement. Working in this fashion minimizes the traditional big company-lead time and makes the teams very agile, similar to many startups.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good!

The teams deliver the minimal viable product that meets the need, then measure and improve repeatedly. By treating marketing as code it becomes about constantly testing, tracking, iterating and improving ‘till we make something anyone would actually care about. By thinking small, making it work and then thinking big, the enourmous gambles that typically comes with big budget launches and campaigns are not only unnecessary, but also counterproductive. It removes the pressure and adds nimbleness to the way we work, but most importantly it gives people the freedom to experiment without the fear of failing.

To get growth hacking right we needed to break with the antiquated notions of what is or is not marketing and understand that what may seem like a product development strategy is also marketing. By building marketing into the products and services we launch make them more effective than bolting it on post-launch. An example that always comes to mind is how DropBox in less than three years became a multi-billion dollar brand.

This couldn’t be further from the heydays of Mad Men, billboards and celebrity endorsment and yet the Design Lab is located on Madison Avenue, which is a signal of the changes hitting the marketing discipline and the need for adopting new ways.

As Ryan Holiday puts it: The future of marketing is simply going back to its roots, where whatever works is marketing.

Next step: from product to experience

The next evolution in growth hacking will be the move from product-centric to experience-centric; focusing on creating great and shareable customer experiences. As customers’ decision making becomes increasingly more dynamic and complex, the holistic brand experience takes center stage and companies need to adapt by enabling their organization to engage with customers in each moments of truth that follows.

These moments are no longer limited to a single channel. Customers discover, consider, purchase and advocate on social, mobile, web and in real life, but they don’t treat any one channel the same. Each channel is leveraged differently and satisfy different needs. Depending on the stage in the decision making different touch points occur and presents the opportunity for a brand to influence the customer. It is imperative to get those engagement opportunities right, regardless of source or shape, as they affect the next steps and impressions of customers and ultimately decide whether a customer will move along in the brand’s favor.

The challenge presents itself when you look at most organizations where different groups own different parts of the experience and the customer journey. The mobile experience is handled seperatly from the social experience and none of them are connected with the web experience and you can add customer service as well as any offline experience. Usually they are developed independently of each other. The big issue of course is that customers only see one brand! So when the different channels work independently of one another the experience becomes broken and there is no way to create a customer journey that is optimized for the moments of truth. The challenge will be to create an organization that enables the creation of a unified and frictionless experience in every moments of truth no matter the context.

To deliver this takes vision, courage and to marry organizational stakeholders (does breaking down silos sound familiar?). It is nothing new, but forward-thinking organizations are already doing interesting choices that leads in that direction. Some appoint Chief Digital Officers (CDO), but there are different ways to the end-goal of an unified brand experience and engagement. By having multi-skilled scrum teams co-located in the Design Lab working on parts of the holistic experience of the IBM brand sharing the same vision and with the ability to be very agile and change with the speed of social, I believe we are paving the way for a new type of customer experience.

A model that combines the CDO’s vision and ability to bridge organizational groups with the ability of something similar to the Design Lab to execute and iterate fast is where the future lies for customer engagement. In the future these will be the owners of the entire customer lifecycle optimizing and enhancing every touch point along the customer journey, not just online but offline too. It cannot be a someone, a person or team that is bound to a specific function, but it needs to be someone that bridges internal interests, while still focusing on what really matters; the customers and their experience with the brand.

Thank you

Written by

Social Business Manager @IBM Mind like a growth hacker. Learner. WaIks in orange pants. Tech geek. Optimist. The 80,311,717,044th person born. Views are my own.