A Little Background
Today was my lucky day. When I arrived at the Post Office, I found a 5-Minute Parking spot, right on the Avenue. I tried to pull up as far as possible, because I didn’t want to block passersby from experiencing one of the biggest thrills of summer – the lemonade stand!

Somewhere along the way, I received some very wise counsel, which I’ve since claimed for myself. “Never pass a lemonade stand without buying. Never. Ever.”

I’ll actually make a U-turn if necessary, to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit. There’s something about the watered down goodness that comes from iced lemonade served on a sweltering Virginia day (or Georgia, or Texas, or — you fill in the blank).

I was pretty confident today’s proprietors didn’t have change for a twenty, so I scrounged through my ashtray-turned-coin-purse and found a mere $.85. (I forgot I already swiped the silver coins for a recent Chick-Fil-A sweet tea run, but that’s another story.) The lemonade itself was only $.50, but I always tip at lemonade stands. I thanked the young entrepreneurs, asked if I could take their picture and drove away, thinking.

My mind wandered to all things lemonade. At some point I realized I had some great ideas for the marketing folks at Country Time Lemonade. I’m serious. REALLY good ideas. When I got home, I discovered Country Time is made by Kraft Foods. I set out to write a post. (Kraft, if you’re listening, I’d love to share my idea with you. Did I mention it’s really good?)

Next I turned to Twitter to see if I could find @KraftFoods. Sure enough, they were there. I figured I wouldn’t be able to send them a private message (they hadn’t followed me at the time of this writing), so I went to the Kraft Foods Facebook Page. That’s when I stumbled onto a firestorm! In the last day or so, Kraft Foods has been SLAMMED because of an alleged foreign object in Melissa Wiegand Brown’s Apple Splash Capri Sun (from what I can gather, discovered over Memorial Day weekend).

I’m not here to defend Kraft Foods, nor am I siding with Ms. Brown. I can’t say who’s right or wrong; there are lab technicians and enough folks with strong opinions for such decisions. Instead I propose the following:

Seven Observations for Kids with Lemonade Stands, Kraft Foods and Other Brands

1. Touch points matter. If you’re a kid running a lemonade stand, you may not know that every time a customer or a potential customer interacts with your brand, it should be a positive, favorable, even memorable experience. It doesn’t matter if the exchange is a quick glance going down a busy street. That driver could make a U-turn at any moment. But if you’re a business, a mega business, you better know how important brand touch points are, and that some of those touch points are happening on your very own Facebook “Fan” page.
2. Consumers love brands. Especially Kraft brands. What baby hasn’t cut teeth on Ritz crackers? Who could forget Oreos? They’re milk’s favorite cookie after all. Someone please tell me our kids aren’t the only ones who love Kraft mac-and-cheese? And of course nothing evokes fond memories like lemonade stands and Country Time Lemonade (which is how I got here in the first place).
3. Be ready for when they don’t. Life happens. Sometimes business is messy, and when it is, expect your customers will be fickle and have a short-term memory issues. Maybe there’s no way today’s small business owners selling lemonade on a street corner can adequately anticipate the need for crisis management, but corporate communications/marketing folks best have a plan.
4. Understand social media’s reach. Disillusioned consumers (real, perceived, or even deceived) have ready-made platforms to tell their stories to listening friends, family members, as well as to people with whom they have no connection. Today’s companies need to prepare for the far-reaching effects of Motrin Moms and the likes of Melissa Wiegand Brown with her Facebook photos of Apple Splash Capri Sun. We used to say dissatisfied customers would tell 10 people about their experience. That number is way higher today, given the number of friends on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. A casual comment on Facebook about the lemonade stand in front of the post office can do wonders for (or wreak havoc on) their customer base.
5. Engage your customers. Even though the pre-pubescent boys running the lemonade stand didn’t have a lengthy conversation with me, they did take the time to ask me,”Would you like ice in your lemonade? We have clean ice.” How could I turn down such an offer? Smart brands will learn how to fully engage their customers, sometimes on social media, sometimes in person or on the phone. Zappos is a GREAT example! Check out the Zappos Facebook Fan Page to see what I mean. Learn well from them, Grasshopper.
6. Know the plan. If people are saying bad things about your brand online, especially in your space, know who’s going to address the situation, what you’re going to say, and then do something! At the very least, let people know you’re not asleep at the wheel. (If you don’t have a plan, create one now, whether you’re in the midst of a firestorm or not.) Hmmm, maybe this point doesn’t exactly translate for lemonade stand owners. No matter.
7. Turn lemons into lemonade. Clearly, this relates to kids selling lemonade. I mean, duh! But for brands, perhaps, the implications are even greater. Turn broken trust (regardless of how/why trust has been broken) into a powerful customer experience. Every customer service expert I’ve ever heard will tell you that if you treat an unhappy customer well, you could very well have a customer for life.

The rewards my be just as sweet as lemonade on a hot summer day!

What about you? What have you learned recently about engaging people?

*Note: at 6:08PM Kraft Foods Facebook page had this note regarding the Capri Sun package.

This is what I saw tonight:

In the words of Randy, from American Idol, “Dude! That was dope!”

Are you a fan of any personalities, companies or non-profit organizations on Facebook, and if so, who and why?

Here’s the blurb from Dave Carroll’s website:
In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

You can read their side of the full account here.

Almost 5 million views later (not to mention views from embeds), I have to wonder if the folks at United are thinking they might benefit from some customer service/social media training. United, if you’re listening, I know a few people who could help. Just sayin’.

This goes beyond the need for a crisis communication plan, which, based on my experience, few companies have anyway.

The bigger question is what if it’s you? What if it’s your company, your business on the receiving end of a clever song that says less than favorable things about your product or how you treated a customer? How would you respond?

Will your company react to the use of social media, or take action and harness its power with a well-thought out strategy that includes social media?

Look what I found:

A simple little tweet about being here, and passing along this link from a post written about a previous visit, prompted two people (the above tweet as well as a direct message from another Orthodontic Arts fan) to have  positive exchanges about their children’s orthodontist office.

How much money would that cost a business in today’s advertising dollars?

Here’s a quick video from my last visit that show how much attention to detail is given to the patient’s experience. Who said, afterall, that going to the orthodontist had to be a dreadful experience? Certainly not the folks at Orthodontic Arts!

Treatment Room or Spa?

Patient Television Monitors are Individually Controlled (Disney, Nickelodeon, Bravo or other channels, patient’s choice)

Somehow, that drill didn’t sound quite so bad!

The Takeaway?
What lessons could businesses you know learn from Orthodontic Arts? When is the last time you can remember enjoying an appointment at an orthdontist or dental office?

With the advent of social media, you tell all your friends and they blog about it and share it with all their readers. The impact is much greater! Here’s a recent example of a friend who is using Facebook to share her complaint about an Old Navy promotion gone bad.

Companies large and small should be monitoring what others are saying about their brands in social media outlets. Heck, even business professionals should be monitoring what people say by using Google Alert.

Are you listening? And if you were Old Navy, how would might you respond to this situation?

Late last night Twitter made a huge promise on their blog. With the opening of Apple’s 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and Steve Jobs’ highly anticipated keynote address, (and possible new iphone announcement), Twitter is expecting ten times the traffic today on their site. Given the fact that Twitter has had dramatic downtime over the last few months, they’ve “made some plans to accommodate this dramatic surge.”

They’ve also set some pretty high expectations for reliability in the minds of users across the twitterverse. Time will tell if they have under promised and can over deliver. Or if the reverse is true. I hope they can pull it off!

I have really come to value Twitter as a business resource. I can’t say that I’ve come to “rely” on it completely, due to the aforementioned downtime. But I really want to!

When is the last time you were pleasantly surprised by customer service? How do your customers want you to succeed? Have you set the bar too high for your own organization and left your customers with unrealistic expectations of your ability to deliver?