Think customers: The 1to1 Blog

Three Essentials of Voice of the Customer

2012-05-16T21:57:25Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

The Social Education: Studying Social to Learn About Customers

2012-05-16T17:00:00Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Building a Better Customer Experience Through the Cloud

2012-05-16T16:58:02Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Bridging the Digital Marketing Gap

2012-05-15T14:40:55Z

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 measure the results, often because marketing efforts are siloed by channel and aren't correlated well together (e.g. tracking the impact of an email marketing campaign on web traffic and conversion rates).

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

How Do I Know If I've Been Spiffed?

2012-05-14T23:18:04Z

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 highly likely.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Do Your Partners Squander Your Customer Experience Gains?

2012-05-11T14:15:14Z

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 don't come back.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Satisfying Consumers' Appetites Across Channels: Snacking, Lunching, and Fine Dining

2012-05-10T16:30:42Z

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 with a financial institution is influenced by the attributes of different devices or channels; consumers are likely to choose digital channels for self-service and the branch for consultation, for example.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Five Ways to Get Emails to Your Customers

2012-05-10T10:49:03Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Removing Other Customers from Your Personal Experience

2012-05-09T17:00:00Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

The Customer Experience Disconnect

2012-05-09T14:44:28Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

9 Ways to Reward Employees to Reinforce Customer-Centric Behaviors

2012-05-08T19:00:00Z

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 you get the culture right, most of the other stuff--like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customer--will happen naturally on its own."

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Hoffman's Hot Seat: Leveraging Workforce Optimization Tools in the Contact Center

2012-05-08T11:41:10Z

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 of the Customer information to drive operational excellence in the contact center.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Companies Measured by a New Important Customer Metric: Forgiveness

2012-05-07T15:20:56Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

Leveraging Social Media for Marketing

2012-05-04T15:24:21Z

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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog

"Self-Escalation" and the Demise of First-Contact Resolution

2012-05-04T12:04:22Z

"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.

There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog