Your call may be recorded

You’ve probably heard it a thousand times.

“You’re call may be recorded and used for training purposes.”

I no longer believe it when I hear it.  And if I don’t believe it, I’d expect many others don’t either.

By all means record calls, make improvements: call centre representatives are a very important bridge to a brand.  But keeping these types of disclaimers on ALL of the time is not the right thing to do.  Far from it.  It’s a lazy and fake way of pretending that you care about customers – and it has a negative effect now.

Could a company be more insincere? If a company wants to try they might want to throw up a library shot of beautiful call centre representatives as a starter!

Filed under: Branding, Business, CRM, Customer Experience, Customer service, ideas, marketing , Branding, call recording, Customer service, training

People & customer experience

David Jackson, the MD of Clicktools has posted about a conference on customer experience organised by the Henley Centre for Customer Management.  Quoting David directly;

Henley’s research into the perfect customer experience identified the top three attributes that drive satisfaction for both B2B and B2C.

For B2C the three are:

1. How helpful the organisation (ie its people) is.
2. How the organisation minimises the time consumers have to spend on a transaction.
3. The organisation’s ability to recognise the customer – i.e. knows about them.

For B2B , what matters is:

1. The extent of personal contact
2. Flexibility in dealing with the customer
3. Demonstrating an implicit understanding of their needs

In summary; you can have all the technology you need, but when push comes to shove, it’s still people that make the difference.

This is great stuff.

I wasn’t there, but I wonder if I may add a spin to David’s summary – just to be clear this isn’t an either/or situation:

You can have all the technology you need, but when push comes to shove, it must be integrated with people, business processes, systems and solutions to really enhance customer experiences.  Truly integrated customer experiences, across channels, are a pre-requisite for solving customer problems.

David’s blog home on e-consultancy is here.

Filed under: B2B, BBC, Business, Customer Experience, Customer service, IT, IT Planning, Software, Strategy, Web, marketing, technology , B2B, B2C, Clicktools, Customer Experience, David Jakson, Henley Centre for Customer Management, People, systems integration, technology

the little things that matter

Adam Kmiec is an Interactive Marketer at Colle+McVoy.  His presentation on Slideshare about micro interactions is well worth looking at.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Business, Conversational marketing, Customer service, Design, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Twitter, User Generated Content, WOM, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0, word of mouth , 2.0, interactions, interactive, marketing, Media, micro, new, social, Twitter, Web

Out of Office

In an era of ‘On Demand’ service and the continued blurring between ‘work’ and ‘play’, is it wrong to put up an Out of Office notice on your email these days?

I am beginning to think most people display far too old fashioned notices – and hide behind them.

I am out of the office from x – x with limited access to email. I will return your email on my return.

I guess it is up to each individual, but please. No access to email? An increasingly unlikely story.
If you are that way inclined, say it as it is;

I am on vacation and taking a break from work and emails. If appropriate I will return your email on my return. If your matter is urgent contact x on x who can help you in x business hours.

For the rest of us how about:

I am on vacation. I will be accessing my emails from time to time but don’t expect an instant reply this time. If your matter is urgent contact me on Mob: xyz.

I really think it is time to cut out the crappy Out of Office email shenanigans. What’s the worst one you have received?

Filed under: Customer service, Direct Email, Email, Fun, Ideas and Riffs, ideas, marketing , Email, On Demand, Out of Office, service

Please help

Sport Relief

(I should apologise for bringing you here by illicit categorisation and tagging, but I won’t. You might have wasted just 10 seconds. Hopefully you will make the choice to change someone’s world in less than a minute).

Filed under: 2.0, ACL, Adobe, Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Analyst, Analytics, Apple, Awards, BBC, Blog, Blogging, Blogroll, Books, Branding, Business, Buzz, CBS, CIM, CRM, Charity, Colour, Computer, Computing, Conversational marketing, Conversion, Cool, Corbis, Customer service, Data, Deloitte, Design, Direct Email, Direct Mail, EMI, Email, Entertainment, Entrepreneur, Events, Experiential, Facebook, Fairchild Semiconductor, Forrester, Fun, Gartner, Google, IBM, IODA, IT, IT Planning, Ideas and Riffs, Illusion, Imagery, Influence, Infrared, Job, Keywords, Knee, MIT, Mac, Measurement, Media, Microsoft, Mobile, Music, News, Online, Online Video, Open Social, PC, PR, Planning, Power 150, Printing, Public Relations, Punchstock, Quotes, RSS, Religion, Remarkable, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, SPARQL, SQL, Salmon, Scene7, Search, Search Engine Optimisation, Second Chance Tuesday, Second Life, Semantic Web, Sinclair, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Software, Sony BMG, Spam, Spectrum, Strategy, Surgery, Survival, TV, Tattoo, The Orchard, Tim Berners-Lee, Twitter, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Viral Coefficient, Virtual Worlds, WIFI, WIKI, WOM, Warner Music Group, Web, Web2.0, White Paper, Wired.com, Wordpress, Xerox, Xuuk, Yahoo!, YouTube, ZX, blogs, bob, copywriting, digital, dotcoms, garfield, iStock, ideas, illustration, last.fm, marketing, ogilvy, permission, photography, podcast, sport, startups, stock photography, technology, trust, venture capital, verge, web 2.0, webmasters, wi-fi, word of mouth , 2008, Advertising, Age 5-14, Animals, Anime, Announcements, Answered, Art, Articles, Barack, Basketball, Bible, Big, Big Questions, Blog, Blogging, blogs, Books, Business, Charity, Children, China, Christianity, Church, clinton, Club, Comedy, Commentary, Community, Crime, Culture, Current Events, Daily, Democrats, Design, Economics, Economy, Education, Election 2008, Elections, Eliot Spitzer, English, Entertainment, Environment, Events, Faith, Family, Fashion, Fiction, Film, Food, Friends, Fun, Funny, Games, God, Government, Health, Hillary, Hip-hop, History, Home, Humor, ideas, India, inspiration, internet, Iraq, Islam, Jesus, John McCain, Journal, Kids, Leadership, Life, Links, Love, marketing, Marriage, Me, Media, Misc, Miscellaneous, Money, Movies, Music, Musings, My Life, Nature, News, Obama, Opinion, Parenting, penguin, People, Personal, Philosophy, photography, photos, Physics, Pictures, Poems, Poetry, Political, Politics, Pop culture, Prayer, Projects, Psychology, Questions, Quotes, Race, Ramblings, Random, Rants, Recipes, Reflections, Relationships, Religion, Research, Review, Reviews, School, Science, Sewing, Sex, Shopping, Society, Software, Spiritual, Spirituality, Sports, Stories, Stuff, technology, television, The Page, Theology, Thoughts, Travel, trends, TV, Unanswered, United states, Update, USA, video, Videos, web 2.0, Welcome, Women, work, World, Writing, YouTube

6 factors that make a marketing leader successful

Forrester’s Marketing department do a great job, and they have cut me a very personal email called the Marketing Leadership home page, which has 6 Success Imperatives – the 6 factors that make a marketing leader successful.

Needless to say each imperative leads to a report that I can’t share, but I can share the imperatives themselves!  They are;

1. Harness emerging customer trends.  Find the results of global Consumer studies which expose how consumers change their interaction with brands, media, and each other.

2. Thrive on market and technology change. Markets and technologies change rapidly, and effect how your firm manages consumers, content, processes, and business partners. This imperative will help you set priorities and select the right tools and markets to stay ahead of your competitors.

3. Differentiate the brand experience. Brand loyalty continues to drop as product cycles shorten and consumers turn away from advertising. To differentiate your brand from the pack, and justify high margins, find the latest research on brand and loyalty management.

4. Optimise the marketing and media mix. “Half of the marketing budget is wasted; we just don’t know which half” no longer holds true. With new marketing and media planning tools and methods, you can raise the return on every marketing dollar and develop effective multichannel campaigns.

5. Build influence across the company. The role of the CMO is evolving from “market communications” to corporate business strategy, putting the customer first in everything the firm does.

6. Create and nurture high-performance teams and partnerships. The changing role of marketing forces leaders to review their organisation, skills, and partners.

Sound advise as usual from Forrester, who I have to say have always been my favourite analyst co.

Filed under: Analyst, Branding, Business, Customer service, Forrester, Measurement, Media, Planning, Research, Strategy, marketing, technology , 6 Success Imperatives, Advertising, Brand, change, CMO, Forrester, Leadership, marketing, Media, Research, trends

Outgoing only

I am sure everyone has received one of these before:

This is an “outgoing only” email address. If you ‘reply’ to this message by simply selecting the reply button, we will not receive your additional comments.

Sounds like a wasted opportunity to start a conversation if you ask me.

Seth Godin reminds us that if you think interacting with customers is expensive, driving costs down is a good thing, and getting people to go away is beneficial – you’re probably toast.

Filed under: CRM, Customer service, Direct Email, Email, Ideas and Riffs, ideas, marketing , CRM, Customer Relations, Email, Ongoing only email, seth godin

Facebook’s crime (and PR nightmare)

Facebook is having a public relations nightmare, and it is great spectator sport for the neutral! But just how is this going to pan out?

Just a few weeks ago Zuckerberg said, “Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online.“ He also said that historically (advertising) media has been “pushed out to people” but marketers would now “become part of the conversation.“Great words. Awesome sentiment. Very savvy. And correct too. So how the hell did Facebook get lost along the way?Whilst Social Ads are great conceptually, Facebook is having to backtrack fast. Is this due to the fact that they didn’t listen to their customers very much? Probably. What a crime.

It just goes to show you can be on the edge of greatness – have an idea that can change an industry – and still get it very wrong.I’m really looking forward to the next instalment though.There is sure to be a lot of lessons I can learn from this.And I can’t help but think that Open Social will be in the mix somewhere.

Edit: 03/01/08 And it goes on.

Filed under: Customer service, Facebook, Open Social, PR, ideas, marketing , Facebook, Google, Open Social, PR, Public Relations

Learning from the B2C sector

There is plenty of discussion out there about B2B and B2C marketing, and whether there is a difference in the disciplines. On the one hand business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy. And yet there is a perspective that buying a product for yourself verses buying for your company is a very different, emotional experience.

Lets face it. There are plenty of good and bad marketing examples on BOTH sides of the divide, and the best marketers will be those that draw best practices from both disciplines.

To that point, this week I saw a great DM piece from Sky. This is clearly a world away from High Technology marketing, but what I received was a timely reminder that you can get inspiration from anywhere.

You see, being a subscriber to Sky+ I get to come home after a hard day at the office, open a beer, and watch my wife’s favourite TV programmes – all series linked using Sky+! It was great of Sky therefore to mail the household to explain that one of the broadcasters in the UK (Channel 4) were making a few changes in my area – and that programmes due to be recorded using Sky+ wouldn’t work on or after a particular date.

Maybe not a big deal at face value eh? Think again. For my wife to be reminded that someone in the household would need to re-select what they wanted to record is a pretty big deal. She works hard all day with two (great) kids, and at the end of a draining day likes nothing more than putting her feet up and watching some dross. With Ugly Betty just one of the programmes set on permanent record, the aftermath of a failed recording would have caused a fair old rumpus in the household.

My wife will have blamed Sky (when in fact this is a broadcasting issue apparently), complained about how poor the service is (it only takes one glitch for a consumer to feel hard done by these days) and held a grudge for quite a while (1 bad customer is worth 10 delighted ones).

The lesson for a High Technology B2B marketer therefore?

The next time a technology partner makes a software update or a major new release, make sure you do a real good job finding out the consequences for your customers, and the potential ramifications. Then in a clear and concise fashion, explain the issues and the route to resolving the issues that might surface.  Why?  Your brand depends on it. And moreover do it right, and you’ll have a brand advocate on your hands – after all my wife passed me the DM knowing I’d love it.

Best practice in building trust, building a powerful brand, and providing exemplary customer service doesn’t require you to think differently just because you are operating in B2B or B2C. Poor is poor, good is good, and great is great whomever your customer is.

Filed under: B2B, BBC, Branding, Customer service, Direct Mail, Software, ideas, marketing , B2B, B2C, best practices, Brand, Branding, Customer service, Direct Mail, DM, seth godin, Sky, trust, vista consulting

CMR – Customer Managed Relationships

I wrote about Customer Managed Relationships (CMR) here back in July.

The debate still goes on here and here. I find it interesting that web 2.0 technologies are very aligned to this ethos, and that in the context of B2B, web 2.0 may help organisations better understand their customers – and at least partially ‘deal with’ or ‘embrace’ the fact that customers (or consumers) are in control.

There has been much debate about the relevance of web 2.0 in the commercial sector. The news concerning Youtube, Google’s Open Social, Facebook & Microsoft has further fanned the flames as B2B marketing managers crave to identify the real value that web 2.0 will bring to the B2B space; over and above standard user generated content and viral video to name just two spheres of influence web 2.o has garnered.

And so I wonder if establishing a real monetary link between web 2.0 and CRM is what will really create the breakthrough in mindset that seems to be needed to tip the balance?

To me there are too many advertising agencies that are still looking to apply new technology against an old paradigm – where advertising and publishing rules.

That is clearly not the case. Customers manage relationships whether advertisers and brand managers like it or not. But perhaps it is time to prove it?

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, B2B, Business, CRM, Customer service, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Open Social, Social Media, Strategy, User Generated Content, Viral, ideas, marketing , B2B, Customer managed relationships, Facebook, Open Social, web 2.0

Testimonials (and reference based selling)

 

I subscribe to a wonderful newsletter, which is written by a chap called Tom Ranseen from No Spin Marketing in Nashville, USA.  In the latest edition (“NoSpin Debunker” October 2007), he highlights a few helpful hints in getting a leg up on the competition with better testimonials usage online (and offline). It ends with the statement;

The objection that some companies have in not putting testimonials (or client lists online) is that competitors will swoop in. Hogwash! If you’re confident of your products and services that is an incredibly small risk compared to the benefits.

I couldn’t agree more.In this day and age of spiralling choices, mounting overload, low attention spans, bought loyalty; where customers demand perfection and the world is full of brands and their noise, what better effort can a marketeer make then build a roster of testimonials? I can think of only 1. Build a remarkable product or service in the first place! But when you’ve done that (or can I say failing that?) showcase some happy customers just like Tom says you should.Here are Tom’s tips which I have abbreviated – but fully represent his work and not mine. His website is here. Go there to subscribe to his newsletter and read his tips about testimonials in full.Keep an ongoing handy (digital) log of all comments (pro and con)Don’t be bashful but be patient. Ask customers for testimonials, directly.Encourage customers to write them in their own words, and short is fine.Or write it for them. If a customer tells you to ahead and write a testimonial for them, do it.Ask them to talk about concrete benefits vs. just “they are great folks.”Try to get a range of responses talking about different benefits, features, service…Include as much personal information as you can: minimally first and last name, and ideally, title and organization (if applicable), and city/state.Get as many as you possibly can. There is no magic number, but more testimonials is better than fewer.Toss any that might be dated (from wayward, past clients, etc) and keep adding and deleting.Use them (or part of them) as “teasers” for longer “customer stories” and meaty case studies.Advanced hints:Use testimonials throughout your site; you may have various pages devoted but sprinkle them across several pages.Don’t ask clients for testimonials until they’ve had a reasonable chance to use your product/service.Encourage some customers to compare and contrast your products/services to a prior, lousy experience with another business (without naming products or companies in the testimonial).If you can handle the logistics, try for video testimonials e.g. at your customer meetings etc.In a world with a myriad of marketing techniques, there is no excuse in forgetting to do the basics.

Filed under: Advertising, Business, Customer service, Planning, ideas, marketing, trust, word of mouth , benefits, customers, marketing, Nashville, No Spin Marketing, testimonials

How Apple creates loyal customers

Inside CRM editors have listed 12 effective strategies that Apple uses to create loyal customers.

In essence ‘complete solutions’, ‘familiar formats’ and the ‘cool factor’, keep customers coming back – but the full list is worth reading.

Filed under: Apple, Branding, CRM, Cool, Customer service, marketing

Customer Managed Relationships

Seth’s low key post “CRM is dead” – has really touched a nerve with me. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.

It might be more than just semantics says Godin. I think he was right. And some.

CMR is our version of CRM – just a slight nuance regarding our philosophy that our guests invite us into their lives and ultimately manage our presence/relationship with them says Disney.

Tech Vendors in the CRM space needed a jolt in the arm, and CMR might still be it. Trouble is their technologies will most likely need to be re-architected, re-designed and re-thought out to actually meet the functional requirements that this shift in emphasis would dictate.

I hope that if CMR does take off, it doesn’t end up getting ruined by CRM technology vendors.  But I do think the time for this is now.

Filed under: 2.0, CRM, Customer service, Strategy, ideas

A Potted History of B2B High-Tech Marketing

A while ago, brands were communicated simply by ‘campaigns’. Blast a message out a gazillion times and the message would hopefully ’stick’, and hey presto…..more sales. A consistent monologue was established. In this era, messages and media were key. Communication was the order of the day. But times change.

A short time ago, brands were communicated via integrated marketing ‘programmes’. Consumers were treated equally across different channels. Messages and creative were executed consistently – and a consistent ‘dialogue’ was established. Channels, dialogue and CRM were key. Building a relationship was the order of the day. But times change.

Today, long lasting ‘experiences’ are required for brands to differentiate and lead. And that means that the bar has been raised yet again. Today’s focus therefore? ‘Experience’ is the order of the day.

‘Experience’ is a process of interaction between consumers and a brand that creates new brand meaning.

Experience takes saying and listening and adds a third activity: ‘making things happen‘.

Is you B2B High-Tech Marketing making things happen?

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, B2B, Blog, Blogging, Branding, Buzz, CRM, Customer service, Direct Email, Direct Mail, Experiential, Ideas and Riffs, Measurement, Planning, Strategy, Viral, blogs, ideas, marketing, word of mouth

T=r+d (Trust = Reliability + Delight)

If you are a Marketing Director, CMO, Marketing Manager…hell…anyone who is trying to describe the power of branding to a luddite – drive them to this presentation.

The Brand Gap

If they still don’t ‘get it’, and they are in the power base, you are working in the wrong company and should pack your things up and leave via the nearest exit.

Straight away.

Two Golden Nuggets

1) Trust = Reliability + Delight (T=r+d)

2) There are Five Disciplines of Brand Building

• Differentiate
• Collaborate
• Innovate
• Validate
• Cultivate

The best presentation I have seen in years.

Filed under: 2.0, Branding, Conversational marketing, Customer service, Ideas and Riffs, Planning, Strategy, ideas, marketing, word of mouth