Ah, the great outdoors. In Canada, we are blessed with an abundance of wildlife, majestic mountains, pristine lakes, and seemingly endless forests. Since the 1970s, if you were an experienced outdoorsman seeking to explore the authentic, raw, outdoors, then a trip to your local Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) was in order. Customers came to MEC stores to buy the best hiking, rock climbing, and back-woods skiing gear.
Back in 2008, then CEO David Labistour looked at the tea leaves and saw that “the times they were a-changin.’” The granola-powered, anti-consumerist community MEC relied on post-inception was steadily being replaced by a more diverse, urban cohort. As a result, they engineered a shift away from their original mission statement of encouraging “self-propelled wilderness recreation” to one that wanted to “inspire everyone to get off the couch and out the door.” The gambit paid off: For the second year in a row, MEC topped the list of Canadian companies with the best reputations, compiled by market research firm The Reputation Institute.
This is the little-told tale of how MEC put the customer first during the company’s transformation from niche purveyor of mountaineering equipment to hub for outdoor lifestyle enthusiasts. The results speak for themselves: In the intervening years, MEC has doubled its brick-and-mortar locations and nearly doubled its membership, which currently tops five million people, during this period of transformation.
These days, customers are savvier than ever. Generic, sales-heavy marketing campaigns no longer have the same impact they once did. Thanks to social media platforms, customers wield more power than ever before. Customer service and call center agents are certainly feeling the effects of this power: They are working harder than ever to successfully meet customer demands to earn rave reviews rather than damaging social media rants from customers. This can place a great deal of pressure on call center agents, so companies must find ways to keep their morale high.
Shortly after I joined Fonolo, I suggested the company revitalize their brand. As a newbie, it was tough to come in and immediately shake things up. However, it was necessary. Fonolo was one of the finalists for the ‘Best in Show Award’ at the Enterprise Connect Conference in Orlando and quite frankly, our brand needed some TLC.
