1to1 Media

6 Steps for Building Peer-to-Peer Support Communities

Online communities today are as much about information as entertainment. More and more customers are taking to social media to resolve service and support issues with their peers.

Social Media's Undeniable Impact on Customer Loyalty

While many marketers recognize the importance of social media on brand recognition and leveraging social channels to deliver marketing campaigns, many others still fail to see the big-picture benefits of deeply engaging in social.

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.

Case in Brief: HauteLook’s “Flash” Service Speeds Its Flash Sales

HauteLook’s customer care agents are under intense pressure to answer customers’ questions as quickly and efficiently as possible. Agents were struggling to keep up with the requests and ensure that customers were getting the information they needed to make a purchase while the item was available. Integrating customer data and service channels is helping HauteLook scale its service operation to support its growing business.

Business Success Hinges on Innovation

“Nanovation begins with noticing,” write Kevin and Jackie Frieberg and Dain Dunston in their book Nanovation: How a Little Car Can Teach the World to Think Big and Act Bold. The authors say that “every creative insight, every burst of ingenuity begins with seeing or, more powerfully, experiencing a problem or opportunity that is meaningful to someone else.”

Protecting Customer Data Secures Customer Trust and Loyalty

The recent Forrester Research report “Personal Identity Management Success Starts with Customer Understanding,” focuses on consumer attitudes toward personal data and identity management, specifically targeting their willingness to share sensitive personal information with companies online.

3 Ways Socialized Email Marketing Gets Customers Talking

The fact is that social strategies, especially in conjunction with well-targeted email marketing campaigns, can help many types of businesses strengthen customer loyalty. The trick is to target the right audience with the right incentive at the right time.

Banking on Customer Mistakes

Untrustable business models thrive in our economic system today largely because being untrustable can be highly profitable—in the short term anyway—and many businesses are managed almost entirely for short-term results. If you’ve ever incurred more than one overdraft charge on your bank account in a single day, for instance, then you may be interested to know that this is exactly how some banks like it to work, and what they’re doing is legal.

Banking on Customer Mistakes

Making the Case for Customer Experience

Investing in the customer experience may prove to be costly up front, but will ultimately pay big dividends in the long term in the form of higher return on customer, revenue growth, positive word of mouth, deeper customer loyalty, and higher conversion rates to name a few gains.

Data Security Is the Bottom Line in Building Customer Relationships

Because so much of that one-to-one interaction takes place through various media channels, rather than in person, database security has become an increasingly important component of personalized customer communications.

The New Frontier in Telecom Analytics: Get Better Insight Faster

Market Unto Others As You Would Have Marketed Unto You

In his recent book, Brand Against the Machine: How to Build Your Brand, Cut Through the Marketing Noise, and Stand Out from the Competition, John Morgan looks at marketing and branding separately, depicting how marketing tactics can build or break your brand’s reputation over time.

Case in Brief: Customer Reviews Help Diapers.com Improve Conversion

Diapers.com determined that customer reviews could help make the shopping experience better for its customers. The company’s premise was that parents who feel they need advice would be willing to help others. So, the retailer set up a customer review system for its 75,000 different products, ranging from diapers and baby formula to car seats and strollers.

Five Reasons Not to Migrate Customer Service to the Cloud

When it comes to contact center services, the cloud can combine speech automation, intelligent agent routing, outbound notifications, and mobile applications to create unique, intelligent solutions for today’s busy consumers.

Optimism Signals a Potential Increase in Activity Among Online Shoppers in 2012

“The State of Online Shopping 2012” survey finds that, overall, shoppers appear more optimistic about the U.S. economy, with 49 percent claiming they are more optimistic in 2012.

4 Ways Social Media Improves the Sales Process

Organizations are increasingly integrating social into their sales cycle. From the moment prospects show interest, to lead nurturing, to purchase, and beyond, companies are using social media to build relationships, turn prospects into customers, and turn customers into evangelists for the brand.

Cultivating Customer Service in the Classroom

For the students of West Nassau High School in Callahan, FL, customer service has become a way of life. Whether by working hard to earn a certain grade, or simply by picking up litter around the halls, the students of Tammy Roberts’ Customer Assistance Technology curriculum know that service starts from within.

Moving From Content Marketing to Social Commerce

The formula for successful social media marketing starts with the right mix of content, then establishing connections (with your audience), and getting this audience to tell your story via word of mouth. But this is just a starting point.

Promote Employee Engagement to Enhance Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction

Seventy-five percent of employees working for organizations that are customer experience (CX) leaders deem themselves highly or moderately engaged, as opposed to 30 percent at companies that lag behind today’s CX leaders.

When One-to-One Meets Big Data

The promise of “Big Data” is that it can help paint a picture of each individual customer, revealing which customers are ready to buy now and what they are likely to buy, as well as which customers are in danger of defecting.

Case in Brief: Multichannel Data Enables One-to-One Customer Experiences

By matching its clients with agents, the American Automobile Association’s Western & Central New York branch has reduced average handle time by 18 percent, increased profitability, and improved customer experience.

Driving More Revenue While Staying True to the Customer

How do you balance your role between being revenue-centric and customer-centric? The answer can be found in a formula that connects four steps—content, context, experience and optimization—with the ability to listen to and act on data at your disposal

1-800-GOT-JUNK? Drives Its Customer Experience Forward

1-800-GOT-JUNK? company overhauled its customer feedback process and now resolves 90 percent of customer issues in less than three days.

5 Ways Content Marketing Connects Brands and Customers

What once was old inevitably becomes new again. The concept of content marketing may be well-known, but as technology develops, content has progressed with it. Instead of mere words, content marketers now produce videos, podcasts, slideshows, and other forms of evolving media that are designed to attract and engage customers via a variety of channels.

Maximize the Potential of Proactive Customer Service

Today, smart companies are taking full advantage of the strategic advantages of social media and social media monitoring to tune in to customers’ online conversations and maximize the potential of proactive customer service.

Tackling the Top 5 Challenges of Email Marketing

Too much of a good thing is rarely a good idea, especially where email’s concerned. With time serving as both ally and foe, we have no choice but to breeze through our email inboxes to save as many precious seconds as we can—overlooking or deleting anything that seems irrelevant or uninteresting.

Listening to Customers Is Critical for Success

“The globalization of electronic commerce has provided your customers with unlimited choices as well as the ability to conduct instant side-by-side comparisons,” writes Ross Shafer in his book Grab More Market Share: How to Wrangle Business Away from Lazy Competitors. Today’s customer, Shafer argues, is convinced that he can get anything he wants, anytime he wants it, at his complete convenience. “Your customers are accustomed to being served in real time,” he writes. He cites as examples such time-compressing activities as drive-through meals, ATM banking, and TV-DVR recording. “On-demand buying is [customers] way of squeezing you into their complicated lives,” Shafer says.

Customers Want to Hear From You—Sometimes

Customers can head out to their favorite fast food restaurant and have a burger served up their way. But that’s not the only place they want personalization. They want marketing communications served up based on their preferences, too.

Formulating a Scalable Social Business Strategy

More often than not, marketing and communication teams play a leadership role in driving social media initiatives, adoption of best practices, and program execution within their organization. As you look at developing and evolving your social business strategy in 2012, here are some grounding concepts that will help you focus, engage others and prioritize what you need to do.

4 Online Metrics for More Effective Marketing

The goldmine of customer information on customers’ online activity is prompting a keen interest in Web and social media analytics among companies that see an immense opportunity to better understand their customers and prospects.

DeVry University Schools Executives in Customer Experience

Master’s of business administration programs with concentrations in CRM and customer experience management are rare today, but that may change. At DeVry University, for example, graduate school business courses in customer experience management (CEM) will soon become a reality.

Marketers’ Overlooked Relationship Builder: Retargeting

Retargeting has mostly been used as a direct response marketing tactic with the sole goal of boosting conversion, but most marketers overlook a much higher impact opportunity: branding.

Case in Brief: Feedback Triggers Swisscom’s Customer Service Improvements

Swisscom wanted to increase the number of customers who were finding support solutions either on its website or through its mobile app. The Swiss telecommunications provider bolstered its online self-service content based on customer feedback and reduced calls to its contact center while also improving customer experience.

Proactive Outreach to Shopping Cart Abandoners Can Spurs Sales

Web-savvy shoppers have begun to reveal shopping cart abandonment tendencies that, while initially perceived as detrimental to sales, may actually represent a normal step in the purchase process.

5 Steps to Creating a Seamless Cross-Channel Customer Experience

To deliver the kinds of experiences that consumers expect is largely predicated on knowing your customers and how they’re interacting with your brand.

Customers’ Public Social Data Isn’t Yours

Companies are using social networking sites to learn more about customers and prospects, so they can deliver more targeted marketing. However, these firms must tread carefully and respect customers’ privacy, or risk a customer backlash.

Mobile Customer Service That Clicks

Mobile has reached an inflection point. Scores of experts predict 2012 to be the year that mobile more successfully integrates with other customer interaction channels: mobile and email, mobile and commerce, mobile and social, mobile and video. As these connections increase, so does the importance of merging mobile customer service with traditional customer service.

Six Reasons for Businesses to Be on Google+

Google+ pages enable consumers to connect and build relationships with things they care about from local businesses to global brands. Businesses benefit from optimized search results through user-generated content, and can segment audiences into Circles to articulate the most relevant messages and content.

Social Media Integration Still in Its Infancy

While over 50 percent of respondents say that their organizations have a presence in various social networks, four in 10 of these senior marketers admit that their company has not engaged in, or has only just begun to integrate their social media efforts with existing marketing and service tactics.

Addressing Online Customers’ 4 Basic Needs

Whenever customers are about to make a purchase, they go through a mental exercise, argues Aaron Shapiro in his book Users Not Customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business. He says customers balance trust, convenience, price, and fun to decide where to shop and what to buy.

Case in Brief: Deltek Halves Its Contact Center Response Time

As a global company, Deltek had customers around the world contacting its call centers in Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and the U.S. with support requests. However, the enterprise software provider realized its customers were having a different experience depending on which Deltek solution they had purchased and the call center they were contacting.

Digital Marketing Investments Dominate 2012 Spending Trends

As StrongMail’s 2012 Marketing Trends survey highlights, email marketing and social media are atop the list of marketing budget investments for the coming year.

Marketing: Adversary or Advocate?

Trust isn’t what it once was. Even the most loyal of customers are reviewing their long-standing choices and casting a skeptical eye on the mountain of customer communications that come their way.

2012 Trends to Watch: Customer Service

Experts predict that trends such as social customer communities, multichannel knowledge management, virtual agents in mobile and social, and natural language processing will have the biggest impact on the customer service experience in 2012.Here, several industry insiders offer their predictions on key customer service trends and how companies can harness them in 2012.

2012 Trends to Watch: Marketing

2011 was a year of collaboration in marketing. Marketers worked more closely with their sales counterparts, partnered with IT to harness new technologies for customer engagement, and even joined forces across marketing silos to improve the multichannel customer experience. But that was just the beginning. Here, several industry insiders offer their forecast on key marketing trends and how companies can optimize their marketing efforts in 2012.

2012 Trends to Watch: Sales

Throughout 2011 the B2C and B2B purchase processes evolved greatly. Customers increasingly took to social and mobile for researching products and services, as well as to make purchases. Here, several industry insiders offer their prediction on key sales trends and how companies can harness them in 2012.

4 Imperatives for Creating Social Dialogue

More and more consumers are increasingly hyper-connected, shifting their interactions with and about brands online. As a result, companies must redefine social as a platform that enables conversations with those consumers to build engagement and drive customer loyalty. This means social media strategy must transition from a one-dimensional broadcast device used to drive promotions into a two-way communications channel that enables meaningful and personalized dialogue.

Charter’s Social Commitment to Customers

Social media is growing as a critical part of any company’s strategy, regardless of industry. The personal and direct connections offered by social media can enhance the customer relationship, if done properly. It requires thinking of social media not as a channel, but a critical part of the overall business. John Birrer, senior vice president of customer experience at Charter, discusses how social media permeates the entire organization.

Creating a Social Media Agenda for Healthcare

In healthcare, whether to participate in social media too often comes down to risks versus rewards. Many industry leaders cite U.S. privacy regulations in healthcare as a major barrier to fully embracing social media for patient and community engagement. The risk of saying something in a social channel that may violate patient confidentiality is simply too great for some providers.

Creating a Social Media Agenda for Healthcare

Customer Strategy Trends to Watch in 2012

1to1 Media asked industry experts in customer service, marketing, and sales what customer strategy trends will make the biggest impact in 2012. Here are their predictions.

Dell's Commanding Social Presence

After its own social calamity, Dell made a commitment to engaging customers online. Cognizant that its customers were increasingly turning to social media to discuss most everything, including Dell, senior management wanted to listen closely, and cohesively, across the social landscape for mentions of its brand and products. Although various listening groups scattered throughout Dell’s different departments had been monitoring social media mentions for some time, company leadership felt the need to set up a central structure to monitor social conversations and ensure that action is taken on any customer concerns.

Developing a Strong e-Social Ethos

It takes time and effort to share an opinion, so why do it at all? Because we enjoy sharing our perspective or ideas, that’s why. Some of us feel fulfilled by offering advice, and some of us get a thrill from influencing others’ opinions.

Developing a Strong e-Social Ethos

Mayo Clinic’s Prescription for Social Media Success

Social media today goes beyond public relations and marketing. Healthcare organizations, for example, can leverage social media tools to support patient care, education, research, and also administrative efficiencies. Patients are already interacting in the social space, so physicians need to master these channels, as well.

Meet Today’s Social Customer

Today these customers are the early adopters, but much sooner than most business leaders think, these social customers’ approach to buying will be commonplace— especially for considered purchases like automobiles, electronics, financial products, software, travel, even services like consulting.

Mining for Social Customer Gold

As business moves beyond the hype of social media, the real value is in the ability to identify and align social media information to different stages of the customer purchase cycle.

Mining for Social Customer Gold

As business moves beyond the hype of social media, the real value is in the ability to identify and align social media information to different stages of the customer purchase cycle.

Mining for Social Customer Gold

As business moves beyond the hype of social media, the real value is in the ability to identify and align social media information to different stages of the customer purchase cycle.

Motorola Harnesses New Media to Rebrand a History-Rich Company

After more than eight decades in operation, last January Motorola split into two parts. Its consumer-oriented side became Motorola Mobility, and its professional-focused business was titled Motorola Solutions. With Google on track to acquire Motorola Mobility, Motorola Solutions is poised to soon become the only Motorola. However, Motorola Solutions has been a virtual unknown to consumers. Its products—ranging from two-way police radios to retail barcode scanners—are used by the government, public safety officials, and businesses. Although those products play a major role in people’s daily lives, this was the part of the company few knew about.

Personalizing the Sales Experience Helps Close the Deal

As technology becomes an ever more integral part of customers’ lives, consumers have come to expect companies to embrace it with the same enthusiasm, as well as to use it to improve the customer experience. In terms of the sales process, this includes activities like offering customers the ability to make a purchase through a mobile app and delivering contextually relevant interactions with customer-facing staff.

Social CRM Defined

While much of the attention around social media has been focused on marketing, savvy organizations are now exploring an emerging and powerful frontier: leveraging social media to dramatically enhance customer service.

Social CRM Defined

Taking the Leap From Social Media to Social Engagement

Social media has forever changed how customers and companies interact. Companies are eager to embrace social media, but they rarely take the time to set a well-thought-out social media strategy. Not only does this limit the opportunities they capture, but it can also be damaging to their brands. To maximize their ROI from social media, companies need a customer-centric social engagement strategy that aligns with overall corporate and marketing objectives.

Taking the Leap From Social Media to Social Engagement

Telus Dials Up Its Customer Service by Going Social

Telus is one company working diligently to change its employees’ perception of social as a one-way channel, as the concept of social customer service gains momentum. The Canadian telecommunications company has been engaging in social media marketing for a number of years. However, it wasn’t until the company launched its “Customers First Culture” in mid-2010 that the idea of social media for proactive customer care moved to the forefront of executive discussions.

The Future Impact of Social Media

Consumer adoption of devices like smartphones and tablets will only continue to accelerate social media use in 2012. As a result, companies must prepare their enterprises for this new reality by developing strategies, processes, and best practices around social media engagement.

The Key to Becoming a Social Organization

The era when companies had at least partial control over what was publicly said about them is long over. Instead, the power has shifted to the customer, who has the tools at his fingertips to tell the masses about his experience with various organizations. And he uses those tools frequently. According to The Realtime Report, there are currently about 250 million tweets per day, with 25 percent of Tweets mentioning brands. Facebook reports that it has more than 800 million users, and that “more than 50 percent of its active users log in on any given day.”

Uncorrelated Wisdom and the Financial Crisis

Once the novelty of social media wears off, think carefully about how you can best use social technologies to gain access to different opinions, challenging points of view, and unanticipated ideas.

Uncorrelated Wisdom and the Financial Crisis

Once the novelty of social media wears off, think carefully about how you can best use social technologies to gain access to different opinions, challenging points of view, and unanticipated ideas.

Moving Beyond CRM to Drive Customer Centricity

Traditional customer relationship management (CRM) solutions have focused on presenting every possible bit of customer information to a contact center representative, but it’s the burden of the rep, through extensive training, to sort out the appropriate information and take the right actions to resolve each customer’s specific issue.

Social Healthcare Readiness Checklist

What's your social readiness score? Use Peppers & Rogers Group’s Social Media Healthcare Agenda Readiness Checklist to gauge where you stand.

2012 Customer Strategy Survival Guide

Just for a moment, take a break from Foursquare check-ins and check out our top articles, blog posts, and videos of 2011. They’ll gear you up for customer experience success in 2012.

How Does Your Social Strategy Stack Up?

According to the “2011 Social Strategies” study, from Peppers & Rogers Group and Temkin Group, 43 percent of respondents characterize their organization’s use of social media as “well below” or “somewhat below” the industry norm.

Case in Brief: Attracting New Customers Through Facebook

Consumers are so focused on giving gifts during the holiday season that Shoebuy decided to give its customers a gift of their own. The company leveraged the holiday spirit to attract new customers, as well.

Making Big Changes, One Small Step at a Time

“There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or quick fix,” argues Darren Hardy in his book The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success. Instead, major achievements can be attained through incremental changes that are executed consistently over time, contributing to a compound effect.

Love or Money: Why Auto Insurance Buyers Prefer the Former

According to Acxiom’s study of auto insurance buyers, intense competition among carriers has largely been based on a simple premise: cost savings.

Direct Mail Dominates as Customers’ Preferred Information Channel

According to Epsilon Targeting’s 2011 Channel Preference Study, 60 percent of U.S. consumers and 64 percent of Canadian consumers enjoy checking their mailboxes each day, signaling an emotional connection with direct mail.

Know Your Customers, Grow Your Business

Many high-end salons and spas mainly target women through its marketing efforts. This is what prompted Ben Davis to open The Gents Place, a men-only salon and spa that is striving to differentiate itself through first-class customer service.

Marketers Brace for the Tsunami of Big Data

Big Data continues to wreak havoc on companies’ marketing efforts. The flood of data resulting from a growing number of customer contact channels is calling for marketers to take responsibility for understanding how to leverage and analyze this data for optimal marketing results.

Service Without Sacrifice

Many businesses find it difficult to justify the cost of adding new lines, new staff, and other upgrades, only to scale back again in a month once demand subsides. This often results in exorbitantly long hold times for callers, frustrated customers, and lost sales—definitely not the top items on anyone’s wish list.

Communication: The Key to Any Successful (Customer) Relationship

The study, “The Customer Dance: When to Lead, When to Follow,” investigates the level of engagement consumers seek from today’s brands and the types of interactions that are most likely to increase brand loyalty and encourage repeat patronage.

Using Pricing to Build Value, Not Discount It

"Value-Based Pricing: Drive Sales and Boost Your Bottom Line by Creating, Communicating, and Capturing Customer Value" highlights the importance of formulating pricing based on the perceived value a company’s products and services offered to its customers, versus their actual cost, competitors’ pricing, or market value.

Case in Brief: The Right Leads Improve Conversion and Satisfaction Rates

Exhibit Surveys found itself in a predicament after one of its salespeople retired: The rest of the sales team was ineffective at generating leads, leaving the company in a weak position to attract new business. After outsourcing its lead generation, the company was able to bring in more new business.

5 Ways to Accelerate the Effectiveness of Email Marketing

Innovative marketers know that harnessing the power of social networks maximizes the value of digital marketing programs, broadens the reach of email campaigns, and amplifies the customer conversation to drive additional advocacy and brand awareness.

Call Agents Still the “Center” of Customer Service

Online communities and smartphones may be at the core of our culture’s increase in “social” interactions for everything from information to recommendations to tech support, but most consumers still turn to the contact center first to resolve their customer service issues.

3 Ways to Create Actionable Customer Insight

Unlike structured data, which can be handled at scale by many types of technologies, unstructured data presents a seemingly insurmountable problem: much like knowledge itself, it cannot be contained and it requires human interaction to fully realize its potential.

5 Customer Segmentation Tips to Improve Sales

Segmenting customers and prospects to improve sales and marketing results may seem commonplace. But done incorrectly, segmentation can be a more than waste of valuable marketing dollars, it turn customers off to the point of defection.

A Healthy Roadmap to Customer Centricity

HealthNow is working toward customer centricity by evolving away from its traditional, internally focused approach and into a more customer-centric enterprise. Here, Kerri Garrison, vice president, venture growth, at HealthNow, describes the challenges, as well as the successes, that go along with becoming a customer-centric organization.

Adjusting Email Tactics to Improve Brand Reputation

As Responsys’ notes in its “Email Engagement and Deliverability Study: Management, Reengagement and Re-permissioning of Inactive Subscribers by Major Retailers” report, many email subscribers don’t bother to unsubscribe from email lists for various reasons, adding themselves to the ranks of inactive subscribers.

Finding Customers Through Social Data

“We are entering a world where technology and marketing converge,” writes Marshall Sponder in his book Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics. According to Sponder, social media analytics has become the medium through which relevant data and insights are being conveyed to marketing decision makers and stakeholders.

Case in Brief: Rewarding Brand Evangelists Boost Sales

After learning through customer research that the majority of new its customers were being referred by existing clients, J. Hilburn wanted to harness the potential of that word of mouth.

Marketing a Traditional Product in the Digital Age

Car and homeowners know how crucial insurance on their material possessions can be, yet many neglect to insure their greatest asset: themselves. According to Acxiom’s 2011 Life Insurance Consumer Dynamics Customer Survey, life insurance ownership is at a 50-year low, with nearly half of all adults uninsured.

The Art of the Cross-Sell

Many marketers find themselves faced with a wall of data blocking them from really understanding and engaging with prospects and customers.

Orchestrating an Organization-Wide Social Strategy

A social media leader needs to have the backing of the C-suite and a team supporting his efforts. Cisco, H&R Block, and Ford are three companies taking that approach. They each have a conductor who brings corporate communications, marketing, and customer service together in harmonious collaboration

Service at Your Fingertips

While apps accessed for information and purchasing are on the rise, apps that include robust customer service functionality are still lacking. In a study from ClickFox, 72 percent of mobile users said they would replace some traditional service channels with mobile apps if the same customer service features were available.

7 Steps to Harnessing Speech Analytics for a Dramatic ROI

When centered as part of comprehensive cross-channel “interaction analytics”, speech analytics empowers organizations to improve agent performance, process efficiency, customer experience, and marketing and sales results.

7 Steps to Harnessing Speech Analytics for a Dramatic ROI

Social Media Is a Gateway to Customer Engagement

With “like” and “tweet” taking on whole new meanings, companies can no longer deny that social media is fast becoming an essential element of every company’s customer strategy.

The Secret to High-Performance Sales

In their recent book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, Dixon and Adamson discuss the five main types of salespeople in the business world, concentrating on the high-performing, customer focused Challenger.

Case in Brief: Quality Customer Feedback Begets Quality Customer Experiences

FlightSafety wanted to get more actionable feedback from its students. The international aviation training company changed its data collection system and saw a vast improvement in actionable data.

6 Strategies to Make CRM Work

In today’s dynamic environment, where the focus is on a customer-centric business approach, for any CRM strategy to be successful, pharma companies must have a solid understanding of what their CRM systems can and cannot deliver.

Consumers Crave Mobile Brand Experiences

According to ClickFox’s recent Mobile Apps Consumer Survey, 48 percent of mobile users use an app on their mobile device 10 or more times per day—more frequently than general grooming and eating habits combined.

The 5 Musts for Optimizing Multichannel Customer Service

As it becomes more common for customers to switch from one channel to another without deliberation, companies must take steps now to offer a seamless experience between channels—or risk losing customers to competitors that do. Here are five do’s, and don’ts, to create this optimal service experience:

The Demise of the Psychopathic Business

Consumers have become so accustomed to non-empathic customer “service” that they don’t even consider it abnormal. But as standards improve, non-empathic companies will become rare, then rarer, then endangered, and eventually extinct.

The Demise of the Psychopathic Business

The Rules of Social Engagement for Sales

Today’s sales reps are looking for an edge, and many are quickly realizing that social media provides the leg up they’re looking for. Whether it’s for making introductions, deepening relationships, or building a following, social media is becoming the prospecting method of choice among a growing number of sales organizations.

10 Tactics to Create a Great Customer Experience

“Creating the customer experience edge is most definitely a journey, not a destination,” write Reza Soudagar, Vinay Iyer, and Volker G. Hildebrand, Ph.D., in their book The Customer Experience Edge: Technology and Techniques for Delivering an Enduring, Profitable and Positive Experience to Your Customers.

Capturing the Attention of the Online Customer

Marketers today are searching for ways to increase their prospects and customers’ engagement and experience online. There are many ways to engage site visitors, but one of the most effective is real-time, personalized online video.

Don’t Miss the Writing on the Wall

After the initial purchase, customers often have questions or complaints and want their issues addressed quickly. Social media presents consumers with a budding outlet for customer service that offers immediacy they expect.

Delivering Better Service, Faster

Marie Curie Cancer Care slashed the time and effort it takes its Wales-based contact center employees to match a patient with a nurse who is not only available during the needed time, but also has the necessary skills set to care for a particular patient.

The Mobile Channel Is a Wellspring of Customer Data

As mobile devices increasingly become an extension of consumers' physical identity, organizations have access to a wealth of fresh information. This wellspring of uniquely identifiable customer data can provide business leaders with insight into new and innovative ways to interact with their customers.

Transforming Marketing Strategy for Right-Time Revenue Optimization

For many marketing organizations, implementing multichannel marketing to optimize revenue at the right time in the customer life cycle is an imperative, but an elusive goal. Most believe that multichannel marketing strategy is about allocating budget, assigning channel roles to the team, and selecting and scheduling execution against those channels.

Dissatisfied Consumers Vehemently Broadcast Their Discontent

Even as the focus on customer experience intensifies in boardrooms across America, an increasing number of U.S. consumers are taking to the Web to express their discontent over poor customer service. Additionally, according to the 2011 Convergys U.S. Customer Scorecard Research, the number of U.S. consumers who report a bad service experience to the offending company continues to rise, increasing 5 percent in the past year, and marking a 13 percent jump since 2009.

Case in Brief: An Engaging Online Customer Experience Builds Revenue

The Veterans of Foreign Wars understood that its seven-year-old website needed to be updated. After revamping the site, the VFW has seen a 65 percent increase in overall visits and an 83 percent jump in page views.

Understanding Customer Economics

Customers who talk about a business to friends or associates generally fall into two camps: those who speak positively about a business, and those who speak negatively about it. Those positive and negative sentiments can lead to an increase or decrease in customer value—among existing customers, as well as among the prospects in a customer’s network. In other words, it’s possible to quantify the value of customers who promote a brand versus those who advise against it.

Understanding Customer Economics

Grow Your Share with the Wallet Allocation Rule

GROWTH! It is arguably the most important gauge of a company’s long-term success. Growth creates economic value for shareholders. As a result, growth is the common goal of every CEO of a public company, and one of the most important metrics by which the board of directors will assess a CEO’s performance.

Today’s Marketing Mix Increasingly Favors Content Curation

For brick-and-mortar businesses, location may be everything. But online, content is king. Many customers researching products online want information not just about the products or services themselves, but also on how to solve problems or reach goals related to those offerings. As a result, marketers have begun to increase their focus on online content generation.

Customers Act, Businesses Respond

Behavioral targeting is a marketer’s dream, but some consumers’ nightmare. The slick and—to some customers—Big Brother-like marketing technique is rapidly becoming commonplace among marketers. The practice leverages information collected from individuals’ Web-browsing behaviors, customer preferences, and buying histories, and then, based on this data, serves up advertising and messaging across a number of customer-facing channels.

Members Are Customers, Too

Executives today are time-crunched and information-hungry. They need to solve problems or harness opportunities quickly, often looking to peers for insight. Professional associations are one place for those conversations, but many associations don't do enough to enable member interaction.

Case in Brief: Leveraging Employees as Brand Ambassadors

New energy management company JouleX engaged its employees and leveraged their social media contacts to increase visibility and more than tripled traffic to its website.

5 Ways to Turn Experts Into Marketing Assets

"Fire starters are the superheros of your industry," writes Michael A. Stelzner in his book Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition. These experts can be a very important asset for marketers. If leveraged properly experts can help companies influence more customers.

8 Rules for Deploying Intelligent Virtual Agents Intelligently

Your customers live online and demand that you do, too. Social networks, mobile, and the Web have redefined customer expectations around convenience, accessibility, and personalized interactions. But today’s self-service options, while attractive for the bottom line, can leave the customer feeling frustrated, isolated, and underwhelmed.

CMOs Lack Digital Readiness

As the digital era ushers in new ways for companies and consumers to interact, chief marketing officers (CMOs) are facing a critical and permanent shift in the way their companies engage with customers. However, of the more than 1,700 CMOs surveyed worldwide in “2011 IBM Global CMO Study,” the majority questions whether their marketing organizations are prepared to manage such a change.

Airlines Use Social Media as Their Eyes in the Sky

Through the use of social media channels, customers can communicate directly with the brands they do business with, anytime and anywhere. For airlines, social provides the opportunity to communicate with customers and prospects in novel ways.

Customer Experience Is Now a Strategic Priority

In many companies today customer experience is more than just a buzzword. Customer experience management has matured to the point where a growing number of firms are creating customer experience organizations to help refocus, reshape, and retool customer experiences across their enterprises.

Why Marketers Should Bring Their Offline CRM Data Online

Marketers have long used marketing services and data providers to gain a precise understanding of their offline customers. This has enabled marketers to tailor their marketing campaigns, such as direct mail, to specific customers and prospects. However, traditional marketing is becoming more expensive, harder to scale, and is declining in performance as consumers shift their attention to the Web.

Full Price and Poor Service Are Deal-Breakers This Holiday Season

The temperatures may be dropping, but the holiday shopping season is just heating up. According to Brand Keys’ latest survey, the projected average increase in holiday spending may reach 3 percent, matching last year’s sales growth. The study, which polled 16,000 customers on their expected holiday spending, sees the potential for a small rise in retail sales, though 70 percent of respondents claim the economy is still impacting their plans.

Case in Brief: House to Home Redecorated to Increase Holiday Revenue

British interior design magazine House to Home wanted to increase its reader engagement and its revenue. The magazine is now adding value to the customer experience by directing its readers to retail sites where they can shop for featured items.

New Rules of Engagement for Nonprofits

We have myriad interaction channels to choose from when engaging with companies, including online, direct mail, email, text, and social. Every interaction a company has with us—good and bad—can be publicly scrutinized and publicly broadcast, creating whole new levels of accountability in a new digital world. But are the rules any different for nonprofits?

Build Customer Engagement Through Purpose-Driven Social Communities

“Social media enables mass collaboration, in which a large and diverse group of people who may have no preexisting connections pursues a mutual purpose that creates value,” write Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald in "The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees."

Build Customer Engagement Through Purpose-Driven Social Communities

Holiday Spending Predicted to Stagnate in 2011

When Santa’s sleigh comes to town this holiday season, the tow may be a bit lighter than years past. According to Gfk Custom Research North America’s 2011 Holiday Shopping Survey, 84 percent of consumers intend to spend less or the same amount when shopping this year as compared to 2010. The survey polled 1,007 Americans ages 18 and over, establishing that 40 percent of American households will spend less this year, while 44 percent will remain on the same spending track as last year. Only 11 percent of those polled plan to spend more money this holiday season.

5 Imperatives for Mobile Marketing

As 2012 nears, marketers must begin planning how mobile will fit into their current marketing strategies. Here are five mobile imperatives to help marketers kick start their mobile efforts in the coming months.

Empathy, Self-Interest, and Economics

Companies that want to earn their customers’ trust have to be willing to act in their customers’ interest—sometimes even when the customers’ interest conflicts with their own (at least in the short term).

Empathy, Self-Interest, and Economics

Preparing for Today’s High-Maintenance Holiday Shopper

During a recent visit to the Stamford Town Center mall, a number of retailers shared their holiday preparedness plans, mostly focused on bolstering their staff with well-trained temporary hires and stocking up on the most popular items.

Optimizing the Online Customer Experience Boosts E-Commerce

In e-commerce, it’s dynamic, targeted that content sells. If that content is loads slowly, however, it can negatively impact the customer experience, search engine results, and, ultimately, sales.

Personal Information Sharing Wanes In Light of Security Breaches

Interacting with a company is like going on a blind date: You embrace what they have to offer with an open mind, but you approach with caution until they gain your trust. However, many companies long to dive into a long-term commitment too soon, asking customers to provide an array of personal data that most are hesitant to share so early in the relationship—or ever, in some cases.

Case in Brief: Dungarees Increases Its Online Conversion Rate

Dungarees realized that to rescue lost online sales the company needed to remain top-of-mind with its customers and remind them of the items they had expressed interest in.

Step 1 in Customer Relationship Management: Listening

In the offline world we take it for granted that marketers listen to their customers’ needs and desires, pay attention to inferences from their actions, and use the information to market to them directly, writes Neil Rosen in his book Chatter Marketing: Putting the Relationship Back in Customer Relationship Management. However, Rosen emphasizes that this attitude should extend into the online world. In fact, according to Rosen, savvy marketers are listening to what their customers and prospects have to say online, allowing them to market directly to them much earlier in the decision-making process. Rosen says, “Great marketers intuitively understand how chatter marketing works” and position themselves to leverage it to their advantage.

Customer Loyalty Starts in the Back Office

Optimal loyalty program execution demands enhanced communication and collaboration between client and service partners to ensure the program launches as designed, on time, and on budget, with maximum delight delivered to those members who engage.

Social Media Adoption Spans the Ages

Thanks to technology, the social butterfly no longer has to leave its chrysalis to interact with friends and family across the globe. With 129 million Americans who use the Internet also using social media, this new channel has developed a considerable presence, becoming an essential, complex marketing tool for companies and brands looking to connect with customers on a more personalized level.

Transforming Big Data Into Big Opportunities

Companies that blend structured and unstructured data sources to create a holistic view of the customer can leverage the growing influx of customer information to their advantage.

How to Avoid Being One of the Most Hated Companies in America

Each year the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) releases its “Most Hated Companies in America” index. The list for 2011 is led by airlines, banks, utilities, and telecommunications companies.... But it’s a blow that can be avoided. Here’s how:

A Passion for Listening and Learning

When Donna Lendzyk, manager, customer loyalty, at SaskTel, launched SaskTel’s Customer Champions group in January 2010, her mission was to improve customer satisfaction. She knew that to be successful she had to get everyone focused on the customer.

A Winning Formula for Guest Satisfaction

Roger Curtis, president of Michigan International Speedway, conducted a customer experience makeover that required improving the “doorstep to doorstep” customer experience.

Bolstering Links in the Service-Loyalty Chain

Jeff Smith, vice president for operations and loyalty services at Omni Hotels and Resorts, takes a customer-centric approach to business. Smith continues to build on the culture of service that program ingrains within the organization.

Business Benefits Guide Customer Experience Improvements

Harry Rosen's CIO Stephen Jackson deployed a mobile strategy to help sales associates find new ways to delight customers, regardless of whether they make appointments or drop into stores unannounced.

Creating a Direct Connection to Customers

Dennis Fitzgerald,vice president of customer satisfaction for Yaskawa America's drives and motion division, led the introduction of a new strategic approach to customer interaction.

Customer Centricity on all Cylinders

Rich Brecht, director of customer experience at J&P Cycles, embodies a passion for customer centricity and infuses customer centricity into various company-customer interactions.

Customer Success Starts With Listening

Jay Topper,senior vice president of customer success at Rosetta Stone, analyzes customer data streams on a daily basis which led him to recognize a need for improving the organization’s customer experience.

Gathering Customer Feedback on the Slopes

Michael Colbourn vice president, marketing, sales, and communications, of Stowe Mountain Resort, delivers more personalized guest experiences that have led to significant increases in customer satisfaction, intent to return, and intent to recommend across all customer segments.

Hungry for Insight to Continually Improve Service

Chuck Sliker, senior vice president of operations services at Arby’s, uses customer insight to strengthen weak points in the company’s products or service, as well as to commend individual restaurants and specific associates for superior customer service.

Introducing the 2011 1to1 Customer Champions

The 1to1 Customer Champions are tireless champions and experts in customer experience success. As the 2011 1to1 Customer Champions demonstrate, an uncompromising focus on the customer is a guaranteed business driver. Hear how in the stories that follow.

Keeping an Analytical Eye on Customer Feedback

Tim Teran knows this firsthand. As the senior vice president of consumer insights and strategy, Teran’s mission is improving Macy’s customer experience through employee engagement. He believes he can do that through an extensive voice of the customer (VOC) program.

Laying the Foundation of Customer Centricity

Ven Bontha has a curious mind. An engineer, he is always looking to answer the question, “How can we make it easier for the customer to do business with us?” Bontha takes cues from outside his industry to answer this question in his role as vice president of customer experience at building materials supplier CEMEX USA.

Putting Employees First Increases Customer Delight

Tom Feeney’s promotion to president and CEO of Safelite AutoGlass in 2008 initiated a cultural transformation at the auto-glass repair company. The new approach emphasized internal improvements that would ensure customer delight.

Serving with Empathy in a Customer’s Time of Need

For David Payne,assistant vice president, contact center at The Standard, ensuring the health of The Standard’s contact center means taking an agent-centric approach designed to build employee engagement.

Speaking to Customers in Their Language

When Ingrid Lindberg was recruited by Cigna to become its customer experience officer in 2008, she immediately sprang into action. She and her newly formed team mapped out the optimal customer experience, addressing customer pain points that were derived from an analysis of voice of the customer data.

Striving for a Happily-Ever-After Customer Experience

Susan DeLaney, vice president of customer experience, UPS, has been entrusted with designing and executing the company’s customer strategy vision for the ideal customer experience for the company’s shippers and receivers.

6 New Rules for Marketing Success

Our fast-paced world requires rapidly evolving business techniques that meet the demands of today’s society. Much like ever-changing technology, advanced business methodologies can quickly become obsolete. As a result, business leaders must find ways to adjust to these advancements. But, according to Timothy R. Pearson, many marketers have failed to adapt, using antiquated tactics that often leave their companies struggling to move forward.

Case In Brief: New England Patriots Increase Season Ticket Renewals

The New England Patriots was experiencing its lowest season ticket renewal rate in a decade. Recognizing that first-time season ticket holders were the most likely to churn, the team focused on its rookie fans to increase their renewal rate.

5 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing

Public relations is evolving in conjunction with the explosion of digital and social channels. As part of the evolution, business-to-business (B2B) companies should launch content marketing programs to engage their audiences.

Travels and Tribulations

Life may be a journey, but that doesn’t mean our travels have to be a struggle. Southwest Airlines has taken steps toward avoiding staff-related flight delays, and the confusion that can often accompany those schedule changes, by integrating a text messaging platform that allows the scheduling department to quickly and efficiently match pilot availability with flight needs—ensuring that customers experience the least disruption possible.

4 Sales Strategies That Make Price Irrelevant

While there are numerous strategies for deemphasizing a customer or prospect’s focus on price, the most effective sales tactics, experts say, have nothing to do with selling. Here are four methods salespeople can use to reduce the relevancy of price when speaking with customer.

Customer Satisfaction Is a Commodity

What sets today’s leading brands apart from their competitors isn’t just well-made products or reasonable prices. They have those, to be sure, but so do most of their competitors. It’s something much more meaningful: true customer engagement.

KFC’s Secret Recipe for Social Media Success

KFC is sinking its teeth into social media, and gaining some juicy results. The fast food chain is using social channels not only to interact with its customers and engage them, but also to create buzz about its products.

QR Codes Drive Customer Engagement

Short for “quick response,” a QR code links online content to a mobile device. The barcode type graphic can hold up to 7,000 characters in a compact space. The consumer simply scans the code (using a QR reader app on their smartphone) and is redirected to content that the creator of the code has developed.

Case in Brief: Ikea Israel Doesn’t Keep Customers Waiting

Ikea Israel was experiencing an increase in business, which meant an exponential rise in the number of incoming calls and email to its contact center. This led to undesirable wait times for customers. The company wanted to address this problem quickly, and deliver a better experience by providing the majority of answers to its customers’ queries online.

Complementing Business Intelligence for Data-Driven CRM

Many companies are unknowingly leaving money on the table simply because they put their effort into generating new business instead of growing existing customers. With estimates claiming that it can cost six times more to attract a new customer than to maintain and expand a relationship with an existing one, this is just bad business—especially given the incredible insight that already exists within your organization.

Direct Marketing Drives Sales

Marketing has the power to influence millions with a single message. But just as incorrect postage on a letter prevents a note from reaching its destination, the wrong channel can limit a campaign’s spread and sales effectiveness.

Smartphone Users Expect Great Service

Customers have high expectations from the services they can access through their smartphones. A SpeechCycle and Echo Research survey finds that customer experience is a top priority for smartphone users, who are willing to pay more for better service.

Making Channel Sales as Effective as Direct Sales

As a veteran of both direct and channel sales management for IBM and Oracle, I know firsthand that companies selling through the channel face no shortage of challenges. Unlike with direct sales managers, channel sales managers don’t know their end customers; they only know their reseller partners. This is further complicated by the fact that data collection in the channel is difficult and sporadic.

“Big Data” and Evidence-Based Management

It’s a daunting task to keep up with technology. Consider, for instance, the tremendous increase in the sheer volume of information we are accumulating today that technology has made possible. This information is not just in the form of business documents, government statistics, and scientific reports; it’s also data generated through the individual efforts of billions of people acting independently—information contained in blog posts and on websites, status updates, photos, videos, comments, product reviews, text messages, podcasts, “like” and “share” buttons, even location check-ins.

“Big Data” and Evidence-Based Management

A Segmentation Framework That Works

Customer-centric companies have long understood the need to manage their customer portfolio, rather than just their portfolio of products or services. These firms know that the customer portfolio must be the fundamental factor guiding how a company is organized, what it manages, and what it measures. A segmentation strategy provides companies with the insight they need to manage their businesses profitably and with a customer focus. Segmentation delivers that insight by subdividing a customer portfolio into multiple categories, based on such attributes as behaviors, value, and needs.

A Segmentation Framework That Works

Applying Customer Analytics for Business Success

Customers share a plethora of information about themselves with companies, both deliberately and unintentionally. This happens via support and point-of-sale interactions, surveys and other types of feedback mechanisms, social media discussions, text interactions, etc. Organizations can glean additional insights about customer attitudes and needs using sophisticated analytics tools, including speech, sentiment, and text analytics

AutoTrader Revs Up Its Staff for a Sales Tune-up

AutoTrader plans to deploy a new electronic order (ESO) system for its sales force to help simplify and accelerate the ordering process for AutoTrader's dealers and manufacturing customers by allowing the company’s advertising consultants to more quickly select and configure promotions without toggling between multiple systems.

Capturing Customer Potential Through Social Media Platforms

Social media is not just a playground for B2C companies anymore. It holds potential for any organization, even those in the pharma industry, to interact with the public and other important stakeholders.

Capturing Customer Potential Through Social Media Platforms

Creating a Data-Driven Loyalty Strategy

John Moser CMO at Denihan Hospitality Group, leads the firm’s customer engagement and marketing practices. Here, Moser describes his efforts to help build a data-driven enterprise that fosters loyalty and stimulates growth.

Customers Speak Volumes. Are You Listening?

I often wonder if companies that ask for my opinion do anything with the information. Most businesses never say how or if they’re going to use customer survey data. So it was a pleasant surprise to receive an email from a Macy’s executive after I provided feedback. I complimented the customer focus, skill, and helpfulness of an associate; the executive wrote to say that she shared my note with the associate and his manager.

Data Analytics Lead a Customer Service Evolution at Saudi Telecom Company

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is making changes to adapt and grow with the market. In 2009 the new STC Group CEO, Saud Al-Daweesh, took the helm to lead the company through the transformation into an international telecommunications company. Recently STC reorganized its internal structure even further, appointing new CEOs in its strategic, technical, and Saudi operations, as well as transitioned leadership at each commercial unit in STC's home base.

Empowering Customers to Become Evangelists

How engaged are your customers? Can you identify advocates among your customer base? These are important questions to today’s senior executives. Organizations in every industry are looking for competitive advantage and the relationship strength that comes from building and engaging with a community of strong customer advocates. The pharmaceutical industry in particular stands to gain by focusing on customer engagement.

Empowering Customers to Become Evangelists

Get Better Insight Faster

With so many new challenges, telecom operators find themselves in a tough situation: It’s becoming increasingly difficult to continue sustainable revenue growth. Many agree that using customer insight correctly is essential to overcoming these challenges. But are traditional analytical models enough? No. If operators are changing the way they do business, this shift must apply to analytics, as well.

Get Better Insight Faster

Getting the Most Out of QR Codes

QR codes are here to stay—making them a marketing tool that shouldn’t be discounted. Scanning will become more commonplace as smartphone penetration increases and certainly once smartphones are manufactured with an integrated scanning app.

How Smart Is Your Business?

There is a treasure chest sitting within most companies, waiting to be opened. And many don’t even know it. If they do, they don’t know how to get to the riches inside. The treasure is data. Most companies simply aren’t making the most of what they have.

Isbank Customer Wait Times Decrease 37 Percent With Rightsizing Models

Türkiye Is Bankas? A.S., also known as Isbank, is one of the largest banks in Turkey, with 24,000 employees serving customers across more than 1,100 branches. In 2009 the bank worked with Peppers & Rogers Group to create a rightsizing program for its branch tellers and sales force. The company has seen average wait times in its branches decrease by 37 percent.

Multichannel 101

Why does it remain difficult for large companies to formulate a sound multichannel strategy, especially one tailored by customer type? Here is the 50,000-foot answer: Because no one is getting paid for it.

Rightsizing Bank Staff Leads to Customer-Centric Growth

Many banks, even those with highly advanced customer-centric strategies, are throwing money away and ruining their customer experiences by miscalculating a vital, yet often overlooked equation: customer focus plus rightsizing the staff of individual branches equals profitability. Each branch is its own entity, yet many banks use one-size-fits-all strategies when it comes to staffing. Or, worse, they look at one or two metrics to decide staffing. Banks can’t sacrifice their financial stability for customer centricity, nor can they sacrifice the customer experience to keep costs down. Ultimately, the decision of how to staff each branch requires a balance of meeting customer experience expectations while considering costs and operations.

The Art and Science of Customer Experience Management

Complexities surrounding multichannel analysis often stem from the age-old problem of data silos. The bigger the company, the more harmful a role silos play, because having a holistic view of the marketing campaigns means having the ability to share customer preferences, feedback, and promotion history across channels.

The Best Customer “Data” Is Feedback

For years American General Life Companies primarily relied on its insurance agents to relay what customers were saying about the life insurance company’s products and services. That was a problem for Simon Leech, AGLC’s senior vice president of insurance services. “Customer feedback was filtered,” he recalls. “If an agent was sensitive to a particular issue, it would [affect] the conversation. As a result, feedback wasn’t direct, it wasn’t real-time, and it was mostly anecdotal.”

The C-Level Executive’s Greatest Asset: Information

Equipped with the right information, business leaders become superior decision-makers. This is especially important for executives in the highest echelons of an organization. These business leaders are increasingly pressed to make quick decisions on issues that could impact their entire company and need data to inform or support those decisions.