Cozi Service

My AdAge article on Marketing as Service generated a lot of positive feedback including a rather interesting email from Dave Ackert, VP at Cozi, an online service that promises to help “busy families stay organized.” Mr. Ackert offers an unapologetically positive portrait of his company as a leading Marketing as Service practitioner:

When reading your article, it almost seemed like you could have been partially inspired by Cozi and how we are helping our brand partners deliver a meaningful service (see Whirlpool’s print ad as one example)! Cozi is a great opportunity for brands to deliver ongoing meaningful value and utility to today’s busy families. In return, the brands receive amazing loyalty from the family as their brand is integrated right into the figurative and literal centers of family life.

And then he includes an instructive thread of customer service emails:

From: Tara Burns <cozi employee>
Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 10:56:43 -0700
Subject: User Comment on how they use Cozi

User: I just wanted to thank you. I am a New York Attorney who practices
Collaborative Divorce, a new alternative for handling matrimonial disputes. I have
recommended separating couples who have children to use the Cozi web-site and
calendar for family scheduling. It has been an enormous help. Each family
member has their own color and visitation scheduling has been very clear. I know
you may not have envisioned this as one of the purposes for your web-site,
but it works very well. Thanks again.

From: Jan Miksovsky <cozi employee>
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: User Comment on how they use Cozi

Wow, this is totally amazing. Maybe worth a blog post?

For the record, addressing the needs of divorced families is something we’ve thought about quite a bit. It’s still off in our future, but hopefully not too far.

Please let this user know how much we appreciate their comment, and let them know we’re thinking about this.

From: Tara Burns
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 11:43 AM
Subject: RE: User Comment on how they use Cozi

I wrote back to the user and she wrote with this. Even a bit more interesting

User: I heard about Cozi from my daughter in Maryland who uses Cozi for her family
scheduling. She and her husband work and the 2 kids have many activities. She finds it very helpful. I suggested it to one of my clients who was having trouble communicating with his ex-spouse about visitation and suggested Cozi. It worked so well for them I now suggest it to all my clients. In fact today on a national phone conference, I suggested it to many Collaborative Divorce practitioners across the country. Everyone was very interested. The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals will be putting it on their information about our phone conference which will go out to all their members.

The email from Mr. Ackert brings a lot of thoughts to mind:

1. Finding a relevant partner to provide added value like Whirlpool did with Cozi can be a win-win-win for the two marketers and the consumer;
2. You know you are on the right track when your customers tell you how they are using your product or service in ways that you hadn’t necessarily considered;
3. If you are lucky enough to get consumers to talk to you, make sure you return the favor;
4. If you don’t have a social media outreach strategy to get bloggers (like myself) to help spread the word, then develop one pronto. The conversation is happening whether you like it or not so you might as well join in!