My research director Harley Manning has a lot of quips that we affectionately call Harleyisms. One of them goes like this: All ads promise one of three things -- you're gonna get rich, you're gonna live forever, or you're gonna get (um, I'll be polite here) some nookie. While this might have been somewhat true during the golden age of advertising, I've noticed a new ad trend over the past several years: More marketers are advertising the customer experiences that
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There's no such this as a social media "campaign," according to Gary Vaynerchuk, cofounder of Veyner Media. One-off campaigns in social media are like "a one-night stand in a world where we're trying to be Beyoncé and 'put a ring on it,'" he said recently. Vaynerchuk asserts that even individual campaigns should fit with an overarching social media strategy designed to build customer loyalty and engagement over time.
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"There's never been a more interesting or challenging time in the customer service business," inContact CMO Mariann McDonagh told attendees of the company's Problem Solved tour in New York yesterday. McDonagh warned that it will only get more difficult to differentiate brands based on product attributes; driving sustainable growth more and more requires a superior service experience. "The next five years will bring more changes to the customer service market than the past 15." What's driving those major changes? A
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Everyone organization wants it: the ability to deliver unique, authentic, memorable, wow customer experiences across the enterprise. But saying it and doing it are two separate things. Getting it done requires companywide commitment, understanding, and a willingness to consistently deliver optimal customer experiences.
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Analysts and pundits like to talk about the importance of providing customers with personalized experiences. On paper, it sounds great. But in the real world, it's easier said than done, particularly for enterprise organizations that have tens of thousands of customers.
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Over the past few weeks I've been part of a group that selected the winners of Forrester's Voice of the Customer Awards for 2011. I can't yet tell you the names of the three winners -- the companies will be announced on June 21 at our Customer Experience Forum in New York, along with the other seven entrants who made up our top 10. But I can share some insight into what separated the winners from the contenders. At one
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"A lot of life is about enchanting people," Guy Kawasaki told a rapt audience at the Allegiance Engage Summit 2011 earlier this week. In business, enchantment is part of building a mutually beneficial relationship. Kawasaki, cofounder of Alltop and author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, shared three essential elements of enchantment.
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By understanding what motivates its "fashionista" customers, Zara has changed the definition of success in fashion retail. Customers make an average 17 annual store visits, compared to four visits for other retailers. The Zara "habit" that keeps customers coming through their door results in more products sold at full retail: nearly 85 percent of Zara's inventory sells at full price, compared to a retail average of 40 percent. Most important, because customers are Zara's "sales force," advertising is hardly necessary--it's
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The increasing usage of social media is forcing companies to think about how to incorporate social into their contact centers--something that companies and contact centers haven't had a need to think about until recently.
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Marketers continue to strive to make greater use of analytics in order to better understand customers and craft more relevant offers for them. But while many marketers believe their use of analytics to enhance customer experiences is working effectively, consumers don't necessarily share the same views.
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A few weeks ago I described the sobering fact that most voice of the customer (VoC) programs don't deliver business results. I recently dug into the responses to Forrester's Q1 2011 Global Customer Experience Peer Research Panel Survey to find out why. Here's some of what I found (full results will be available in my new report titled, "Voice Of The Customer Programs Don't Deliver Enough Value," due out later this week):
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If you lead a business unit--a team, a department or a corporation--you've thought about corporate culture. You've read about how having the right culture drives exceptional results. Get the culture right, the gurus say, and the rest will magically take care of itself. And you believe it if you've ever been part of a high-performing team. Everything just clicks, it's fun, and the results flow. The problem comes when you try to take your current, not-too-bad-but-nothing-special team and change the
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Even though consumers today use a barrage of social technologies, including SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter, ratings and reviews sites, and blogs, a new study shows that they are less inclined to share word-of-mouth (WOM) experiences than they were three years ago.
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As a reporter, writer, and synthesizer of insights (a more accurate title these days), I've long wrestled with the question of whether I should clean up my source's quotes. If a CMO describes "averse" economic conditions when she clearly means "adverse," can I change her quote for her benefit (as well as the benefit of the reader)? Zappos kicked a similar question into the realm of marketing ethics, according to this nifty article on Slate, "Awsum Shoes!," that asks whether
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Craig Hayman, General Manager of Industry Solutions at IBM, about best practices that marketing leaders can apply to demonstrate improvements to the business.
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I recently read a story about the butterflies in Zion National Park. Apparently, there aren't as many of them as there use to be. And after decades of research, scientists have finally figured out why. Zion National Park was developed in the early 1900s -- and with that development came an influx of tourists. Scared off by human foot traffic, cougars retreated from certain areas of park. And with no natural predators, the deer population exploded. These cute (but ravenous)
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Shop.org and Forrester Research last week announced results of its annual online retailing study in the The State Of Retailing Online 2011: Marketing, Social, and Mobile. Of course, social and mobile are hot trends that retailers are beginning to experiment with, though financial results of such initiatives tend to be vague.
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When was the last time you personally thanked a customer? Sent a hand-written note? Last year Jack Mitchell wrote 1,793 personal notes to customers of his retail stores. That's about five notes a day, every day. Mitchell is CEO of The Mitchells Family of Stores, which owns several high-end retail stores, including Marsh, Mitchells, and Richards--and is author of Hug Your Customers. He spoke at the Conference Board Customer Experience Leadership Conference about connecting with customers on a more personal
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Challenges are mounting for sales teams: higher quotas, changing metrics, and new channels in which to sell. The problem is that these changes can get in the way of salespeople doing what they do best, which is selling. To better understand this conundrum, BigMachines recently conducted a benchmark survey, identifying the key factors that drive sales teams, as well as the roadblocks they encounter. The results uncovered widespread, inefficient processes and the fact that few organizations actually take the steps
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At IBM/Unica's Marketing Innovation Summit in Boston this week, it's more apparent than ever that marketers are facing increasing pressures and evolving challenges. IBM's global "State of Marketing" survey released yesterday offers more proof of the changing landscape.
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Good customer experience doesn't happen by accident. Behind every good customer experience is a set of professionals working hard to make sure that their company fulfills the needs and desires of their customers. So who are these people leading the customer experience charge? Customer experience professionals. To better understand these individuals, Temkin Group recently completed a research report on behalf of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) called Customer Experience Professionals Benchmark Report.
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Customers are willing to spend more with businesses that deliver quality customer service. So says the 2011 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, a survey American Express conducts annually to uncover customers' attitudes and preferences toward service. This year's U.S. survey polled more than 1,000 American consumers. According to the survey findings, 70 percent of Americans are willing to spend 13 percent more on average with companies that provide outstanding customer service. This is a significant increase from 2010 when
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Christopher Morace, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Jive Software about different ways that companies can use social business software to engage both their customers as well as their employees.
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Well-intentioned customer relationship management (CRM) efforts that focus on internal processes and objectives have largely failed to serve the most important stakeholder: the customer. Business process professionals characterize CRM as "the business processes for targeting, acquiring, retaining, understanding, and collaborating with customers." Although CRM leaders and customer experience professionals share goals like extensive customer knowledge and increased service quality, the fundamental approaches of these two disciplines differ vastly. Typical CRM efforts take an inside-out approach that serves specific business needs
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