#525 crumbs of insight

Earlier this week, I gave the keynote address to a conference of financial aid administrators.  I was asked to speak on the topic of customer service from a student's perspective and so I was able to refer to many of the examples that I have written about in this blog.

In addition to that, I also shared a visual display of 30 different variations of Oreo cookies.  If you had asked me before I started my "research" in this area (which turned into an obsessive quest to find even more varieties!!), I would not have guessed that so many kinds existed.  But they do.  I wrote about some of them before* when I received Watermelon Oreos for my birthday, but it was nothing like what I shared in my keynote.

I likened Oreos to the different kind of scholarships that schools have available and said that from a student's point of view they were all the same brand of cookies.  Thus, it was daunting to them and hard for the financial aid officer to explain the variations -- especially when one tried to explain in print or via the web.  I think it made the point.

Maybe you could do a visual display of Oreos when you need to make a point to your staff.  Do you have too many forms or products or policies that are hard for the outsider to differentiate?  Do you need a lesson on the proliferation of brand extensions?  Maybe you could you do an exercise at a meeting and ask participants to describe how their Oreo is different than the person's next to them -- trickier than it sounds when comparing a Golden Oreo to a Golden Birthday Cake Oreo.  Or serve Oreos and milk to discuss how to make your product (original Oreos) different from all your competitors (who are now Heads and Tails Oreos or Mega Stuff Oreos or Candy Corn Oreos, or Raspberry Fudge Cream Oreos, etc.)

There are lessons all around us -- even those that are good enough to eat!

-- beth triplett
leadershipdots.blogspot.com

@leadershipdots
leadershipdots@gmail.com

*Blog #389, June 25, 2013