We hear a great deal about companies collecting customer feedback and not using it, and about companies ignoring social sentiment. But fortunately there are also plenty of companies that act on customer input gathered from various interaction channels. As it turns out, igourmet.com is one of the latter.
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Temkin Group has completed its third annual study on the state of customer experience management. The research examines feedback from hundreds of large companies. As always, it's great to see a snapshot of where companies are on their customer experience journeys. For this post, I've decided to assemble some interesting tidbits from the research:
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Organizations want to know what their customers think about them and what they can do to improve their customers' experience. This is even more important in a competitive environment and in the age of social media where customers are very quick to share their opinions. But in their zeal to get information, some organizations are overloading their customers with numerous surveys that have an exhaustive list of questions, potentially alienating them from giving their insight. And with more customers providing
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Voice of the customer initiatives require three main elements to succeed: executive involvement, closing the loop, and taking action--according to Cameron Conway, assistance vice president of customer research at Equifax. During his presentation at the Allegiance VoCFusion conference yesterday, Conway provided some insight into each of these areas.
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During childhood, we learn in a group atmosphere. Just as we learned to socialize while also developing necessary life skills, businesses must now cultivate their social skills in order to learn how to best serve their customers.
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Cloud computing in the past has been a controversial subject, with companies leery of putting proprietary data in the cloud. But with its promise to reduce costs, scale up, and provide real-time access to data, cloud computing is shedding its reputation and companies are increasingly migrating to this service.
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A new study from PulsePoint on the digital marketing capabilities and shortcomings of companies finds that "overwhelming complexity" and a "lack of unified measurement" are the key stumbling blocks in aligning these efforts with consumers' multichannel behaviors. There's a growing body of research on this topic, most of which support this thesis that marketing leaders are, in fact, overcome by the difficulty of managing and coordinating marketing efforts across the flood of channels that customers use. They also struggle to
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With all this talk about customer trust and companies acting in customers' best interest, it got me thinking about spiffs--incentives that manufacturers provide dealers and retail salespeople to sell their wares over the competitor's. Spiffs are great for salespeople, not so great for customers. Salespeople motivated by a boost in their commission check or some other incentive may be more likely to sell what's good for them instead of what's best for the customer. Actually, I'd have to say
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You've worked hard to create a brand image and deliver on your brand promise. Then your organization partners with another company that turns about to be not so customer-centric or detail-oriented or what have you as your firm is. What to do? One option: Find a new partner. Another: Work with that partner to bring the company up to your standards. Neither option is an easy fix, but doing something, anything, is essential--before customers walk out the door and
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Consumers are increasingly interacting with businesses through a mix of channels. This is especially true in financial services. Consumers now expect to be able to access their financial information and conduct transactions via any channel they desire, whether that channel is digital or physical. Consumers who use multiple channels also expect information to be accurate, up-to-date, and consistent across channels, at all times. This creates a need for accurate, real-time cross-channel updates. Additionally, how a consumer chooses to interact
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Marketers spend a lot of time and energy preparing content to entice their customers to do business with them, and emails are a major mode of delivery to reach these individuals. But these efforts are useless if the messages aren't opened by the intended target, or, worse still, if they don't even make it to a customer's inbox.
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There are some matters that are beyond our control. No matter how hard we strive for the perfect customer experience, certain unexpected factors come into play--factors beyond the company's or brand's control, in fact.
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Earlier this week, my colleagues and I were debating the differences between what makes a good customer experience and if high marks for delivering customer experience translate to that company being truly customer centric.
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The only way your company will differentiate based on customer experience is if the culture of your organization aligns closely with the brand promise to customers. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh puts it in his blog post entitled Your Culture Is Your Brand: "Advertising can only get your brand so far... So what's a company to do if you can't just buy your way into building the brand you want? In a word: culture. At Zappos, our belief is that if
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Greg Sherry, Vice President of Marketing at Verint Systems, about different ways that companies can use workforce optimization tools to foster a customer-centric contact center. This includes the ability to identify agent competencies and align agents' skills and aptitudes, such as first call resolution or cross-selling capabilities, to provide the right support to the right customers at the right time. Additionally, workforce optimization tools can also be used to help act on Voice
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The Temkin Group recently released its second annual "Forgiveness" rankings of companies in a variety of industries. This measures a customer's likelihood to forgive a company for making a mistake. The 2012 ratings asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to rank 206 companies from 18 industries. Not surprisingly, many famous customer-focused companies found their way to the top of the list.
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Social media is like the new cool kid on the block: Everyone wants to be its friend, but they're all worried of mishandling it and end up doing more harm than good. Although many marketers are trying to leverage social media to get close to both customers and prospects, this relatively new medium is not about likes and fans, but about engaging with people.
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"Self-service is the equivalent of outsourcing tier-one service to customers. So if they 'escalate' by calling your contact center, the service had better be great," Strativity Group founder Lior Arussy said emphatically during his presentation at a networking event the company co-hosted with Godiva at the chocolatier's New York headquarters. This situation raises two issues, which came up earlier this week during a conversation with NICE Systems CMO Benny Einhorn at the company's Interactions 2012 customer conference.
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In today's business environment of declining consumer trust and heightened social communication, organizations no longer control how their brand is perceived. Welcome to the Age of the Customer. Gone are the days that brands controlled their image strictly through marketing collateral and advertisements. The advent of social media has fundamentally changed the way that customers seek and share information. Today's customers access information through a variety of channels and are quick to share feedback with their communities, both online
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Big Data is giving organizations a lot of information about their customers, but some are--rightfully--concerned about overdoing it and alienating their customers with intrusive behavior. However, many companies have recognized that as long as they tread carefully and give value to their customers, clients will be more willing to share information. Alan Adams, senior director of marketing and CRM applications at Office Depot, pointed out that companies need to use data to be where their customers are, but at the
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Today's customers are no longer bowled over by a great advertisement unless it targets them individually, giving them information that's relevant to them. This puts extra pressure on organizations to develop marketing campaigns that aren't just captivating, but also give added value.
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Sitcom kids from past generations always had a goal in mind. Whether it was Wally and the Beav or Dennis the Menace, they took on after-school and weekend jobs to earn just a few extra pennies so they could afford whatever the episode happened to revolve around that day. They learned the principles of hard work and the value of a dollar. But today, there are far too many teens who care more about when their shift is over than
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It's no mystery: Social savvy consumers have high expectations and will quickly spread the word when those needs aren't met. The results of the third annual American Express Global Customer Service Barometer released today confirm the lengths those consumers will go when they encounter poor service. The survey results also reveal how dismal the general state of customer service has become.
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Customers are more empowered and more connected than ever, NICE President and CEO Zeevi Bregman reminded attendees during his keynote at the company's Interactions 2012 customer conference. Customers are online shopping and playing more, sharing more, using more media, he added. With the proliferation of mobile, customers can now interact 24/7 from anywhere via multiple connection points: mobile websites, social networks, the contact center, etc. In fact, a NICE survey of about 2,000 consumers found that respondents use six
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Nikhil Govindaraj, Vice President of Products at Moxie Software, about different ways that companies can monitor and act on customers' social media comments to provide timely and proactive support when it appears to be needed.
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"The big change in the world is that patients are taking control." The remarks from TEDMED's Jay Walker at last week's World Health Care Congress captured the prevailing sentiment of the conference for medical and healthcare executives. Nearly every session and keynote focused on the theme that consumers, once a secondary business consideration in the industry, have shot to the forefront of healthcare business strategy.
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Many business leaders consider their most valuable customers as those who are the most profitable or the largest. There's certainly no denying that. Increasingly, customers who are considerable social influencers are also moving up the value chain. But what about the customers who don't buy much, but only buy from you. Customers who give you 100 percent wallet share. Do you know who they are? Do you need to?
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New experiences are exciting, but the fascination can quickly dissipate unless we're continually wowed. This is true for companies, which need to continue to enchant their customers to make sure they don't go to competitors. According to Guy Kawasaki, Apple's former chief evangelist, there are three pillars to make enchantment last--likeability, trustworthiness, and quality. "You need the likeability of Richard Branson, the trustworthiness of Zappos, and the quality of Apple," he said during the SAS Global Forum this week.
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Customers don't just expect the brands they do business with to deliver a great experience; they also want it to be effortless. Regardless of how fantastic a product is or how impressive the services, having to put in effort to make their relationship with a company work will negatively impact the customer experience. The expectation that they don't have to work hard to get what they need from a company continues--perhaps becoming even stronger--when customers decide to stop doing business
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If the roles were reversed, would a company be so honest: On a recent shopping trip I visited Dick's Sporting Goods to purchase snow boots for myself and for my daughter. While there we added gloves and several other items to our cache. The line was long and full of customers impatiently shuffling their purchases as one harried cashier rushed to ring up sales and quickly as possible.
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After attending Forrester's Marketing Leadership Forum last week, I came away with two realizations: 1. Marketers are getting serious about leveraging conversations about their brands in social networks, and 2. Because many marketers are jumping in without a clear strategy about how social fits in with other customer touchpoints, data silos are proliferating.
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We live in the land of make believe. We pretend to "go shopping," but we never leave our chairs. We fill "bags" with items, but there are no handles to carry. Yet, once we click the purchase button, much like the wave of a wand, these products magically appear 7-10 business days later.
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If you're like me, the parent of a soon-to-be college student, you're probably immersed in researching colleges and universities to help determine which ones may be a suitable fit for your child. After all, with a price tag that can exceed $200,000 for a four-year degree, finding the right college for your child is serious business.
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Yes, we all want engaged customers. Awesome products can create customer engagement (think: Apple). A unique customer experience can build customer engagement. But there's nothing quite like engaged, enthusiastic employees to inspire engagement among customers, particularly new customers or those on the fence. In other words, employee engagement--especially among customer-facing employees--is as important as customer engagement, because the former is often essential to the latter. Consider my recent experience with Nike.
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How many times have you bought something from a retailer online only to find yourself facing a sudden onslaught of emails from the company? Too many, I'm sure. Yes, online retailers need their customers' email addresses to confirm their purchases. But it's the more customer-centric companies that actually 1) note that the email will be used for confirmation purposes only, and then 2) ask if you'd like to opt in to their mailing list(s). Many retailers simply opt in customers
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One hundred years ago, Titanic launched. Three days later, she sank, taking precious lives and treasure to an icy grave. In hindsight, saving the ship should have been easy. The captain and crew needed to listen to warnings from nearby ships, communicate more honestly among themselves, and turn hard to port before it was too late. But the main thing they needed wasn't to be invented for 27 years: radar to see dangerous icebergs miles away through the fog.
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Change is exciting, but it can also be daunting. This means that drivers of change have a difficult task on their hands, convincing their colleagues that such a change will be beneficial for the whole organization. Despite the best intentions, organizations often encounter problems when attempting to transform customer experience. According to Lior Arussy, president of Strativity Group, one of the major mistakes that organizations make in their transformation journey is thinking that what's being proposed has already been tried.
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Brand building is a journey for all companies and organizations, said Chris Stutzman, vice president and principal analyst, at Forrester during his opening remarks during Forrester's Marketing Leadership Forum 2012 today in Los Angeles.
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Human beings have the propensity to give, but often lack the follow through. Filling out paper or online forms to make a donation or volunteer can become a chore that discourages the generous from giving both their time and money. But as mobile devices become more widespread, charities and other organizations are also working to branch out, developing techniques that cater to the digital age.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Udi Ziv, President of NICE Systems' Enterprise Group, about approaches for striking a balance between using customer sentiment in social media while protecting customer privacy.
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"Consumers think of healthcare as a complex web," said Joshua Riff, M.D., chief medical director at Target at today's World Health Care Congress event. The company known for customer engagement sees healthcare as a potential new horizon.
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I've noticed lately that a few of my favorite brands seem to be following me around. I clicked through an opt-in email from Ford, which led me to its website. While there I looked at the social badges and explored the 2013 Mustang. Then, during my next visit to Facebook there was an ad for the Mustang. On another occasion I visited Livestrong to track my fitness and was served an ad for clothing retailer White House|Black Market (I'm a
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It seems that everyone now has a Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and any other alphabet soup social media account you can think of. And rabid social media "experts" are calling for every C-level executive to embrace social media as part of their new commitment to transparency.
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The relationship with a company doesn't finish when money changes hands. Even if it's a retail transaction, often that's only the beginning. Especially with increased competition, companies are under extra pressure to ensure that they not only satisfy their customers' expectations for after-sales service, but exceed them. Nine West recently did just that, and what might have been a one-time purchase may turn into a long-term relationship.
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April is customer loyalty month, a 30-day wake-up call for companies to realize that engaging customers one-on-one in stores, through social media, and in marketing communications can have far-reaching effects on customer loyalty, word-of-mouth marketing, and increased sales.
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Even when in public, everyone still seeks comfort in the right to privacy. But for us ladies, "rest" rooms can be the unsettling sore spot of the overall customer experience.
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Many different types of firms have channel partners or others that control a significant part of the actual experience with customers. Automobile companies have dealers, insurance and real estate firms have independent agents, software companies have value-added resellers (VARs), restaurants and hotels have franchises, and heavy equipment manufacturers have resellers. Even the brokers or financial advisors within financial services organizations can act in many ways like these external partners.
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Remember the automat? Walls of vending machines stocked with sandwiches, snacks, and drinks; cafeteria-style dining. Popular in the early 1900s, they began to fade in the 1950s. When Horn & Hardart closed its last automat (on 42nd Street in Manhattan) in 1991, it seemed that gone were the days of getting any food but chips, crackers, and Pop Tarts from a vending machine. But in what seems to be a move to address the snacking needs of today's impatient, on-the-go
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Customer experience, as we all know, is a hot topic. In the rush to embrace and improve it, some business leaders mold its definition to suit their needs. In many cases this means equating customer experience with customer service. They are not the same, and it causes confusion within organizations, as well as in the marketplace, to use them interchangeably.
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Social media and mobile phones have changed the way many people view the world. But the impact hasn't solely been on connectivity, as social channels and text messages gave rise to new ways of communication using text. The prevalence in text-based communication has increased the popularity of chat for customer service use, according to Jeremy Sokolic, senior vice president of marketing at LivePerson. "Text-based communication has become second nature," he said during a recent conversation.
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It's inevitable. We've all experienced an airline horror story at one time or another. Whether it's a delayed flight, lost luggage, or a surly flight attendant, these experiences tend to unite us like the 4th of July.
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Each day, airlines connect thousands of travelers with hundreds of distant destinations. They carry customers from one place to another, often forgetting they are not just passengers, but are people, too. However, for JetBlue, connecting with customers has become a priority at touchpoints throughout the trip cycle. Particularly, JetBlue's advertising initiatives show that the airline cares about each individual customer's experience, not just how the airline is perceived.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Vinay Iyer, Vice President of Marketing at SAP, about the evolution of customer relationship management.
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Think about your favorite action movie. Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The Matrix. Any James Bond flick. What do they have in common? A storyline that goes something like this: In the first few minutes you're drawn into a short chase or adventure--something that immediately gets your heart pounding. It builds up quickly, and then resolves with a big boom! You're hooked. And at that point, the main narrative begins. Over the course of the next 90 minutes or so,
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Today's issue of 1to1 Magazine highlights the Top Mobile Trends to Watch. A number of experts in the industry share what they think are hot topics related to mobile marketing, customer service, and the overall customer experience. Data shows that mobile is a burgeoning channel. However, its promise has yet to be fully realized.
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Customer strategists today face an ever-increasing plethora of challenges across every aspect of the customer experience. While attending the Gartner Customer 360 Summit in Orlando, I asked a number of industry insiders to share their opinions and advice on four of the many hot topics facing customer experience professionals right now. Find out what they had to say:
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I just published Forrester's fourth annual report "The Business Impact of Customer Experience" using updated data from the 2012 Customer Experience Index. Once again the news is good for companies hoping to get a financial boost from their efforts to improve customer experience. In all of the industries we modeled the revenue benefits of a better customer experience range from $31 million for retailers to around $1.3 billion for hotels and wireless service providers.
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Marketers and marketing consultants all too often make the mistake of equating customer loyalty with customer experience. Whether out of laziness or sloppiness, this is a critical miscue in the measurement, analysis, and management of customer loyalty and experiences.
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Have you ever stopped to think how many brands impact your life on a daily basis? Starting from your morning coffee, the transportation you use to get to work, your phone and the network that it operates on, all the items on your desk--the list goes on and on. And when you have a problem with any one of the products and services that you use, you expect the company to be responsive when you contact it, listen to you,
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Mobile is no longer about the phone; it's about being connected. In fact, in some countries there are more mobile subscriptions than there are people (Mobile Marketing Association). Additionally, it takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email, but it takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message (CTIA.org).
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Parents always tell their children to disregard what others think--to march to the beat of their own drum. But for businesses across the board, from fledglings to old timers, consideration of how others perceive the company's products and services can mean the difference between success and failure. One way many companies are getting insight into that perception is by asking how likely customers are to refer friends or associates.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Dave Capuano, Vice President of Marketing at Vovici, a Verint Company, about different approaches for engaging today's empowered customer.
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Social media is an enigma to many executives. Its prevalence can't be denied and all companies should use it as a critical interaction channel. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursqure, Pinterest and others take away the barriers to direct interaction with customers and prospects. The challenge comes from using social media in a strategic way that has a financial impact, not just as a "nice to have" initiative. Many companies are looking for best practices in how to best use social
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Gaining and retaining customer loyalty is no easy feat. Customers are often "loyal" based more on convenience than emotion, which means given a better option their loyalties will change as quickly the weather on a Florida afternoon. Loyalty programs help bolster retention, but they're not a magic bullet for fostering attitudinal loyalty. Earlier this week at Loyalty 360's Loyalty Expo 2012 several speakers shared research findings that reveal just how fickle consumers can be. They also shared challenges and opportunities
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While social media alone creates buzz around your brand, it's gamification that drives engagement across your online community. That's why many enterprise marketers are turning to gamification to measure and influence consumer behavior on their brand-owned Web and mobile sites. By accessing behavior metrics and understanding customers' specific actions that are tied to key business objectives, you can determine how individual users are interacting with your site's content and what drives customer engagement with your brand. This knowledge can be
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Loyal customers are an asset that companies need to look after. Just because someone loves your brand today doesn't mean he won't defect to a competitor if he finds a better deal. It is therefore essential for organizations to work hard to keep their clients enthusiastic about them.
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One thing most likely on every marketer's mind today is integrated marketing. With ever-emerging customer channels and communications devices, marketers find themselves in a constant race to implement effective strategies, processes, and technologies that link communications across channels, ensuring consistency and personalization. In return, they want the complete view of the customer--a picture into their cross-channel behaviors and a guide to what influences them on their journey to purchase.
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Wyndham Hotels is among the brands that have embraced social commerce and put reviews right on its site. According to Senior Vice President of Loyalty Marketing Robin Korman, the company is the first hotel brand to have done so.
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In most respects, there's not a lot of common ground between a regional water utility and a multinational logistics giant. But one thing that does unite the Las Vegas Valley Water District and FedEx is their respective passion for using customer analytics to improve the customer service experience.
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Having the right customer data is essential for organizations to provide the most personalized and relevant customer experience. Harry Rosen Inc. and McAfee have both bolstered the data in their CRM systems to improve their sales efforts while delivering a better customer experience. Their efforts have landed them among the winners of the Gartner & 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Awards, in the sales effectiveness category.
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How do you make a company that sells a commodity like energy stand out? How do you get customers to recognize you, select you, and stay with you? TXU Energy focuses on four basic brand builders: be trustworthy and transparent, customer centric, innovative, and dependable.
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Only 25 percent of customers feel "very loyal" to their preferred brands, according to Tim Suther, chief customer and strategy officer at Acxiom. Worse, 25 percent feel no loyalty at all. How can companies build customer loyalty in this time of customer promiscuity? During his presentation at Loyalty 360's Loyalty Expo 2012 this morning, Suther offered these five tips:
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It's common knowledge that customer focus leads to revenues. So why don't more companies implement customer strategy? They are knowingly leaving money on the table, yet many continue to do it rather than risk facing the "devil they don't know."
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We all know that social is the shiny object in business today. Why are organizations so focused on social? According to Gartner the top reasons are to strengthen relationship with customers, enhance brand awareness/preference, share information and ideas with customers, supplies, and partners, establish an interactive relationship with customers, and increase revenue. These are all valuable goals, but they must tie to specific, measurable outcomes. According to Gartner Research Director Adam Sarner, "businesses must connect the dots of social CRM
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All too often sales teams rely on outdated, unreliable, incomplete information. This makes for poor decision making, Gartner Research Vice President Tiffani Bova said during her presentation at Gartner Customer 360 this morning. Sales organizations need to improve data quality, validity, and quantity to improve their performance. Having the information and acting on it also means being consistent with how and why you use it, she said.
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Community brings people together, uniting them based on their common bonds. With social outlets readily available all across the Internet, connecting with likeminded individuals is merely a click away. Yet, while most companies focus on the company/customer side of social engagement, many neglect to embrace customer interactions with other customers as a means to enhance the customer experience.
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In the recently published 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings, we rated the customer experience of 206 companies across 18 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. This research provides a great benchmark of customer experience, as it compares companies with their industry peers as well as with companies from other industries.
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A great after-sales experience is essential. Not only do customers want to ensure that the product or service they've just purchased works as expected, but they also want the company they bought from to be there to answer questions or help them with any problems.
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CRM is in the spotlight. According to a recent Gartner survey of CEOs, respondents rated CRM as a top priority in terms of avenues for growth, followed by e-commerce. Similarly, Gartner found that increasing customer acquisition, customer satisfaction, and revenue are the top three CRM goals for 2012. During their opening keynote at the Gartner Customer 360 Summit this morning, Gartner's Gene Alvarez, research vice president, and Ed Thomson, vice president and distinguished analyst, shared 10 CRM-related trends to watch
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Is your customer experience where it needs to be? If not, your business may be missing valuable opportunities to boost customer satisfaction and improve retention. Worse yet, you may soon be facing critical problems.
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CRM as a concept has been around for a long time. And many firms have undertaken not just one, but several, CRM initiatives. As such, Gartner has looked at how CRM evolves and developed generational models that explain the changes in thinking and emphasis that we see.
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I've recently been following a discussion thread on LinkedIn on declining consumer sentiment about customer service along with the causes of this (e.g. lack of agent training). While there's no simple answer to this, here are a few points to ponder.
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In our continuing research on the emerging role of the Chief Customer Officer (CCO), we recently looked at the kinds of authority their firms vest in them to drive change across the organization. This authority can affect the activities they do, the composition of the teams that report into them, and the budgets they control. For firms considering putting this kind of senior customer experience leader in place, Forrester has identified three archetypal models that characterize the most typical modes
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Site design, personalization, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are not getting the attention they deserve in terms of the online customer experience, according to Kevin Cochrane, Adobe's vice president of product strategy and solution marketing. "When people think of the online customer experience, they're focused on the design and 'sexiness' of their website. They don't do enough research into who their customers are and what they're trying to accomplish. Not all customers are looking for the same thing," Cochrane told
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Today I made a purchase that I was compelled to make. It wasn't something I needed or had planned to buy. But I had to have it.
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Customers may seem high maintenance, but in fact their high expectations are warranted. Every penny counts in today's economy, so consumers worldwide have come to expect nothing but the best from the companies they choose to purchase from. They expect only the best possible customer experience available, and rightfully so, says Bruce Temkin, managing partner at Temkin Group.
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Have you ever walked into a second-hand store, picked up an item, and wondered where it's been before and if there's an interesting story behind it? Britain-based charity Oxfam is using technology to tell the story of the second-hand items sold in some of its stores. Using QR codes, Oxfam is creating a link between a product's previous owner and its retail shoppers in an attempt to make the shopping experience more interesting and to sell more donated products.
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The noise around voice of the customer is growing. In fact, the balance of 2012 will see an increase in the impact of VoC strategies on customer engagement and loyalty. Not surprisingly, technology, marketing, and customer care service providers are all fighting for their piece of the VoC revenue pie.
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Rising investments in marketing automation have resulted in increasing overlap between the roles of the CMO and the CIO. Gartner predicts that by 2017, CMOs will be spending more on IT than CIOs. Indeed, a growing number of CMOs and other business leaders are circumventing the IT organization when acquiring technology to support their function in order to move faster on deployments and avoid lengthy architectural and compliance reviews.
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UK supermarket chain Tesco has always been afforded a reputation for providing a positive customer experience. But new competition, along with growing customer expectations, a down economy, and a lack of customer focus have taken its toll on the retailer. The company announced today that it would add 20,000 jobs over the next two years, boosting its workforce by 7 percent. Many of those jobs will be created in the customer service department. In these days of automation and cost
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Whenever I see a Chevy Camaro my heart rate revs up. Seriously. If I'm driving and see one parked, I slow down to ogle it. If I'm on the highway and see one up ahead, I'll try to catch up with it to check it out. I'm so struck by them that I feel like I'm cheating on my Ford Mustang whenever I gaze longingly at that sleek masterpiece of a muscle car.
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Imagine this. You decide to follow one of your favorite brands on Twitter and moments later, you experience the briefest jolt of excitement when you see that said brand has sent you a direct message on Twitter. Yet instead, you find the most generic marketing message conceivable: "Thx for following. We'd love to have you as a fan on our Facebook page, too..." Womp, womp.
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People's actions are driven by emotions. And that includes their purchasing behavior. Whether we're buying an everyday item that we need, like a carton of milk, or something we desire, for example, a designer handbag, emotions play an important part in the process.
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AT&T is facing a customer backlash brought on by complaints of data throttling. After a customer in California sued AT&T in small claims court of data throttling, numerous customers have started petitions on Change.org in an attempt to urge AT&T to alter its data policies. The combined petitions have garnered thousands of signatures.
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By most measures, this has been a rough winter for U.S. ski resorts. Across the continental U.S., snowpack is well below average and warm temperatures have made it tough for resorts to make and retain man-made snow. Finding a mountain with even fair conditions has been a real challenge, especially in the Northeast. But past experiences recently led me to a ski resort where I knew I could count on good conditions. And I wasn't disappointed.
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Last week, President Obama unveiled The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, a policy framework designed to provide a "baseline of clear protections for consumers and greater certainty for businesses." The availability and use of consumer data continues to grow. The announcement intends to provide clarity on how companies can use consumer information, and provides consumers with guidelines about their protections and rights.
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When it comes to using customer centricity to improve business performance, there is no one secret formula for success. Customers, companies, and the relationships between them are unique. Therefore, each organization's customer-centric business strategy must be unique, as well.
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CEOs and boards of directors often feel daunted when it comes time to hire a chief customer officer. The two main reasons: There is a lack of a standard definition of the roles and responsibilities of the CCO, and key characteristics of successful CCOs are still emerging.
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Companies want to bridge their information silos to have a holistic customer view, knowing that this will allow them to give their clients a better and more personalized service. While many experts argue that silos are actually necessary to ensure that different departments strive for accountability, focus, and specialization, the ultimate aim for organizations is to have a complete picture of their customers and ensure seamless service across different channels and departments.
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The importance of delivering exceptional customer experiences during a down economy is essential to fostering customer satisfaction--a critical measure for success. But according to the 2011 fourth quarter customer satisfaction report released yesterday by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, there were only mild improvements in customer satisfaction with a yearly gain of .07 percent, and some not-so-surprising winners and losers.
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There's been a lot of buzz about Big Data, as well as misconceptions about what the term actually means. Since this is an area that carries a great deal of significance for customer management professionals, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the topic.
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You've doubtless heard the now-clichéd phrase, the only constant is change. When it comes to marketing, however, the only constant is complexity, according to Bruce Biegel, managing director of Winterberry Group. During his presentation at a Direct Marketing Club of New York luncheon, Biegel shared some insight into that complexity, as well as related trends to watch in 2012.
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Newegg.com is loved--by everyone from technical wizards to those who are just beginning to introduce technology into their lives. A big reason for this adoration is because the company tells the truth about its inventory to customers. The minute its warehouse runs out of an item, Newegg.com marks that product as unavailable or it is removed from its site.
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Making sure that customers are satisfied with their experience with a company is an essential part of any organization's job. However, it's also imperative to make sure that employees are happy, since they're the ones interacting with customers and can have an important impact on their experience.
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I stated in this January article that 2012 will be the year that mobile more successfully integrates with other customer interaction channels. As Forrester reveals this week in the report, "Mobile is the New Face of Customer Engagement" for mobile to successfully blend with other channels and engage with customers, CIOs need to rethink their role, strategy, and organizational structure.
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Each year we put a stake in the ground to identify trends that marketers should pay special attention to. This year we see these on the horizon:
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Valentine's Day doesn't normally conjure thoughts about banking--unless, of course, you're concerned about piling up too much debt onto your credit card account in demonstrating your affection to a loved one. But a recent experience I had with a bank has led me to share the following on this day of romance.
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While I write frequently about the rise of the Chief Customer Officer within firms advanced enough in their customer experience efforts to consider this kind of executive position, I often get questions at a much more basic level, such as: Where do I get started? Often an individual may get mandate from an executive to spear-head creating a greater customer focus at the company. For those, here are seven steps for getting started:
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Social media is like a tornado, creating a whirlwind of open dialog between companies and their customers. This is how Get Satisfaction CEO Wendy Lea described social media to me when we recently discussed the topic.
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In many ways, selling is a bit of a black art. We can't control the customer. They don't buy when we're absolutely certain this one's in the bag, and other times they surprise us with an order in the second meeting. Salespeople pump themselves up every day to go off into the unknown and find revenue. They work hard under a cloud of uncertainty, and at the end of the year, they've put up a number. Then management sticks them
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Customers have come to expect good products and service. What blows them away is when companies go beyond the line of duty, giving customers more than they expect.
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Now that your company is just getting the hang of navigating the social world of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, along comes another site that you should start leveraging...Pinterest.
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The dawn of a new year often marks a spate of leadership changes within many companies and 2012 is no exception. This includes new marketing leaders that have popped up at Facebook (former Levi's CMO Rebecca Van Dyck), Kenneth Cole (former Anthropologie marketing chief Amy Choyne), Macy's (Martine Reardon has been promoted), and Gilt Groupe (Elizabeth Francis jumps from Intelligent Beauty). And while there are multiple factors that can drive changes in leadership changes (e.g. newly-appointed CEO brings in their
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If you're reading this post, there's probably at least one person in your company (you) who's already working to improve your customer experience in some way. That means your company's CX efforts fall somewhere on the curve below.
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Satmetrix's Net Promoter Score has always brought about some interesting debates: Should organizations tie compensation to their? What is the ideal score to strive for? And should it be the single predictor of a company's growth? At the company's Net Promoter 2.0 conference held today and tomorrow in San Francisco, it seems like pundits may have a new discussion in which to participate.
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I had the privilege to attend the recent 2012 NRF convention and was impressed with the buzz around loyalty marketing and customer centricity. In one session Macy's CMO Peter Sachse stated, "We don't need new customers. We need to keep the ones we have and get more out of them." Simple yet powerful; all marketers should take this approach--and will create more valuable brands as a result. Yet, why do so many companies continue to miss the mark here?
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"Customer trust is down." You've seen plenty of headlines like that, especially in banking. But what does it really mean?
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Madonna's Super Bowl half-time show won't be the only attention grabber this Sunday. Mobile ads and location-based services will play an important role in this year's Super Bowl as companies include them in their marketing strategy in a bid to reach more customers and transform a moving image into a sale.
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Sure, most every company would like to handle customer service themselves. For some, let's just say, it's not their core competency. These companies look to outsourcers for assistance--but can you really outsource customer experience? Not if you think of it as getting the lowest price for cheeks in seats.
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There's been a lot of buzz about J.C. Penney lately now that the fledgling retailer has tapped former Apple retail czar Ron Johnson as its white knight. Much of the buzz has centered around Johnson's fair pricing strategy which is designed to keep prices low on the types of products its shoppers typically look for and, in part, by setting up its stores with low-priced merchandise on a monthly basis.
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Whew! What a week. 1to1 Media and Peppers & Rogers Group's 2012 social media week was a great success. We met lots of readers and fans, got some great insight, and connected in ways we've never done before. If you missed any of it, here's a recap of our activities last week:
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When it comes to considered purchases it seems that everyone--B2B and B2C buyers alike--wants a second opinion. In fact, 100 percent of the nearly 100 respondents to 1to1's recent survey "How Social a Social Customer Are You?" seek recommendations on occasion before purchasing an item important enough to research before buying. While only about a third of the survey respondents seek recommendations prior to every considered purchase, only 4 percent rarely ask for recommendations.
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Instead, many companies use social to promote a product, to sell, or to monitor brand mentions. To be truly effective at leveraging social to engage customers and foster loyalty, organizations must transition from using social as a one-dimensional broadcast device to a two-way communications channel that enables meaningful and personalized dialogue.
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Customers are communicating with their favorite brands in an ever-increasing number of ways; along with phone calls and emails, today's customers are increasingly using social media channels not only to follow and interact with companies they're interested in, but also to share their experiences with these organizations.
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Unless you have fresh ingredients, following a great recipe will not lead to a delicious meal. It doesn't matter which Michelin-starred chef penned the recipe or how well you follow it, the stars of the show are the ingredients, and they can make or break your dinner. Similarly, the stars in any company are employees, making hiring the right people and giving them the needed training, as well as constant retraining, an essential factor in creating a fantastic customer experience.
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Often, while browsing the Internet, I notice advertisements that pertain directly to items or topics I've just searched. When shopping at the mall, I'll suddenly receive an email that connects me with an offer for the very store I just left. The eerie wave of awareness stops me dead in my tracks and I wonder, where is Big Brother and how does he know my every move?
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In business, we don't use social media for the sake of being social; we leverage social media to grow our business. However, how can we determine whether a social media marketing or sales strategy is proving beneficial to our bottom line when many of us are still struggling to determine how to measure the success of our social efforts?
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When Susan Boyle walked on the stage of Britain's Got Talent in 2009, both Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan gave the 47-year-old unemployed woman skeptical looks. She expressed her wish to become a professional singer, but had never been given the chance to make her dream come true. And from Cowell and Morgan's facial expression, they didn't seem to believe that her luck was about to change.
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In a recent study, Temkin Group and Peppers & Rogers Group examined the social media activities within companies. It turns out that less than 40 percent of large companies have achieved even modest value from their social media efforts, but nearly 90 percent expect to gain that value over the next three years. A lot of companies are expecting many good things from social media. To gain that value they'll need to have solid social media strategies and good execution.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with SundaySky President and Chief Revenue Officer Jim Dicso about ways that companies can use online video to engage customers and form tighter relationships.
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Today we published Forrester's Customer Experience Index, 2012 (CXi). It's our fifth annual benchmark of customer experience quality as judged by the only people whose opinion matters: customers. The CXi is based on research conducted at the end of 2011 and reflects how consumers perceived their experiences with 160 brands across 13 industries.
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What can Warren Buffett learn from Justin Bieber? Besides the latest dance moves, it turns out celebrities can teach CEOs and other business executives a thing or two about making personal connections with customers via social media. Until now, many executives have hidden behind their size when it comes to customer interactions. Social media tools like Twitter and others break down that barrier, allowing senior leaders and customers to interact in new and scalable ways.
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If you're not harnessing social to its full potential, we're here to help. 1to1 has joined forces with parent company Peppers & Rogers Group to bring you Social Media Week from January 23-27: five days of content and activities that aim to help you launch or improve your social media strategy. Why next week? We're celebrating the release of our social media-themed issue of executive journal Customer Strategist. The entire issue examines how social media drives customer engagement and business
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Adapt or die: It's an adage that many companies have had to heed to remain successful in times of change. New technologies threaten to sideline currently successful ones with the promise of better and faster service and output.
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It's an exciting time to be a retailer. In addition to the announcement made on Monday at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City that retail sales are forecasted to grow 3.4 percent this year, the show also demonstrated that retailers will soon be better positioned than ever to offer customers a seamless, innovative, and convenient shopping experience.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with MediaRoost President Mark Krieger about steps that companies can take to deliver effective customer support via social media channels.
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I opened my email today to a message from Zappos telling me my account may have been hacked. But I'm not alone. 24 million other customers received the same email. While Zappos has made a name for itself with its customer-focused culture, not everyone is a fan. This weekend it became the target of hackers. And the situation may test the relationship it has with customers.
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It seems that marketing folks are torn. In most organizations marketing "owns" social media monitoring and welcomes the opportunity it provides to interact with customers, but they don't want to get pigeon-holed into become the monitoring group, according to Chris Cottle, executive vice president of marketing and products at Allegiance. Cottle called this situation the dysfunctional social paradigm.
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I recently had a particularly bad self-service customer experience that prompted me to think about the experience gaps in many organizations' self-service offerings. Although my experience involved a self-pay kiosk at a parking garage, the basic principles can be applied across virtually any industry.
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With the second week of January coming to a close, the signs of the recent holidays are quickly disappearing. Spendthrifts have been replaced by savers and healthy salads are taking the place of gluttonous meals. What remains of the holidays are the resolutions to be better in 2012. For many marketers, resolutions include a stronger social media presence. According to the State of Social Media Marketing report, by Awareness, marketers want to increase their presence across social media marketing platforms,
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Every organization and company has unique opportunities to create meaningful interactions with their customers every day, through any channel, by engaging customers and offering exceptional value with each touch point.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Russell Keziere, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Pegasystems, about steps that companies can take to leverage real-time analytics to tighten relationships with customers.
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2011 was a pivotal year for the field of customer experience. A major increase in the number and types of consumer technologies had a wide-ranging impact on daily life: People controlled their TVs with tablets, asked their phones questions, and played video games without using physical controllers. The extensive reach of these changes -- and the screaming pace at which they happened -- triggered a corporate awakening to the value of great customer interactions.
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The online world is fast-paced and hectic. Many of us are so focused on keeping up, that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there are other people out there too. Somewhere along the line snarky comments and impatience replaced common courtesy and politeness. Well, Real Simple magazine has had enough, and this week launched "Be Nice on the Internet" week.
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Everyone has a place they love to go because the customer experience is so fabulous. Yours may be a restaurant, boutique, hotel, or spa. It may even be a bank or gym or dry cleaner or copy shop. Or perhaps a gallery, theater, or museum. And the reasons you delight in the customer experience at your favorite place are as varied as the places themselves. The reason you enjoy the customer experience may be because of stellar customer service, but
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Last year was an exciting one for the voice of the customer (VoC) world. We saw significant advancements in a number of key areas, including process, culture, and technology. Ultimately, these moves led to better experiences for customers and better financials for companies.
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With the holidays over, many retailers are offering deep discounts to get their stock moving. But businesses need to keep in mind that slashed prices aren't an excuse for bad customer service, especially considering the cutthroat competition they're facing.
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In 2012, social media will continue to transform our society, businesses, and social discourse. But I wonder if executives are still largely unconvinced that engaging in social sites and blogs isn't relevant to their work.
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1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with Dan McDade, President and CEO of PointClear, about best practices for generating sales leads effectively.
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Quick Response (QR) codes are either poised to take off in 2012 or eventually join the junk heap of other tech flops such as the Apple Newton and Internet currency (remember Flooz and Beenz?). While the emergence of other technologies such as near field communications and digital watermarks may shape the durability of QR, ultimately, the potential for the technology rests with how effectively companies place customers at the center of their QR efforts.
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