Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

How to Create Engaging Customer Experience Through Social Media

Denise Shiffman
Venture Essentials
www.ageofengage.com/blog

Denise Shiffman is founder and principal of the strategic marketing and innovation consultancy Venture Essentials (www.ageofengage.com/blog). She is also the award-winning author of "The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today's Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture." In her 23-year marketing and management career, she has launched over thirty products responsible for more than $2 billion in revenue, marketed pioneering computer and Web technologies, and reinvented the corporate brand of a Fortune 500 company.

In this podcast, Denise tells us how companies can differentiate themselves by effectively engaging customers with social media. She shares her thoughts about the pitfalls organizations should avoid when implementing social media, and how to measure the success of engagement.

Denise blogs at www.ageofengage.com/blog and can be reached at [email protected].

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Listen to this podcast.

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Avis: No Longer Trying Harder

You just can't make this stuff up:

I walked into the Avis Rental Car Office at Boston's Logan Airport yesterday. The customer service rep very efficiently handled my reservation and asked me if I'd like to get a GPS for the car. I told her no, but I would like a map.

"We no longer do maps," she said.

"What? You don't offer maps? Is that because you want people to rent GPS systems instead?" I asked.

"Oh no," she said, quite seriously. "We're trying to save money, so we stopped printing maps. The economy is so bad, we're laying off a lot of people. We're all going to lose our jobs soon!"

Saving money by not printing maps? How sad that an industry leader like Avis has stooped this low. As I got in the car, I wondered if they'd also checked the air in the tires lately, or changed the oil and, when I had to stop suddenly, how recently they'd tested the brakes.

Looking around the rental car office, at first glance I noticed at least 4-5 different printed pieces that could have been eliminated to save money, but instead Avis chose to eliminate maps.This is not a way to make customers feel warm and fuzzy and secure when renting a car in New England in winter. When I hit a traffic jam on the Mass Pike  a half hour later, I thought how nice it would have been to have a local map to find an alternative route.

It's a shame that Avis doesn't do maps anymore. It looks like Trying Harder is out of vogue these days.