Gartner’s CRM Excellence Awards was a major highlight of the recent Gartner CRM Summit. There were three finalists: Electronic Arts, Lennox International, and Shaklee. Each shared their success story, based on a winning customer strategy that gives customers choice and gives front-line staff the information and support they need to deliver a compelling customer experience.
Last month I was in San Francisco for the Salesforce.com Dreamforce ’07 conference when I stopped in a small pizza shop for lunch. It looked just like any restaurant I’d visited on the East Coast, with one key difference: something on the checkout counter that caught my eye.
Specialty retailer Pier 1’s elimination of its online store on September 1, seems like a flashback to a decade ago.
The reason for the close? The company cited inventory concerns due to the uncertain nature of planning when making products by hand rather than on an assembly line. http://www.pier1.com/TheNewPier1com/tabid/198/Default.aspx.
The title of Tom Markert’s new book, You Can’t Win a Fight with Your Client (Collins), sounds like basic advice. After all, who would want to even find themselves in a combative position with an existing or potential client, much less an actual rumble?
But Markert, the CEO of market research provider Ipsos Loyalty Worldwide, already knows that you already know that. Just as was the case with his previous tome, 2005’s You Can’t Win a Fight with Your Boss, Markert is providing some fundamental rules that serve more as a reminder of good practices than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Customers are not equal. If you have ever read a Peppers and Rogers book or heard them speak, you know this is true. It's the basis of what we write about every day at 1to1 Media. So knowing that, how do you figure out their value? A new buzzword around the marketplace is "engagement." It's a great attribute of a customer's value to the company, but it's so vague. Companies talk in very broad strokes about the importance of engagement, but there hasn't been much in the way of measurement for it. Forrester Research aims to change that.
Earlier this week I attended the Gartner CRM Summit. The event kicked off with a keynote from distinguished analyst Scott Nelson, Gartner’s managing vice president, application strategy and governance. Nelson shared some expectations and predictions regarding customer strategy and technology for the coming year.
We hear in the news all the time about people frustrated with long-term cell phone contracts, undisclosed fees, bad service, and the inability to switch providers. One remedy to nearly all consumer complaints against wireless carriers is a bill proposed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Jay Rockefeller, democrats from Minnesota and West Virginia, respectively. Though politicians often unveil proposed legislation as a public relations stunt knowing it will never get to a vote, the rules they’ve drafted are a great start toward reforming the mobile industry. Among the changes in the Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007, Klobuchar and Rockefeller propose the following:
Continue reading "Senators tackle wireless industry standards" »
Over the past few months, I’ve made a few gift purchases from Macy’s jewelry department. Each time, I received excellent service from the customer service reps. And each time, at the end of the purchase, they asked me to go online when I got home to take a survey about the quality service they delivered to me. Although my intention every time was to follow through and note the outstanding service I received, I have yet to take even one survey.
Like most busy consumers, I forget about the experience I have as soon as I leave the store. In which case I ask, why are retailers still missing out on capturing this valuable customer information at the point of sale—when it matters most? Why aren’t companies investing in in-store kiosks so that consumers can log their suggestions and comments immediately after they make their purchases?
Continue reading "Are You Listening to Customers Where it Counts?" »
"Business opportunities are like buses; there's always another one coming."
So says Virgin Enterprises founder Richard Branson, someone who knows an entrepreneur when he sees one. (Ted Turner says an entrepreneur is “what you’re called when you don't have a job,” but let’s not get distracted.) While identifying entrepreneurs seems relatively simple – hello, Bill Gates! Roll over, Walt Disney, and tell Howard Hughes the news! – there’s also the very real possibility that there are entrepreneurs-in-the-making within your company.
That’s the theory behind Entrepreneurs Inside: Accelerating Business Growth with Corporate Entrepreneurs (Xlibris), a new book by Susan Foley, Executive Director, Research Centers at Babson Executive Education and the founder of management consulting firm Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC.
If you won the lottery, would you spend it all at once, or sock it all away to use later? Most people would try to do a combination of both, balancing their long- and short-term financial goals. The same should be true with how companies deal with customers. There has got to be a balance between getting as much money from customers as possible at once, and building loyalty and lifetime value over time. Move over too far in either direction, and you may destroy customer value or run your business into the ground. Or both. Which is what happened with many mortgage lenders that took advantage of the subprime loan market.
I was recently having a conversation with reader Miroslav Slodki and he posed the following question:
If a brand is global, is it fair or wise to have isolated geographic pricing? He then answered the question using Oral B as an example.
The best use for social networks from a marketing perspective is still very much up in the air. Some companies use profile pages to increase awareness, many advertise on MySpace and other sites in a more traditional manner, and others search blogs and profiles to gauge perception. The last of those three, using social networkers as a focus group by listening in on what’s being said, has created a lot of buzz lately because of what a few brand managers have done.
Continue reading "Businesses DO pay attention to Facebook!" »
Dave Duffield, the well-known beloved boss at former software company PeopleSoft, known for his camaraderie with his employees, became somewhat of a phenomenon for building a highly regarded employee culture ripe for fostering information sharing and fresh ideas. So it was my pleasure to have the opportunity to recently interview the former head of what was once the second largest software company in the world, at the RightNow user conference.
You gotta figure that Mattel’s Chief Executive, Robert Eckert, isn’t having much fun these days.
In a little over a month, the world’s largest toy maker has announced three major recalls due to concerns about excessive lead paint in Chinese-made toys the company sold. Now comes word that Eckert is expected to testify in House and Senate hearings this week and next, centering on how adroit the company was in alerting federal regulators about major toy recalls.
As a concerned parent of a going-on-three-year-old, I’ve been tracking the story pretty closely. After all, I was the one to anxiously check my son’s ever-growing collection of Thomas trains a few weeks ago for the telltale numbers signifying whether James, Percy and the others might be headed for that great railyard in the sky. (Well, in the mail to toymaker RC2, at any rate.)
However, Thomas and the Very Big Recall was, if you’ll pardon the expression, child’s play compared with the still-to-come Mattel move.
It's been 13 years since Amazon.com first started its online shop. Millions of merchants have followed suit, and now we're getting into the awkward stage. Sure, there are many sites (like Amazon) that have matured early, but unfortunately many still have a ways to go before they catch up. As these companies mature, many are looking at personalization as a must-have strategy for the future. At the recent eTail conference, eBay and Neiman Marcus in particular spoke of plans to enhance their personalization features, and integrate on- and offline business strategies. We highlight their plans in today's issue of 1to1 Weekly.
Last week I was catching up on my stack of BusinessWeek magazines while lying on the beach. I read with great interest “Fear and Loathing at the Airport,” by Chris Palmeri and Keith Epstein, which discusses the sad state of the U.S. air travel system. It’s a great article that covers lots of ground, but being that I obsess about all things customer service, I was especially struck by the following:
I’m not really very technology-savvy, and I have always been very happy not to possess a PDA. Until my kids gave me one I didn’t even own an MP3 player. But I have to say that when I saw the new iPhone my 27-year-old son bought, I contracted a bad case of gadget envy. I mean this thing is very sexy. It is way way cool. Starship Enterprise cool. Now I know this is a terrible thing for any father to say, but secretly I found it very satisfying that he had had to pay an astounding $600 for the thing, because that allowed me to continue resisting the temptation, and to bask in my fatherly fiscal wisdom. “Aren’t you worried they’ll cut the price soon?” I asked him. Of course, he said, he knew they would be cutting the price sooner or later. But he just wanted to have one NOW.
And now they have definitely cut the price. From $599 down to $399. Two months or so after launch. My son is upset, and many other early adopters of this new product are, also. They feel betrayed. Wall Street has hammered Apple’s stock, and the scuttlebutt is that Apple did this solely to make their short-term sales numbers. On the other hand, I can’t help thinking that Apple is now on the road to conquering the whole PDA-phone-pod universe. The only step they could take that would be nearly as big (and they HAVE to do this!) would be to make the iPhone available on non-AT&T networks.
If my judgment of Apple’s corporate character is right, I predict they will soon be making amends to the early purchasers of the iPhone, either by giving outright refunds or by giving away equivalent levels of free services or additional products. Apple is one of the most trusted brands in the tech space, and they didn’t get that way by failing to listen to their customers. If they can win back their early adopters, then the only thing this really shows is that they misjudged the initial demand for the device at the higher price. And then when they get back on track, they'll probably keep plunging ahead, where no one has gone before…
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this saying, “Give Em the Pickle” is the catch-phrase of motivational speaker Bob Farrell, who also sells a customer service-oriented training video. Before I began working at 1to1, my previous employer showed us his video every year to make us think about customer service in a different way and drive home the point that making customers happy now, even when slightly less profitable, will pay off in the long run. As Don and Martha would say, don’t get stuck in the mindset of short-termism.
Perhaps you’ve found yourself in a situation similar to the one I found myself in the other day. My wife and I were in a local Honda dealer, finalizing our lease agreement on a new car. We’ve been driving Hondas for years, have always been impressed with their performance, and regularly receive courteous and helpful service.
As the salesman handed me the keys, he noted that I could probably expect to receive a customer survey satisfaction survey by phone in the following weeks. “You’ll be asked to rate a number of statements from ‘1’ to ‘5,’” he explained. “Anything less than a ‘5’ on anything and I fail the entire survey.”
We’ve all seen enough Willy Lomans and Gil Gundersons in our time to feel guilty about giving that poor working-for-commission shlub less than a 5. But that negates the whole idea behind the questionnaire, doesn’t it?
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