ResearchTalk

Earlier today we tweeted this Prezi presentation on alternatives to PowerPoint/Keynote for researchers that Tim Macer gave at a recent ASC conference.

It proved a popular link, so we thought we’d turn the presentation into an audio slideshow (just to see how well it would come out). The result is above, it’s only 5mins long so enjoy! A larger version is available on our YouTube page. Or you can revert to the original Prezi version.

That was the intriguing notion being discussed by Annelies Verhaeghe of Insites Consulting at the recent Cloud of Knowing meetup.

As John puts it:

[In the Insites study] bloggers were asked to provide images of what they perceived to be cool at a music festival they were attending. Researchers, marketing experts and 4 different types of crowds were then given the task of evaluating these and providing perceptions of their own. The bloggers then graded these in terms of the insights they generated. The 4 different types of crowd included those who were at the festival and also those who were not. And those who knew the bloggers and those who did not. The result showed that crowds appeared to be a better source of insight. And that the most fruitful crowd was one familiar with the context (ie present at the festival) and unfamiliar with the blogger (at several degrees of separation). A fascinating paper which has given Insites a way to use crowds to increase insight generation (they claim) by 200%!

Watch the video to discover what Annelies found.

Back in March this year, Herdmeister Mark Earls organised a talk at the RSA involving two of his collaborators (Prof. Mike O’Brien, professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri, and Dr. Alex Bentley, co-director of the Centre for the Co-evolution of Biology and Culture at the University of Durham).

ResearchTalk was there to capture the event so for those who weren’t able to make it, we hope you enjoy this brain food.

Mark Earls:

Prof. Mike O’Brien:

Dr. Alex Bentley:

On the eve of the release of Wall Street 2, the message above is somewhat befitting. It comes from the British Library’s Inventing the 21st Century exhibit which promises to “explore the journey behind 15 of the most ingenious inventions to come out of Britain in the past ten years.” Even though you’ll probably be familiar with many of the inventions it’s still worth a visit if you’re nearby.

Anyway, the above post-it was one of many left by visitors encouraged to share their own ideas, completely in the spirit of our collaborative times. We found it amusing, as we did the following, and there’s also a couple of good ideas in there…

A pill you take so you never have explosive diarrhea

A happy pill without adverse effect!

A device to assist in understanding women!

A device to clip walking sticks to a table or chair in cafes

A powder/sachet of sunscreen that you could add to your shower head, to be fully protected at the start of every day

Shoes with built-in weighing scales

We’re just back from the excellent two-day European Customer Experience Event where folks from Zappos and Harley-Davidson talked about how they build their ‘wow’ experience.

It’s our first time there and, to be honest, not the usual beat for us. But it should be – both for us and the insight community in general. Researchers who do anything related to loyalty or customer service should be attending this type of event because they get to meet the folks who actually put their work into practice – customer experience and service heads from major organisations, public and private.

We’ll blog more with some things that caught our eye. But first, in what’s becoming a tradition, here’s a wrap-up chat with three fellow delegates in which we talk highlights, learnings, customer experience in the public sector, digital natives vs. immigrants, behavioural economics, engendering loyalty by charging people (!), transparency and authenticity, convergence, and improvements for next year. Enjoy!

STARRING:

• Brian Koma, VP Research, Vovici
• Sharon Bayliss, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
• Toni Blumeris, MD, Harding & Yorke (S. Africa)

European Customer Experience World event

A lot of folks are drinking the Zappos kool-aid these days. And it’s easy to see why. Because every now and then you come across a company that’s so contrarian in its thinking and execution that it leaves most observers bewildered. Before it was Google with quirky initiatives such as 20% time, something we now know powers its innovation funnel.

Online retailer Zappos is the latest purveyor of contrarian thinking, all in the pursuit of its happiness business model. For example, staff can spend six minutes or six hours on the phone with a single customer – there’s never any pressure to hit productivity quotas. New staff are paid to leave to gauge their commitment. And customers can return shoes up to a year after purchase, postage free, for a full refund. The list goes on.

The result? Booming sales – a couple years ago they broke the $1bn mark. And they were recently acquired by Amazon for – insert Dr. Evil voice – one billion dollars!

Harley-Davidson needs no introduction. It’s an iconic brand that, unlike Zappos, has been around for decades. And for many of us it conjures up distinct emotions such as freedom even if we’ve never experienced their products.

So, why are we telling you all this? Because you’ll learn more about how these companies are building strong cultures which drive profitability in the short podcast below (15 mins). It’s a discussion with the COO of Zappos and a senior marketer from Harley-Davidson, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming European Customer Experience World event in May – check out the website for tickets and details.

Kindly hosted by Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s intellectual adventurer and scholar of the new world of work. He focuses on customer loyalty and talent engagement.

In the chat we learn about…

• The genesis of Zappos quirkiness
• How Harley-Davidson is managing to stay relevant today
• Whether the ‘humanizing the organisation’ movement has staying power
• Examples of initiatives to build a sustainable culture of positive experiences/behavioural economics
• The evidence that these deliver topline and bottom-line results

STARRING:

• Alfred Lin, COO, Zappos
• Markus Kramer, director of marketing operations, Harley-Davidson
• HOST – Dean van Leeuwen, intellectual adventurer, TomorrowToday

Music by Amber Ojeda.

Produced by the wonderful folks at the RSA

Dynamic feedback can sometimes help consumers make decisions in your favour, like this display at a newsagent in Heathrow’s Terminal 5…

Copyright ResearchTalk.co.uk

But then again, sometimes it’s next to useless…

Pic c/o Twitter user ilicco

See here for the introductory article.

Here’s a couple of panel discussions from the event.

     
Paul Berney of the MMA probably said it best: giving the keynote at the Globalpark-sponsored 2010 Mobile Research Conference, he said that 2009 turned out to be the year that mobile became a serious consumer internet access device. But then he also said he wasn’t going to be held to that proclamation given how premature the prediction turned out in previous years!

Around 100 folks turned up for the two-day, well-organised event in London for what I believe was a meaty feast of the useful and practical. And there was good Wifi so lots and lots of tweeting (apparently nine tweets/min at one stage).

We took advantage of the Wifi to post these five podcast chats in almost real-time – hope the many hundreds who listened to these on the day felt the speedy upload was useful.

See here for audio from two of the panel discussions.

In the next few days we’ll add links to blogger commentaries: