For all the grief the auto industry has gotten, many automakers strive to build long-term loyalty with customers. At the 2011 North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this month, Ford and Kia stood out for their ability to generate repurchases.
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Clothing retailers looking to sell more stuff have, for a while now, taken to a tactic that I find offensive: let's call it vanity sizing. Not to get too far into the "too much information" territory, but at 5'5" and 124 pounds I'm currently a size 4 in many women's brands. Really? Funny, because for years I was a size 6, sometimes even an 8, at that exact height and weight. Recently, I bought a pair of jeans at Gap:
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Customer loyalty is more precarious than ever. As a result, marketers must rethink their approach to customer interaction and engagement by finding new ways to get closer to their customers. Here are six predictions for the evolution of one-to-one marketing over the next year, and why marketers should pay close attention to each.
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If you haven't realized by now, you are not in control of you brand; consumers are. The new Media Value Report: Brand Exposure Analysis by General Sentiment reveals how true this is.
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In the latest sign of a strengthening economy, U.S. companies say they plan to hire more workers this year, according to a new study that was released on Jan. 24 by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). Although marketing leaders likely have their own specific priorities for the near-term (i.e. recruiting direct marketing professionals or people with email marketing expertise), there are three hot skills where hiring should be particularly strong this year: social marketing, mobile development and analytics.
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Over the past five years Forrester has observed an increase in the number of companies that have a single executive leading customer experience efforts across a business unit or an entire company. Whether firms call them a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) or give them some other label, these leaders sit at high levels of power at companies as diverse as Allstate, Dunkin' Brands, Oracle, and USAA. We define the CCO as: "A top executive with the mandate and power to
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In the call center, self-service tools are considered valuable to help improve the customer experience while also boosting efficiency. But a study of more than 400 call center professionals finds that there is still much work to be done to understand how to make the most of self-service tools.
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Mobile telephony drives me a bit crazy. If I need a phone for my house, I can go to Target or Radio Shack or wherever and buy a phone and plug it in and it works. I don't have to buy a new phone if I want to switch from, say, Verizon to Time Warner Cable as my home service provider. And I don't have to switch providers--nor do I have to wait two years--if I decide that I want
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A few weeks ago I called a local chimney-cleaning company and set up an appointment for a cleaning. When the workmen arrived, I asked them to remove their sooty shoes when walking around the house. Despite this request, the workers left an ugly trail of black soot stains on our basement carpeting. So began a fascinating opportunity to experience how some companies are mastering the integration of marketing and customer service. My problem was turned into a marketing opportunity by
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Depending on who you talk to today, some industry experts proclaim the death of email while others say it remains king. According to recent statistics that were announced yesterday on CBS News, it appears as though email is king, however it is in disrepair. In 2010, more than 100 trillion messages were sent over the Internet but 90 percent were spam.
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Using predictive analytics to analyze customer data, including customer preferences, behaviors and purchasing histories, can help companies to better understand customers, tailor products and offers to them and establish tighter relationships, says Colin Shearer, Worldwide Industry Solutions Leader for the SPSS brand at IBM.
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Customer experience transformation efforts don't happen overnight. It can take years to develop the right customer experience strategy and roll out improvements across interaction points. But the screaming pace of technology innovation over the past year has sparked major changes in customer behavior and expectations. The net result? 2011 will be a pivotal year for the customer experience field.
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Email's demise has been greatly exaggerated. Some have predicted that as smartphone usage grows, email use will decline. That's just not the case. In fact, people are combining their email and smartphone use to enhance both activities. And data around how people use mobile email sheds light on some interesting customer experience opportunities.
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How often have you wished that the hold time when you call customer support was shorter, or that a retailer would add more cashiers so the line wouldn't be so long, or that it didn't take so much time to unpack and set up a new gadget? Your customers are thinking the same thing. Therein lies the opportunity. The organization that considers time when designing or improving its customer experience is the one that will win with today's time-starved customers.
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"Don't waste your time!" This is a phrase we hear all the time. People have even written songs about it. And for a businessperson especially, time wasted is usually equated with time lost -- which further translates into lost customers. If you ask most people, a time-waster most often conjures up the image of a lazy, non-productive person; in other words, a non-achiever. But are there situations where "wasted time" can actually be a good thing?
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In 1993, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers described in The One to One Future life after mass marketing, focusing on one customer at a time, nurturing those relationships, and collaborating with customers. At the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City yesterday, it appears as though 2011 may finally see many of Peppers' and Rogers' predictions getting a greater foothold in companies.
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How should you measure customer experience? Is it even possible to measure something that feels as squishy as customer experience? As it turns out you can measure it, you should measure it, and you even have some decent options for measuring it. Your alternatives range from monitoring the real world interactions your customers have with your firm (like clicks on a site or the length of a call) to asking your customers for their perceptions of those interactions (the real
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One of the great side benefits of social networks for companies is how they can be used to collaborate with customers and business partners on new product ideas, suggestions for product design improvements or enhancements to customer service or support.
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Today's issue of 1to1 Magazine's Weekly Digest tackles two hot issues among social media strategists: the role of influencers and the difficulty in achieving measurable ROI. Both topics are on the forefront of any social media discussion.
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It's great to say that your organization wants to be more customer-centric; putting those words into action is where the challenge lies. Hartford Insurance uses a Customer Connections Framework to ensure that its service specialists "are supported to create connections and build engagement with customers," Sue Brinker explained during a session at NACCM. Brinker, assistant vice president, property and casualty learning, for Hartford Insurance, shared that framework:
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All of my favorite restaurants have at least two things in common: amazing service and great food--and yes, in that order. No matter how delicious the dishes, it's always the people--and how welcome, happy, and just plain "good" I feel around them--that keeps me coming back. The enthusiasm of an engaged employee is infectious--to both coworkers and to customers. We've all felt it. That's why no matter what business you're in, the people who work for you can help be
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Some companies like American Express, CDW, and Dell understand the benefits of customer feedback, and as a result, have established formal enterprisewide voice of the customer programs around that initiative.
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As companies became more involved in leveraging social media tools in 2010 to connect with customers, one of the most popular uses has been to use social media to help provide customers with proactive support. For instance, a growing number of organizations are scanning for mentions about their companies and brands on Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks, in part to identify potential customer issues and address those before they reach the contact center.
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As each year begins anew, there is much hope for how the year will play out. For customer strategists, the hope renews that companies will bring customer focus to the forefront of their business practices. We asked experts in customer service, mobile, multichannel marketing, social media, and voice of the customer to weigh in on their thoughts for the coming year.
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Back in October I traveled to Berlin and Cambridge, MA, to attend the annual conferences of the Service Design Network, an international organization for professionals and academics working in the field of service design. Um... What's service design? Great question! Service designers broadly define what they do as a collaborative process of researching, envisioning, and then orchestrating experiences that happen over time and across multiple touchpoints. Unlike traditional design disciplines, service designers typically examine -- and often reengineer -- the
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