To say that marketing today is fast paced is an understatement. Consumers want information quickly and have little patience for slow-loading Web pages, interruptions in streaming videos and ads, or off-target marketing as they browse a brand's site. According to a December 2009 survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly three quarters (74 percent) of American adults use the Internet. This high Internet usage by everyday Americans further validates that consumers are tuning in online for information, product research, and an always-on connection with the brands and sites they rely on most.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Martin Hayward: Supporting Social Media Engagement on Your Website" »

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As mobile phone and Smartphone adoption rates continue to soar, a growing number of organizations are taking advantage of mobile marketing and messaging campaigns to help tighten the customer experience. As part of these trends, companies are also beginning to increase their use of mobile feedback systems to gauge and react to customer experiences.

I spoke recently with Allegiance Vice President of Marketing Chris Cottle to determine whether mobile feedback systems make sense from an ROI perspective.

Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Mobile Feedback -- Is It Worth It?" »

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In my new favorite movie "Up in the Air," the George Clooney and Vera Farmiga characters, both frequent fliers who met for the first time, sit in an airport lounge, impressing each other with the amount of loyalty cards they carry in their wallets and how many frequent flier miles they've accumulated. At one point, the Farmiga character says to the Clooney character "We're two people who get turned on by elite status. I think we're starting at cheap," to which Clooney responds "There's nothing cheap about loyalty."

Continue reading "There's Nothing Cheap About Loyalty" »

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The other night on the way home from work I stopped to pick up my dry cleaning at the drive-up window. I'm not making this up. A nice young woman opens the window and says, "I'm sorry we are closed." And promptly closes the window. I'm usually up for a robust discussion about the quality of service, but she closed the window so quickly and I was so surprised by her action that I did not have time to mount a charm offensive. I checked the time as I thought perhaps it was past closing time and I was being inconsiderate, but I had 5 minutes to spare. I drove away in stunned silence.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Ralph Heath: What Has Happened to Customer Service in America?" »

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Tax season is upon us, and almost no company is as synonymous with tax preparation and accounting activities as Intuit. The makers of Turbo Tax, QuickBooks, and Quicken software are preparing for its busy time by gathering and acting on customer insight from the web.

Continue reading "Intuit Gains Customer Insight in Time for Tax Season" »

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A colleague of mine was angry about the way Orbitz handled a service issue, so she tweeted about it. She also sent a complaint via the company's website customer support page. Orbitz responded to the Twitter posts via email, and resolved the issue; the company only ever sent a generic "we're reviewing your inquiry" email in response to the complaint sent via the website.

This made me wonder whether Orbitz's service channels are actually connected on the back end. Many companies now have people whose primary focus is tracking and responding to complaints aired in online communities and social networks; but not all of those teams are integrated with the rest of the service organization in a way that promotes information sharing.

Continue reading "To Tweet or Call, That is the Question" »

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Driving to work the other morning, I heard a news report about how Burberry PLC's third-quarter sales beat market expectations. Same-store sales from the company's own retail outlets, which generated two-thirds of Burberry's overall sales in the third quarter, were up 10% for the period.

What really caught my attention in the report was a comment about how the effectiveness of the company's Internet marketing efforts have helped this 154 year-old maker of trench coats and outerwear to drive additional sales traffic at its retail outlets.

Intrigued, I decided to do a little research.

Continue reading "Internet Marketing from the 'Trenches'" »

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Taking cues from customers is difficult in the rapidly shifting social landscape. This week Forrester has updated its Social Technographics Ladder to help marketers determine the categories of social behavior that customers exhibit to help them analyze their target audiences. A new one has emerged and marketers should take note.

Continue reading "Forrester Adds a New Rung to the Social Technographics Ladder" »

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Amid all of the excitement around new media and predictions that this will be "the year of" mobile, social media, or augmented reality, the reality is that most companies will still only spend a fraction of their marketing budgets on these new alternatives in 2010.

I have heard one consistent question that inhibits spending in new media: "Where's the scale?" It is a question that goes to the heart of how the basic model of marketing has fundamentally changed, and while there still is no answer to the scale question, I believe we are on the verge of shifting our approach in a way that will uncover opportunities for more meaningful results for both bottom lines and customers' lives.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Bob Gilbreath: Finding Success in New Media by Abandoning the Search for Scale" »

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Many companies talk a good game when it comes to the customer experience. It's very easy to speak in broad strokes when it comes to a company's efforts to provide a consistent, positive experience from any channel. Yet when it comes to taking action, it can be confusing to know where to begin. There are two tactics that may serve as good starting points.

Continue reading "A Tactical Approach to Customer Experience Improvements" »

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Succeeding in today's hypercompetitive, fast-changing environment is no easy task. Qualities like perseverance, resourcefulness, and consideration are musts. Two that are especially important today are optimism and enthusiasm.

Continue reading "Optimism and Enthusiasm" »

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As a ski buff, I'm fortunate to live in an area where there are a handful of small resorts located within a half-hour's drive of my home. What I like most about the proximity is that I can take a few runs on a weeknight or on weekends and not have to make a huge time commitment. I buy passes in advance so I don't have to waste time waiting on a ticket line. Just park the car, strap on my gear and head right to the chair lift.

Unless there's an unforeseen glitch.

Continue reading "Preventing a Customer Experience from Going Downhill" »

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With the media constantly inundating us with negative messages, it was refreshing to listen to someone like Bert Jacobs speak on Monday. The cofounder and chief executive optimist of Life is Good, a $100 million privately held t-shirt and apparel company, talked to an audience at the National Retail Federation to provide life lessons that we can all translate into business lessons. "Your life isn't there to grow your business; your business is here to serve your life," he explained.

Continue reading ""Life is Good" Offers Valuable Lessons" »

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This is our third year publishing the CxPi. The 2007 CxPi and the 2008 CxPi rankings were published in Q4. We decided to publish this year's CxPi in Q1 2010, so we don't have a 2009 CxPi.

The 2010 CxPi ranks 133 organizations across 14 industries: Airlines, Banks, Credit Card Providers, Health Plans, Hotels, Insurance Firms, Internet Service Providers, Investment Firms, Parcel Shipping Services (new this year), PC Manufacturers, Retailers, TV Service Providers, Utilities (new this year), and Wireless Carriers.

The CxPi is based on consumer evaluations during November 2010 across three areas: 1) meeting needs; 2) being easy to work with; and 3) enjoyability (see the methodology section below).

Continue reading "Forrester's Bruce Temkin: Forrester's 2010 Customer Experience Rankings" »

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Brand value improves as customer loyalty to that brand improves. It makes sense, but many companies still don't connect the dots between customer value and brand value. But which are the companies that do it best, and what can we learn from them?

Continue reading "Loyalty Correlates with Brand Value" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I once was fired as a customer. It's true.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Allstate Insurance decided that potential hurricane damage was a significant risk for many of its customers in the New York City area. So, the company notified us that it was cancelling our homeowners insurance--with plenty of time to find a new carrier. Initially, it seemed absurd to me (I live in the city and the extremely rare times any hurricane has made landfall in New York, it's been at the eastern-most area of Long Island). But, being in the "customer business" I understood Allstate's decision to fire potentially unprofitable customers.

Continue reading "When Is It OK to Fire Your Customers?" »

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The IRS doesn't have a very good reputation for customer service or helpfulness. With the bar set so low, it would take something extraordinary to get people to be upset about a lack of service. And here it is: the customer service goal is to answer only 7 out of every 10 calls that come in.

Continue reading "The IRS' Customer Service Goal: Don't Answer 30 Percent of Calls" »

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As it becomes clear that social networks provide a real opportunity for performance advertisers, I'm nevertheless surprised about PepsiCo's announcement in December to sit out Super Bowl XLIV and not purchase an advertising spot, instead investing $20 million in a social marketing campaign.

Continue reading "Pepsi Watches Super Bowl From the Sidelines" »

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The New Year always brings with it predictions about what to expect over the next 12 months. The consensus among our group of leading business thinker is that this year will be the year that social media actually gets operationalized into business. Companies now realize that it's no fad, and they should dedicate resources and strategies to incorporate social media into everyday business, say Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and others. What do you think?

Continue reading "Is Social CRM the "It" Strategy of 2010?" »

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