Last week I spoke with Russell Kazeer, senior director of BPM marketing at Pegasystems. Earlier in the day he had called Sprint about a new product that was a result from the joint venture made in late 2005 between Sprint Nextel, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast. The agent had no knowledge of the product or the partnership, which was made to accelerate the convergence of video entertainment, wireless, and wireline data. Russell had to guide the agent through the deal. “Here’s a new product that was offered without training or support to the call center staff,” he said. “Companies need to accelerate new products to market that excel agent training.”

Continue reading "Arming the Contact Center" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft released its new Vista operating system today, the first major release since Windows XP in 2001. For some, it's big news. A few stores had launch parties at midnight to celebrate, and lines of people (mostly in Silicon Valley) waited to be the first ones to buy it. Microsoft has a huge market share, but are its customers truly loyal, or just out of alternatives? Users, especially corporate users, have basically no choice. So the sales of Vista don't necessarily show the true picture.

Continue reading "Are We Truly Loyal to Microsoft?" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If I had to ID one element of the customer-centric company that really works, I would call out experience. Our 1to1 Weekly story asks this week, what is the secret for customer-centric companies? But I don't think there's an acutal secret. It's right out there for everyone to see. The companies that achieve consistent financial results have a unique customer experience. The reason Lexus outsells Lincoln is the customer experience from the dealer to the contact center to the TV commercials. The reason Virgin Mobile continues to grow when its rivals are consolidating is the customer experience that's geared toward the way its target audience (kids) use cell phones. It's pretty simple. The customer experience is the brand promise and the value proposition.

Posted by John Gaffney at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Where are the opportunities to encourage and improve sales and marketing collaboration? Massini Group CEO Kermit Yensen asked that question during a panel discussion on the topic at the Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing Executive MindXchange earlier this week in Tempe, AZ. He also responded to the question, citing three areas where sharing is the answer.

Continue reading "Getting Sales and Marketing to Get Along" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Many companies are nervous to open up their products and services to customer comments. But a new study finds firms that allow unbiased user reviews actually build stronger customer relationships and make more money than those who keep information close to the vest. The Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index from ForeSee Results surveyed over 10,000 online shoppers that visited one or more of the top 40 online retailers. The sites that offer customer product reviews have a competitive advantage, while sites that don't are missing an opportunity to drive satisfaction, loyalty, and sales.

Continue reading "Customer Control Is Good for Business" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the early days of the recording industry, record labels were absolutely necessary for the success of any artist. Today, well-known artists are taking over their own brands and essentially owning their customer relationships.

Over the years, record companies have added little value to the process of creating and distributing music. Their brands stand for nothing. These days, who knows or cares which label their favorite artists happen to have signed with? A full-service marketing solutions provider called Musictoday is trying to change that by connecting the customers directly to the musicians through the creation of customer multichannel communities that feature live event information, merchandise, tickets, fan clubs, and general music-related content.

With the ever rising online music distribution channel, being customer friendly is the goal of many artists. Musictoday helps to achieve that goal by building loyal fan bases and repeat customers by allowing artists to connect with their customers through artist-to-fan Web ticketing, online stores, and by delivering customer data analytics.

Continue reading "Protecting the Brands of Bands" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There are many different types of call centers, and many different strategies for running them. And recently, they've been judged. CRM Lowdown released its top 10 Hall of Fame call centers, and balanced it with a bottom 10 Hall of Shame list as well. Leading the pack is 1-800-Flowers, a business that survives on its call center. The worst of the worst is Dell -- a story of outsourcing gone wrong, and employees without empowerment.

Continue reading "Best and Worst Call Centers" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Like a lot of people today I am recovering from seven hours of football. It's not the football that I'm actually weary of, it's the commercials. Yes, I know the NFL is the last of the great male-dominated mass audiences. Yes, I know I need to have my 40-plus year old, Volvo-owning, insurance-buying, movie-watching brain tattooed incessantly by 30 second messages. It is America right? This is Our Country, I'm told. But why do so many companies neglect this opportunity to connect more completely via addressing specific customer groups (or segments as our 1to1 Weekly story suggests) when they spend millions on ads? Not everyone who watches the NFL values durability and patriotism in car purchases. In fact, I actually know people who watch football that are not interested in pick-up trucks. A lot of money was wasted yesterday. It will only pale in comparison to the great waste called the Super Bowl when it kicks off in two weeks.

Posted by John Gaffney at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday during Genesys Telecom Labs’ Analyst Conference Joe Heinen, vice president of corporate marketing, polled the analysts about customer interaction channels. About 30 analysts, representing such firms as Datamonitor, Yankee Group, Forrester Research, and Frost & Sullivan, were attending the event.

Heinen’s first question: Globally, what percent of customer service interaction will each channel have in 2008?

Continue reading "2008: Phone Is Still Favorite " »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Flying to San Francisco yesterday for the Genesys Telecom Labs’ Analyst Conference I was reading background information on companies nominated to Genesys' Customer Innovation Awards. One common thread was their use of dynamic skills-based routing. This made me consider whether most contact center executives consider skills-based routing as the best option, or do some prefer to have all their agents trained to handle any and every call type.

Continue reading "“Special Agents” in the Contact Center" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently spoke with Rich Geraffo, senior vice president, Americas, at BEA Systems, who told me that everything begins and ends with the customers. How does he ensure this, I asked? Building teams of leaders, not followers, he said. In turn, those leaders build out additional teams of leaders.

Gerrafo, who spent 15 years in a variety of sales leadership roles at IBM, brought this function to the table at BEA three years ago and has had great success—he has led his 450-plus team to a 17 percent increase in bookings.

Gerrafo, who focuses on talent management, said a cross-functional rotation strategy gives employees a diversified skill set and allows them to groom their talents. As a result, ongoing skill building has become the core competency of the company’s employee development plan.

Do you have an employee development plan? What works best at your company?

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When Apple unveiled its new iPhone at Macworld last week, everyone clamored to see it up close. Yet only a few journalists and gadget gurus actually got to play with the iPhone. The general public and most of the press could only watch a demo in the Apple theater or gawk at one of two iPhones in closed glass pedestal cases. One CNN reporter said it was presented as if it were the Hope diamond. Apple was very calculated about which "influencers" could start the word of mouth and review it from actual use.

Continue reading "Apple Controls iPhone Influencers" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes companies need to focus on customer advocacy as a matter of crisis management. But the smarter strategy is to focus on it before it becomes a crisis. When I look at every big and even small crisis of trust or fraud in the business world over the past few years, that issue could have been avoided by simply playing advocate. If a company puts itself in the customers' place and acts in the customer's best interest, fraud will rarely happen. Security breaches will happen less. Marketing activities will be less brand-focused and more customer-focused.

Do you need an executive position to focus on this? No. Every employee you have should focus on this.

Posted by John Gaffney at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

What are the most overused word and phrases in business today? Well, as much as everyone wants to be customer-centric and achieve a significant ROI from their marketing dollars, they're tired of hearing those terms.

Stephen Fraser, senior vice president of Client Strategy & Insight for Carlson Canada, forwarded me this week's issue of the Canada Marketing Association's weekly e-newsletter. It cited a survey by Caifornia-based Creative Group that reveals what respondents (executives in advertising and marketing) think is "the most annoying or overused buzzword in the creative/marketing industry today."

The responses were anything but surprising:

Continue reading "ROI Is, Like, So Yesterday" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

In our latest issue of the The Marketing Xfactor newsletter we discussed whether social media has a place in the loyalty mix, so I asked readers “Do you think social media is a flash in the pan, or will it grow as a sustainable and successful platform?”

One of our readers got right back to me with insight that gets to the heart of why so many companies are frantically trying to find creative ways to capitalize on the opportunities social media presents.

Continue reading "Social Media: Frenzied Fad or Future Trend?" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We talk a lot about empowering employees and giving them “policies” to work within that are guidelines, not cement walls. Giving employees the information, training, and flexibility to do what they know is right for the customer will go a long way toward creating loyalty-building customer experiences. Giving them policy “blinders” upsets and frustrates customers (not to mention the negative effect it can have on employee morale).

Here’s one example:

Continue reading "Stupid Policy of the Week" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Selling in the B2B arena has always been complex. But today that complexity is increasing as organizations flatten and push responsibility, authority, and accountability further down into the ranks.

“There is a cultural shift in sales cycles and how deals are getting done,” Spoke Software CEO Frank Vaculin told me in a conversation we had earlier this week on sales trends. “There are significant changes in the decision processes in companies today.”

Continue reading "How Today’s Deals Get Done" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, I stopped at my neighborhood market to pick up a last-minute item for dinner. When I put the product on the counter to check out, I realized that I only had $2 in my wallet, but the store requires a $15 minimum purchase for debit card use and my item totaled $4. When I told the clerk, who I assume is also the store owner, that I didn’t have enough cash, she said “Don’t worry, I trust you. Pay me tomorrow.” This woman had never met me, yet she said she trusted me.

That single kind act will most likely make me a loyal customer. This woman’s level of trust is probably her virtue, and not a business tactic. But at the enterprise level, building a culture of trust is not only a valuable asset for an organization, it should be the company’s economic driver.

Continue reading "A Crisis of Trust" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just caught an article from PC World showing how difficult it can be for a customer to cancel an online service. The author signed up for and then canceled 32 accounts, each at a different site. "About a third of the services in the sample made the seemingly simple goal of canceling very hard to achieve," wrote author Tom Spring. How's that for a parting shot?

Continue reading "Customer Service Frustration to the Bitter End" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I think it's time to stop splitting hairs when it comes to the definition of loyalty. Our lead story in 1to1 Weekly details a loyalty program in the works at True Value hardware that focuses on share of wallet. Does share of wallet equal loyalty? Yep. For me, increasing share of wallet, regardless of what kind of company is behind the effort, passes the loyalty test. It encourages incremental spending. It generates more revenue for the company. It generates more data about the most valuable customers. It gives customers a reason to plan on a future with the company who is getting more share of wallet. I guess you could argue that share of wallet is a less than perfect strategy. You could argue that it doesn't necessarily add value to the customer. But at the end of the day a company needs to increase business generated from its customers for the long term. You call it what you want.

Posted by John Gaffney at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Like the ideas Robert Fulghum penned in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, we can learn the most important customer experience lesson from one simple axiom: The Golden Rule. Tony Alessandra, Ph.D., put a spin on it and created the Platinum Rule: Treat customers as they would like to be treated. But it all comes down to the simple of idea of walking in your customers’ shoes when you design your organization’s customer experience. The result is a win-win for both you and your customers.

What got me thinking about this?

Continue reading "Customer Service Goes to School" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I was on the other side of the interview table. A public relations representative for an enterprise feedback management (survey) vendor asked me whether I saw growth potential in that and in the broader CRM markets. Although some industry insiders feel that CRM has maxed out, I think there is significant opportunity for growth. And not just among organizations that have never implemented CRM technology. Many companies that already have a packaged or homegrown system in place plan to update that technology in the near future.

A recent forecast from Forrester Research concurs.

Continue reading "CRM Growth Continues" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, Bob Nardelli, the chairman and CEO of The Home Depot, abruptly resigned after posting big profits, but poor stock performance. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070103/home_depot_nardelli.html?.v=6 He recently came under fire for his hefty salary, which The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations listed as $37,862,312 in 2005. http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceou/database.cfm?tkr=HD&pg=1. His reward? A severance of $210 million.

Nardelli’s severance and salary are indicative of the need for a reasonable and fair compensation system for executives and workers to create long-term corporate value. However, since 1990, there’s been a dramatic increase in the ratio between the compensation of executives and their employees, creating an unfair and wide disparity. According to United for Fair a Economy, CEO pay jumped more than 500 percent between 1990 and 2003 while workers’ pay held somewhat steady. http://www.faireconomy.org/research/CEO_Pay_charts.html

Continue reading "Nardelli Proves That CEO/Worker Compensation Disparity is Alive and Well" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)