Blog: customer experience management

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Thoughts from Neolane Evolution

Jul 6 2010

I recently attended the Neolane Evolution 2010 in wonderful Paris and I was impressed by the number of attendees. I had the opportunity to talk to a number of them about the challenges that they are facing in marketing today. It was also a great opportunity to hear from marketers about the interesting things and areas that they are exploring, as well as how they are leveraging Neolane.

Here are some of the broad themes that I heard at the conference:

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Gaining Momentum with Moments of Truth

Mar 24 2010

Identifying customers’ Moments of Truth is a great place to start to build a program for improving the customer experience.  But, it's just as important to figure out how to determine which changes to the Moments of Truth you should implement and how you measure the success of each initiative. Customer Experience improvements need to be a ‘win-win’, meaning it should meet or exceed customer expectations, but should also pave the way for improvements to your bottom line.  To get the commitment for making changes, it’s as important to impress the CFO as it is the CCEO (Chief Customer Experience Officer).

 

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Building Your Own Online Community

Mar 4 2010

We are all familiar with the typical social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but some companies are bringing social media in-house and reaping enormous dividends.  While shopping for some outdoor gear, I came across Backcountry.com and discovered a whole community of customers who were actively participating in the e-commerce site.  Almost every item I viewed on the site had a collection of reviews, comments, Q&A and customer-submitted photos.  Before purchasing a shirt, I was debating which size to get and decided to post a question to the "Product Wall" about whether it runs large or small.  Within an hour, I received an answer, not from a Backcountry.com employee, but from a fellow customer on the site who had purchased the shirt a week before.  Add to cart, checkout.

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Honda Uses Facebook to Build an Online Community

Jan 12 2010

Honda recently caught my attention with their new social media marketing campaign - "Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda".  I found this particularly interesting because Honda is directing people to Facebook in order to participate in the experiment.  I could not recall another company of Honda's stature using a foremost social media platform for an official marketing campaign and customer engagement platform.  Interesting!

After visiting the page myself, I see that Honda has amassed an impressive network of 268,000 fans (as of Nov 2009).  Counting all of the fan's friends, this network reaches over 3.3 million Facebook users.

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Let customers control how/what/when when they hear from you

Dec 29 2009

One of the most annoying aspects of the customer experience does not have to do with the shopping experience but with the communication experience.    A constant refrain we hear from customers across the board (whether in B2B or B2C situations) is that they get too many calls or emails but often do not hear when there is relevant news that they are truly interested in.  On the other hand, a surprising (and dismaying) number of marketers still measure their productivity by the sheer volume of outbound communications (email, direct mail, calls, touches, etc.) rather than by the quality or even the relevance. 

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A bad customer experience has far more impact than a good one ever could.

Nov 4 2009

I was at the gym this morning - a local establishment I recently joined - and was surprised by how cold it was inside.  I looked at the thermostat to find that it was only 56-degrees.  The individual at the front desk didn't have a key to the thermostat so I proceeded to workout, albeit uncomfortably.  As I was leaving, I saw one of the managers and informed her of my concerns about the environment.  Her response: you need to work a little harder then.  What?  I left, shocked and disappointed by her comment and thinking about my options (read: find a new gym).

In my line of work, we often discuss customer experience management (CEM) from a channel perspective.  How well does an organization present information on the Web?  What kind of customer information is the call center using to handle inbound requests?  How quickly does an email get answered? 

And yet, we know that solving channel complexities is only part of the equation.  Having a solid web strategy doesn't make you more customer-centric.  Treating your customers well all of the time does.  Forrester analyst Bruce Temkin calls it "obsessing about customer needs" and I agree.  No amount of technology can compensate for not putting the customer at the center of everything you do.  

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What's in a name?

Aug 5 2009

Customer Data Management. Customer Intelligence Management.  Data Intelligence Management.  The notion of using customer data to drive investment decisions has propagated many organizational names and acronyms over the last few years.  Customer Intelligence Officers were crowned, integrated task forces were formed, and dedicated publications multiplied.  Why?  Because data = $.

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Will hard times spur innovation?

Jul 13 2009

Based on what I observe with many of our clients these days, particularly the ones that are hurting the most, I wonder if "hard times bring forth innovation".   Clients in multiple industries seem more open to considering new ways of doing things, perhaps because the same old same old is simply not working anymore  Or is it perhaps because they are so desperate, they will try anything?   Actually, having spent some time with senior marketing executives as well as general managers, I think the smart ones see an opportunity to actually use these hard times to execute on ideas they have had for some time - so it may be a case of not letting a crisis go to waste.  

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