Think customers: The 1to1 Blog

Transparency and Trust in B2B

2012-05-25T13:57:28Z

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 Customer Experience Obsession

2012-05-24T17:00:00Z

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 company to concede to the technology in order to efficiently manage the business. But it wasn't until the grocer was absolutely sure the sound of the "ping" from the scanner didn't interrupt the ﬂow of conversation between cashier and customer.

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In Marketing, It's All About Building Relationships

2012-05-24T10:03:20Z

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 decided to start doing business with a company. The relationship doesn't start when money changes hands, but as early as the marketing phase.

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Building Your Brand Message: Salespeople as "Brand Mascots"

2012-05-23T18:00:00Z

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 relationships and facilitating the conversations that build customer loyalty.

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Companies Lack Contextual Customer Data

2012-05-23T16:20:37Z

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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Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business

2012-05-23T02:00:20Z

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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Exploring the Customer Centricity of Mobile Data Plans

2012-05-22T13:46:49Z

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 for their mobile phones will be able to keep their unlimited data service plans for a flat $30 monthly fee.

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INFOGRAPHIC: No wonder social media strategy is so hard

2012-05-21T14:48:58Z

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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A Sweet Case of Surprise and Delight

2012-05-18T18:55:07Z

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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The State of CX Management: A Story of Haves and Have-Nots

2012-05-17T17:00:00Z

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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Five Tactics to Avoid Survey Fatigue

2012-05-17T10:18:59Z

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 their email address when purchasing a product or service, it's becoming easier for organizations to reach out to them and ask what they think.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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