Customer experience is meant to be evocative not reactive… We are entering an era of customer-centricity, mostly because we have to. But also, because employing a customer focus is the right thing to do. I guess businesses lost their way at some point. Blame quarterly earnings. Blame technology. Blame politics. But over the years, we overlooked the importance of the “C” and “R” and instead scaled the “M” in CRM. It didn’t hurt that we found ways to save time…
Companies Profit When Customers Suffer
You’ve heard it a million times, a happy customer tells a couple of people and an unhappy customer tells everyone. Yet to this day, executives tend to run business strategy with an emphasis on transactions over experiences. More so, business value is expressed in short-term performance metrics and reports to an audience of shareholders and stakeholders over the very people who keep them in business…your customers. It’s all a bit absurd when you think about it. I know, I know…it’s…
The Top 25 Socially Engaged Companies on LinkedIn Invest in Employee and Customer Relationships
LinkedIn and Altimeter Group published a joint report on the value of corporate social media and its role in customer and employee engagement. To do, we formed a baseline of companies that were actively engaged on a platform we could effectively study. After eight months of research, we assembled a list of the Top 25 Socially Engaged Companies based on how they use LinkedIn to engage employees and customers in the following areas: 1. Content marketing 2. Employee engagement 3….
Disrupting the B-to-B-to-C Model
Guest post by Gib Bassett (@gibbassett), Global Program Director, Consumer Goods, Teradata Business disruption sometimes happens very quickly, almost too fast to react. Consider what happened to Blockbuster as movie rentals shifted online. Other times it happens more slowly but is no less impactful. Case in point: how online, mobile and social channels are transforming the way we shop and make purchase decisions. The industries most affected – retail and branded consumer products – possess entrenched business models that pre-date…
The Accidental Narcissist and The Future of Customer Engagement
Have you ever noticed that your Facebook News Feed is the digital equivalent to “It’s a Wonderful Life?” Perhaps you’ve liked your Instagram stream to that of “Lifestyles of the Digital Rich and Internet Famous.” In each network, and across multiple social streams, you’re fed a visual buffet of travel, food, fashion, celebrations, which in assemblage, tell the story of life well lived or at least a life well curated. And at the center of each of these experiences is…
Stop Talking About Technology and Start Designing Experiences
As Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore wrote in the Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage, the future of business is less about products and more about creating experiences. That’s right. You’re no longer in the product business. Products are a by-product of experiences you set out to create. Products are also social objects that spark desirable relationships between you and customers and also among customers. The future of business is experiences. One year after launching What’s…
4 Steps to Connecting with—and Engaging—Generation C
Connected, empowered consumers—also known as of Generation C—have come to expect businesses to know them, to understand them, and to deliver what they want, where, when and how they want it. I recently published an ebook with IBM, The Connected Consumer and the New Decision-Making Cycle, that explores the new decision making cycle of connected customers. You can download it for free here. Thanks IBM! The goal of the ebook, and also this post, is to introduce readers to the differences…
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The Accidental Narcissist And The Future Of [Connected] Customer Engagement
Have you ever noticed that your Facebook News Feed is the digital equivalent to “It’s a Wonderful Life?” Perhaps you’ve likened your Instagram stream to that of “Lifestyles of the Digital Rich and Internet Famous.” In each network, and across multiple social streams, you’re fed a visual buffet of seflies, travel, food, fashion, and celebrations. In assemblage, they tell the story of life well lived, or at least a life well curated. At the center of each of these experiences…
The First Mile: The Broken Link of Social Media Customer Service
Part One. An edited excerpt of What’s the Future of Business, Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences For all that social media is doing to change business for the better, it’s not yet enough. Interview any executive and ask them what their priority business goals are for 2013 and I’m sure you’ll see some element of customer-centricity on the list. Yet the challenge that exists for any organization trying to get closer to customers lies in the definition of…
The Imminent Shift from Social to Digital Engagement
How do you define engagement? No matter how you define it, engagement is something that we most likely underestimate. Engagement symbolizes the touches that occur in various moments of truth and this should completely change not only how you engage someone in each moment but also how the inside of your company works with one another to make it frictionless and experiential. Whether a customer stands on the stage of awareness, consideration, purchase, or post purchase, touch points open and…
