In her recent book, Different, Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon points to an epidemic of me-too thinking infecting brand value, often with mortal impact.

“In category after category,” writes Moon, “companies have gotten so locked into a particular cadence of competition that they appear to have lost sight of their mandate — which is to create meaningful grooves of separation from one another. Consequently, the harder they compete, the less differentiated they become. Products are no longer competing against each other; they are collapsing into each other in the minds of anyone who consumes them.”

In this bizarre world, companies race to keep up with each other on features and functionality, but rarely leap forward feet first into the unique. Differentiation is dead. “Marketing strategy” is reduced to an oxymoron. In the end, herd thinkers compete only on margin and tip into a death spiral as deep-pocketed competitors undercut prices to and below the bone.

Look at any market niche — cell phones, TVs, OSS and BSS software — and you find a profusion of once unique but now commoditized products and services that perform identically. Each is a stationary target for the first company that smacks them aside with a product idea that makes customers’ brains sizzle.

Such “idea brands” up-end the limits and assumptions of market categories. They’re not built around a suite of well-rounded products and services that perform satisfactorily in a hundred areas. The company may only do one thing — but they do it exceptionally well.

Howzat?  Consider that every Saturday, ordinarily mild-mannered men by the thousands magically transform into The Terminator. . .just by donning black leathers and jumping on their hogs. Harley-Davidson owns the stand-out brand that converts accountants and school teachers into bad-ass mothers. A favorite t-shirt slogan with this crowd reads: “We don’t care what they’re doing in Japan.” That’s the magic of drop-dead, to-hell-with-the-competition idea branding.

How can you tell if you’re that kind of company?

Read Youngme Moon’s book cover-to-cover, twice.

Walk into the front office and ask any employee to recite in 25 words or less what makes your company stand out.

Ask yourself: If we disappeared tomorrow, would anybody miss us?

Now that social media is all the rage and its competitors are elbows deep in the stuff, that once too timid company is blogging and tweeting furiously. There’s a tiresome sameness to such assembly line-style content, and it’s hard to distinguish one me-too outfit from another.

Take one aside and ask face-to-face what sets them apart.  If being completely candid they’ll reply, “We really don’t know.”

Later, dudes. It’s Tuesday morning, the roads are clear of dentists on Harleys, and transformation awaits me astride my kick-ass, suicide shift, brakes-are-really-just-a-suggestion 1946 Indian Chief.

In his new book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, author Matt Ridley flogs the school of pessimism that dominates business, media and, well, just about everything. Granted, with oil spewing from a mile deep gusher, a no-gain decade in equity markets, ongoing concerns about the economy — and in our own space — questions on whether or when telco capex for BSS/OSS will pick up, one’s gut reaction is to view the positive with skepticism and to question whether any optimist is in full possession of his senses.  Rest assured that Ridley is no New Age nut case, but a respected expert and author on topics ranging from evolution to human nature and genetics.  In The Rational Optimist, he simply points out the overlooked obvious.

To wit, most doom-saying is hair-brained. Over the last 200 years, and particularly in more recent times, science, technology and communications have — contrary to what the “end is nigh” crowd thinks — vastly improved the quality of life.  Human lifespans have doubled, food is cheaper and more plentiful, infant mortality has declined, many diseases have been eradicated, employment and pay have risen, leisure time has increased, and on and on.  Even from 1900 – 1950, a period marked by two world wars and global depression, most measures of human advancement rose across the globe. It seems we progress even in the worst of times, sometimes despite the odds and ourselves.  How can that be?

Ridley credits “the rapid, continuous and incessant change that human society experiences in a way that no other animal does.”  Change is driven by the unceasing acceleration of ideas, and even moreso, through their exchange in a process mirroring Darwinian natural selection. When shared, our ideas — like genes — replicate, mutate, compete, select, accumulate, and create something new that moves us forward.  Ridley amusingly likens the process to “ideas having sex.”  Their spawn are innovation, progress and perhaps most importantly, dynamism.  There is no “steady state” in the ever-expanding universe of ideas, nor in economics, markets, nature, nor life itself.

Pessimism is the common byproduct of the “steady state” fallacy.  Had rail and motorized traffic never come to pass, the man who predicted city streets awash in horse droppings might have proved a seer. Instead gas-powered vehicles not imagined in his day shoved the man’s dire prediction off the road.

Some years later, around the moment we were to have been engulfed in manure, IBM’s founder scoffed at the idea that computers would one day become popular business tools and household devices. Such skepticism was understandable since at the time computers were roughly the size of a house.  Then in Silicon Valley, ideas had sex. Out popped the microprocessor enabling Microsoft, Apple and Dell to venture onto turf their predecessors could not foresee.

Notwithstanding the wonders wrought by the petrochemical and computing revolutions, most of us should  be dead by now, the victims of modern plagues ranging from HIV to SARS, avian flu and swine flu, and the few lone survivors wandering in a barren land deforested by acid rain. So the naysayers have predicted for years. Given their proclivity for scaring the wits out of us with disasters that never materialize, one wonders if the new pet crisis of global warming is humbug, too.  Not that it matters whether the threat of catastrophe is real.  Mankind, which has never had it so good, nonetheless savors an appetite for the apocalypse. Go figure.

If you haven’t picked up Matt Ridley’s book yet, please do so. It’s a refreshing break from the brooding economic jeremiads now in vogue, and an ideal tonic for steady state thinking.

Tucked away in the Canadian pavilion, Decyde’s booth was decydedly low-key and easy to miss. Hope you didn’t pass it by. A chat with co-founder and CEO Dr. Lorna Strobel Stewart is well worthwhile.

Dr. Stewart’s team has developed a platform they describe as the next level of business intelligence — “the first software engine to reason the way people do when they use judgment, but without the errors that can make human judgment irrational.”

Say what? Software that thinks? Well, darned close it. Decyde does not claim the ability to take on complex, Einsteinian decision-making. The product is designed for repetitive daily operations decisions that involve multiple factors and unstructured evidence. Such brain-teasers are typically routed to analysts for resolution and can be a major time-sink. Applying rubrics and “mathematical rigor,” Decyde automates and lowers the risks of much business decision-making.

Think what that could mean for any employee faced with making a snap decision whose outcome will impact revenue.

Disclosure: I didn’t see a demo and thus can’t attest at this point whether Decyde’s product does everything it claims to. But in a market where so many companies appear intent on looking and sounding alike, I’m encouraged to stumble across a fresh idea that moves BI forward a notch.

Schwartz is absolutely correct that consumers have final responsibility for meeting the terms of their telecom service contracts, and that carriers have the right to set rates in accordance with usage.  Ultimately, service providers must move to tiered billing based on each customer’s usage patterns. Given the billions of dollars that operators have invested in bulking up networks, it’s not right to allow a handful of bandwidth hogs to gobble up capacity at flat rates.

But tiered billing isn’t the whole answer to this problem.  Looking back at the $18K bill shocker, and other cases like it, one must ask:

• Did the operator’s billing platform have the capability to establish a hierarchy that identifies and segments consumption patterns per each user?
• Could the system allow the “administrator” — in this case the father of a hyperactive teenage texter and data downloader — to set a threshold on individual usage?
• Was it integrated with front office systems that could notify the administrator when one individual’s usage approaches the threshold, and then suspend service for that user when he or she knowingly passes the limit?

These capabilities and more are readily available in convergent rating and billing platforms integrated with CRM, intelligent self-service and contact centers.  Until service providers embrace modern BSS platforms, or at the very least shoehorn them onto legacy systems to make the latter perform more efficiently, billing shock will continue — and operators will get a PR black eye for a user’s failure to “read the fine print.”  How much happier all parties would be in the long term if the phone company simply called, texted or e-mailed the customer to say, “Hey, time’s up.”

CRM vendors now offer “cloud monitoring” services that enable customer service agents to follow discussions on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  When they spot an unhappy customer, they can enter the social media conversation to offer help, a credit, a freebie — or direct the customer to the company’s own SM vehicles where the chat will be more “contained.”

Cable TV companies are big on cloud monitoring, and some customers like this outreach, according to a recent Business Week story. Others found it “creepy” when a customer rep surfaced on their Twitter home page.  So do I. Reason: Cloud monitoring is more about controlling than helping.

When John Doe’s TV set goes blank during the big game, he’s usually online or on the phone with customer service in a heartbeat, and the repairman’s on the way.  By the time John goes on Twitter or Facebook, he’s merely indulging his God-given American right to bitch.  The “watchful” agent’s followup via the same SM vehicle can’t fix John’s TV.  Its sole purpose is to prevent a complaint from going viral.  That’s not customer care — it’s just an intrusive business trying to save its butt. I suspect that even customers who “approve” social media monitoring do so after reaching a compromise with themselves: They’ll take whatever benefit being spied upon yields, but at heart they distrust it.

Here in the States, the National Security Agency (NSA) monitors phone conversations to ferret out and prevent terrorist plots.  Similarly, in the U.K., public video surveillance extending from the busiest London “tube” to the most remote country road tracks suspicious activities to safeguard the public.  If a government agency’s oversight of my life saves me one day, I’ll be grateful and may grudgingly admire them.  That doesn’t mean I like what they do.

When a company agent appears “out of the blue” to help — or turn the tone of a social media conversation — customers understand whose public good is at stake.  Businesses should take care how far they exercise their power to monitor and control what customers say.  “Free speech” and “control” don’t mix.

Big Brother, watch out.  Your little bro’ and sis’ are watching right back.

The company is Cision, owned by Berkshire Hathaway.  Their core product: online, continuously-updated media lists.  From recent experience, I know that these lists pull too much irrelevant data and must be manually purged of at least 50% of entries before they’re any use. In fairness, I haven’t yet test-driven Cision’s social media monitoring product. But given my experience with the media list side of the house, my bias against the monitoring service is somewhat automatic.  When I or a staff member have to spend hours fixing a media list, some chemical reaction in my brain triggers an immediate visceral response: “This thing is worth 5 bucks maybe, not 500!”

For those who’re interested, there are scores of social media monitoring services, all bona fide players: BurrellesLuce, CustomScoop, CyberAlert, J.D. Power Web Intelligence, Media Miser, Metrica, Nielsen BlogPulse, Reprise Media, and Sentiment Metrics, to name a few. I tested one — CyberAlert — a few months back, on behalf of a client.

CyberAlert’s people were super-nice and professional, and explained that my first few reports would be chock-full of old blogs as the system played catch-up.  Boy was that ever true: Took me an hour and a half to crawl through the first one!  After a few days the flood stemmed to a manageable flow.  What I quickly discovered & went on to confirm in my month-long test:

1. Most entries were rubbish: job ads, execrably bad employee-made videos tucked away in the far reaches of YouTube and so on.
2. CyberAlert missed key postings that I knew existed.  Guess where I found them? — Google.

In a word, I found this social media monitoring service to be very much like online media list services: inaccurate and incomplete.  Almost like it was. . .automated!

Google worked just fine.  As I type these words I know I will one day regret flakking for the next great soul-less monopoly that needs to be busted up so that smaller players can vie in an open, competitive marketplace.  There is no doubt in my mind that Google has the potential to become the next iteration of the American Bell System or Microsoft.  But for now, you can’t beat Google’s performance.  And you can never beat free.

Recent research on customer behavior shows that 40 percent of customers leave a company after a single bad experience.  Worse, according to this research, some 87 percent of those that defect tell friends and colleagues what happened.

I suspect the same is true of media.  Miss an interview or mislead a journalist, you’re on her or his black list for good.

Once a client of ours cancelled a meeting with The Washington Times — with no warning, at the client’s office, after the reporter had driven an hour to get there.  Apparently, the CEO who was to meet the reporter learned that his company had entered an SEC “quiet period” and couldn’t say or do anything that looked like flakking the stock.  He should have known sooner and told me.  To this day, when our paths cross that reporter looks like he wants my blood.  As far as I’m concerned, he’s within his rights.

Then there was the company that blatantly failed to Do the Right Thing: They flat-out lied — to me and a reporter — about under-the-table dealings with a shady financier. ‘Nuff said.

In contrast, I had an experience this week that made me extremely proud of a client.  During an analyst briefing, the company president misspoke about a product feature. Turned out his product didn’t do one tiny thing he’d said it did.  On realizing his mistake, the prez called me immediately and asked to personally call the analyst, apologize and set the record straight.  How ’bout that!  Mistakes happen.  The usual attitude is “aw, let’s forget about it” or “who cares? — they’ll never find out.”  This client’s honesty won my heart and I’m sure the analyst’s, too.

Back to Rado. It wasn’t just one thing, rather a litany of deception and rude behavior:

1. Broken Contract. Our agreement said they’d provide “two looks” or design concepts.  I received one, liked it, but wanted to defer a decision til I saw the second design.  Rado’s response: “You get one design. You can look at it twice.”  (No, I’m not making this up — he really said that.)
2. Missed Deadlines.  When I asked for deliverables promised the week before, I heard, “Oh, didn’t you receive that? — I’ll re-send it.”  Not once, but several times. Repeated delays pushed back the “go live” date on our web site by months.
3. Taking Virtuality to Thin Air.  Six months into a three-month project, we were getting worried and wanted to talk live.  Guess what? — talking by phone was impossible.  We tried everywhere.  The “contact us” page on Rado’s web site touted 3 physical locations and showed photos of big office buildings to prove the point, so we tried calling each one.  A little investigation revealed that the web designer wasn’t really in any of these locations: He worked at home and the buildings belonged to a friend.  I don’t care if a company is “virtual” — but don’t pretend you’re something else.
4. The Last Straw. When I sent in prospective training dates and Rado replied “How dare you assume I’m available then?” that did it.  I was ready to fly right through the Web and strangle him with my bare hands.

That’s four offenses.  If I wanted to bother with it, I’m sure I could remember more.  But I should have fired him at #1.

A journalist will do just that.  The majority are extremely fair-minded.  But don’t ever “break the contract” by violating their trust.  Journalists don’t forget and never forgive.  Having seen or two made fools of by a lie that went to print, I don’t blame them.

Recent research by the Service Support Professionals Association (SSPA) shows that:

1. Revenue from services now represents over 57% of total revenue for software firms and 37% of total revenue for hardware firms.
2. Service/support is no longer just about fixing problems.  The new focus: speeding consumption of services and products, propelling customers toward repurchase.
3. “Low-quality” outsourcing to cut costs is dead. When companies outsource tech service/support it’s to highly-qualified professionals who know their products cold and act as a direct extension of internal support resources.

Tech’s growing recognition of the revenue value of service has played a major role in the sector’s resilience during the recent downturn.  In 1999, service revenue contributed 33% of total revenue for software firms and 22% for hardware manufacturers.  In other words, over the last decade, service-driven revenue has grown 73% for software firms and 68% for hardware manufacturers.  Service is now a primary vehicle for customer acquisition, not just retention.  Puts a whole different spin on traditional ideas of “customer service,” doesn’t it?

If there’s a pimple on this industry snapshot, it’s tech industry leaders’ failure to promote their outstanding work in delivering a superior service experience.  Too often, we hear the opposite: tales of irate customers storming the walls of software, hardware and comms companies or gang-tweeting to protest a minor tech issue or billing snafu.  Glitches do happen, but for the most part, tech is far ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to servicing customers.  They have to be: That’s where they make the money.  Why not tout this success?

That same day I hired The Complete Website out of New Hampshire, and never looked back. Great people. Outstanding work quality. Rapid response time. Reasonable pricing. To this day, any time I need help, Peter, Jean, Chris, Kate and Jordan are all over it before I can even finish my sentence. Never any need for me to come up with a thought on how to improve SEO, create Google-friendly content, etc. — in their quest to continuously “surprise and delight” the customer, TCW comes to me with these and many other ideas.  They are unforgettable in the best possible way.

I’m not saying this merely to praise TCW or single them out as an exceptional provider of the superior customer experience, but rather, to observe that all tech companies — from the simplest hosting outfit to the maker of sophisticated OSS/BSS solutions — should be just this good.

I’m sure my ordeal with Rado the web designer is the exception, not the norm, in the IT arena.  But if you have any doubts, remember that the customer experience is the thing. Customers may well love you for your extraterrestrial-level technology.  But they rate you on service.