It Keeps Coming Back to Customers
It comes as no surprise that executives from CRM technology firms are recommending customer centricity as an imperative for managing through current economic conditions.
It comes as no surprise that executives from CRM technology firms are recommending customer centricity as an imperative for managing through current economic conditions.
Custom videos are a staple on YouTube and blogs, where users take famous scenes and insert themselves (or humorous people/objects/phrases) into them. The first effective mass-version of this I've seen comes from Disney, which has an unrivaled marketing machine. Plugging a customer's name, picture, or personal information into an email, direct mailing, or personal URL is one thing. What Disney has done with its latest campaign is more technically sophisticated (and expensive) than anything else I've seen in the mass-market.
When Fred Reichheld introduced Net Promoter Score (NPS) a few years ago, many detractors debated his simple methodology. How could a single question build customer loyalty, retain employees, and ultimately grow your business?
Continue reading "Take a New Look at the Ultimate Question" »
I can't imagine anyone, regardless of political creed, who wasn't moved by the inauguration of President Obama last week. It was hopefully, a transformational moment for America, though, of course, results will tell us whether that's true or not.
If you listened to the Twitter chatter, read the blogs, tracked the mainstream news media, you heard throughout the day, on occasion, discussions around what approaches that President Obama was going to take to use his online political movement presence to remain "in touch" with it -- because as one pundit put it (heavily paraphrased), it was the first organized grassroots movement to ever enter the White House with the President.
Companies of all sizes seem to be cutting larger and larger swaths through their employee ranks every week, turning thousands of otherwise happy lives upside down. It is a terrifying thing to lose your job. I know. It happened to me less than twenty years ago, when I was let go from a highly paid advertising job in a general cutback. And I remember the feeling like it was yesterday. Abject fear. Terror. I had a modest severance, but our household was way too far in debt even before I was let go, and my wife wasn't working, as we were already expecting our second child. We calculated three months, maximum, before we would begin missing mortgage payments. What to do?
Last week when US Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of birds a few minutes after taking off from LaGuardia the captain of that flight experienced his own moment of terror. Not enough altitude to return without power to LaGuardia. No alternate airport available. No jet had ever made a successful water landing. Four or five minutes max to make something happen. What to do?
Continue reading "Prepare for Impact: Conquering the Terror of Losing Your Job" »
Countless products come and go, but often those with staying power stick around because they were created to solve a specific customer need, and then built with the customer in mind. At the recent National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York, I came across just such a product: EZface's Virtual Mirror.
Will it catch on? Only time will tell. But it has two advantages:
Although more blog entries about Twitter have been written than the site's popularity warrants (visit Mashable.com for hundreds of posts over the past year), occasionally the service deserves some of the good press it receives. Recently Business Week ran an interview with Frank Eliason, the Comcast employee responsible for handling customer issues via Twitter. But the interesting part wasn't that he uses the service for CRM, but what came at the end of the story.
Work begins today for the newly elected 44th president of the United States. But it was his campaign's work with leveraging social media that helped land him in the Oval Office.
By combining social media, analytics, and targeted messaging, Obama's campaign set an example of how business strategists need to think about how their companies should change the way they communicate and interact with customers. Innovative businesses can learn from the campaign and understand how to stay relevant.
Continue reading "Lessons Learned From the Obama Campaign" »
As marketers, it really seems like a "no brainer" that we should focus on building relationships with new customers as they enter our business or service. Even beyond our profession, I expect that as a customer myself. The phrase that was always engrained in me as a child is, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."
Yet, when you think about marketing investment dollars, the allocations can sometimes go like this in those tedious budget meetings:
Last week I attended the Argyle CMO Leadership Forum, featuring more than 100 senior-level marketers covering all sorts of industries. Naturally the topic of social media came up frequently, as people were curious how their programs stacked up to their peers, and what insight and best practices has been achieved. One executive from MTV Networks, Christina Glorioso, shared her predictions for where social media is heading, and what MTV is doing to anticipate the future.
One of the (many) things that drives me crazy as a customer is to see an ad for a product, especially something new, and then to go to the store only to be told that it's not yet in stock. I don't know whose idea it is to generate buzz before a product is available--implying that it is available (much different than building buzz for an upcoming release date)--but let me just say to those folks: It's really disappointing and creates a hugely negative customer experience.
I imagine that in some cases the reason for the delay has to do with supply chain management (SCM), not something I often think about as a key aspect of the customer experience. But, as it turns out, it's much more vital to customer experience than some folks give it credit for. In fact, earlier this week at National Retail Federation's annual convention, Retail's Big Show, two major retailers cited SCM as integral to delivering on customer expectations--each for different reasons.
Continue reading "Supply Chain and the Customer Experience" »
When the Obama transition team launched Change.gov, it began a whole new chapter in how the Federal government views the internet, social media, and the power of listening to citizens. A similar site could have been created years ago, but it took the outside-the-box thinking of the incoming president's team to fully grasp the power of this medium.
Today the Obama team announced it was opening the Citizens' Briefing Book to the public as part of the Change.gov site. Any person can log into the site, post an idea they have for making the country better, and watch as their fellow citizens vote on whether or not they agree. The ideas with the most votes automatically rise to the top, showing others which ideas are most important to the masses.
It was Alvin Toffler, technological, digital, and corporate futurist, who said, "Change is the process by which the future invades our lives."
After visiting the National Retail Federation's Retail's Big Show on Monday in New York City, I believe that change may be invading our future sooner than we think.
It finally, unexpectedly happened: I'm at my new HP Pavilion laptop, there is a flash of blue, the scrolling of words, and then the screen goes black--followed by the sickening silence of death. Having raised three children to adulthood I've calmly lived through emergency room stitches and teenage drama, so I wasn't quite prepared for the sheer terror that erupted in my body.
I tried the owner's manual and all the usual dance steps I had learned over the years from the tech support guys ats the office, but to no avail. So I dug out my sales receipt, took a deep breath, and prepared to make the call. You know, THE CALL. The call to the technical-support desk that only the desperate make.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger, 1to1 Customer Champion Brynn Palmer: Feelin' the Love" »
I've heard many people talk about what big fans they are of airline JetBlue. Sure, its planes are comfy and the satellite TV is a nice perk, but there's something about the whole experience that gets customers to come back. To create a great end-to-end customer experience, JetBlue looks past the plane ride to understand what customers want and need.
Continue reading "JetBlue's Flights Are Just the Beginning of Customer Relationships" »
Consumer behavior is changing, especially in the way customers communicate and interact with brands, according to Mike Osborn, cofounder and managing director of Catalyst Direct. Consumers are much more empowered. Increasingly they interact with businesses when, where, and how they want. "This is the way the world is going," he said during a recent conversation with 1to1, "and it's challenging for businesses to keep up."
Osborn discussed four areas that businesses should improve in to keep pace with customers' changing expectations:
The annual list of top online holiday retailers is in, and there are almost no surprises at the top. ForeSee Results and FGI Research compiled the list of 40 retailers with the best customer satisfaction over the 2008 holiday season, using the Univ. of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index's 100-point scale. The top-five are:
Continue reading "Happy Holidays for Customers and E-retailers?" »
After 62 days and painstaking inspection of ballots, Minnesota finally announced Al Franken the winner of its Senate race on Monday.
This week I made a presentation to a large telecom client of ours in Istanbul about the virtues and how-to's of customer analytics and segmentation. As a normal part of the transition strategy to becoming more customer-centric, we usually suggest that a client should identify one or two segments, and place them into a pilot program of customer management. By running this pilot project over a number of months, you can work out the kinks and conflicts involved in managing customers, rather than just products and channels. You can also publicize your success within the company to help secure support for the overall transition.
Continue reading "Segmentation Pilot Projects - What Segment to Select?" »
Organizations that want to lower their services costs (that would be all of them...) should work harder at avoiding those calls and emails in the first place--and not by removing the contact information from their website. According to Bill Price, author of The Best Service Is No Service, businesses must do more to improve their products, process, and services, thus customers will have fewer reasons for contacting the companies they buy from.
During his presentation at the CRM Association's annual conference Price offered seven ways to reduce customer contacts, all of which will help to decrease service costs and increase customer satisfaction.
Today's lead story in 1to1 Weekly takes a look at the role of the Chief Customer Officer. As companies look to shore up their customer strategies to weather the economic storm, it looks as if having an executive in the board room with a focus on customers would be a good idea. Some, however, don't agree.
It's easy for executives to say that they want to use customer experience as a competitive differentiator, but putting action behind those words isn't always so easy. Customer experience management (CEM) comprises service, branding, employee engagement, and the like. In fact, I recently attended Strativity Group's two-day customer experience management (CEM) certification course, and came away with pages and pages of notes on those areas and more.
I poured over those pages and compiled a list of the questions, observations, and advice that to me were most notable. I've presented it here, by area of interest:
Continue reading "Customer Experience Management Checklist" »
