PPB February 2018

by Jen Alexander WATER COOLER Can’t We All Just Get Along? Establish house rules for civil discourse at the workplace. The mother who invented a “get along” shirt for her two children to wear simultaneously when they were fighting was a genius. But it’s impossible to find one shirt big enough to corral your whole team when morale is low and bickering is high. Such ill-mannered behavior can trickle down to customer interaction, leading to a host of unfortunate consequences for companies who make their bread and butter in the service of others. Civil behavior at work is more important than ever, says Don Peppers, an author and keynote speaker who specializes in the customer experience and is a founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, a customer-centric management consulting firm. Peppers recommends companies adopt “house rules” that foster respectful collaboration and interaction. If you’re looking to refine or establish house rules for your business, take your cue from these examples: • Assume good intentions in others. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and practice empathy when addressing conflict. • Balance the interests of all stakeholders. This includes front-line employees, shareholders, customers, creditors and service providers. • Do not tolerate ethnic, gender or religious bias. • Take appropriate action against unethical or rule- breaking behavior. • Do not tolerate the use of power or authority for personal gain. No one wants to work for a supervisor who steals ideas or dismisses concerns in order to climb the corporate ladder. AD-ITIVES Dealing In Data To BeatThe Big Guys Amazon’s entry into the grocery game has fed fears that brick-and-mortar store sales will crumble, but one store chain is using big data to flout that assumption. Kroger, which has stores throughout the South and Midwest, defied predictions with a ripe third quarter last year and is looking to capitalize on its loyal customer base even further with data mining. Data mining offers a host of lucrative benefits, according to Neil Patel, co-founder of the analytics platform Kissmetrics. Among these are the ability to segment your customers; break down your market into groups such as age, gender and economic status; plan merchandise to eliminate inventory overages and shortages based on purchasing patterns; and forecast sales by examining past buying patterns and the number of customers and competitors in a target market. Kroger’s in-house customer insights firm, 84.51°, analyzes the data of over 60 million customers, and the information it gleans will be used to sell targeted ads on Kroger.com, as well as Kroger-branded ads on the web that serve to redirect consumers back to its home site. The company has been using data to personalize savings for its customers for several years now, but as online shopping continues to encroach on traditional stores’ territories, Kroger hopes the double-digit growth in new digital customers that it saw last year will help it continue to stay as fresh as its online competitors. Source: Life of Mom 54 | FEBRUARY 2018 | THINK