February 2012 Expert Opinion offers fresh and provocative ideas from a diverse group of experts. The 1to1 Community is the platform for insights and analyses from the many voices that are championing the customer cause. These contributed columns gives readers the chance to tap into the vast knowledge and expertise of – not just 1to1 experts – but other analysts, practitioners, vendors, academics, and more.

Current Articles:

The Next Frontier in Loyalty Marketing: Customer Experience Management In these uncertain economic times companies are straining to convince people to consume their goods or services. With loyalty programs becoming ubiquitous, and offers and promotions becoming a commodity, customer experience management (CEM) has become a tangible differentiator.
Creating Exponential Value for Customers Generates Revenue Growth The current economy is stalled. For businesses this means revenue growth comes down to how to get a larger piece of the pie. Companies are doing this in two main ways: taking market share and finding ways to increase revenue within their customer base.
Making the Case for Employee Engagement Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and Walt Disney said. “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”
Three Game Changers for Customer-Centric Businesses In his book Business at the Speed of Now John Bernard highlights how social media, along with cloud computing and the millennial mind-set, are now the core building blocks of the ever-evolving digital age. We are a society of action, and we want results—now.
Don’t Fall Into the Micro-Moment Trap The key is to personalize each interaction with consumers. For smart retailers, this means understanding a number of variables that create a dynamic and accurate consumer profile.
Helping Employees Embrace Customer-Centric Change To be successful, change agents need to surround themselves with the right people who will do what it takes to set the company apart from its competition. In this excerpt from Running the Gauntlet, Hayzlett says leaders need to make themselves and their employees uncomfortable staying with the status quo, instead inspiring them so they want to continually move forward.
Going Beyond Email to Spur Customers to Action However, the flood of entrants into the space has resulted in consumer deal fatigue, with subscribers inundated with a plethora of daily deal emails, making differentiation increasingly difficult, and reducing the efficacy of email as the primary distribution channel.
The Importance of Expanding Your Customers’ Social Experience More and more companies today encourage customers to ask questions, share content, and provide sentiment about their brands on social media sites. Each of these sites has its place and value for marketers, but nowhere is the creation of a social presence more important than on your own site.
5 Ways CVS Is Building Loyalty on Facebook CVS Pharmacy is one brand that is leveraging Facebook effectively in a number of different ways to build stronger relationships with its customers. The retailer is using loyalty programs, providing education, sharing the voice of the customer, creating social circles, and managing its reputation.
Put Your Money Where Your Customer’s Mouth Is Designing, implementing, and managing a best-practice voice of the customer (VOC) program to capture and evaluate customer perceptions and experiences is “hard work.” Linking VOC to executive compensation is even more difficult, while driving such a variable compensation regime throughout the larger organization presents even bigger hurdles.
Good Things Come in Small Packages In his recent book, Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales, Andy Paul discusses the benefits of starting small, such as reducing complexity and risk, while increasing the likelihood of success.
Achieving Customer Relevance In a world of customer power and unlimited consumer choice, marketing is being forced to change its emphasis to build closer relationships and greater customer loyalty. An essential aspect of this is achieving customer relevance, which demands in-depth understanding of customers.
4 Steps to Sell Your Way to Success You can’t save your way to success when employee morale drops and customers feel the impact. Your best bet to start a successful turnaround is actually to do a better job selling to your current customers and top prospects.
5 Ways Customers Impact Service Customers play a distinct role in service encounters, argue Francis Frei and Anne Morriss in their book Uncommon Service: How to Win By Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business. “When it takes a customer five minutes to supersize an order of fries, he or she isn’t just a passive recipient of your company’s ingenuity and hard work. This person is now playing an active role in the delivery of the experience,” the authors write. . In this excerpt the authors list the five ways in which customers can impact the service that a company strives to give.