Teaching is a struggle. Teachers would be paid like rock stars if I were our country's benevolent dictator. (Full disclosure: my mother, sisters, and much of my family are all teachers. Further full disclosure: I'd love to be the country's Benevolent Dictator.)

Consider this situation: I was helping a young man with a speech the other day as he is in the finals for the "Outstanding Young Man" in the state of Wisconsin. And indeed he is an outstanding young man and very smart, as you would expect.

He used the word "ump" in his story and I suggested he use the more formal umpire as some of the judges may not be as familiar with the word ump. I also thought using the formal word might make him sound more eloquent. Probably not my best contribution ever, but the speech was so good I couldn't think of anything to add and I'm supposed to be Mr. Big Shot Keynote Speaker Guy. In subsequent rehearsals he struggled to make the relatively simple transition to the word umpire.

It is a testament to the challenge of teaching and getting people to embrace change (and why minor suggestions are often best left unsaid).

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Ralph Heath: Teaching and Developing Leaders via Storytelling" »

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Emulating best practices is one approach to achieving marketing success. But often the true learning comes from mistakes. The following horror stories, shared by clients, illustrate that your best laid marketing plans may be doomed without fierce attention to detail. You can't make this stuff up.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger James E. Sullivan: Success--or Not--Is in the Details" »

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Many marketers struggle to obtain a clear picture of who their organization's best sales prospects are. 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman spoke with TARGUSinfo Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Moore about demand for real-time lead scoring analytics and the challenges that marketers face in utilizing this information effectively.

Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Utilizing Real-Time Analytics With Lead Scoring" »

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I got a pleasant surprise yesterday when I opened the mail--a letter from the Stamford Ford Lincoln Mercury dealership where I purchased my Lincoln MKX a year ago. The simple letter was from my sales rep, wishing me a happy one-year anniversary, adding that she hopes that I'm enjoying my car and that she and the dealership value my business.

Continue reading "A Little Goes a Long Way" »

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Have you recently called a company to resolve an issue, only to get conflicting answers as they pass you from one department to another? In the past few weeks I've had that experience with Comcast, American Airlines, and Citibank. And the sad part is that I'm not alone. You've probably had something similar.

The customer experience that companies like these offers is an "external" sign of an "internal" dysfunction.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Nilofer Merchant: How Collaboration Improves the Customer Experience " »

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Yesterday I flew from Barcelona, Spain, to New York , returning from my vacation. The flight landed 90 minutes EARLY, something I've never experienced before as an airline passenger. Thanks to Delta for surpassing my expectations and creating a great experience.

I wanted to mention it because it's rare to hear someone discuss a great customer experience around airline travel. Most news you hear is bad news. Take JetBlue's Valentine's Day Ice Storm three years ago. People were stranded on the tarmac for hours, leading to changes in federal regulations and a new commitment to the customer on the part of JetBlue. As the company reflects three years later while also celebrating its 10-year anniversary, we look at what the company's commitment to customers really means.

Continue reading "For Its 10-Year Anniversary, JetBlue Recommits to Customer Experience Excellence" »

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Customer service, in its many forms, can be an effective sales tool. Sometimes, however, when the experience is self-serving for the provider, a service opportunity can become a way to lose business. Consider these two examples:

Continue reading "Service Can Make or Break a Sale" »

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C-level executives are hungry for fresh sales, inventory and other data that they can use to make more knowledgeable decisions quickly. But once executives are provided with these business intelligence dashboards, these systems often sit dormant or are under-utilized. 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman spoke with Infor Director of CRM Product Marketing Tony Compton to explore steps for gaining dashboard adoption and to help make these tools succeed.

Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: CRM Dashboards: Best Practices for Gaining Executive Adoption" »

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Customer ratings and reviews, online communities, and social media have become critical components in influencing customers in the online experience. A September 2009 study from "Internet Retailer" demonstrates the power of customer recommendations when it revealed that 67 percent of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from their online community of friends.

Continue reading "Rubbermaid Proves the Value of Listening to Customers" »

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Does your organization have a soul? Does it matter?

Some organizations constantly show passion, commitment, and the ability to achieve sustained success. These organizations have a "soulful" quality about them; there is a feel or a buzz that is noticeable and memorable. Conversely, many companies seem disorganized, unfocused, and unproductive. These organizations have less soul and, often, less market share. Soulful organizations consistently outperform soulless organizations.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger William Seidman: Rediscovering the Corporate Soul" »

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In my new book, Flip the Funnel, I talk about better being S.A.F.E. than sorry. The acronym stands for:

• Satisfy curiosity
• Address concerns
• Avoid festering
• Prevent escalation

Continue reading "Guest Blogger Joseph Jaffe: It's Better to Be S.A.F.E. Than Sorry" »

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As a growing number of organizations are creating the role of Chief Customer Officers, they're also working harder on designing more granular customer experience programs that are aimed at improving the business performance of their companies. 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman spoke with Sage North America's Chief Customer Officer Doug Meyer about the importance of incorporating business process and culture change as part of this evolution.

Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: The Chief Customer Officer: Building a Customer Strategy" »

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Marketers today are pondering their social media strategies, questioning the best tools, how much to invest, and the real benefits.

This week ForeSee Results attempts to answer some of those questions in a newly released study, "The Key to Driving Retail Success With Social Media: Focus on Facebook."

Continue reading "Starting Out in Social Media" »

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Remember Super Bowls ads that were truly memorable? Like Apple's `1984' spot for the Macintosh? The Budweiser frogs? Monster.com's 'When I grow up'?

Continue reading "Betty White and Lindsay the Milkaholic: Memorable Super Bowl Ads" »

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The ability to innovate is an entrepreneurial quality that is essential for companies to succeed in today's fiercely competitive retail markets. However many companies may be locked in an inertia of change dictated by industry norms.

Continue reading "Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone " »

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CIOs have expressed some trepidation about managing different types of customer data in public and private cloud environments. Security, loss of control over data and regulatory/compliance issues top the list of worries. 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman spoke with RightNow Technologies CIO Laef Olson about these concerns and steps that can be taken to address them.

Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Customer Data in the Cloud" »

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New technologies follow a pattern. They start by imitating older technologies before they evolve to their true forms. The first automobiles looked like horseless carriages. It wasn't until the Vintage Era of the 1920s that cars evolved to a form that we'd recognize today with features like front-engines, enclosed cabs, and electric starters. Televisions started off copying radios -- they looked more like an armoire with a small screen stuck on the front.

In the process of working on my latest piece of research, it became clear that the Web has followed a similar pattern. Early sites imitated a much older medium: paper. And even though "web page" still dominates our thinking, online experiences have begun to evolve away from the page-based metaphor. In the next 5 years the evolution of online experiences toward their true form is about to take off at a much faster rate than in the previous 5 years.

Continue reading "Forrester's Moira Dorsey: The Future of Online Customer Experience" »

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Motivation as a topic is quite popular. Whether in sports or in business, we talk about motivating others to perform better, to work better, or to help us accomplish our goals. But the best way to motivate can be quite elusive. We try all sorts of different programs and philosophies to get others motivated, but in the end, we are right back where we started. There is a very simple reason why this happens. The reality of motivation is this: We cannot positively motivate anyone but ourselves.

Continue reading "Guest Blogger James Castellano: The Truth About Motivation, and What You Can Do About It" »

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Online customer communities used to be just a message board where customers could ask questions or more likely, complain about products. But as social tools become more available and user adoption increases, online communities should advance with them.

Continue reading "Online Customer Communities Embrace New Social Tools" »

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