Microsoft has never had a customer-focused reputation. Like a bull in a china shop, it uses its market share to ram new programs and operating systems into the marketplace. No more was this more evident than with Microsoft Vista, the operating system no one seems to like. Microsoft forced its hardware partners and enterprise customers to install it, even though most were perfectly happy with XP.

Now, as Windows 7 prepares for its launch, Microsoft is taking steps to address customer concerns and preferences ahead of time, a new strategy for the software company. But will it work?

Continue reading "Can Microsoft Prevent Another Vista Debacle With Windows 7?" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many pundits agree that the B2B and B2C customer experiences have a great deal in common. After all, ultimately, a person is buying something--whether for himself or his company--so has a vested interest in that product or service meeting expectations.

With few exceptions (like financial services) the commonalities diverge when it comes to long-term customer relationships. Sure, some B2C consumers want "relationships" with their favorite brands. They want special offers, unique experiences, in-depth information, and the like. They want their value to be recognized. B2B customers expect that, as well. But they also expect that when a vendor sells them a complex product or service, that provider will stick around long enough to help ensure their (at least initial, if not long-term) success with it.

Continue reading "Defining the Customer-Centric B2B Enterprise" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Starting next month, AT&T has instituted a new policy requiring all smartphone (BlackBerry, iPhone, etc...) subscribers to purchase a monthly data plan (for $30). While the vast majority of these customers would subscribe to a data plan anyway, there are some people out there who buy the phone for show, because of its 'cool factor' and don't use all of its features.

Continue reading "Is Smartphone Plan Change a Smart Move?" »

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People who volunteer in their community give one of life's most precious gifts -- their time.

Once a year employees at 1to1 Media give their time by spending the day volunteering at a local children's community center. Yesterday we painted, scrubbed, and organized the building's classrooms so that the children can return to clean rooms in the fall.

Continue reading "Do You Have a Volunteer Recognition Strategy?" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sounds simple right? Most marketers would say that they use some notion of value when they target customers. I think there's more to this topic. First, most marketers use likelihood of response as a predictor far more often than value. A recent conversation with Tim Suther of Acxiom got me thinking about targeting techniques. Here's my take: Generally most marketers have three approaches to onsite targeting:

Continue reading "Forrester's Suresh Vittal: Applying Customer Value to Online Targeting Strategy" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As the social Web continues to gain traction, with millions of individuals now making individual contributions, one thing that frustrates businesses is the problem of making sense of all this noise. Because that's all it is, unless you can detect patterns in these billions of individual posts, tweets, text messages, and comments. It is a giant, flowing river of information, but it's impossible to get any sense of a river's current by examining it one drop at a time.

Continue reading "Sentiment Analysis: See the Forest by Aggregating the Trees" »

Posted by Don Peppers at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Both business and consumers have bad assumptions about the service process. When the two perspectives collide we get the current train wreck of customer service. When companies and consumers change their assumptions, the experience is dramatically improved. Here are six assumptions that most business wrongly hold and three misperceptions that consumers have:

Continue reading "Guest Blogger John A. Goodman: Lost in Translation -- Conflicting Assumptions That Business And Consumers Make About Each Other" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I spoke to a registered user to our site who was not receiving our email newsletter, 1to1 Weekly. After some searching, we realized that her account was linked to an old email address. And when I say old, I mean old. It was an "erols.com" address, which is a company that died along with the dial-up modem. This is one example of how data can get away from you pretty easily, even at a company that proactively stays on top of it.

Continue reading "Digging Out From All That Data" »

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

The rise of social media has brought with it a new class of customers/entrepreneurs: mommy bloggers. They began writing about their children, relationships, and shopping trips, but soon evolved into a word-of-mouth marketing machine. Earlier this year I wrote about just how powerful the mom market had become, due in large part to the throng of bloggers reviewing products, writing about their experiences as customers, and taking down brands they felt were dishonest or unsafe. It seems some of that power went to their heads, and now they're coming back down to Earth.

Continue reading "Will Conflicts of Interest Sink Blogging?" »

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This week Pittsburgh became the first city to launch a 311 "iBurgh" application for smart phones so citizens can catalog complaints by snapping photos of nuisances like graffiti and then send the photos to city hall.

Continue reading "Do You Have an Application for That?" »

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

So you might be wondering: When most companies have barely put their toe in the "social media waters," how could deploying a customer service social media initiative have become a business transformation tool? I have to say, it stunned me. But the data is there. Some of you who know me know I used to be a scientist--the whole white lab coat and all. So I am akin to data. I like trends and patterns. But when I started my social media research I didn't expect any of that. In fact, I wasn't sure what to expect. But that's the cool thing about doing research: the surprises.

Continue reading "Forrester's Natalie Petouhoff: Got "Transformation?"" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We got an interesting piece of mail recently. The return "address" was just the logo of an upscale catalog retailer of women's clothing. "Check Enclosed" was printed prominently above our address. Opening the mailer revealed a check for $10. On the back, a lot of text above the endorsement line informed us that, by cashing the check, we were agreeing to a 30-day trial of a roadside assistance service, and that a $15.99 monthly fee would be automatically charged to the credit card that the retailer had on file unless we cancelled before the end of the trial period.

Elsewhere in the mailer, we read "_____ values your relationship and from time to time will introduce you to valuable services. So ___ asked an unaffiliated company, ____, to offer you discount and savings services." Based on a description of this "valuable" roadside assistance service, it offers much less than AAA at a much higher price. A quick Web search on the provider of these services turned up a number of complaints. In some cases, the complainants claimed that their credit cards had been charged even though they did not cash the check.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger David Bakken: How Far Can You Stretch a Customer Relationship?" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing three CRM experts about social CRM for a 1to1 Media video. Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary, and Bill Band shared their views on what social CRM's role is in a larger customer strategy, and how companies can avoid the pitfalls that were common during the first go-round of CRM implementations. Companies and customers have changed, and social CRM should now be an integral part of a company's customer strategy.

Continue reading "How Does Social CRM Fit Into Your Business?" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We all know the classic John Wanamaker quote, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." Unfortunately, not much has changed.

According to Tim Suther, senior vice president of multichannel marketing service for Acxiom, about $112 billion of advertising spending is considered wasted each year in the United States alone. That equates to about 47 percent of the total advertising dollars spent, Suther said during his presentation last week at Acxiom's Global Marketing Performance event in New York. What's more, only 22 percent of Americans trust advertising.

Continue reading "Stop Wasting Marketing Dollars" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I felt like Ed Montague earlier this week (non-baseball fans please Google his name). For the third time in less than 3 months I was dealing with Wachovia customer service, and they swung and missed yet again. They were a checked-swing away from losing me as a customer, but fortunately some good may have come out of it. I'll backtrack a bit to explain.

Continue reading "Preventing Small Issues from Escalating" »

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There's no doubt about it: Social media is having a significant impact in the workplace--good or bad. Last week some NFL teams restricted players from using social sites in an effort to block broadcasting of league memos. And the Few, the Proud, the Marines were also stopped last week from using social media to prevent critical information from being viewed by adversaries.

While still a fixture in corporations based on the benefits of enhancing relationships with customers, new evidence shows that corporations are raising concerns regarding employee use of social media.

Continue reading "Do You Have a Social Media Policy?" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Rolling sustainability into business development isn't just a marketing ploy. In the CRM arena it's an effective way to communicate with more customers and prospects at a lower cost. Last summer, when a gallon of regular peaked above four dollars per gallon, Beagle Research published a white paper on sustainability and CRM. I am happy to report that there are many signs in CRM and elsewhere of industries taking the first steps toward more sustainable business.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Denis Pombriant: Lights, Camera, CRM!" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Consumers today are sick and tired of marketing; they feel that most marketing is irrelevant to them. This is the reality that marketers are faced with today, said Forrester Research principal analyst Dave Frankland during a presentation earlier this week at Acxiom's Global Marketing Performance event in New York.

Frankland went on to describe how dire the situation is for marketers: Consumers think they receive too many marketing communications, he said, adding that relevancy is a major issue. According to research from Forrester, a mere 5 percent of consumers "strongly agree" that advertising is relevant to their needs; only 3 percent "strongly agree" that email is relevant; 2 percent feel that way about direct mail. What's more, 55 percent of consumers say companies "should let me decide how they contact me."

Continue reading "When It Comes to Marketing, Data Is the New Black" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My 3 ½ year old son loves the Pixar movie Cars. Ok, I admit it, I love it too. It's a feel-good story with lots of lessons, great animation and, of course, cars.

Few are the movies that one can watch over and over and not get bored. The first time I saw the movie I took in the story and chuckled over a few predictable lines like Sally's offer of a "free Lincoln Continental breakfast" if visitors decide to stay at her Cozy Cone motel. But with each successive time I've watched the film I've noticed something new. Whether it's the flies that are tiny cars with wings or the "Fettuccini Alfredo" brand whitewalls on display in Luigi's (I noticed this one more recently), there's always a pleasant surprise. In fact, until we bought my son his own (rival bad guy) Chick Hicks car, I hadn't noticed that Chick's main sponsor is the very fitting HTB - Hostile Takeover Bank (and I'd seen the movie at least five times at that point).

I'll be honest, I've seen Cars about a dozen times and I've yet to find any place in the movie where there could be more cars or more references to cars. The cars theme is so infused into every single detail of the movie that I'm hard pressed to find a flaw.

What does any of this have to with customer experience?

Continue reading "Forrester's Ron Rogowski: Brand Experience Lessons From Pixar" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

What could customer service representatives learn from calling other companies' customer service departments? A lot. CNBC recently did a story about loan-modification officers who spent frustrating hours on the phone with banks' call centers, fighting with agents who were overworked or just didn't care enough to help them find answers. I guarantee the loan-modification officers were a lot nicer on the phone when their customers called them after experiencing that call center hell first-hand.

Continue reading "CSR's Should Spend Time Dialing in Customers' Shoes" »

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Companies have been concerned with data quality in their organizations for some time, but a recent report makes it abundantly clear that the problem isn't going away. In fact, companies still find it a major challenge to maintain accurate data.

Pitney Bowes Business Insight, a provider of data quality and location intelligence solutions, and Silver Creek Systems, a provider of automated data mastering, yesterday announced the findings of a co-sponsored report "The State of Data Quality Today."

Continue reading "Poor Data: Companies' Dirty Little Secret" »

Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Social CRM has been one of the most talked about topics in the CRM and social media industries. Yet many companies are still are struggling with basic CRM challenges. While they work to effectively define their strategy an 800-pound gorilla has slipped into the room.

This 800-pound gorilla--the social customer--does not take away the need for an effective CRM 1.0 strategy. But organizations must address customers' social CRM expectations using an sCRM approach that compliments their CRM strategy. Throw social media tools at the gorilla without any strategic direction or process and it will turn on you.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Michael W. Thomas: CRM and the 800-Pound Gorilla" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

While I was at last week's Customer UNinterrupted conference in San Francisco, I had a chance to have dinner with a few of our 1to1 Customer Champions and Customer Award winners. Representing financial services, wireless telecom and retail, the three executives I dined with had great perspective and shared many customer challenges.

Continue reading "Executives Do Some Old-Fashioned Social Networking" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)