BenchmarkPortal, a national research firm specializing in contact center best practices, published its survey results last month showing contact center preferences for “all-in-one” (or “unified”) versus “multi-point” communications systems.
Among the key survey findings, the report showed that all-in-one systems were preferred over multi-point systems based on their ability to support additional applications with virtually no modification or integration issues, and for their ability to lower administrative costs by reducing support staff by a full 25 percent. Systems composed of products or applications acquired from third-party vendors, despite being marketed as single “all-in-one,” “unified,” or “suite” solutions, were qualified as multi-point systems due to their multi-box architectures.
Additional survey results showed that the majority of CTO and IT departments are inclined toward, or favor, all-in-one systems over multi-point systems, and that the former have become more attractive over time.
Also uncovered by the survey were key contact center technology trends, which showed post call surveys, Web chat, and multimedia queuing as the most likely applications to be deployed over the next 12 months.
The BenchmarkPortal survey was conducted by polling the research firm’s contact center performance database -- the world’s largest with more than 25,000 global members representing 43 different industry sectors.
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There is a mutual dependence of three elements to deliver a great customer experience: Product, People, and Process. I have been contemplating another but gosh durn it I can't come up with another P word for it.
The last element it seems to me is Technology -- propelling .
There are lots of technologies that swirl around delivering a great customer experience; technologies that enable us to do CEM efficiently and more profitably. with its great command over database and analytics, that connect customer service specialists with customers (see , for example), and many emerging support technologies that enhance one function or another in providing customers with valued experiences.
But a lot more is needed to effectively assist human beings in serving customers with a distinctive experience that can drive brand differentiation. Where will all this New Technology come from
Feb. 13, 2007 -- On an 80-core chip not much larger than the size of a fingernail and using less electricity than most of today's home appliances, Intel Corp.
has developed the world's first programmable processor. Our researchers have achieved a wonderful and key milestone in terms of being able to drive multi-core and parallel computing performance forward, said Justin R. Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer.
It points the way to the near future when Teraflop-capable designs will be commonplace and will reshape what we can all expect from our computers and the Internet at home and in the office.
Breakthroughs of this magnitude will take what we know of as Customer Experience Management to a new level. We will be able to accumulate, store and manage details about our customers so we can deliver individualized experiences that are valued, relevant and wanted.
Of course, that's where the big problem of another P word will emerge -- Privacy. And that gets back to People and Process and adds Protection. If we cannot protect the privacy of our customers, then we will fail.
Yesterday, customers of Anthem Healthcare, one of the Biggest Blue Cross/Blue Shield Plans in the nation, became the latest in a long string of organizations who had personal data stolen from the firm's data storage facilities.
Privacy is the sacred trust all of us must protect; otherwise our customer experience programs will NOT be valued at all.
But Technology will ramble forward, like it or not.
Actually, it is moving at a full warp-speed gallop. Consider this that puts our current world into perspective and then steps forward some 20 years with projections of $1,000 computers that will hold more intelligence in one machine than in the minds of all humans of the face of this earth.
The original was started by Noah Kagan in late ‘05.
The carnival is a travelling assortment of interesting blog entries on marketing topics. The next one is forming up at
Nick Rice just put out the latest extension of The Marketing (r)evolution Carnival -- one of the real composite treats on the blogosphere. This concept enables serious marketing bloggers to post thoughts and gain a bigger stadium that their blog alone might get.
A Serious Megaphone!
What I find is a serious lack of thoughtful postings about customer experience delivery as a new strategic direction in marketing. The Carnivals are great assemblages of thoughtfull marketers.
Likewise I am hoping to do the same around the concept of customer experience marketing. Already I have attracted guest authors of high repute: Shaun Smith, Jeanne Bliss, John Todor, Jill Griffin, Randy Saunders, Bob Prosen. These world-wide experts are openly sharing their ideas on how to design and deliver outstanting customer experiences.
Hope you will find time to check it out at .
Bill Porter, Director of Porter Research’s Customer Experience Practice, tells us, “Customer satisfaction definitely declined in 2006 from the previous year. After spiking into the ‘90’s’ in 2005, satisfaction slipped back into the ‘80’s’ again in 2006 following a declining trend that’s been going on for some years now. Also different from 2005 was customer’s dissatisfaction in 2006 with the area of partnership with suppliers. “Past complaints about service got upstaged this year by partnership expectations in the growing customer experience movement. My belief is that customers who want a world-class experience today just aren’t getting good partners as suppliers.
And customers are starting to demand more!”
Since 1989, Porter has provided customer experience research programs that drive development of predictable future revenue streams for hundreds of companies including global customers like IBM, Siemens, McKesson and Xerox. Bill is author of the best selling book on the customer experience, Quest for Loyalty.
For years, now, Bill Porter has provided with win-loss analysis that helps us understand why we win and why we lose deals … which gives us yet another view into what it is that our customers expect so that we can deliver more perfect customer experiences.
Thanks to the invention of Tivo, I rarely see TV commercials anymore. The one exception is the SuperBowl.
Like many of you, I watch every commercial for the creativity and entertainment value.
But how many of these ads will actually drive the audience to action? Apparently very few.
Doug Hall (Eureka Ranch CEO and perhaps now most famous as the blunt, colorful judge on ABC's reality TV program American Inventor) has studied the effectiveness of SuperBowl ads. His research indicates “advertising that communicates meaningful news is five times more likely to generate sales growth versus advertising focused on entertainment.”
As Hall explains, every good advertising message should quickly answer three questions:
(overt benefit)
The most effective SuperBowl commercial ever tested?
According to Hall’s research, it was the original Subway “Jared” ad.
This campaign made Subway the fastest growing restaurant chain in same store sales and was a key driver behind Subway becoming the #1 restaurant franchise in America - with even more locations than McDonalds.
So when you watch this year’s SuperBowl ads, think about which ones are just amusing and which ones actually entice you to buy the product.
| Liz Roche on Unica's asks: who owns the customer?
She goes on to profess a concept that I bet (guest columnist on this blog and author of a book titled ) would strongly agree with.
Liz writes: I believe if we're trying to influence customer behavior across a lifecycle -- how a customer is engaged (mindshare captured), how the transaction is effected (exchange of currency ), how the fulfillment works (product/service delivery) and how the service looks (post-sale service and support) -- we must have visibility into and the ability to effect change among each lifecycle stage. If we buy this notion, then to me this means the customer relationship must be coordinated/directed centrally -- and NOT from within any one of the disciplines in the lifecycle.
So I think that the customer relationship must be coordinated by something like a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) organization, which doesn't live in sales, customer service, marketing or product, but exists independently (reporting to the CEO). And as such is able to create segment-specific treatment plans (down to segments of 1) that have involement across the lifecycle.
I would agree that a CCO is a grand idea -- providing this person is truly empowered to guide the customer experience for the company.
Where I work, is a proponent of delivering a great customer experience -- one that provides such great value and support that we have retained many clients for 30 years. Such loyalty is profitable for both the company and the customer.
Managers within the company are challenged to make good on the customer promise.
We don't have a CCO, but we have a pretty good idea of how to make customers happy. That does not mean there are no debates over clauses in license agreements or that sometimes our products or our processes might will fail in this objective. And yes there is always a struggle between how far you can go to please customers and still run a profitable business.
This struggle sometimes erupts into an unhappy customer experience. Perfection is a tough standard. But it is the standard to pursue.
Who owns the customer experience? One answer is that it is the CEO who must own this experience. Or if the company can justify a CCO, then this person stands in for the CEO.
And they set the tone. But in the end, we all must deliver the goods.
That's a major reason we have created this blog -- The Perfect Customer Relationship.
Here we can listen to some of the best CEM consultants in the world (Shaun Smith, Jeanne Bliss, John Todor, Jill Griffin, Louis Columbus ...
and more who will join us in the future). Here we can listen to the voice of the customer experience and in the safety of sharing our thoughts we can all get better at delivering valued and unique experiences that drive advocacy and profitable growth.
So in response to Liz's initial question, who do you think owns the customer at your organization?
| We are pleased to add Jill Griffin to the outstanding team of customer experience consultants who share their knowledge with you.
Jill Griffin has been preaching and teaching the gospel of customer loyalty in Corporate America for almost three decades. Dell, Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, Subaru, Days Inn, Marriott Hotels, Hewlett Packard, IBM, AMD, Wells Fargo, Western Union, Sprint, Toyota and other similar organizations have sought her solutions and welcomed her deep inside their conference rooms, call centers and customer sites.
Jill’s most recent duties have earned her a seat in the boardroom. Since 2002, Jill has served on the Board of Directors of Luby’s, Inc. (NYSE: LUB), overseeing the restaurant chain’s critical turnaround.
In four short years, Luby’s has returned to profitability, paid off all debt, enhanced shareholder value four-fold, and restored its storied Brand to prominence by winning back lapsed customers and marketing to new ones.
Jill’s string of best-selling, award-winning books on customer loyalty began publication in the mid nineties, with the release of the internationally published, business best-seller, Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It. The second edition of Customer Loyalty, revised for the digital age, is on Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge list of recommended books.
Jill is the co-author of Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal, which won Soundview Executive Book Summaries’ 30 Best Business Books award. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Jill served on the University of Texas McCombs School of Business faculty from 1988 to 1990.
Today, she is a frequent UT guest lecturer. Her two books have been used as textbooks for the university’s MBA and undergraduate courses on customer management.
In her early career, Jill served as senior brand manager for RJR/Nabisco’s largest brand and distinguished herself as one of the youngest brand managers in the corporation’s history.
From RJR/Nabisco, Jill joined AmeriSuites Hotels as the start-up chain’s first National Director of Marketing and Sales. She launched Griffin Group in 1988.
Jill is the recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Alumna Award for the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business (received alongside Larry Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines) from which she holds MBA and Bachelor of Science degrees, Magna Cum Laude.
Jill’s passion is speaking to audiences world-wide about the power and pit-falls of customer loyalty. Each of her Loyalty Maker ™ presentations is painfully customized and loaded with industry-specific how to’s, wrapped around real-world, heart-felt stories and case studies. Jill’s in-the-trenches leadership and experience, married with her high energy, fun-loving platform style, make her a real stand-out among corporate speakers.
| wonders about the relationships that exist between PR, sales and customer experience.
It is easy, from my point of view, to get tangled in semantics.
Customer experience is all about how a customer thinks about the brand.
It's what's in his/her head that determines if the experience was perfect, good or terrible. That said, PR has an essential role in building positive customer experience. Every customer touchpoint contributes the what finally ends up in the customer's head.
I think we might all agree on that.
So then, the link to sales? Customer experience is about building advocacy for a brand so that customers become referrers and thus generate increased revenue.
Revenue generation is the end result of a well conceived customer experience.
But starting with a designed customer experience is a world apart from traditional product centric marketing and a sales pipeline mentality. Think customers first and the rest will flow just fine.
Think company/product first and we will be part of yesterday's news.
| Federated Department Stores acquired the 60-store Marshall Fields in 2005 and last September announced “All Marshall Field’s stores will convert to the Macy’s nameplate in fall 2006.”
Several hundred other acquired May department store brands like Kaufmann’s and Filene’s were also converted to Macy's as part of a strategy to create a national department store chain that could be advertised nationally.
A new report from Dana Cohen, managing director of Bank of America Securities reduced Federated from a recommended buy to neutral, in part because of flagging sales at Marshall Fields and other ex-May stores. Although Federated’s legacy Macy and Bloomingdale’s stores reported a 4.4 percent gain, the same-store sales at hundreds of former May Department stores were down by 11 percent.
The report said some possible contributing factors included the sudden conversion of all May nameplates and changes in product assortments emphasizing Macy's private brands and downsizing some national ones.
“The key issue we are facing is that management miscalculated the impact of these changes, said Cohen.
Another report indicates that former May locations may have lost 10-20 percent of the shopper base from a year ago.
They are asking shoppers around the country to give up a brand that a lot of them have had for a long time and have been emotionally attached to, whether it's a store or product brand, said Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail.
| Consider first the impact on your company when you lose one of your most trusted and experienced employees -- when this talent leaves your organization to work for another, or when that employee retires to pursue other dreams.
In 1994, Bill Gates recognized that Microsoft was in the midst of an operational crisis, the company's laid-back, creative atmosphere increasingly at odds with the need for corporate structure.
The world's most successful businessman had his choice of top executives to help him fix this problem and, ultimately, take Microsoft to the next level.
Gates turned to Robert Herbold, a senior vice president from P G..
. Bob was an experienced and trusted manager that had helped several CEOs at P G to achieve stellar growth and efficiency. Over the next seven years, with Herbold as COO, Microsoft's revenues quadrupled and its profitability increased seven-fold; operating expenses fell from 51 percent of revenues to 40 percent over the same period.
Imagine the value he would have brought to P G had he stayed there!
Now consider the impact of something well over 4 million trusted, experienced employees in America will have on the economy as the Boomers begin peeling out. This will be a gigantic brain drain on every company -- large and small.
These are the senior managers and senior staff at most companies. They are the ones who have designed and delivered the customer experience that has vaulted so many companies into market leadership positions.
I had a bit of an introspective moment last night while watching the Memphis Tigers absolutely destroy a young Cincinnati Bearcat team.
In years past, the seniors and juniors of the high flying Bearcats would immerse the new players into the culture of a winning tradition. They knew how to swagger and knew how to set fear into opponents. But the Cats have no seniors or juniors and they lost Coach Bob Huggins to a new coach.
Nothing from the decades of dominance remains. The knowledge transfer was lost. The trusted and experienced employees all left at once.
We have already established in many postings on this blog that it is the employee experience that in the end creates the customer experience. Two things are needed.
- Companies need to figure out how to hold on to their best Boomers longer, convincing these trusted and experienced people to put off retirement at the traditional age.
With improved health expectancies, most of these key employees still will have their most valuable years ahead of them.
- Companies need to begin an accelerated training in customer experience management with the next layer of younger managers. Assure an effective knowledge transfer through something more akin to the old apprentice program.
It must become a key part of human resource planning to get these most experienced employees to develop the talents in the younger staff.
cites new observations about how retailers are marketing their wares.
According to the online site, one new cross-channel activity that should pick up steam next year is the practice of driving customers from the printed page to a specific online page, or vanity URL, containing information about the product they’re interested in instead of a generic home page, Mr. Haggin said.
I’m starting to see multichannel merchants view the catalog as setting up the proposition and recognizing that the consumer wants to, on his or her own terms, consummate the order online, he said.
That’s the most profound thing I see changing.
It’s all about the customer, as another marketer explained.
According to a survey by : While new and enhanced service offerings can be crucial in building brand loyalty, it is still customer service that remains one of the best tools in providing customer satisfaction.
The survey found that 20 percent of consumers have returned a technology product in the last two years, citing poor product quality (38 percent) and missed functionality expectations (19 percent) as the main reasons. Poor customer service (11 percent) and a failure to work with other products and services (15 percent) were cited as leading reasons for product and service dissatisfaction, according to the survey.
This adds to the body of evidence that delivering a superior customer experience will grow business.
Good customer support yields customer loyalty to your brand, said Al Delattre, global managing director for Accenture's electronics and high-tech industry group.
He noted that the survey found that nearly three out of four consumers agree that getting good customer support makes them more likely to buy from the same company in the future. While the survey clearly reveals the significant challenges facing the consumer electronics industry today, it also shows that there is strong demand for enhanced customer support and other service offerings that can overcome the current confusion and frustration.
Delattre said: This presents a clear opportunity for leading companies to develop the bundles of products and services that can deliver a truly satisfying and exciting customer experience.
The survey of 10,000 consumers in North America, Europe and Asia also found that consumers are frustrated with complexity, with 43 percent stating that they would prefer to buy a single-use product or service that does one thing well. Again from Delattre: Digital technologies increasingly are moving into the lives of mainstream consumers who are embracing these products and services as part of what can be described as an emerging digital lifestyle -- where use of these technologies has become seamlessly integrated with how we all live and work.
But unlike the technophiles who were the primary market for these products in the past, today's mainstream buyers do not have the same degree of technical knowledge to cope with the complex installation, setup and troubleshooting that these products often require -- and this survey indicates they have no desire to become their own technicians. The online survey was conducted by TNS for Accenture. About 800 to 1,600 consumers were polled per country.
Consumers in the United States and eight other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China participated in the overall online poll.
| Gonna take a few days off.
But not before sharing this message so right for the Season.
Just a few minutes, but you will feel better by 1000%.
|
- The customer experience with products, services and the company providing them will be the foundation for CRM going forward and will be increasingly a consideration for corporate strategies and metrics. CRM, as we knew it, will disappear by the end of the 2008.
- CRM On Demand will become preeminent as companies shift an increasing proportion of their budgets to on-demand products.
- The open source movement and companies like SugarCRM will become viable alternative.
- CRM will increasingly be integrated with strategies for social networking.
Clearly “Customer Experience” is gaining momentum on the priority list of many executives. Greenberg points out he personally expected more metrics to be available and widely accepted to measure customer experience success.
But on the other hand, at least Fred Reichheld’s (NPS) is quickly being universally embraced as THE customer advocacy metric. In fact many companies are now tying executive pay to NPS and all indications show this trend will accelerate throughout 2007 and beyond.
Greenberg was definitely on track with the expected growth in on-demand or “Software as a Service” (SaaS) applications.
No doubt this disruptive acquisiton and delivery model will increase in importance to all organizations -- small, medsize and enterprise – as it allows them to quickly obtain and implement new technology and applications. You don’t have to look any farther than the rapidly growing Salesforce.com subscriber base or the colossal increase in participation at to see there’s enormous interest and adoption of Software as a Service.
| An apparently not affiliated with McDonalds is keeping close tabs on the fast food chain and its ability to deliver a positive customer experience. I happened upon McChronicles while cruising through the blogosphere. The first story I found was one that struck a cord with me --
The blogger did not give McD a great rating.
It was chronicled that a lot of McD crew members take an order and then ask the next person in line for their order. This leaves the person who just ordered wondering what happened. This customer feels suddenly like the Emperor with non clothes.
I've had this happen to me a lot at the fast food chain. I kind of stand back to the side, somewhat surprised at the rudeness.
Well, now the McD process of pushing customers through has been documented.
Not exactly the kind of customer experience the McD corporate headquarters imagined ...
it is an example of the unintended consequences of process ...
and a lack of appreciation for the customer.
As I have written before, customers will forgive an imperfect customer experience providing it is not repeated. All of us in corporate-dom need to be listening for signs that our CEM systems are not working and then fix them fast .
.. show the customer we appreciate their business.
McD staff, as you might expect, are on top of the customer experience thing. See their official .
| One of the fastest growing job titles now popping up on the Personnel Recruiting Websites is Customer Experience Manager.
We're also seeing similar titles popping up in our own marketing database and in various lists we purchase.
-- An exciting new role in the Customer Operations directorate. You will be responsible for managing 4 key functions: Continuous Improvement, Process Mapping and design, User Acceptance Testing Operational Business Readiness.
You will seek to identify opportunities to drive improved business performance and efficiency through process change and improvement, and be responsible for ensuring that Customer Experience is at the heart of all business change.
This is just further evidence that customer experience is becoming a movement across enterprises -- large and small. When CEOs see the need to improve the experience their customers have with them to the extent that they are designating this as a vital management position, you can be sure this CEM thing is real.
| American Airlines announced plans to to upgrade its entire fleet of Boeing 767-200 aircraft. The $20 million investment represents another step in a series of investments American is making to its core products to enhance the overall customer experience on some of its most highly competitive transcontinental routes. The upgrade includes updated First and Business Class seats, a lighter and brighter cabin interior, and new audio and video on-demand personal entertainment devices in First and Business Class.
This announcement would lead us to believe they don't quite know how to respond to Virgin and Southwest which are still the leaders in customer satisfaction. But it is a sign that the airline is recognizing its most profitable customers and is trying to make the experience better for them.
$20 million is nothing to sneeze at, but everything we know about providing a perfect customer experience says fixing the planes is important, but only part of the battle.
The three-legged stool calls for alignment of product, processes and a staff trained and passionate about delivering customer experience.
Toyota leads the auto industry in retaining new vehicle buyers, according to a study released by JD Power and Associates on Wednesday. The automaker's Toyota brand replaced the Lexus in the annual survey, which measures the percentage of new vehicle buyers and lessees who replace a vehicle with another from the same brand.
The Toyota brand topped the survey with a 63.9 percent retention rate compared to the overall industry rate of 47.9.
Neal Oddes, director of product research and analysis at J.D. Power said: Toyota benefits from its reputation for exceeding customer expectations in terms of both short-term and long-term quality, which has helped to maintain the high resale value of its vehicles, as well as to expand its customer base.
Toyota, which has seen its U.S. sales and market share rise steadily all year, is expected to overtake General Motors Corp.
GM.N as the world's largest automaker in a year.
Driving Revenue Growth by Web 2.
0 -- (Troy Angrignon). This blog post is a general starting point for companies to explore how they might think about driving revenue as well as to understand how the various technologies and attitude shifts fit together. We have seen how specific Web 2.
0 approaches and tools such as Long Tail theory, blogs. wikis, RSS readers and aggregators, online communities, web services, metrics, usage pattern recognition, user generated content, and self-service can be used..
.today..
.to drive revenue growth in an organization by impacting the acquisition and retention of customers, the amount of revenue that is earned from those customers, and the prices that your company can charge for its products and services. .
Today’s Best Known Brands Move to Homeshoring Customer Service Model. ‘Homeshoring,’ a model which is changing customer management outsourcing, is the use of home-based agents to field various types of customer care inquiries.
With an estimated 4 million people working in call centers in the U.S., companies are turning to a home-based model to address challenges such as the need for better agent quality, high turnover and the addressing the seasonal nature of many industries.
There are an estimated 139,000 home-based phone representatives in the U.S., and IDC predicts that number could exceed 300,000 by 2010.
The new emphasis in customer care, IDC further predicts, will be on meeting specific metrics while still providing high customer satisfaction. .
Harte-Hanks to Host Webinar for Retail Marketers, Looking to Win Customers With a Better Shopping Experience. Harte-Hanks today announced that the company is hosting a live Webinar featuring independent analyst Nikki Baird of Forrester Research, and retail vertical practice leader Wendy Lynes of Harte-Hanks, on the topic of customer experience management for retailers. This free one-hour event takes place live on Tuesday, December 12, at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST.
Baird will offer retailers specific insights and recommendations for competing effectively without the necessity of a large marketing budget, and Lynes will relate recent findings of Harte-Hanks regarding critical best practices for multichannel retailers. .
The U.S. lost 250,000 call center jobs to India and the Philippines between 2001 and 2003, according to Technology Marketing Corp. Yet the trend appears to be reversing, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale.
The nation added 40,000 call center jobs over the past four years, a fair number of them customer service agents who work at home. IDC says there are some 130,000 such home-based workers, a number it expects to reach 300,000 in 2010.
Advantages for employers include reduced real estate and equipment costs and educated and motivated workers for whom they typically do not provide health care or other benefits.
Many of the workers are mothers with small children, retirees, people with disabilities and students.
| We hear a lot of people talking about them -- podcasts, that is. The roar makes one think it is the Next Coming of Marketing!
And maybe it is.
My colleague Randy Saunders loves listening to podcasts. He drives a long way between home and office so he fills the time with podcasts.
Next morning, sure enough, he's telling us all he learned the night before. He gives me a few on CD to listen to and I check them out on my short drive home.
Here's my problem with podcasts.
I have low attention deficit or some kind of anti-podcast malady. I hear an interesting point during the podcast and my mind wanders off to contemplate this new tidbit. About 10 minutes later, I realize the podcast is still running, but I have missed all the gems once my mental wandering began.
I have to go back and forth, or listen to the whole podcast several times before I finally get it all without being interrupted by my mental malady. But give me a book or an article or a blog posting that I can print out -- then I underline, read what I want, in the sequence I want to read, skip what I want to skip ..
. get what I want from the written word.
That's not to say podcasts do not have a place in our modern media world.
After all, use of podcasting is growing. Download the latest Pew Research Analysis on podcasting. But until I move an hour from where I work, I suspect my car radio will continue featuring Big Band music or NPR.
The day before Thanksgiving holiday in the US and as they say in broadcast news: It looks like a slow news day.
There are nearly 500 articles in the archives of this blog that has now been running for just about two years.
One I recommend looking at again is a story about a Xerox customer service team that, in my opinion, defines The Perfect Customer Experience.
It should inspire you to change how you think and give you a path for that change.
And on this slow news day, take a drive through our Archive. Have a nice holiday.
| Should all customers be treated the same? Not if you want to really “wow” the most loyal and profitable customers and attract more people just like them.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t treat all customers “fairly.
” But treat everyone equally and you’ll probably disappoint a top customer whose unique situation deserves extra service.
As Jeff Mowatt points out in his article , what would happen if you treated a 6-year-old and a 17-year old child the same? Of course that would be a huge mistake.
Since they’re “different” you need to treat them “age appropriately.”
Similarly, you may need to accommodate a special request from your very best customer that you wouldn’t do for a complete stranger. That’s just good business sense.
Mowatt has some great examples of why different approaches are required for different customers. To not recognize and respond appropriately to the situation could leave a great customer quite frustrated.
A recent shows that (blocking and filtering) are the result of reputation issues, not content. The study, based on 550 email campaigns, shows that sender reputation causes 77% of delivery failures, while an additional 6% are triggered by the reputation of domains included in the email content and and only 17% being related to factors such as words, fonts, images, or spelling.
Making simple changes to creative elements of email messages can or more, to new research conducted by Silverpop. Email subject line, ratio of images to text, and the email layout style are the key creative elements evaluated in this study.
--Only 15% of marketers use click-stream data as an audience segmentation attribute, but that is growing (Jupiter).
--Only 15% of marketers state they have dedicated staff for Web analytics; 9% have more than one staff member; 15% have no staff and over 50% state this is a part-time role for one or more staffers.
| 93% of all technology purchasing decisions begin with research on the Internet.
Better make sure you have a sound online strategy.
| Over the last decade, Shaun has been a key catalyst in expanding management focus from the tactical issues of customer service to the much wider and strategic issue of customer experience. He has developed some of the latest thinking and practice around this subject, helping organisations world-wide to create a compelling customer experience that achieves brand differentiation and long-term customer loyalty.
He is co-author of three critically-acclaimed business books.
His first book ‘Uncommon Practice’, researched and written in partnership with Interbrand, examines those companies that create exceptional customer experiences. His second book ‘Managing the Customer Experience’reveals how leaders can build this kind of competitive advantage for their own organisations. Shaun’s latest book ‘See, Feel, Think, Do – the power of instinct in business’ co-authored with Andy Milligan of Interbrand, explores how highly successful business leaders and entrepreneurs use the power of instinct to achieve results.
,
Shaun is also contributing author to The Economist’s Brands and Branding and author of the Organisational Alignment Survey (OAS™) and the Customer Experience Management+™ survey (CEM+™) research tools that enable organisations to evaluate and improve their customer experience and align their people with company values and strategy. -
Shaun began his career in the airline industry, where he became Head of Customer Service, Sales and Marketing Training worldwide for British Airways. He later moved to Hong Kong to head up Cathay Performa Consulting, where he specialised in airline customer service strategy, before starting his own company providing customer service consultancy to international organisations in Asia.
He returned to the UK in the late 1990s as Senior Vice President of The Customer Experience Business, a specialist consulting division of Forum Corporation, a leading provider of workplace learning.
Over the last 25 years, he has built up a wealth of practical experience with organisations throughout Europe, Asia Pacific and the US, working with senior executive teams on key issues such as brand strategy and implementation, leadership, customer experience and organisational alignment. Shaun
has worked within a diverse range of sectors, including both business-to-business and business-to-consumer organisations.
These include retail, telecoms, travel, leisure, professional and financial services, technology, automotive, manufacturing and the public sector.
Shaun has featured a number of times on the ‘Ask the Expert’ programme on CNBC and is sought after to speak internationally on key business issues such as Brand Leadership and differentiation; The Alignment of Marketing, Customer Service and HR to create customer-focused change; Motivating and Training Employees to Deliver the Brand.
Shaun now runs his own customer experience consultancy, shaunsmith+co, which is firmly rooted in the ‘keep it simple’ ethos.
He doesn’t talk paradigms, complex methodologies or seven magic bullets; instead his approach is refreshingly straightforward, always pragmatic and at times, controversial.
| John Todor uniquely combines two perspectives for developing win-win relationships between companies and their customers. During his tenure as a professor and research scientist at the University of Michigan he investigated how people learn and make decisions.
As a business owner, executive and consultant he has faced the realities of turning a profit. His new book, Addicted Customers, is the outgrowth of over fifteen years of integrating the two perspectives into a methodology that delivers the experiences customers value along with sustainable profits and growth for the companies.
He owned and managed a marketing firm with clients that included General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Domino’s Pizza, held executive positions with technology companies, and worked as a CRM analyst.
As the Managing Partner of , he helps companies implement business strategies that strengthen customer relationships and profitability. Clients range from small entrepreneurial ventures to multi-nationals like Hewlett-Packard
He received his Ph.D.
in Educational Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and completed post-doctoral studies in cognitive science, clinical neuropsychology and marketing. He is co-director of the Association for the Advancement of Relationship Marketing’s Customer Equity Initiative.
| MSNBC, today, launched the largest buy ever. The media placement on more than 800 blogs is promoting MSNBC's which is scheduled for this Wednesday. The MSNBC buy is bigger than the Audi BlogAds buy of 286 last spring, and is the second big move of note by a decent size advertiser in recent weeks through the Blogads service, the first being spots for The Manchurian Candidate.
Revenues from online advertising excluding search grew to $6.1 billion for the first three quarters of the year--up by 11.5 percent from the first nine months of 2004, according to a report released Wednesday by .
Overall, ad spending during the first three quarters increased by just 3 percent, to $104.1 billion.
The Internet share of total advertising has now recovered to 2001 levels, according to TNS
reports that instead of shying away from the digital book revolution, News Corp.
publisher HarperCollins, for one, is embracing it.
The company today is announcing it will make its books available to the search services offered by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.com, while maintaining possession of the digital files themselves.
By owning its digital files, Google and company will have to come to HarperCollins for access to its backlist of 20,000 titles.
These titles will be hosted on HarperCollins' internal server, so that search engines will have to ping the server for page views instead of copying and then hosting them on their own.
This is a positive response to the move by big Internet firms to digitize book content that has many publishers worried that they will lose their intellectual property rights.
In response, publishers and authors have brought Internet search giant Google to court for copyright infringement.
Fascinating how the new media are taking hold.
Dixie, maker of those tiny little disposable cups and paper plates, issponsoring a new show.
It's not a show you've probably heard of though. It's actually a podcast called hosted by two moms in Virginia. The two women recently signed a deal that writes is north of six figures.
“We've been researching podcasts for some time,” said Erik Sjogren, senior brand manager of Dixie. “We are trying to speak to the same moms and reach them in the same way Mommycast does. We are an 85-year-brand but we want to be contemporary and find the cutting edge.If this does well for Dixie, it'll be interesting to see if other brands begin to woo other podcasters.Perhaps [paper plates] aren't the sexiest category, but we like to think we'll catch some people by surprise. He said the sponsorship coincides with brand renaming and repositioning happening in the spring.
I promised myself the other day to re-read my copy of Peter Drucker’s Age of Discontinuity. Of all his books, I remembered this one as the most important, but I have not read it in for over a decade. Shame on me.
But picking up my old, somewhat yellowed copy felt good the second I opened it up. There were all my underlinings and sidenotes written into the book in my previous readings. My first observation as I scanned my sidenotes: this man made me think.
The first responsibility of managers, Drucker said, was to ask themselves a simple question: What is your business? He was of the opinion that only the customer could really answer. That was a statement made way ahead of the current CRM boom.
And yet it is a definitional problem that most managers still struggle with. At least I do.
Getting a handle on “what is our business” is deceptively difficult.
I work for a software company. So the deceptively easy answer is that we are a software company. Wrong.
At least in the eyes of our customers. They told us we were in the business of helping them to simplify complex business processes so they could make better, faster decisions.
Drucker brought clarity to discontinuities that he saw well ahead of his contemporaries.
Scanning his classic book, he picked off issues that were predictive. They are issues that we now are struggling with in one business after another.
New technologies are upon us.
Drucker could not envision the PC and the Internet, but his book was an early warning system on what we would have to ponder as technology became ubiquitous.
He saw the implications of the global economy before it resembled what we now live in. “The world has become one market, one global shopping center” … “yet this world economy almost entirely lacks economic institutions to energize global productivity” that could lift poor and largely colored nations out of poverty … we stood the probability of a new war between races.
(Did Drucker actually see the Jihad coming?)
He saw the approaching disenchantment with big and cumbersome institutions – universities, hospitals, businesses, governments. And he warned we were not prepared for this complexity.
He challenged us 40 years ago to prepare for the Knowledge Revolution.
Big discontinuities seen so long ago and yet unresolved in this world.
Drucker does make you think.
Even after his passing.
Google, perhaps the one technology company that truly understands one-to-one marketing continues to show its mastery with yet another contextually relevant service:
Google Base, is a new service that allows users to post and make searchable anything from recipes to help wanted ads, goes live in beta form today, triggering what Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy says will be a new era for buying and selling things online.
Google Base, he says will be even easier and more efficient than Craigslist or eBay, which is complicated by a time-consuming listing process and vast numbers of international sellers who take too long to deliver products.
Rashtchy says ecommerce 3.0 --powered by Google, of course--will connect buyers and sellers on an even more local level by leveraging its e-mail, satellite mapping and shopping services. Craigslist, which certainly connects local buyers and sellers, lacks the fundamental search technology to connect even greater numbers of people locally.
Is Atlanta's new slogan contextually relevant?
Al Ries thinks not and Al Ries knows branding for sure.
Although it has become widely known as 'Hotlanta,' Atlanta elected to invent a new slogan for its brand campaign.
After 8 months of gestation, the new logotype and theme for the Brand Atlanta campaign was just introduced.
“Opportunity. Optimism.
Openness” is the new, compelling branding strategy backed by a red-and-white trademark with the letters “ATL” highlighted.
Opportunity, optimism, openness: Sounds like a slogan for the state of Ohio and not a very good one at that. I’ll guarantee that few people will remember the three Os, let alone connect them with a name that doesn’t have a single O in it.
Al goes on to further chide Atlanta for abandoning a brand it already owned in our minds ...
but notes some pretty big companies have made the same mistake.
Our company, , has recently launched a new brand ..
. well, actually, we kind of re-launched our old brand. For a few years, we had veered off with a slogan that emphasized our experience in the software industry.
We returned to our roots with built around what Cincom Systems has done well for 37 years ...
build and market software that simplifies complex business processes.
So maybe it's not too late for the Mayor of Atlanta to ditch the O's and return with gusto to 'Hotlanta' -- a slogan that breathes excitement into one of the fastest growing cities and entertainment destinations in America.
For those who may have missed it in the news, Peter Drucker died this past Friday at the age of 95.
Some 20 years ago, a young college graduate we had hired asked me what he could do to get ahead faster. I gave him five books by Drucker and told him to study them as if his life depended upon it.
I’d still give that advice.
Drucker made everything simple and that’s not easy to do. He understood how complexity ground businesses down when managers stepped out of their area of expertise and created too many products, made by too many people and tried to be all things to all people.
The young graduate returned the books unread.
I just spent four years reading books and I don't want to do it anymore. He never made it at our agency, and I'd be willing to bet he never made it anywhere.
Peter Drucker's passing reminds me that I have not re-read his books in a long time.
I think I will get out tonight.
All you do is sit down behind a typewriter and open a vein.
That piece of wisdom by the great sports columnist Red Smith.
Bleeding is something all us writers do, only to watch someone else red-line the hell out of our blood and sweat. Red Smith's memorable quote was passed to me from , who is as talented a writer as I know ..
. he does newsletter (filled with informative yet humorous content) and he has several screenplays under review in Hollywood. So he knows a lot about the opening a vein part of writing.
It takes a passion to do it well.
Makes me cringe when I see so many business managers pull out their red pens as they sit down to review copy written by professional writers. I keep thinking, For crying out loud, would you at least read it through once before you start hacking away at it!
Business managers need to be more thoughtful when giving direction to their writers. A well crafted, concise creative brief should give the writer what s/he needs. And if the writer delivers on the creative brief, the business manager should put the red pen away.
If the writer veered off path, then there's room for a critique and for direction on how to get the content back on path.
In this post, I blend some of my writing with that of .
A recently accused me of being as old as the .
Actually I am just as old as , who is considered wise instead of old. Tom recently posted on his blog that he's heading off to a worldwide tour of speaking engagements ..
. his version of the TV reality show .
Tom Peters is no less energetic than the snorting young bull he was at 32.
And I point out that I still do my 60-hour weeks, plus author on 4 blogs, have two books in progress and still have time left over for family, church and fun. The wonderful thing is that we're not alone in actively pursuing careers at an age when our parents were thinking of retiring. The Boomer Generation is setting a new path.
Is Tom staying young? No.
Am I staying young?
No.
We're just not getting older.
Think of John Barrymore’s immortal quote, “A man is never old until regrets take the place of dreams.
Ego sum erat. “I am where you will be,” is a phrase says he sometimes tells young people in marketing.
This market segment is now the largest and wealthiest in the US and it officially turns 60 years old this year.
While most companies still seem to be chasing younger generations, this is the one with the most extra cash to spend. But appealing to them is not so easy when you're not one of them.
As David Wolfe points out: Unless someone has made an effort to show younger marketers life as seen through a lens polished by six, seven or more decades of life, young marketeers don’t really know where the Boomers are, or what they think or how they make purchasing decisions.
David suggests that the guidance of more seasoned minds is needed to figure out how to communicate to customers who are older, but think younger. David ponders how many marketing agencies commit time and resources to training the young among their staffs on how to market to the over-40 crowd?
Marketing client companies have no idea of how much money is wasted by marketing agencies that don’t have staff that is firmly grounded in what it takes to be successful in older markets .
.. imagine the wasted money when agencies use trial and error as a substitute for real-life experience.
Getting into this type of customer's mindset must run deeper than skimming off key insights into consumers through conventional consumer research that comes up with obvious answers instead of real and compelling insights.
Marketers who are boomers themselves and who are still very active in their careers can be invaluable resources to agencies and their clients who want to tap this older but active boomer market. Fortunately, there are lots of experienced boomers who remain actively involved in marketing so there should be no shortage of this critically needed talent.
answered my previous post on what leadership looks like. He's U.S.
Army Lt. Gen. Russel L.
Honore -- now in charge of Gulf Coast and New Orleans military operations. A no-nonsense leader gives us some significant attributes to aspire toward.
Leadership Attribute No.
1 -- Take Command, Communicate Clearly
It takes a big personality to command the army east of the Mississippi River. A reporter told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that a Louisiana politician had complained there was too much red tape facing victims. Before Chertoff could answer, Honore snapped: That's b.
s.! He isthe kind of commander you don't mess with, you don't cross, who punctuates pronouncements with barked questions like Everybody got that?
Leadership Attribute No. 2 -- Serve Those You Lead
He's a soldier's soldier, the man you want in the trenches with you, the kind of man who'll cover your back. Read his conversation with Spec.
Amy Firestone to see the perfect example. This ain't about me, he says, there amid the troops. This is about us.
Leadership Attribute No. 3 -- Create the Mission and Take Action
It's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. What Honore has done is understood his role and understood the broad mission.
He will make somebody mad. He will step on somebody's toes and probably do some things wrong, albeit very few things wrong.
Leadership Attribute No.
4 -- Be Accountable and Expect Accountability
I got in the military and I liked what I was doing and the opportunity to be judged by your performance as opposed to other measures. He is talking about race, but he does not want to elaborate. Rather than talk about the racism of those days, he says, I'm more about the future than the past.
Fending off early criticism of the federal government's response to the crisis, he says, It's like the first quarter of a football game. You're losing 25 to nothing. What in the hell is the coach gonna do?
This from the ...
Whoa!
Madonna may want to thank her horse for bucking her.Like most of you, I have sat here now for a week watching the terrifying images from our Gulf Coast.
We hear Motorola execs were so worried that the singer would pull out of a commercial for their new Rokr phone that they dangled twice as many carrots in front of the aspiring horsewoman.
According to a source, Madge made close to $8 million for 10 hours of work on the ad, which she shot last week in London. (The spot has the flirtatious superstar surprising a Middle Eastern teen as he talks in a phone booth with a girlfriend, asking, Who's that girl? )
Word is Madonna couldn't have been friendlier during the shoot.But the singer, who had her arm in a black sling, grimaced between takes. Her rep confirms that the health freak won't take painkillers and is still doing Pilates.
I have debated back and forth whether to write here about the experience ...
this is a marketing blog; not a news blog. I tossed the debate around for several days and finally could not go any longer without adding my prayers to all the victims and all the caregivers and to all the wonderful people in Texas who have adopted so many of the now homeless.
What could be more relevant than that we all share somehow in the grief, and that we each find our own way of helping.
I have learned personally that prayer is powerful so it is not an unimportant act that we all lift our voices in unison to grant some sense of peace amidst all the turmoil. My daughter and I went to Kroger, like so many others, to buy food and supplies that we took over the our church. Churches all over Cincinnati are doing the same thing and sending the donations to a central warehouse where it is all being boxed and then shipped to churches in the distressed areas so that 3 meals a day can be served to those who find their way to these centers of hope and humanity.
It is our nation's largest natural disaster ever. It will also be our nation's largest outpouring of personal giving and sharing.
| For some reason, I am cheering for a Martha Stewart rebound.
She went to prison for lying. And now her magazine property Martha Stewart Living Magazine is one of many consumer magazines trapped in the spotlight of reporting untruthful circulation numbers. What do they say in baseball?
Three strikes and you're out?
I wonder what the fallout might be to the upcoming Apprentice: Martha Stewart reality show. Producer Mark Burnett reportedly has signed up some major advertisers to the new series: Buick, Delta, Song, Random House, Westin Hotels among others.
For those of you who read my blog carefully, you already know I am a reality TV show junkie. So I am looking forward to Martha putting on a more interesting show than Trump -- one that has become terribly boring over the last season.
reports that Martha Stewart Living, Family Circle and House Beautiful are the latest magazines to be caught in a circulation scandal that is sweeping through the media industry like “an apocalypse,” as one worried publisher dubbed it.
Worried they should be. Not fun to be caught in a lie. Lies destroy all credibility.
In this case, the credibility at stake is with media buyers for ad agencies and corporate media departments who place their professional reputations on their analyses of the circulation numbers presented by ABC-rated magazines. If it's based on false numbers, the whole business sits on quicksand.
Media buyers and their clients must be quite firm in dealing with this scandle.
In the end, if our honesty is at question, then all of marketing is at risk. Seth Godin might believe all marketers are liars ..
. well, this sure does put an understroke to his claim.
An analysis of the online behaviors of blog readers was just conducted by comScore, and co-sponsors of this research, Six Apart and Gawker Media.
The result, based on comScore's permission-based research panel that measures the online activity of more than 2 million global participants, is this behavioral examination of consumers who visited the 400 top weblog properties and blog hosting services during the first three months of 2005.
50 million U.S.
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