When I was a teenager, I got an allowance for doing weekly chores. After I quickly spent that money, I'd go back to my parents with stories of how the money wasn't enough to get the clothes, music, or other toys that I needed to survive the adolescent world. Most of the time they'd answer with, "when I was a kid, we didn't have...," which really meant NO. Today's issue of 1to1 Weekly shows how a similar dilemma plays out between marketers and the CFO.

Continue reading "Marketing, Finance Battle for the Bottom Line" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Customers want to hear from you. Really.

Earlier this week at the Genesys Telecom Lab’s G-Force customer conference, president and CEO Wes Hayden and Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, head of marketing and business development, revealed the results of the company’s 2006/7 Global Consumer Survey. According to the findings, customers are open to cross-sell, but using different media based on the context and if the offer is relevant. What percent of the 4,500 consumers surveyed said this? 95 percent. Wow.

Continue reading "The Service-Loyalty Connection" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Software has versions. The Web has versions. And now customer service has versions too. During his keynote speech at Genesys Telecom Labs’ G-Force customer conference, CTO Brian Galvin explained to a rapt crowd that Customer Service 3.0 is where we all need to be.

Continue reading "What Version of Customer Service Do You Offer?" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Every 3.5 minutes a new product is introduced, every second, 10 containers are shipped, and a merger and acquisition occurs every 20 minutes.

Given these rates, companies require innovation and agility at a much faster pace. That was the message of SAP CEO Henning Kagermann at Sapphire, the company’s customer and partner conference held in Atlanta.

Kagermann said in order to compete in this rapidly changing world, companies must effectively collaborate with their business networks including employees, suppliers, customers, partners, and distributors. When organizations properly develop these relationships they successfully differentiate themselves from competitors.

“No longer can companies go at it alone,” he said. Change is happening at an accelerated pace and every company needs to cultivate a network of business partners to cope with the speed of change in business.”

Continue reading "Looking for the Source of Innovation" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Had an email yesterday from a reader who asked a great question: Can a customer be loyal and unhappy at the same time? I say yes. But here's the qualifier. An unhappy loyalist is a short-term customer and not very valuable. When I was interviewing Cisco's Kirby Drysen for our Customer Champions issue he said something about loyalty that keeps resonating with me: "Loyalty is the natural willingness for customers to do business with you." A customer could be dissatisfied and loyal. I hate Exxon but they have that Speedpass thing, right? I hate my cell phone provider, but I'm under contract. When you factor in "natural willingness" it seems to mean that a customer would be loyal even if the barriers to moving to a competitor didn't exist.

Posted by John Gaffney at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The world may be flat, according to Thomas Friedman, but that doesn't mean it's all the same. Today's lead story in 1to1 Weekly, "Measuring Loyalty Around the World" discusses the cultural differences impacting customer satisfaction and loyalty scores.

Continue reading "Loyalty on a Global Scale" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While attending the CRM Association’s inaugural National Conference earlier this week I got a speak peak at an interesting research study on marketing ROI. The study was jointly conducted by Raj Srivastava, director of the Zyman Brand Science Institute at Emory University, and Naveen Donthu, the Katherine S. Bernhardt research professor and professor of marketing at Georgia State University, working with Naras Eechambadi, Ph.D., CEO of Quaero.

During their session they gave a brief preview of the results, which they’ll be analyzing in depth over the coming weeks. The gist of what they’ve found so far suggests that although marketing budget is important, what truly separates companies is marketing capabilities.

Continue reading "A Big Marketing Budget Is Nice, But Marketing Capabilities Matter Most" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at the CRM Association’s inaugural National Conference. It was jam-packed with great content, but my very favorite quote of the event was this:

“The voice of the customer isn’t in your head. It’s the actual voice of the customer.”

Continue reading "What Customers Want" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Your customers can then lead your company in new directions—if you let them. But that will require you to rethink the very nature of your organization. If you really want to listen to customers, give them personalized service, and reward them for loyalty, then you have to reorganize your entire company around customers. To do this requires an enterprisewide commitment to sharing customer data, and the reinvention of how every department in the company should interact with customers.

This isn’t revolutionary thinking in business, but imagine my surprise at last week’s Forrester’s Marketing Forum when executives from CA and UPS were asked during a panel session if becoming a customer-centric organization means reorganizing the company around the customer and their response was “no.”

Continue reading "Are You Customer Centric or Just Pretending?" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, acquisition and all that cool stuff we like to measure and plan for gets washed out by pure emotional advertising that connects. The Imus incident allowed what I believe to be the best practitioner of mass media to show its true colors. Nike has hit with a print and online campaign that turns this whole mess into a positive conversation. If you haven't seen it, part of it reads: "Thank you, ignorance. Thank you for starting the conversation. Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutgers team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we've missed. Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak."

We will be tempted to measure how many Nike sneakers are sold because of this. We will be tempted to measure word-of-mouth units. But this is the kind of connection that cannot be replicated or measured. It can be aspired to. That's what makes great brands great.

Posted by John Gaffney at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This year's 1to1 Customer Champions represent a wide variety of companies, each with their own unique challenges. But these executives, representing companies such as Lexus, Ann Taylor, AT&T, Canada Post, NetBank and Loews Hotels, have very similar approaches to customer strategy. In today's issue of 1to1 Weekly, some of our champions open their playbook and share secrets to their success.

Continue reading "What Does It Take to Be a Customer Champion?" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Kerry Bodine, principal analyst at Forrester Research, says supporting your customers is easy to say but hard to do. At Forrester’s Marketing Forum, Bodine gave examples of companies that are delivering business expertise as well as channel expertise.

Continue reading "Supporting your customers is easy to say but hard to do." »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

What is customer centricity?

That’s the recurrent question being asked at Forrester’s Marketing Forum being held yesterday and today in Miami. If the 600 attendees learned one thing it’s that customer centricity is easy to say and hard to do, as the session speakers repeatedly tackled this question.

George Colony, chairman and CEO of Forrester, says when he talks to company executives about becoming customer centric, he always tells them six things:

1) Your company is inside out. Customers are taking more control, he says. As a result, companies have to become more “outside in.”

2) The best evidence is your Web site. Only around 5 percent of the 1,000 Web sites surveyed by Forrester pass the firm’s measure of quality. Colony says this is evident that Web sites reflect internal demands and not what customers are interested in.

3) You should be asking your customer one question: That’s the Net Promoter Score measurement: “Would you recommend our product or service to a friend or family member?

4) You don’t own your customers, your customers own you. Loyalty isn’t dead but it’s on the wane. Companies must provide differentiated service.

5) Bits want to be free; bits want to break the law.

6) Great marketing+great technology is the only way forward. Companies must have a combination of the two to land where customers are headed.

Customer centricity is in the details. What’s your roadmap for becoming customer centric?

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Random acts of good service do not make for a compelling customer strategy.

That thought is borrowed from Martha Rogers, Ph.D., who uses it in her keynote speeches to make the point that occasionally friendly service isn’t enough to build the kind of customer relationships that boost wallet share, loyalty, and recommendations. I was reminded yet again of the truth in that statement last week during our weekly editorial meeting.

Continue reading "Great Service Is No Accident" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

If I wanted to, if I was a real technological and financial daredevil, I could go online right now and sign up for Vonage. Can you believe that? Just days after a judge said "you can't sign up any new customers" I can sign up for Vonage like nothing ever happened. Now, Vonage (as of this writing) is working under a temporary stay of that court order. And the court order was not based on a customer service issue. It was based on a patent infringement dispute with Verizon. But if you're going to have a bad day in court, you should let current customers know that you did and how you're going to operate in its wake. To invite new customers without warning of your bad day in court is textbook fodder for the "don't let this happen to your company" chapter.

Posted by John Gaffney at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year around mid-June a tent goes up in one of the local business parking lots, and a guy sells fireworks for July 4th. Come July 5th, he packs up until the next year. The same is true for the rose vendor at Valentine's day. Is it possible for these merchants to create loyalty? In today's 1to1 Weekly lead article, "Building Loyalty in the Short Term," we discuss how companies with short customer lifecycles define loyalty, and how it may be a different strategy for different companies.

Continue reading "Is There Such a Thing as Short-Term Loyalty?" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I rented a car from Enterprise Rent-a-Car earlier this week. Something surprising happened when I did.

When I stepped up to the counter, management assistant Mike White greeted me and extended his hand. Instinctively, I extended my hand toward his, holding my driver’s license and credit card to give to him. As I reached out I realized that he was holding his hand not to receive documents, but to shake hands.

Continue reading "Surprised by a Handshake and a Smile" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone knows that gathering customer feedback is important. The question is, are you really listening to customers or just hearing what you want to hear?

Earlier this week I spent quite a bit of time with three of our 2007 1to1 Customer Champions -- Bill Burris, Relationship Marketing Manager, Lexus; Kirby Drysen, Director of Customer Listening, Cisco Systems; Jane Judd, Senior Manager of Customer Loyalty, Zappos.com. We got together to tape an on-demand webcast on how to create a unique, innovative, and profitable customer experience (watch for it online April16). During the webcast, and even during dinner the night before, the one area we kept coming back to was feedback and customer insight.

Continue reading "Are You Listening?" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The critical role of services has been recognized by many corporations for a number of years but is still not quite understood. In response to that gap, IBM and Oracle launched the Service Research & Innovation Initiative last week, a consortium that will aim to bring the concept of service innovation top of mind with executives and evolve it into a common business practice.

Continue reading "Service Innovation Gets the Attention it Deserves" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At last year's THE Conference on Marketing, everyone seemed to be talking about the importance of the 1to1 connection, and how to reach individual customers. In the span of one year they've evolved the message to get into the hearts and souls of those customers. Marketing is now about storytelling, where consumers can come to their own conclusions and where their values drive engagement with a brand. In this week's lead 1to1 Weekly article, Steve Wynn and Home Depot's CMO share their stories of building trust this deeply.

Continue reading "Talking Trust and Value" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)