In a new study by GlobalSpec, 70 percent of manufacturers reported that their sales will increase this year. However, with growth comes complexity. Growing demands placed on manufacturers requires a clear eye on what is needed to deliver on customer expectations. and that requires an investment in marketing.
Continue reading "Manufacturers Need to Ramp Up Marketing Efforts" »
Most companies today, 62 percent according to Forrester Research, have a voice of the customer (VOC) program. Some of those organizations are getting increasingly sophisticated in their approach to enterprise customer feedback and translating the customer voice into action.
Earlier today at the Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2010, Forrester's Victoria Bough and Andrew McInnes announced the winners of its 2010 Voice of the Customer Awards--companies that excel in how they collect and act on customer insight. According to Harley Manning, vice president and research director, and another Voice of the Customer Awards judge, "the best VOC programs demonstrate that executive involvement, measurement, and insights that are tied directly to action are critical to customer experience success."
Proving the business value of marketing is getting harder, Dave Frankland principal analyst, customer intelligence, noted during his presentation at Forrester Research's Customer Experience Forum 2010. Numerous challenges affect this. Channel proliferation, for example, makes attribution more difficult. Some marketers have difficulty gaining agreement on a definition of marketing accountability; others say that measure marketing ROI is tricky.
Frankland cited four areas--alignment, process, metrics, and communication--that lead to breakthrough accountability in marketing.
Continue reading "Four Tenets of Marketing Accountability" »
Since Dan Hesse joined Sprint Nextel as CEO in 2008 the company has seen increases in its share of new customers, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. The reason: An intense focus on improving every aspect of the customer experience. At the core, Hesse said during his keynote presentation this morning at Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2010, problems the company faced prior to 2008 stemmed from poor customer experience. In fact, the number of calls to customer care was two times the industry average.
According to Hesse, 2008 started with three priorities that remain today:
Continue reading "Fix the Customer Experience, Fix the Business" »
Why are today's websites so boring?
Ron Rogowski, principal analyst of Forrester Research, asked this question during his keynote this morning at Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2010. "Today's web experiences leave an emotional void," Rogowski said.
Fortunately, however, 67 percent of companies want their website experience to be a competitive differentiator, and are taking steps like improving web design and navigation, according to Forrester.
So, how can a website be emotionally engaging? Through emotional experience design; that is, by interacting with customers by catering to their emotional needs.
Continue reading "Create Emotionally Engaging Online Experiences" »
Marketers are wrestling with effective ways to help their companies lift sales in a tight economy. Market Force CMO Janet Eden-Harris shares her insights on how to leverage customer intelligence to help drive new sales.
Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Using Customer Intelligence to Boost Sales" »
Employees rarely pay attention to--and invest effort to align with--any new strategy or initiative they believe is the "flavor of the month" and will soon be forgotten. Unfortunately, that is the default assumption employees in many organizations hold any time leaders introduce something new. "I've learned from experience," employees will sometimes say, "that this too shall pass." Leaders can complain that this is a cynical point of view for their employees to hold--but most of the employees who hold it arrived at it honestly.
So how do organizations show employees that this time, it's for real?
Continue reading "Guest Bloggers Jeff Grimshaw & Tanya Mann: Want Engagement? Stay on Message" »
In a Temkin Group Insight Report called "The Current State of Customer Experience," we surveyed more than 140 large North American firms. It turns out that 11 percent of those companies think they are customer experience leaders today, but 65 percent want to lead within three years. That's a lot of ambition!
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Bruce Temkin: Can You Be a Customer Experience Leader?" »
Social media adoption is happening at an extraordinary rate, and I believe most companies will have some sort of social media presence within the next 18 months. But social media isn't about quickly building flimsy connections between a company and its customer base; it's about slowly building strong affiliations between an organization and an engaged portion of its customers and fans.
Continue reading "Socia Media: Slow and Steady Wins the Race" »
Social CRM is a hot topic with businesses these days--not only with all the usual suspects, but also with some new ones that are trying to enhance the customer experience using social tools. And there are signs that it's working. Before you put the cart before the horse, however, it's important to realize that if you are simply responding to customers' tweets, posts, and reviews in the social sphere and doing nothing else you are leaving major value on the table.
If you've done a great job starting a relationship with your customers, why not do more with it? If customers are using their valuable time and energy to tell you about their experience with your product or service, they are signaling that they want to be involved. Yes, there are times when a customer wants to vent. So let them. But other times they are opening the door for more. You've started the conversation; now use that to get closer.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Debi Kleiman: Hey Social CRM Cart, Here's Your Horse" »
Social CRM is a hot topic these days, and many companies are looking to create a strong social CRM strategy. And as more organizations dip their toe into the social waters, best practices are beginning to emerge.
Some consumers who complain about a product or brand experience on Facebook or other social media sites often welcome offers by a company's agents to help resolve their issues. But in some instances, consumers feel like their privacy has been invaded and that the company that's reached out to them has crossed the line.
Continue reading "Drawing the Line on Social Media Eavesdropping" »
The growing adoption of smartphones by consumers is creating additional opportunities for marketers to connect with prospects. SpeechCycle Chairman and CEO Zor Gorelov discusses some best practices for utilizing so-called rich phone applications to engage with customers and enrich their interactions.
Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Connecting with Customers Using Smartphone Applications" »
What frustrates customers? That's a loaded question, depending on in which industry you're asking the question. If companies can get at that valuable information and decipher customers' needs and concerns, they can increase customer retention and improve sales.
Forrester Research recently reported that the web "is now a pervasive part of consumers' lives, embedded into their shopping experiences overall. By 2012 approximately one third of all retail sales will be influenced by the Web." As more consumers conduct everyday transactions like refilling a prescription or purchasing beauty products online, organizations' web support and presence has to evolve to provide exceptional ecommerce experiences whether contacted on Twitter or during an online chat session.
Even though consumers are moving online to purchase items, their expectations for personalized service experiences has not decreased, and they have more product choices than ever before. To differentiate from competitors and increase sales, organizations have to deliver a personalized, superior web experience to consumers using the mix of new tools available to them.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Andrew Hull: Cure for the Common Customer Experience" »
It seems like new drugstores are popping up almost daily. Whether it be CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Duane Reade or others, the chain drugstore market is fiercely competitive. While many companies look to compete on price, some drugstore chains are turning to customer centricity as a competitive advantage.
Continue reading "Customer Centricity in the Drugstore Aisles" »
Customers ultimately decide which channel or channels they use to connect with companies. Responsys CMO Scott Olrich shares his recommendations on how to execute cross-channel campaign marketing effectively.
Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Best Practices for Cross-Channel Campaign Marketing" »
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns talked at today's World Innovation Forum about how her company innovates. I was impressed at how often she mentioned customers. It's uncommon for a CEO, let alone one with an engineering background, have such a customer focus rather than lean on technology during an innovation discussion. Xerox, which came back from the brink of bankruptcy in 2000, innovates by dreaming along with its customers.
Continue reading "Diapers Lead Xerox's Innovation Efforts" »
So far today at the World Innovation Forum we have heard from marketing expert Seth Godin, venture capitalist Brian Cohen, and Wendy Kopp, CEO of Teach for America. They represent three very different industries, but each sector share common qualities of leadership and innovation.
"Innovation means doing something that's impossible," said author Seth Godin at today's World Innovation Forum opening session. "Because if it wasn't impossible, someone would've done it already."
What marketing has been about for a long time is advertising -- yelling at people about stuff that you make, he said. You want people to buy more. You make average stuff for average people. There are more average people than anyone else. The mass is average, and average people want average stuff. TV was the best way to find average people.
Even a relevant marketing message, the model that says 'I'm going to find the right person and push that message to that person,' is wrong, Godin said. "We have branded ourselves to death. Marketing innovation does not mean a better ad." Instead, marketers need to organize tribes of people - groups that are connected by work, family, a passion, or something they want to make happen.
Continue reading "The Marketing Revolution Is Filled With Tribes, Artists, and Genius" »
Social media is rapidly changing the way consumers and companies interact. Consumers are more empowered and companies have greater opportunities to interact with customers on a more personal level. However, a lack of organizational change, integrated technology, and staffing skills prohibit such opportunities from becoming reality.
At the 2010 World Innovation Forum in New York today, Pfizer Chairman and CEO Jeff Kindler was asked what healthcare companies need to do to effectively serve different generations of customers.
Continue reading "Delivering Better Customer Experiences in Healthcare" »
One of the keynote speakers at the 2010 World Innovation Forum in New York today is Michael Howe, the former CEO of MinuteClinic, the retail healthcare division of CVS/Caremark Corp.
Continue reading "In Healthcare, The Customer is the Driver" »
Are you reading this blog post from a mobile device? I bet some of you are. It just shows that people are doing more and more on their iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, iPad, or other mobile devices. As customers get more mobile, customer service needs to follow suit.
From the day of advertising's mad men to the era of the Internet, the relationship between marketers and customers has continued to evolve. And this era is no different.
Consumers are no longer content with the marketing status quo. They're calling the shots, and what they want are experiences -- not messages. Today's consumer wants to engage with a brand on all levels and at the time that they prefer, not the other way around. For a meaningful interaction to take place, they want a total engagement experience. Technology today has made it possible for customers to create real relationships with brands -- and the more technology evolves, the more they'll come to expect from these brands.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Jeff Hilimire: The Total Engagement Era" »
Marketers are wrestling with effective ways to reach customers using social media. Greg Nelson, Director of Customer Engagement at agencyQ, discusses best practices for devising global social CRM strategies that engage customers across geographies.
Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Devising a Global Social CRM Strategy" »
We hear and read so much today about bad customer experiences, resulting in negative word of mouth that spreads like gossip at a ladies luncheon.
In contrast, I would like to highlight an impressive customer experience that I recently had in April after I flew on Delta. The return leg of my trip was delayed a couple hours, and a week after the trip, I received a letter in the mail from Elizabeth Reed, the general manager of customer care. Here's the letter:
As leaders we should always be looking for ways to improve our business and increase bottom line results. Building customer engagement by delivering an outstanding customer experience is one way to do so. But this will only happen if employees are engaged.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger James Castellano: What Do You Expect?" »
