Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

Innovation fails far more often than it succeeds.  Wonderfully imaginative ideas that promise transformative effects for consumers and companies are more frequently abandoned than sustained, even in companies that have successfully fostered an innovative corporate culture.

Harvard Business Review contributor John Kotter examined failed change efforts and confirmed that nearly 70% of projects that required substantial change management fail to achieve their intended results. The implications of these failures are enormous. Wasted time. Wasted effort. Wasted resources. And wasted opportunities that are frequently attempted again and again. At best, these failures distract management and staff from pursuing other, more productive, efforts and at worst they can propel the company into crisis.

The failures to adopt and implement new innovations is rarely caused by a lack of resources or a lack of will by senior management. Instead, these failures can most frequently be attributed to a lack of leadership and engagement by employees at all levels.

There are no shortcuts to implementing change within your organization, but there are discrete steps that can help you cement the change and transform your organization:

1. Communicate a sense of urgency – It’s up to management to generate the energy necessary to overcome the unyielding weight of corporate inertia. Businesses are full of individuals who have worked for years to perfect their business processes, constantly refining them to make them more efficient and productive. The last thing they’re going to embrace independently is innovation that may disrupt or even threaten their current job.

It’s management’s responsibility to let their staff know of a specific vulnerability or opportunity that, if not confronted, will threaten the organization. Without motivation, employees won’t wander out of their comfort zones and the effort will stall before it gains any momentum. When you have at least 3/4 of your staff convinced that business as usual isn’t good enough, you’re ready to…

2. Create the vision. Impending threats aren’t sufficient to maintain a sense of urgency. Employees need to have a clear where the organization is headed and how they can contribute. The more detailed the vision, the more powerfully it can guide and align efforts throughout the organization.

3. Communicate the vision. Relentlessly. You can never communicate the vision frequently enough. It shouldn’t be limited exclusively to manager’s meetings or mentioned in passing in your monthly corporate newsletter. The driving vision needs to take center stage in your organization and be repeated and referred to daily. Managers need to demonstrate their commitment to and embrace of the vision in their actions, showing to all their unfailing efforts to achieve the vision.

4. Empower passionate teams to act on the vision. Enthusiastic and committed employees should be recruited and empowered to pursue projects that promote the company’s new vision. Enthusiasm is contagious, so remove obstacles from their way and let the rest of your staff see how effective and appreciated their nascent efforts are.

5. Target and pursue short term wins. Nothing succeeds like success, so identify early those short term goals that can be reached effectively and promoted internally as proof that the vision is attainable. Celebrate the early wins to motivate others and maintain the organization’s sense of urgency to complete the task.

Taking these steps will contribute to the potential for institutional embrace of innovation and change, but the job isn’t done until the change becomes the new way that things are done. When your employees see for themselves how the changes have enabled the organization to become stronger and more capable, they’ll start to live the changes instead of fighting them.

The National Science Foundation released a disturbing study recently that revealed that only 9% of American companies engaged in any product or process innovation during the three-year study period (2006-08).

Frankly, I’m not surprised with the near absence of corporate innovation because I see so few companies that encourage a culture of innovation.

Too many CEOs focus exclusively on improving financial metrics – increasing earnings and keeping a tight control over costs. Few understand their corporate value can be linked directly to their embrace of innovation and their capacity to constantly renew themselves.

That’s exactly what Apple has been doing, and its devotion to designing new customer experiences centered around technology has contributed to a 1,300 percent rise in its stock price in the past 10 years and a market capitalization that exceeds that of Microsoft.

Apple keeps innovating because it has intentionally created a culture of innovation. The company’s commitment to design and innovation is built into its DNA and enables it to foster, create, and execute radical ideas and remain in a perpetual state of reinvention.

Commitment to design and innovation is not the purview exclusively of large companies. Small companies actually have the capacity to move faster and more nimbly than their larger competitors, and it’s significantly easier to adopt cultural imperatives in a small company than a large one.

So, what are the essential cultural elements that your company needs to adopt to encourage innovation?

Purpose – Business leaders who can articulate a corporate vision with the right language can inspire their employees to perform heroic feats. Companies such as Apple, Nike, Amazon, Herman Miller, and 3M are all design and innovation leaders that inspire their employees with clear corporate visions of who they are, why they’re important, and where they’re headed.

They don’t inspire with challenges of 7% top line growth or the extension of an existing product line. Their vision is much broader: They want to change the world in their own unique ways. And they believe they are the agents for that change.

Challenge – You can’t gain a competitive advantage from doing business as usual in the same way that virtually every one of your competitors operates. Innovators and design thinkers create new solutions to problems that other companies are unwilling or unable to address. Take a look at every touch point in your organization and ask yourself if each one is delightful and memorable for your customers.

Why should calls to help centers be frustrating? Why don’t you have instructional videos posted for every one of your products? How can your packaging be reduced and improved? You’re surrounded by challenges if you’re brave enough to take them on. And when you succeed, your corporate differences will be clearly defined.

Encouragement – Leaders in innovative companies encourage their employees to try new things and to test new ideas despite the certainty that taking on challenging projects will inevitably lead to some failures.

Apple had monumental flops with the Lisa and the Newton. Nike had divisive fair trade issues to overcome. Even legendary 3M went through a lean period of innovation when its focus drifted in the early 2000s.

But like all successful design companies, those who emerge with the greatest successes are the ones that encourage, embrace, and celebrate failure. They just ensure that they failed fast and learn lessons from each disappointment. Failure expands knowledge, builds courage, reveals your strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately makes success a little sweeter.

Originally posted at Spin Sucks.

Entrepreneurs perpetually play the role of David against their Goliath corporate competitors. And, just like their biblical counterpart, small businesses can defeat their large competitors by outmaneuvering, out-imagining, and outperforming them.

In a recent scholarly analysis, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” author Ivan Arreguin-Toft analyzed battles between very large armies and small forces and concluded that during the past 200 years the smaller David-sized forces won nearly 30 percent of the time. In many of these battles, the smaller forces were outnumbered 10 to one, yet were able to defeat their numerically superior foe.

Even more amazing, is that when the smaller foe employed an unplanned, surprise battlefield tactic instead of conducting combat in the traditional and anticipated way, their winning percentage shot up to 64 percent.

The business lesson: When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win.

Entrepreneurs are perfectly positioned to operate as insurgents against their entrenched corporate competitors because they’re more willing to challenge the conventions about how commercial battles are supposed to be fought.

Large companies expect to confront competitors. They build enormous corporate strongholds and fill them with regiments of employees in anticipation of large scale engagements. They deploy massive human and financial resources to execute their strategic plan and prepare to crush their competitors.

But, despite their size and strength, these lumbering companies are rarely prepared to confront nimble and fast-moving adversaries that refuse to challenge them on the battlefield of their own design.

How can the entrepreneurial Davids succeed against their Goliath adversaries?

1. Define yourself differently. If you own a hardware store, and Walmart announces plans to open a store in your town, you’d better have a plan to be the anti-Walmart. You know how Walmart positions itself: As the low cost provider. Knowing that, you’ve got to recognize that you’ll never beat Walmart at its own game. Because you can’t win being the low cost provider, you have to define your own niche and then own it. Stock specialty tools, provide in-depth training classes, rent tools, or  become an expert and indispensable in home renovation. Be delightfully different.
2. Attack their weak spots relentlessly. It’s easy to identify your large competitor’s strengths and essential to pick out their weaknesses. Large organizations are typically prepared to counter direct competition but are woefully unprepared to respond to guerilla insurgencies. Because they like to remain above the fray, you can attack them on your own terms on the battlefield of your choosing.
3. Deliver the goods. The success of every strategy comes down to one essential thing: Execution. Once you’ve defined yourself, you have to deliver the goods repeatedly and relentlessly. There are no days off.
4. Extend yourself online. People will continue to do business with people they like, so pursue efforts that make you and your business personable and likable. Start blogging daily about your unique approach to your business, create a Facebook page that actually invites people to engage with you, create compelling content on your website that informs, educates, and entertains, and connect with the Twitter devotees in your area to build enduring relationships 140 characters at a time.

What tips do you have for defeating your large competitors?

Originally posted at Spin Sucks.

A front page article in last week’s Wall Street Journal documented the demise of Liz Claiborne, one of women’s fashions most successful product lines for 34 years. The company that pioneered working women’s apparel after its introduction in 1976, Liz Claiborne has been removed from virtually every tony retailer and is now available exclusively through JC Penney.

It was a precipitous and entirely avoidable fall.

Liz Claiborne broke the first commandment of branding: Be true to your clients and yourselves.

Claiborne made its name by designing stylish career wear for the millions of women, particularly younger women, entering the workforce. Their pieces were consistently styled and well made, delivering a specific brand promise to the women who stocked their closets with Claiborne ensembles that could be mixed and matched to create multiple outfits from a handful of separates.

Claiborne developed a loyal and trusting following of women who appreciated her collections. But with her retirement from the company in 1989, the brand began to suffer. There was no designer who shared Liz Claiborne’s design aesthetic and without a design leader, the company regressed to a financial leader whose focus was the bottom line, not the hemline.

Design by committee emerged, diluting the Claiborne brand promise in a fruitless pursuit of the youth culture. Their working women loyalists took notice and turned their backs on uninspired and confusing Claiborne collections that were considered fashion forward but not geared toward working women, the brand’s core constituency.

The dispiriting Claiborne story was in sharp contrast to the story that Jay Greene recounts in his book Design is How it Works. Porsche has remained remarkably successful in an industry that has few perpetually thriving automakers. Porsche attributes their success to an unyielding devotion to the design principles encompassed in the very first 911 that debuted in 1963.

Since their very first car, Porsche has remained true to its design DNA by incorporating specific design cues – intakes instead of a radiator grill, a car that always tapers to the rear, open wheel rims to display the strong brake calipers, front fenders always higher than the hood, ignition always on the left of the steering wheel and vertically oriented dashboards – that support their vision of a car that is all about driving performance and authenticity.

Porsche has never varied from a design approach that produces cars that their own designers crave. They never cut corners. They never adopt trends that risk the company’s credibility. And they never try to appeal to everybody.

Porsche designers intuitively understand the desires of their most passionate drivers and develop new cars with them in mind. Liz Claiborne took a different tack and abandoned their brand promise and with it their most loyal clients in pursuit of a younger, more active customer. They alienated their most loyal customers without generating any traction with the fickle and trend conscious youth market who want nothing to do with the company who makes clothes for their mothers.

Porsche has had an endless string of hits, including their Boxster, Cayman, Cayenne and Panamera and reported record profits in 2009. Liz Claiborne has virtually ceased to exist. Breaking your brand promise appears to have severe repercussions. If only the Claiborne executives drove Porsches, they’d understand.

How many other successful brands have hastened their corporate demise by abandoning their core principles and their most loyal customers? Sadly, I’ll bet it’s long. Real long.

I’m flying west this morning, heading to Madison, Wisconsin for the biannual Transplant Games (I was the recipient of a kidney transplant nearly 20 years ago). Above me, in a luggage bin apparently designed to hold no more than a laptop and a magazine sit my tennis racquets, freshly strung for the singles and doubles events that I’m scheduled to compete in.

As a competitive tennis player, my racquets are the most important tools I carry so there’s no way I’d entrust them to any airline’s baggage handlers. In pursuit of the perfect racquet I’ve tested an assortment of frames and experimented with strings at a range of tensions until I found the right combination that provides the responsiveness, feel and power that I rely upon every single shot. And when I break a string, I have complete confidence that the next racquet I pull out of my bag will perform precisely the same way. Every time. Without fail.

How do I know that I can rely upon each racquet’s precision and performance? Because each racquet is prepared by a local entrepreneur, Paul Schambs, whose racquet stringing skills have attained artisan status.

For those who don’t play tennis, or play it casually, the importance of consistency in racquet preparation may seem obsessive, but the deviation of just a few pounds in the string tension can dramatically affect the playability of a racquet. And having pulled a racquet out of my bag that was strung by another, less talented stringer I can attest that the difference in power and feel can throw off your game and affect you mentally.

Which is why so many highly skilled players and even tennis professionals rely upon Paul’s expertise and allow only Paul to string their racquets. He is the tennis equivalent of Stradivarius, carefully crafting each racquet to the specific needs of his stable of players and taking pride in the consistency and exceptional quality of his work.

All of which led me to wonder why so few entrepreneurs and businesspeople are recognized as artisans in their own fields of expertise. Artisans are pursued. They’re highly valued. They can charge a premium.  They’re the recipients of referral business. And they don’t have to produce expensive works of art like Stradivarius. They can make pizzas, fix cars, paint houses, or provide marketing guidance. As long as they do it with deep personal commitment, pride and unmatched expertise, they become irreplaceable artisans.

If you’re not perceived as an artisan in your particular field, what are you doing to change your perception and deliver consistently expert work that separates you from the rest of the pack?

What defines your Microsoft experience?

Frustration?… Confusion?… Anger?

My personal list of Microsoft-inspired adjectives is lengthy, and nowhere on that list appears the word delight.

Frustrated with their perennial regard as the ugly and undesirable stepsister to Apple’s beloved fair maiden Microsoft decided to take action to reclaim their throne and assert their benevolent rule in the technology kingdom.

So, what does Microsoft, in all their imperial wisdom do to stand apart and reassert the provenance of their brand? Why they copy Apple’s retail store, of course. Right down to the fixtures.

Gizmodo acquired a leaked PowerPoint presentation detailing the design of the planned Microsoft retail stores, and after reviewing their plans one thought springs instantly to mind: plagiarism. Seriously, if a college architecture or design student submitted this presentation as a class project to create a new retail design, their professor would be entirely justified in red stamping “PLAGIARISM” across the cover page and charging the student with academic fraud.

When will companies learn that copying innovation and clever design does not bestow those qualities upon your organization?

I predict that within 24 months, Microsoft will realize the futility of copying Apple’s retail efforts and shutter their retail stores. The reasons why:

1. Apple delivers a unique Apple Experience that Microsoft cannot emulate, no matter how hard they try. Apple is a design company that expresses their design innovation through technology. Microsoft is a technology company that attempts to apply design elements to their technology after it’s created. Apple delivers an experience. Microsoft delivers a product. Delivering an exceptional user experience is in Apple’s corporate DNA. It is absent in Microsoft’s corporate DNA. And it’s not about to change.
2. Apple has total control over all of their hardware and software products, Microsoft simply licenses their technology to third parties. Apple maintains its near total control over its user experience by designing, developing and manufacturing every device themselves. This maniacal level of control ensures that there are no missteps in delivering a memorable and delightful user experience. But Microsoft adopted a dramatically different business model, licensing their technologies to thousands of companies to integrate into third party computers and devices. Microsoft’s licensing model expands Microsoft’s market but eliminates their ability to control how the software and hardware components interact with the user.
3. Apple focuses on simplicity while the Microsoft universe is inherently complex. Compared to the thousands of different products that integrate Microsoft technology, Apple offers only a handful of computers, tablets, phones and devices. Their limited product offerings allow Apple to retain control while the millions of iterations of Microsoft products expand the PC universe but add technical complexity and near infinite opportunities for user frustration.
4. It’s the culture, stupid. Steve Jobs instilled an innovation centered culture in Apple that has allowed them to create entirely new segments of technology. Microsoft is not known for their innovation and has not fostered a corporate culture that celebrates innovation and understands how to generate new ideas and new markets. And they apparently never will.
5. Microsoft can’t compete on price with their retail competitors. Apple maintains rigorous control over its distribution channel. They do not allow their products to be discounted, so the price you pay at the Apple store is the same that you pay at Best Buy. However, Microsoft will not be able to discount their offerings or offer the same number of configurations as their larger retail competitors. So why would anyone pay more to buy at Microsoft?
6. Renting your store out for birthday parties does not qualify as a brand differentiator. Nuff said.
7. Opening your stores next to existing Apple stores magnifies your lameness. We all know who was first. We all know who copied whom. Opening your store adjacent to an Apple store reinforces the perception that you have no original ideas.
8. Microsoft’s not cool. Apple is. Do you know anyone who camped out overnight to be the first to get the new Zune? Of course you don’t. No one does. Because Microsoft products are cool anti-matter.

The clock is ticking. When the last door shuts I’ll let you know.

A terrific article in today’s New York Times by Edward Niedermeyer prompted me to document my own belief, from the day I heard of GM’s announcement of their eco-friendly Volt hybrid that it would be a massive and historic commercial failure.

There may be no single automobile ever made that has garnered as much positive press and unfettered support from the press, the green lobby and the government. They desperately want the Volt not only to succeed but to be a game changer, a tipping point in the auto industry.

And I’m here to tell you it won’t be a game changer. It will tip no points, and it will end up losing massive sums of money.

It would be hard for any product to live up to the anticipation and hype that’s surrounded the Volt. The Volt’s  been assigned messianic status in the auto industry, preordained to be the savior of GM, the transformer of all transportation and the harbinger of an entirely new way of thinking in the auto industry.

But the Volt has been destined to fail from day one. Rather than asking their designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, GM should have asked them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to dramatic new forms of value.

Their objective from the start shouldn’t have been limited to the objective of building a new hybrid car, but to create new interactions, entertainments, immersive, emotional activities that are embodied in an entirely new way to travel.

But GM is not a strategic, design-centered company. They’re a tactical company that has never demonstrated a capacity for design brilliance or its commensurate risk taking.

Want proof? Take a look at the actual Volt that they’ll be attempting to sell this fall for $41,000. It’s nothing more than a Toyota Prius with a $15,000 Chevy bowtie on its grille.

Contrast this bland design with the original concept car. It was bold, it was edgy, it stood out and made a statement. So, of course, GM had to assign some internal committee to tone it down a little. After all, they want it to appeal to the largest audience possible.

Their design killing efforts proved Mark Twains adage that “I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”

I believe that brands are the promise of an experience. Great brands can project our hopes and dreams and aspirations. They broadcast who we are and what we believe.

So what is it that GM wants to convey with this rolling testament to corporate mediocrity that hasn’t already been captured and owned by the Prius?

Beyond the branding and design failures, GM has to overcome enormous financial, technical and practical hurdles that all conspire to doom the volt.

It’s expensive at $41,000 – which doesn’t include the price of the $2000 charger you’ll need in your garage.

Its electric motor range of 40 miles is virtually guaranteed never to be met in real world conditions. Subtract mileage when it’s cold or when you’re operating the AC or the radio.

And, when its battery needs to be replaced, get ready for the $8000 sticker shock.

The Volt is a corporate response to political pressures. It validates the contention that great design and revolutionary concepts don’t emerge from corporate boardrooms and government bureaucracies. The Volt is exactly what we would expect from Government Motors, and that’s the tragedy.

Imagine what could have been produced if Apple were to design a car from scratch. Or if Google teamed with Ideo to create a new commuter vehicle. I don’t know what they would conceive, but I do know one thing for certain: it wouldn’t be the Volt. And it wouldn’t require hundreds of millions in subsidies to attract buyers, and it wouldn’t be conceived without considering alternative green technologies that could be integrated into its design.

If the Volt symbolizes the new GM and the new Michigan, as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm claims, pray for GM and Michigan.

With nearly 80% of the general population now publishing their own blog (according to a statistic that I just made up), it’s inevitable that most of those writing for internet consumption will publish without any editorial oversight.

As someone who grew up in a family of talented writers and had his early publishing efforts edited ruthlessly, I appreciate the value that editors bring to the publishing process. I’ve frequently relied upon the sharp editing eye of my blog readers to point out minor errors or miscues in my posts and have found their feedback to be useful and edifying. Yet I see every day the carnage wrought in the blogging universe by bloggers who have never submitted their work to an editor and view any editorial comment as a personal attack.

Scan any cross-section of blogs and you’ll run across those that contain repeated grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, the misuse of I/me, your/you’re, their/they’re, complimentary/complementary, and other niggling errors that diminish the impact of their posts and suggest a verbal slovenliness.

Typically, when I encounter an error on a blog that I read regularly, I’ll send a private message to the author identifying any errors in their post. I had always assumed that the blogger would appreciate being made aware of their published errors so they could correct it before it was observed by future readers. However, several recent communiques have indicated I might be dead wrong.

It’s important to note that my messages to the authors were always private, were courteous and praised their work before identifying the error contained within their post. In return, I received comments including:

It’s so annoying when you tell me my mistakes.

So who are you? The internet police?

It’s a blog, not the New York Times.

You can guess whose blogs I’ve stopped reading.

There appears to be a generational component to the level of receptiveness to editorial comments. Those authors over 40 have been unanimously appreciative of editorial feedback while those under 30 have exhibited extreme sensitivity towards feedback that they perceive as critique and chastisement, even when none was intended.

So, in this era of social media dominance, is it appropriate to engage in crowd-editing? Or should I keep my red pen firmly in pocket and simply move along?

Alec Brownstein decided he wanted a job with one of NYC’s top creative directors, and wasn’t going to wait around for a job opening to apply. In a bold and impossibly creative move, he spent six dollars and came up with this:

Alec’s approach was so simple and so direct, that it will undoubtedly be copied frequently by other job seekers. And why not? It was imaginative, it was unique and it worked. No reason others shouldn’t push the same envelopes in their job search endeavors as well and take full ownership of their personal brand and determine precisely how it’s presented.

For those imaginative small business owners, you can do the exact same thing when preparing to meet with a client who needs SEO or social media services. Buy the Google adwords for their company name a few days ahead of your meeting. Then, during your pitch, ask them to Google themselves and see your pitch for their precise needs at the top of the page. They’ll wonder how you got the top position, they’ll be impressed that you know how to manipulate the page rankings and you’ll have demonstrated your capacity to outimagine your competitors.

Bottom line, for a few dollars and a few minutes of your time, you and your firm can appear distinctive and memorable. And that’s always a good thing.

I’ve been approached at several recent speaking events by businesspeople eager to become engaged with social media but afraid of the repercussions of negative comments or complaints. It’s not unusual for executives to see the negative potential of any new technology or initiative before considering its vast potential, so I thought I’d clarify what I told them.

If your business engages in unethical or inappropriate behavior, then you have legitimate reasons to worry about the potential negative impact of social media since social media doesn’t camouflage your true identity, it reveals it.

However, if your concern centers around the potential reaction to typical business slip-ups and oversights, then you really have nothing to worry about as long as you demonstrate immediate empathy and care for your clients. And when you make a mistake, as everyone does, follow these simple, proven rules:

1. Apologize. If you screwed up, simply acknowledge your mistake and say you’re sorry. We all  make mistakes every day. And we deal with companies that make mistakes every day. We understand that mistakes are inevitable. However, we expect that if you make a mistake that you will acknowledge it and proffer a sincere apology. Your apology isn’t an invitation to sue you or embarrass you, it’s simply an acknowledgement of societal norms that require the acceptance of responsibility for one’s actions.
2. Resolve to fix the mistake. The apology is a great start, but the problem still remains. You screwed up. You sent the wrong product. You didn’t deliver your proposal on time. You overcharged on your invoice. Whatever you did (or failed to do) still needs to be corrected. So, step up and tell them how you intend to fix the problem and ask them if that effort is satisfactory.
   One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is offering a solution that benefits them, but not the client. If you failed to deliver your product on time, it’s your responsibility to overnight the product, to get it there as fast as you can. I don’t care if you have to eat the extra shipping costs. I expect you to do the right thing, even if it’s inconvenient or expensive. That’s how you show you really care about fixing your failure.
   If you offer to fix the problem, and your client says “that’s not good enough,” then you’ve got to work with the client to determine exactly how you can make things right.
3. Fix it. Steps 1 and 2 are actually pretty easy. You say you’re sorry and offer to fix the problem. The tough part is actually fixing the problem since this is your final chance to ensure that your relationship isn’t significantly harmed. If you promise to overnight a spare part, you’d better make sure that the part is put in a box, is properly labeled and is handed off to FedEx. Don’t delegate, do it yourself.
4. BONUS STEP: Follow up. Once you’re sure that the problem has been resolved exactly how you promised, make a follow up call (not a tweet or email) to let your client know how important they are and to demonstrate your care and concern. I know that your first reaction will be to ignore the problem rather than revisit it, but you’ll actually enhance your reputation by confronting it, ensuring that it’s resolved and proving your value as a reliable and caring business partner. Pick up the phone.

Typically, it’s best to take the conversation off-line while you’re addressing a client’s problems. After you reach out to them online to let them know that you heard their complaint and that you want to take care of the problem, suggest that they contact you through a Twitter direct message, an email or a phone call so your conversations and ultimate problem resolution remain private.