Consumers say a lot about companies and their brands in social media channels. CoTweet Co-Founder and CEO Jesse Engle shares his insights on steps that companies can take to leverage Twitter to forge tighter connections with customers.
Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Tweet Your Way to Customer Relationship Strength" »
Customer loyalty is a term that gets bandied around among executives with customer-based responsibilities. For many, loyalty is synonymous with a points or rewards program. But as customer savvy evolves, companies need to rethink how they define and build customer loyalty.
Continue reading "What Does Customer Loyalty Really Mean, Anyway?" »
"There is a massive amount of information bouncing around online," Richard Hanks emphasized during a recent conversation we had. Hanks, president of Mindshare Technologies, was referring specifically to the many comments, complaints, and opinions voiced through such social channels as blogs, online communities and social networks.
A few months ago I tweeted about one of my posts post called XFINITY Is (Unfortunately) More of the Same. Immediately afterwards, a nice woman from Comcast replied to my tweet and tried to change my opinion. This type of social media outreach is not unusual for Comcast, which has made a name for itself over the last few years with an active presence on Twitter.
Comcast, however, continues to receive less-than-stellar (I'm being nice) feedback on its customer service. The company managed to come in 125th and 126th out of 133 companies in Forrester's 2010 Customer Experience Index and ended up in 3rd place on MSN Money's 2010 Customer Service Hall of Shame.
So Comcast reaches out to strangers on Twitter, but doesn't service customers very well when they contact Comcast. Something seems out of whack.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Bruce Temkin: 8 Symptoms of Social Schizophrenia" »
With the news this week that the direct marketing job market is worsening (indicative of the state of the overall industry), it's no wonder that companies are turning to new channels to engage with customers.
The Federal Trade Commission is planning to propose voluntary measures to curtail online privacy abuses that may also allow consumers to opt out of online behavioral tracking.
Continue reading "Budding FTC Restrictions Could Impact Online Behavioral Tracking" »
Social engagement may not be easy, but for the majority of companies today it's essential. Often the most difficult part is just getting started. During Alterian's Engaging Times Summit 2010, executives from American Greetings Interactive, Dave & Buster's, and Western Union provided a glimpse into their social engagement strategies:
Continue reading "Step One of Social Engagement: Strategy" »
Companies have long aimed to increase their market share or wallet share. Today organizations also need to consider their share of friends, Engauge Chairman Stan Rapp told attendees during his keynote at Alterian's Engaging Times Summit 2010. Businesses not using social media to engage customers risk losing those customers to competitors that are making the most of social channels.
"Consumers are in the driver's seat," Alterian CEO David Eldridge told attendees of Alterian's Engaging Times Summit 2010, "and they want interaction, not interruption."
During his opening remarks Eldridge also revealed several findings from the company's report "Your Brand: At Risk or Ready for Growth," based primarily on a study of about 1,000 consumers. According to the report, he said, customer trust is low and companies need to focus on rebuilding that trust.
Other key findings he noted include:
Different companies have followed different paths to reach the goal of high customer loyalty.
IBM was known for being safe, for product reliability. "No one was ever fired for buying IBM" went the popular saying. Their products were not exciting, but IBM made sure they always worked. Customers followed them in lockstep loyalty, a slavishness that Apple parodied in the famous "1984" commercial.
Microsoft became a very big company through persistence. Their goal was product functionality, and they have been known for trying over and over again until they got the product right. Sometimes they started from scratch (BASIC) and sometimes they acquired a starting point (MS-DOS), but they keep plugging away until they get the function right. Internet Explorer and Bing are more recent examples. Customers rewarded them by buying the upgrades to each new version of their many products.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Mark Klein: The Paths to Customer Loyalty" »
Those of us in media and marketing have been feeling the effects of shrinking marketing budgets for some time. However, a new Accenture report "Onward and Up--How Marketers are Refocusing the Front Office for Growth," found that in addition to budget decreases, marketing organizations are also experiencing a shortage of skills and inadequate tools.
Suburban Propane has been in the news a lot recently in my corner of the world and the coverage has been anything but favorable.
You may think that studying cultural anthropology in South Africa is a far cry from working in digital marketing; however, there are parallels between both practices that you can recognize and use when creating effective web strategies and online communities.
As a former cultural anthropologist I had the privilege of studying how social groups defined themselves in a hotly contested political, racial, and geographic environment. Among the Rastafarians living in the Cape Province of South Africa I mapped out an organized hierarchy of relationships among participants to the people around them. This hierarchy allowed us to observe how rules were enforced, how decisions were made, and how this hierarchy affected individual behaviors, including communication between and among people and groups.
Continue reading "Guest Blogger Tim Neill: Mapping Your Online Village" »
Customer loyalty is becoming volatile. Companies are growing more concerned about losing customers and the cost of replacing them is the highest it's ever been. Many companies, however, think that if their customers are satisfied, then they will be loyal. Wrong.
Continue reading "Don't Stop at Satisfaction When Building Loyalty" »
Managing the complexities of customer relationships can be fraught with challenges. Udi Ziv, Chief Product Officer and President of NICE Systems' Enterprise Products Group, shares his views on steps that marketing leaders can take in tending to customer interactions effectively.
Continue reading "Hoffman's Hot Seat: Best Practices for Optimizing Customer Dynamics" »
Yesterday opened up football's preseason. The Dallas Cowboys beat the Cincinnati Bengals 16-7 in a game designed to shake the rust off after a long off-season. There were no spectacular plays or memorable moments, just a slow-pace game led by second string players. What happens on the field is in the hands of the coach and the players, but the organization is working to make sure that it can influence fan relationships by improving the fan experience to match the grandeur of the new $1.3 billion, 80,000-seat Cowboys Stadium.
Continue reading "Dallas Cowboys Make Improvements Off the Field " »
One sales tactic I recently fell pray to is the half truth. I think the reason this approach works so well is that the customer wants to believe that half truth (I certainly did). You know, the "Those shoes will stretch as you wear them" or the "It's paint and primer in one, so you'll 'probably' only need one coat.
The problem with this strategy, however, is that once buyer's remorse kicks in, it has the potential to hit big. Big, as in, returning the item in question at best; switching providers for good at worst.
Consider my recent fall to a series of half truths:
Continue reading "The Half Truths of Selling--and Their Impact on Buying" »
The marketing industry is undergoing a transformational change in the heart of a revolution that questions its relevancy. This revolution challenges the definition and future of the marketing function. It is a revolution long overdue and offers an exciting opportunity to restore marketing to the art of driving business results based on the science of understanding and adding value to current and future customers.
To successfully achieve the potential of this revolution, the CMO must be a powerful change agent, both internally and externally, and help her department chart a course for where marketing needs to go, navigate the waters of change, and compellingly lead from vision to results for both the board and the street.
Within the span of a week, I had two dramatically divergent customer experiences, each with different companies.
A personal touch can go a long way to building customer loyalty. And as more companies look to capture and maintain strong relationships with high-value customers, they are embracing the use of personal concierge services in unique industries. For many companies, the long-term benefits far exceed the costs. Is it right for your business?
Continue reading "Personal Concierge Services Expand Across All Industries" »
