Touchpoint attribution--the ability of marketers to attribute a sale to the correct marketing effort--has been called the holy grail of marketing. Does this seem a little extreme? Still not sure attribution should be considered the pinnacle of marketing? The claim is likely more appropriate than you might think. Conquering touchpoint attribution may lead you on an arduous journey, but there's a big payoff in the end.
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Smartphones have made it easier for customers to get the best deal. Not only can they search for items they want from the comfort of their own home, but when they find an item they want in a store, customers can scan the barcode and check whether it's available for a better price online. This practice is so widespread that it's impacting a number of brick-and-mortar stores. These retailers are becoming showrooms for online giants, such as Amazon, which are
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There's something increasingly impersonal about today's shopping experience that makes such endeavors a lot less thrilling than they once were. Shopping bags are now virtual lists where we track the items we plan to purchase. Showrooms are websites that offer a basic, two-dimensional view of the products for sale. And when it comes to movie rentals, one can hardly find the DVD they want without consulting an online service or a monstrous kiosk. While we used to be able to
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Sales professionals have all experienced this at one time or another: Crammed into the office conference room for two days and forced to eat stale doughnuts and chug strong coffee, they endure listening to a "sales coach" who preaches to them for 16 hours about a new sales methodology or how to connect with customers.
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Sometimes a CEO takes the reins at a company that's in such great shape, I can't help thinking, "Wow, it must be great to be that guy!"
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A new study released by Amadeus examines the frustrations that travelers have with today's airport experience and how airports are expected to evolve between now and 2025. The study provides a fairly comprehensive look at what passengers dislike most about the airport experience and what they would like to change.
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Social has brought transparency to consumers never before possible. The information that consumers share about companies and that companies reveal about themselves is presenting new opportunities for B2C companies to build and maintain, or rebuild, customer trust--or to lose it in the blink of an eye in one gigantic, public flameout.
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Trader Joe's wants to be your neighborhood store--a place where you're welcomed by people who want to have a personal relationship with you. That's why Trader Joe's resisted installing scanners as part of its checkout process for years. The hesitation came from concerns over the sound the scanners make, usually a "pinging" noise as each item is scanned. The company didn't want that noise to interrupt the conversations at checkout. Trader Joe's ever-changing and growing inventory mix finally pushed the
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Customers are becoming more demanding and also more discerning. One of the reasons behind their amplified expectations is an increase in choices, which mean that customers no longer have to settle, but can choose the best products and brands they do business with. But more than anything else, customers are expecting these brands to treat them as individuals and invest in building a relationship with them. Rather than one-off interactions, customers want a long-lasting rapport that starts even before they've
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We see numerous cartoon animals and celebrity headshots scattered across the shelves as we browse the supermarket, yet when it comes to the B2B market, we rarely have a face to put with the company name. The reason, according to Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer at Corporate Visions, is that B2B companies don't have just one mascot, but an array of brand ambassadors typically known as sales representatives. These salespeople serve as the voice of the company, fostering
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Creating a customer-centric culture isn't an easy feat today. With ever-evolving customer channels, consumer devices, and multiple Web experiences, delivering a targeted customer experience is becoming more and more difficult.
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Customer experience is, quite simply, how your customers perceive their interactions with your company. In Forrester's soon-to-published book, Outside In, Harley Manning and I show that customer experience is a fundamental business driver and--in an age when customers have access to vast amounts of data about your company and its competitors--it's also the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.
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In the next few weeks, both Verizon and AT&T are expected to introduce family data sharing plans where customers will pay for a fixed amount of data to be shared between family members or between device types (e.g. 5 gigabytes for two devices instead of 3 GB for one), according to USA Today. For its part, Verizon would phase out unlimited data plans for customers who renew their contracts or upgrade to new phones. Only customers who pay full price
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Social media strategy is a topic that's front and center on almost every executive's mind. Everyone knows the social world is a critical channel for marketing, sales, and customer service. However, there is no silver bullet or how-to manual for success in the social sphere. The complexity of the space is represented visually in this infographic from Buddy Media that has gone viral.
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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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