Carrots, sticks and chocolates

Greetings.

Hopefully you have enjoyed the last of our Bank Holidays, at least for a wee while. Seems like April and May have been one long holiday. Now maybe we can get back to wealth creating before the summer beaches beckon.

For those of you still wondering-yep, we still have a hole in our High St with no signs of a suture being imminent. Ye Gods, the Japanese have re-built not just a motorway but their entire country in the time these taxpayer-funded Navvies have taken.

And the big question of the week-did you get your Olympic tickets?

As you know Cicero is a big fan of brands which ruthlessly demonstrate great customer service. And if you have ever been in his proximity when he has experienced brand-destroying bad customer service, you will immediately get a sense of his attitude towards poor customer service. It is not pretty and his feelings can be measured on the Richter scale.

Now you may not know this but Cicero is also a big fan of gowf, or golf as it is now known in these parts.

And a few weeks back Cicero’s aged amicus with whom he traverses the fairways was experiencing trouble with the machine with which he transports his golf implements around the course. In short, it was broken. Something to do with wheel bearings which as you know is a bit of a mystery to Cicero.

Cicero’s amicus dropped an e-mail to the manufacturer of said machine and within two days he was sent a replacement part, free of charge. No quibbling. No attempting to wriggle out. No charge. Brilliant. Cicero and his amicus were well and truly amazed.

That is what you call great customer service and it was all the better for being a complete surprise.

Cicero was musing on this experience when he read an article by one almost as learned as Cicero who was describing his experience with a boot manufacturer, Shipton and Heneage. It is entirely possible that you will not have heard of them but you can learn lots from them. Cicero hadn't and did.

For a start the marketing copy on their website is brilliant. It has real personality and conveys a great sense of what the brand is about, its heritage and its pedigree. It might only make and sell boots but this company knows a lot about the kind of brand it wants to be and delivers this in spades.

But the brand really got going when the boots arrived for it contained more than boots. For inside the box were two pairs of socks and a shoe brush. Another brand which seeks to quietly delight its customers. And what a great way to welcome you to the brand.

For many other businesses at this point, when you have handed over your sesterces, you stop being a prospect and become a customer and this is the point when all niceties go out of the window. It is almost like ‘now you have joined us we can stop trying’. Imagine that. Do you know anyone who behaves like that? But this is not the Shipton and Heneage way, obviously.

Someone once told Cicero that brands can motivate customers in three ways-by giving you a carrot to reward your behaviour; by applying the stick to make you lose out if you don’t act; or to offer a chocolate as a pleasant surprise for responding.

Providing chocolate is the most unusual type of incentive but it will get your brand talked about. And can you imagine any of the big service brands with whom we interact every day of every week behaved in a way we weren’t expecting? Nope. Quelle surprise.

So what kind of brand do you want to be known as-a carrot, stick or chocolate brand? If you go for chocolate, your brand can become very distinctive. And talked about.

Is it only me.........but this is becoming like ‘Carry On, doctor’.

I have been following with keen interest and mounting exasperation the debate around the future of the NHS. Have you?

Now it seems that many out there, supposedly speaking on our behalf, which is code for protecting their own vested interests, are getting their Jockeys in a knot because the Two Caesars (or at least one of them) is supposedly keen on introducing competition and the private sector into the NHS.

What is wrong with that?

Why exactly is competition such a hated word in the lexicon of the NHS? I know that NHS employees are State Apparatchiks but some of them are quite well educated and so should surely see the merits of competition. Are they so afraid of competition that they fear for their jobs? It might be worth pointing out that where there is no competition you end up with Sepp Blatter and FIFA. Do we really want that for the NHS? I think not.

And what is wrong with the introduction of the private sector into the NHS? One argument put forward by the Defenders of the Vested Interest is that the introduction of the private sector means money leaving the NHS. Now let me point one thing out and this might come as a shock to those of you of a more statist dirigiste persuasion-money leaves the NHS and flows to the private sector every minute of every day. Have you got over that shock of that yet?

Drug companies? Private sector. The people who run the computer systems? Private sector. Manufacturers of X ray equipment, CRT scanning equipment, bandages and elastoplasts? Private sector.

And there is good reason for this-it keeps cost down.

Now it might only be me but in my book the NHS only has to deliver against three key principles-it keeps us healthy; it does this at lowest possible cost; and it is free at point of delivery. End of. And if that means it has to use the private sector and introduce competition so be it.

And may I suggest that no one really cares unless of course you are an NHS Apparatchik who fears they won’t be able to stand the heat but is reluctant to leave the kitchen.

So my message to the Two Caesars-just get on with sorting out the NHS, it needs it. The time for listening and pandering to the Vested Interest Groups is over. We elected you to lead, so lead.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.