The financial crisis has been with us since 2008, followed by a tepid recovery. You would expect businesses to focus on delivering excellent customer service experiences and overdeliver on every level.

Surprisingly, even though customers value excellence, and even though companies are committed to delivering it, we’re still subjecting each other to excruciating mediocrity.

Why is that?

Great service is not delivered on pure attitude or willingness to please. Great service is part of the business design. Businesses make strategic tradeoffs to deliver a reliable, superior experience:

JetBlue: Low prices, no transfer to other airlines, no business class, no lounges, no special service. In exchange, customers get low prices, one bag for free and convenient locations out of the mega-airports.

iPad: The iPad has no USB, it’s hard to create any content on it, multi-tasking is almost impossible but it’s a great device to consume media, get sucked into the app world or use it as a presentation tool.

My favorite coffeeshop: The coffee is mediocre, the seating is limited and uncomfortable, the Wifi spotty. Still, their kid’s area is superb, a lot of other parents show up on the weekend, they remember my order and have it ready within a minute and everybody is very friendly.

Successful businesses make these choices by design. They know they can’t be good at everything but need to be superb at something, while, at the same time, be bad at other things. For that to work, companies need to deeply understand their customers and design a business that delivers on the most important values of their customers.

I can live with mediocre coffee as long as my kid plays happily for an hour and I can catch up on my Instapaper during that time.

I can live without special service offerings from JetBlue as long as they get me to m destination without any frills and paying for the first bag.

We don’t want to buy from brands that can do everything fairly well. We want to buy from companies that do something exceptionally well and other things exceptionally bad.

You click on a button on your iPhone and it immediately bursts into life, the blinking “slide to unlock” label hinting at the direction of the motion it wants you to make. That rich, lively screen just begs for your attention. Add to that the layer of notifications and you have no willpower left to resist. No matter what’s happening around you: a kid wanting to play with you, a book waiting to be read, a view that wants to be soaked in – once the iPhone wakes up, everything else in the room disappears; your attention’s been stolen by that burst of light. The iPhone (and the iPad, for that matter) is a needy, attention-craving siren that will enslave your attention by it’s amazing beauty at the expense of the world around you. It’s a temptress that constantly reminds you: “You could be on Twitter now” or “You could engage with your friends on Facebook now.”

The Dopamine release

When you check your information, when you get a buzz in your pocket, when you get a ring – you get what they call a dopamine squirt. You get this little rush of adrenaline and, most of the time, you are disappointed. Sure, you get this little information nuggets, the location of your friends, the links they share, the inconsequential email but it’s doesn’t satisfy your craving for more. But when you don’t get this little alarms, you feel bored, you want that little excitement. You’re being conditioned by technology to check, check, check and check.

Information is like food. It nourishes us and we need it to survive in the 21st technology, to be a productive citizen. Yet, food has positives and negatives. As Fast Food Nation clearly showcased, a steady diet of fast food won’t lead to any good. Actually, it might lead to your quick demise. While we know to distinguish between Twinkies and Muesli, we still have trouble distinguishing between information red meat and information red grain.

The diminishing returns of noisy technology

Over time, we have created our information foundation: Email, Facebook, Twitter, Messageboards, Foursquare and other platforms that solve problems for each individual. We don’t have a lot of attention left in our life to add more information and platforms. Apps and destinations became more noisy to get our attention. Just like a gathering that started out as a small dinner party, developed into a party with loud music and now looks like this:

(Talking about Dopamine.) You can enjoy a rave for a few hours, maybe even all night and a nice sunrise. But it’s not a sustainable model. We can’t continue to add new technologies and new platforms, begging us for information constantly without hitting the wall. I would argue, we’ve already reached that wall and we’re about to hit it.

Nobody is saying noisy technologies will disappear. It’s just too intriguing and easy to blink, flash and beep to get the attention of people. But the returns are diminishing and people are starting to look for technologies that solve problems with out being a needy temptress.

In Part 3 we’ll talk about the emergency of calm technologies and their integration into the information ecosystem.

Is it going to location-based marketing? Hyper-local marketing? Google+? Facebook’s timeline? Twitter ads? Social Search? What about the convergence of mobile and social? Touchscreen computing?

Clients ask me that question all the time and my answer remains the same:

Nobody knows what the next big thing is going to be. Nobody. More importantly, you shouldn’t be concerned about it. We haven’t even figured out the basics of digital marketing yet.

Let’s be frank here: The only working tactic working in the digital space is SEM. Measurable, scalable and tied back to your basic ROI. Once you leave the SEM area, digital marketers continue to work in the Wild West. We still haven’t worked out how to engage with customer through display advertising. Instead, we try to try work the attribution and measurement game:

“The metrics are all wrong.”

“It’s not about the last click.”

All true but it doesn’t instill any confidence in our clients when we sell our arsenal of digital tools with a major asterisk attached to them.

We need to fix digital marketing from scratch.

SEM/SEO? Check

Display advertising? Clearly, we need to start from scratch. We have optimized the delivery of ad units to customers but the creative side of the equation continues to be abysmal. The declining click-through rates are proof of that.

Social Media? Most companies have still not understood the power of Social Media. 95% of marketing efforts on social platforms continue to be megaphone-style, mass marketing efforts. Cutting down the power of Social Marketing to almost nothing.

Location-based marketing? Coupons are nice but they are not the be-all and end-all of location-based marketing strategies. By focusing on pure coupon play, you’re missing out in great opportunities.

The next big thing is already there.

Actually, there are many next big things. You’re just not using them properly yet. You’re not innovating enough using all these new platforms.

The majority of brands act like little children riding a bike on training wheels. After a few minutes, they get off the bike and ask: “When can I drive a car?”

Let’s try to ride the bike properly first.

See this thing? The iPad with the shiny stuff on it?

300 carats of white diamonds. It’s also ornamented with rare black diamonds on the home button and Apple logo on the back.

It goes for $1.2 million.

Yes, that’s $1,200,000.

If I had a say, I would drag the maker, Camael, in front of the International Criminal Tribunal in Den Haag and charge them with obscene display of wealth.

Heck, let them be charged for crimes against humanity.

And all the idiots who bought this product should be deported to Somalia.

Let them eat diamonds.

And explain their purchase to starving kids.

That’s what I would like to do with these people.

Actually, what I would like to do is to work with a client (somebody focused on providing customer value) and combat with them any obscene displays of wealth.

I’m sure that brand would be called “anti-capitalist” or “Socialist” by the CNBC crowd.

Even better.

A value brand doesn’t need these guys.

As a brand, you actually want to be despised by that crowd.

Because Main Street will love you for it.

They are your customers, anyway.

Nothing against luxury.

I love high-end hotels.

Business Class flights.

A nice car.

But nobody needs a 300 carat iPad.

Nobody.

It feels like an expensive middle finger defying the fabric of our society.

That value brand needs to live its values, can’t just market them.

It has to be part of their identity, the reason they’re around in the first place.

It can’t be just a marketing ploy.

It requires an organization who has the courage of its convictions.

An immensely powerful platform for a brand to stand out from the value clutter.

Making a positive difference for society and its bottom line.

Who has the courage?