"There are three basic factors for successful innovation: demand, design, and doability," Peppers & Rogers Group cofounder Don Peppers said during his recent keynote presentation at the Gartner CRM Summit. "All of these are customer focused." Apples' iPod, for example, continues to dominate the market, even at a higher price point, because the company has woven these elements into its approach to innovation.
Yesterday, Mark Selcow, president and cofounder of Merced; and Mark Gally, director of marketing at Merced, shared some findings with me about their company’s latest survey: The “Merced Systems 2006 Performance Management Best Practices Study.”
Of the 107 companies interviewed, 94 percent of respondents cited data challenges, 70 percent reported data complexity as a problem, and only 42 percent believe their data is accurate. Gally attributes these statistics to a widespread use of home-grown tools like spreadsheets to track and measure internal performances. The use of such a primitive tool impacts supervisor effectiveness, creates common data challenges, and ultimately affects the customer experience. Gally said, “This not only makes a process less efficient, but it puts into question, ‘Am I really being evaluated fairly?’”
Selcow said he was surprised because the companies were spread across a wide spectrum of industries and sizes, and many were in financial services. Therefore he assumed the majority would be operating on business intelligence systems. Not the case. “If you have operations between 1,000 to even 5,000, it’s hard to use manual tasks like spreadsheets. You can’t run your business on that and a lot of companies are trying to do it.”
Is your company’s data flexible and transparent? Tell us your challenges and solutions.
WalMart is losing its brand mojo. As evidenced in our 1to1 Weekly story this week, the mega-retailer will now experiment with different store sizes. This comes on the heels of getting into high-definition TV, organic foods, low-priced drug prescriptions, high-end concept stores and a flirtation with banking. All of this, in a way, is based on sound customer strategy. I'm sure there are masses of customers that would be attracted to WalMart for all these new reasons. And I'm sure WalMart has done its homework with market research before launching these extensions. But at some point every brand has to maintain its sharp edge.
Here are some interesting observations:
+ Agent satisfaction is one of the top concerns of contact center managers in Shanghai.
+ The growth of the outsourcing industry in the Philippines is spurring a boom of new 24-hour retail outlets.
+ The lack of toll-free telephone service in Japan has dictated the development of call centers there.
These views aren't from a voluminous research report. They're from a road trip of sorts.
This morning I was at Carlson headquarters, in Minneapolis, talking with our newly hired director of interactive marketing, Doug Rozen. We were just sharing thoughts with each other when he asked me an intriguing question: Does 1to1 work with social networks? I’ve done a lot of thinking about social networks, but I had never actually thought very deeply about where 1to1 ends and social networking begins, or even whether 1to1 marketing applies to a social networking context.
Customers want a consistent accurate answer regardless of which channel they use to contact a company. This simple fact, according to Kana CMO Marchai Bruchey, is one of the drivers leading to the convergence of marketing and the contact center.
With Ford Motor’s announcement that it plans to cut 14,000 white collar jobs, eliminate 30,000 hourly jobs, and close 16 factories, we wonder if Ford will ever again regain a competitive edge. Even with the restructuring, Ford doesn’t expect to see a profit in the North American business until 2009.
Continue reading "Can Ford Get on the Road to Product Development Optimization?" »
New research from the CMO Council reveals that marketing executives are failing to keep pace with information security in the digital world. The study “Secure the Trust of Your Brand: How Security and IT Integrity Influence Corporate Brands,” surveyed 2,000 consumers in North America and Europe and includes results of discussions with 25 leading marketing executives. The study delves into how security is impacting business performance, customer confidence, and brand reputation.
Last week I spoke with Scott Van Camp, editorial director at the CMO Council, who reinforced that security is becoming a growing concern among marketers. But in the study, even though 80 percent of marketers said they’re concerned with security as it pertains to the organization, an overwhelming 60 percent said that security hasn’t become a significant theme in their organization’s messaging and marketing. Even more surprising is that only 29 percent said they have a crisis containment plan in place.
Continue reading "Security Integrity Provides Opportunity for Brand Differentiation" »
The current marketing obsession with using content to influence customers needs to find an intersection with expertise. The story in this week's 1to1 Weekly shows how direct marketing can start to define an influencer profile for a company's brand or service, which I love. Any customer strategy worth its salt has to be operationalized to be measurable and effective. But a recent observation regarding the way Bob Dylan's new song collection (album or CD just doesn't cut it anymore) has intrigued me. It has shown me that levels of expertise, when they become consistent, can be a powerful influencer tool. Let's start at the most basic level, which is me, a person who considers Dylan a songwriting deity. I can tell my circle of friends that this album has six great songs out of the 12. Do you trust that? Well, then you can go another level. The folks at Apple think its pretty good because Dylan is the focus of its TV spots. Then you can read a Rolling Stone review that sings its praises. Then you can go to The New Yorker whose normally vicious critic can't say enough good things about it. Individual recommendation when it meets expertise can be very powerful. Dylan's "Modern Times" is the number one album on iTunes, and he can't even sing anymore. Really, he can't. Trust me.
"Customers want to be loyal," Scott Creighton told me during a conversation we had during the Gartner CRM Summit earlier this week. Creighton is vice president of business development for RightNow Technologies.
The catch, however, is that customers are also more empowered than ever because they have more choice, they are more informed, and they have higher expectations about getting a deal done. "This is what I want, this is what I'll pay, do you want to do the deal?" is the current business environment, Creighton explained. "It's a different environment than it used to be," he said, citing Progressive Insurance as an example of a company prepared to excel by being transparent to customers and, in fact, helping them to find the best deal whether it's with them or with a competitor.
Continue reading "Are You Ready for Today's Loyal Customer?" »
The buzz from the Gartner CRM Summit: Go multichannel or go nowhere.
“CRM is only as good as your last interaction and your weakest channel,” Scott Nelson, Gartner’s managing vice president, application strategies and governance, said during his keynote. The message from Nelson and other Gartner analysts is that organizations need to meet customers' increasing expectations for consistent multichannel experiences and access or risk irrelevance.
The jig is up. The creators of Lonelygirl15, a home schooled 16-year-old who, since June 16, has posted vlog confessionals on Youtube.com about topics ranging from parental rebellion to romantic confusion, posted a message on the site last week stating that lonelygirl15 is actually fictionalized. Critics weren’t surprised. Many realized early on that her video diaries sounded scripted and the story arc Shakespearean.
Continue reading "Lonelygirl15: A Playful Hoax or the Future of Brand Marketing?" »
Last season, my husband Eric went to his first professional football game. It was the New York Giants playoff game against the Carolina Panthers. Unfortunately, the Giants got pulverized, losing 23-0. Eric was so disgusted at the team's performance (and the amount of money he paid for the ticket) that he considered switching his allegiance to another football team for this season. But in the end, his loyalty was strong enough to see him through that rough patch. He sat down this past Sunday night to root for Eli Manning and the Giants against his brother Peyton and the Colts.
Recently Ginger Conlon moderated a webcast with some of our Customer Champions. They discussed strategic initiatives designed to improve the customer experience. As always, when you think of the customer experience, companies like Southwest, Best Buy and Ritz Carlton come to mind. But the definition of a customer experience differs from company to company, and even from customer to customer.
Continue reading "Customer Experience Means Different Things to Different People" »
The writing is on the wall for mobile operators. And how.
Mobile operators face a steady commoditization in their business, as the inexorable force of improving technology continues to drive bandwidth costs down while simultaneously allowing more players in more industries to enter their space. One example: Mobile phone manufacturers are already bringing phones to market that will connect via a wireless LAN, then dial VOIP calls for free over the Internet, without ever setting foot in anyone’s mobile network at all. One manufacturer even has plans to include a Skype client in its phone. Another example: In the UK the 3G operator Three (yes, that’s the company’s name) is now giving away MSN Messenger, so phone subscribers can “save a fortune on texts.” (See http://www.three.co.uk/lifestyle/msn.omp)
You may have fabulous products, unique services, and abundant touchpoints, but if your employees are apathetic, customers are sure to depart for the competition. To build customer engagement, you must first have employee engagement. And that will only happen with...
Continue reading "The One Absolute Must for Customer Engagement" »
I love good customer service as much as the next person. But, frankly, a pleasant encounter with an employee is great, but just isn't enough if the rest of the customer experience is lacking. Two examples:
By now you’ve heard about RadioShack terminating 400 employees at its Forth Worth headquarters last week by email. The employees came to work last Tuesday, opened their inboxes and read this: "The workforce reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."
Continue reading "Don't Let Email Resignation Happen to You" »
Our Inside 1to1 lead story this week addresses an issue that has puzzled even the brightest marketers. That issue: How do I move my money where the customers are? Companies who aspire to spend their branding millions more effciently need to stop theorizing about the percentage of their total budgets they will put online, or how much they're not going to spend on TV this year. The debate needs to turn toward how money will be spent in below the line marketing activites, not how much could be spent. Companies have been given the keys to reaching customers where they research, make and execute purchase decisions. Reaching them during decision mode has opened up interactive, experiential and word-of-mouth marketing. This week's 1to1 story shows how some companies have stopped talking about this path and started walking it. Funny how success in customer acquisition and loyalty seems to be following them around.
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