What comes first, loyalty or engagement? The answer, it seems, is: It depends. During a conversation this morning with Laura Hewitt, director of marketing and communications for Carlson Marketing, we talked about the issue. Some marketers think that you need to build loyalty before you can create engagement; others think it's quite the opposite--build engagement to foster loyalty.
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Meeting and satisfying consumer expectations today is no easy feat. The speed of technology and the proliferation and convenience of mobile, social, and digital have turned customers into critics when they don't get the answers or service they expect. In today's cutthroat competition for loyal customers, companies need to deliver services that not only meet customers' expectations, but exceed them.
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I am not generally a user of social media. I don't Tweet, I don't blog on my own blog. LinkedIn is a bother now that I have a job. When I signed up for Facebook a few years ago, I did so only because my thriller-writer friends insisted. My profile photo was my book cover jacket. Over the course of 3 years I amassed 38 friends on Facebook. I have not seen the movie The Social Network. I am not
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Nikhil Govindaraj, Vice President of Products at Moxie Software, about the challenges and opportunities of providing customers with proactive service.
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Every year in January Forrester publishes its Customer Experience Index (CxPI), which reports how customers rate their interactions with major companies. We learn a lot from studying leaders in various industries -- like USAA, which was the top credit card provider, top bank, and top insurance provider this year. Last week we published a follow-up report, which examined companies that raised their CxPi scores by at least 5 points year over year. Among others, these brands included Aetna (up 6
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This weekend my husband and I bought a new car. The experience was pretty painless, though there were a few hiccups. However, what caught my attention was my salesman's parting words as we drove off the lot. He told us we would be getting a call from corporate asking us to rate our purchase experience. Then he played the guilt-trip card...if he didn't score all 10's on the survey he might get fired. So we need to be sure to
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I recently heard an interesting statement from Gary Vaynerchuk, cofounder of Veyner Media: The skill set required for marketers is changing. It's shifting from "presentations" -- in other words, pushing information out to consumers -- to interactions, like working the room at a cocktail party.
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To get my child to join me at the dog park in the mornings, I had resorted to bribing him with a stop at Starbucks. With my "mom" hat on, it proved to be an effective enticement. As a frequent customer and loyalty practitioner, I cannot help but question why it was so much work (on my part) to reap my deserved recognition and rewards. We've all talked about how Starbucks has changed us. We now talk in terms of
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with IBM Executive Product Manager Erick Brethenoux about some of the changes in the ways that companies are now applying analytics to customer data.
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Using game dynamics to increase customer engagement, very cool. The sudden and growing whirlwind, let's make that hurricane, of hype surrounding "gamification," not so much. In fact, since all of the hullaballoo about this "hot, new marketing must" at and following the recent South By Southwest (SXSW) event in Austin, I've heard so many "gurus" declare an urgency for the adoption of gamification that I want to hurl.
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According to contemporary wisdom (in other words, according to what I hear), customers who experience service failures followed by effective service recoveries actually become more satisfied and loyal than customers who experience no failures at all. This is called the service recovery paradox, and academic research suggests that it's not as common or consistent as we might think. Many customers who experience solid service recoveries still end up less happy than their problem-free counterparts. Service failures are bad, after all.
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We're all awash in data and running at a breakneck pace to make sense of it all. Sometimes that intense focus can cause us to forget the source of that data: customers. In other words, human beings--who often (in fact, almost always) make purchase decisions based on emotions first, rational thought second.
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An exciting new movement that calls for combining Voice of Customer (VOC) data with operational data (CRM, financial, etc.) is happening now. This new opportunity is Voice of Customer Intelligence or VOCi. The ultimate goal of VOCi is to provide actionable business intelligence derived primarily from VOC data sets, but integrated with other related customer data to tell a powerful story that company executives buy in to and rely on to make decisions. VOCi requires a shift from data gathering
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Marketers today seem to be crippled by fear. Just as they master marketing and communicating to customers through a new channel, another one emerges. Things are moving so fast that sometimes marketers don't know where to start.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Dave Capuano, Vice President of Marketing at Vovici, regarding steps that marketers can take to gauge the progress of their organizations' customer loyalty programs.
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Like it or not, government services face many of the same pressures that companies face. Companies like Amazon, Disney, USAA, and Zappos raise customer expectations when they deliver stellar service. As they raise the bar, other companies and government agencies risk getting fired when they fail to deliver the value that customers expect, or make customers jump through hoops to access it, or begrudgingly deliver it through unengaged employees. Customers and citizens simply chose to take their money elsewhere. It's
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Corporate policies are put in place to maintain consistency and drive efficiency within an organization. But sometimes they work to undermine the customer experience, which can leave both employees and customers unsatisfied. With all the lip service given to the importance of the customer experience, it's unfortunate that when it comes down to practice, some companies rely more on strict policies than on solving customer problems.
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It's imperative for companies today more than ever to focus on supporting and growing relationships with their core customers and turning those customers into their best salespeople. When people get really excited about a company with which they do business, they share their love with colleagues, friends, and family; they brag about how great it is to work with your company, and how clever they were to find you. Most important, they will passionately recommend your company to everyone who
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Engaging customers online is no easy task. It requires not only ongoing interaction within individual channels, but also integration between those touchpoints. Jeremy Thum, director of marketing for the NBA's Chicago Bulls, knows these challenges firsthand. In preparation for our participation at the upcoming Social Customer 2011 conference, Thum shared some insight via email into the Bulls' full-court press approach to engaging customers within and across digital touchpoints.
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We recently published the 2011 Temkin Experience Ratings, which evaluates the customer experience of 143 U.S. companies across 12 industries. Let's start with kudos to the top 10 companies in the ratings: 1. Amazon.com 2. Kohl's 3. Costco 4. (tie) Lowe's 4. (tie)Sam's Club 6. BJs Wholesale Club 7. Walgreens 8. Old Navy 9. Target 10. Rite Aid
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In 1999 Forrester proclaimed the proceeding 10 years the digital decade. Today at Forrester's Marketing Forum in San Francisco, that decade-old proclamation is crystallized in conversations in keynote addresses and among marketers on the conference floor.
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Companies can develop a broader view of their customers' needs, preferences, and behaviors by drawing on customer feedback, operational information and other data, says Clarabridge CEO and Co-Founder Sid Banerjee.
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We use mobile devices throughout the day to communicate with each other, get timely information, and entertain ourselves. And, because they're almost always within a few feet of us, these devices offer myriad opportunities for brands to insert themselves into our lives in meaningful ways. But brands have been slow to realize this opportunity. Whenever I browse the Apple app store, I'm always shocked by the small number of apps that have been commissioned by big brands -- and this
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Budget airline AirTrain topped the Airline Quality Rating for 2011, beating out fellow low-cost carriers JetBlue, Southwest, as well as the big dogs like American, Delta, and United. The rankings show that inexpensive doesn't equal less quality. With a commitment to customers, efficiency, and effectiveness, it is possible to provide a fantastic customer experience without crippling customers' wallets.
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