In a high-volume service business mistakes happen. The actions that result and the speed at which they’re taken to make things right with the affected customer are critical. Focusing recovery efforts solely on correcting the errors, while failing to address the inconvenience they have caused for the customer by not responding to their initial needs may generate potential negative word of mouth. Recently, my friend Mike had an experience at a hotel that dealt a negative experience but promptly turned
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At today's 1to1 Webinar, "What's Next for Loyalty Programs?," presenters Luc Bondar and Will Wittkopf of Carlson Marketing talked about using loyalty data more strategically. Part of the discussion was about "enterprise loyalty," which involves taking the data generated by a program and using it to improve other areas of the business--and in some cases, extending the loyalty program across multiple product lines or lines of business.
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Last week eBay announced it will increase the fees it charges to those who sell items through its online stores. The new prices will raise fees by an average of 6 percent for the approximately 500,000 online store owners, eBay estimated. Some sellers are angry with the news, and are considering jumping ship to Amazon, Yahoo or shopping.com. But eBay is cool with this, because some experts say the move was done to "fire" its below-zero (BZ) sellers.
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"The biggest mistake organizations make is thinking that branding is marketing," Intellidyn president and CEO Peter Harvey told me in a recent conversation. "Companies need to tell people who they are -- branding -- or they'll waste their money on marketing."
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Customer lifetime value. It's a metric that many of the executives I speak with long to calculate and use, but say they lack the data necessary to truly assess. One of the challenges is in how an organization defines customer value. Some base it on purchases alone. Other may include such "soft" data as customer influence (with other customers and in the broader market) in the calculations. There are myriad views of what comprises customer lifetime value (CLTV).
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Instead of treating IP as simply enabling cost savings, companies are really looking at how it can drive business value—IP not as a means to an end, but as a catalyst to drive change. That mission became clear at last week’s International Contact Center Management show, where many vendors told me that they’re customers are saying “I’m willing to make fundamental changes to the customer experience and the way I manage contact centers.” They say they plan to achieve this
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Last week a U.S. court ruled that cigarette makers can no longer use the words "Light," "Ultralight," "Mild" or "Natural" to describe their cigarettes. Everyone know by now that cigarettes, no matter how they're labeled, are unhealthy, but it took a court ruling to get the ads changed. It brings up to me the question of trust.
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I'm going to do something somewhat sacriligeous. I'm going to take issue with part of the NetPromoter concept, which is the subject of this week's Inside 1to1 story. Yes, I think the concept is full of simple brilliance. And as I write this I'm wearing my Fred Reichheld Fan Club t-shirt. But here's my problem. Reichheld, as well as the folks at Satmetrix who have cornered the consulting market on NPS, are touting the index as part of the way
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In "Are You Modeling Customer-Centric Behavior" I wrote about one of the key messages I glean from my conversations with three of our 1to1 Customer Champions -- Kevin Cantwell, president of Big River Telephone; Kelly Lam, manager of marketing services for BMW Canada; and Brynn Palmer, director of the customer experience for Charter Communications -- when we met to tape our next Champions webcast (watch for it in September!). That message was the importance of executives modeling customer-centric behavior to
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If you want your front-line staff to be customer focused, you have to continually stress the importance of doing so. And the best way to do that is to be customer centric yourself. Creating a customer-centric culture must start at the executive suite if it is to permeate an organization. That was one of the key messages I glean from my conversations with three of our 1to1 Customer Champions -- Kevin Cantwell, president of Big River Telephone; Kelly Lam, manager
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Monday's issue of INSIDE 1to1 discussed a new direction for marketing strategy to go in, where the entire organization is involved in marketing success. Now Forrester Research has expanded its advice to the B2B space, where customer relationship progress traditionlly has been very difficult to achieve. Author Laura Ramos predicts that B2B marketers will move online, where tactical demand generation can evolve into strategic ownership of the customer relationship, experience, and intelligence. What do you think? Does success revolve around
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There’s a crackdown going on in New York. Last week the NYPD started a wave of ticketing and towing illegally parked scooters. Many scooter owners park their rides on the sidewalk to avoid getting hit by drivers who “touch” park or getting moved by drivers who are desperate for a space. Scooter manufacturer Vespa has stepped in, pushing for a policy change for parking two-wheel vehicles in the city. The company is circulating a “Vespatition” to pressure lawmakers; about 5,000
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Although "76 percent of firms polled by a leading analyst firm indicate they have some type of CRM [technology], 80 percent of customers stop doing business with companies because of a bad experience. So there are obviously lots of companies that have deployed traditional CRM and still treat customers badly enough to lose them." This is an excerpt from an email RightNow Technologies CEO Greg Gianforte sent me yesterday. Gianforte talked about how companies that misuse CRM technologies could "strip
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Small businesses face tough choices. Often faced with limited resources, companies with small workforces used to trail in CRM deployments. That doesn’t seem to be the case today. Affordable and accessible technologies have made it possible for SMBs to grow their businesses. But for SMBs to jump in the race, also requires a change of mindset. Take Altman Lighting, for example. The 52-year-old family owned and operated commercial lighting with 140 full-time employees and 400 customer accounts worldwide had no
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No one can deny Google's dominance in the Internet space, but what's interesting is its ability to create both short-term buzz and long-term loyalty. Cool features like moveable maps and book text searches, along with its supreme search engine make it stand out from other online services. The New York Times compares its "wow factor" strategy to Yahoo's, which is more conservative and deliberate, but is also losing search market share. Google's experimental nature may well win in the long
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I remember the not-to-distant past when most wireless telecoms gave all their best deals and service to new customers and didn't pay much attention to existing customers. It was all about acquisition; achieving critical mass. But as churn rates grew, so did the recognition that retention might actually be a good idea. Most of the rest of us already seemed quite aware of the adage that it costs less to retain customers than to acquire new ones, understanding that companies
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As a fervent BlackBerry fan, I've been especially interested in the adoption of CRM on handheld devices. This is one of those areas that has been talked about for a long time before reaching any critical mass. Although mobile CRM almost seems like old news (nearly every CRM vendor offers a mobile component), the fact is that it's really just taking off among users. There seem to be several reasons for this. One is that mobile professionals are starting to
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What began as a meeting of customers with a common concern has evolved to an industry forum. Last week I had a conversation with Talisma CEO Dan Vetras and Vice President of Marketing Jim O'Farrell about the newly launched CIM Forum. CIM is an ancronym for customer interaction management; the CIM Forum is a "business and technology consortium" created to discuss best practices primarily related to online customer service . What's interesting about this launch is its double layer of
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Last night I got engaged and my new fiancé made reservations at an Italian restaurant in the city in which we live. Granted, we only had been there once before about two months ago, but when we walked in, the owner, Nino, remembered our table and had written my fiancé’s name on the table to reserve it. This is remarkable since John hadn’t told him his name when making the reservation. Nino simply remembered the sound of John’s voice because
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Last week Wal-Mart announced that it was giving up on the German market, and sold its 85 stores in Germany to Metro Group. This comes on the heels of its exit from the South Korean market as well. In Germany, many mistakes were cultural -- employees offered to bag groceries for customers (Germans prefer to bag their own groceries) and clerks were instructed to smile at customers, who are used to brusque service. Many Germans were put off by this
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