Why is the United States Postal Service facing loyalty issues?

Designing Loyalty: An Evening with IDEO

Ryan Jacoby led the group through a case study of sorts: “Return to Sender: Why is the United States Postal Service facing loyalty issues?” Ryan mentioned that the best way to see how you design for loyalty is to put the principles/ideas into practice and just do it. IDEO gave themselves a challenge to try to make the USPS a more trusted, integral part of people’s and businesses’ lives today and in the future. Why — someone from the group asked — don’t we look at USPS workers as heroes, dedicated people who shuttle our letters and packages around the country in rain, sleet, and snow? Whatever happened to the notion of the pony express, and why don’t kids dress up like postal workers for Halloween instead of just firemen and policemen?

Before setting the group loose to brainstorm on ways to help the USPS become a more integral and trusted part of people’s lives, Ryan tossed out some ideas about why the USPS has lost its loyal following. The post office, he explains, is being valued less and less as a community destination, especially in urban and suburban environments where other resources exist. Also, technology is rapidly changing the concepts of communication and correspondence. Worst still — at least for the post office — people now have a slew of options for sending goods, services, and information. How can the USPS compete?

To move the USPS brand to the right place — back into our hearts — the post office will need to deliver on a bigger promise. Based on the crowd feedback, the USPS needs to be about more than just mail – conveying a new or continued relevance with people. Why not offer automated postal and stamp machines (even at airport security check-ins); a “forever” stamp that travels with an individual throughout life, allowing complete ease of use; or, simply, a stronger Web presence and improved service experience? Could these idea build trust with people?

The worksheet from the event can be downloaded as a PDF from the IDEO website. Also, follow the discussion on Facebook, where people are sharing answers to, What am I loyal to and why?

The Reach of Loyalty

How do you access someone’s loyalty when there’s no way to get on-the-ground information from them directly? Amanda Kramer, a senior brand manager with Johnnie Walker at Diageo, faces this every day. She explains that spirits companies face strict laws that can vary state by state.

For Johnnie Walker, building customer loyalty comes from bringing in on-the-ground experts — “whiskey masters” — who can help the company “create impact at the right time in someone’s life.” “That self-reported data, is the best ROI that we can do in our industry,” Amanda said, explaining that the relationship between the whiskey masters and customers also goes a long way in establishing strong brand loyalty.

Starting Up Loyalty

David Hung is the co-founder and the VP heading operations and customer care at Peek, a startup company with an inexpensive service and device for getting email on the go. As a relatively new company, Hung says loyalty means “strong word of mouth.” “Identity — stylish, smart, and affordable — is what started it all for Peek,” but it’s a “social network of Peeksters” that keeps the company’s thousands of customers loyal.

Hung says Peek’s whole premise is “to keep things simple” (like a 30-second setup for both the service and the device) and let “users help and represent each other.” “We even encourage walk-ins,” Hung laughs, adding that he and Amol Sarva, the company’s founder, actually answer support questions. Later this year, one of Peek’s staff will open his loft to any New York Peeksters interested in coming to the company gathering.

Aside from easy access to the company, Hung says Peek gives loyal followers special access and a truly unique experience through organic efforts like “crash test projects” and “super Peeksters.” With  both of these examples, think beta testers on steroids. David assured us that there is more to come from Peek and that given their competition they have to work harder than even to address the needs of their users.

Expanding Out Loyalty

As vice president of Emerging Media and Technology at Scholastic Inc., Jesse Soleil leads the 86-year-old book publisher in blending new media with old media. When it comes to loyalty, Jesse is faced with a long list of constituents: parents, administrators, kids, and teachers. That latter group, the teachers, is what the company first catered to with a magazine back in 1923, and Scholastic has been careful never to step away from that loyal following. In fact, Jesse says, teachers are “the number one reason why Scholastic can sell to kids in the school.” They are thankful for their loyal following from teachers.

Still, Jesse says, “loyalty comes in many different packages,” and Scholastic is reaching out  to kids directly.  One way is through a new project that “hasn’t been done with a book yet,” according to Jesse. It tackles a big issue with loyalty: What to do when dedicated customers must go without their passion — like when author J. K. Rowling penned the last Harry Potter book Jesse says part of the answer is The 39 Clues, a series of 10 books available now. The series — part of Jesse’s push to meld print and digital media — will include Web-based games, collectors’ cards and cash prizes that starts a conversation directly with kids.

Loyalty as ‘Connectedness’

Ryan Jacoby, who leads the firms’ business design discipline globally and helps lead the New York location, called out some of the meanings of “loyalty,” including trust, addiction (the good and the bad), reliance, exhilaration, inspiration, incentive, and advocacy. Ryan asked the audience “What do you love? What do you recommend? Perhaps, even when you don’t own the product yourself? What brands do you hope that someone else would say are right for you?” Then he asked the audience: “What moments in your life would you consider to be part of your regular regimen or routine? What do you rely on? What are you addicted to? What do you do on a daily or weekly or monthly basis that you don’t even think about?” He then introduce where the night was going and where we would be playing with as a group. We find ourselves searching for positive addiction; exhilarating routine; and ultimately, designing for the overlap of trust and reliance.
Ryan then introduced Hilary Old, from EILEEN FISHER, a women’s clothing design company which was founded in 1984 and develops products that invite every woman to express her own style.

Hilary says at EILEEN FISHER loyalty is another word for “connectedness,” and it means being loyal to yourself and what you do, as well as your clients. The company believes that loyalty and loyal behaviors are related to the human experience of belonging and that loyalty grows from the seeds of meaningful connection.

Another tidbit from her talk was the notion of “accepting customers, not changing customers.” “We love our customer, just the way she is,” Hilary said, adding that she sees success in the way women refer to Eileen Fisher, the company founder, “on a first-name basis, as though they’ve met her at least twice.”

What Are You Loyal To and And Why?

IDEO’s Tom Eich and Michele Serro opened the evening with a brief history of IDEO in New York. Although IDEO has been doing business in New York for at least ten years, the design and innovation firm has only had an office in the city for two years. Tom says, after some small events to test things out, the team is settled in and ready to play host with a really relevant and important topic.

Michele kicked off the evening’s discussion by turning people to an insert in their guidebooks for the night. The insert read “my biggest loyalty challenge is {fill in the blank}. She asked the crowd to write down their question/challenge on the postcard and place it in a fishbowl on their way out so that IDEO could send their thoughts back to each person.  In addition to asking for the audiences’ biggest loyalty challenges, they also posed the question – what are you loyal to? But most people were already wearing their answers — buttons, chosen by each guest as they entered the IDEO space, with the words that inspired their loyalty. Some of the multicolored buttons stated the expected —family, friends, self, favored pet (insert “cat” or “dog”). Other words were surprises that, in a context of a person, made perfect sense — trees, eye cream, yoga, indie rock, little black dress, coffee, contact lenses, and the Boston Red Sox.

Designing for Loyalty: Where Behaviors and Attitudes Overlap

IDEO invited a group of eighty or so clients and friends to its New York office for an evening of conversation about designing for customer loyalty. The discussion is on-going — in this event blog and on IDEO’s Facebook “Big Conversations & Small Talk” group, where people are talking about their personal attachments, from “dreams, passions, and goals” to “brands.” For more background about what loyalty means for strategy and design, click to the IDEO website for an article and downloadable worksheet.