Can one simple oversight bring our stock price down 8% in two weeks?

It is easy to underestimate the new power that consumers have in the digital world. Don't let it happen to you. Will it take a disaster to get our attention. Let us hope it isn't so. Now is the time to obsess about how our customers may point out our vulnerabilities.

Almost five years ago, I was sitting in the conference room of one of the world’s largest insurance companies, trying to push the idea of social customer relationship management to their corporate marketing team. I showed them the power of Twitter and Facebook, and painted pictures of how they could get closer than ever to their customers with these then-new touchpoints. Roughly 4 hours and 45 slides later, the CMO stood up, shook my hand, and told me how he realized going social and “being there” for his customers was important. And then he added that he just didn’t have the bandwidth for it. He explained why his company was just not ready to go social, and why he believed it would be far too risky to allow his customer service onto public forums or leave his brand open for user generated debate. About six months later, a tweet from an angry customer went viral and brought the insurance giant’s stock prices down by 8%. In a mere two weeks!

Read more: The Customer Support Hierarchy of Needs - Vikram Bhaskaran - Harvard Business Review

What should you do to start the journey of constituent experience?

The effect of everyone jumping on the constituent experience bandwagon is a slowdown in the maturation of this new business discipline. Confusion abounds as does disbelief. No one wants to risk exposing their constituents (and their job security) to new engagement practices that might increase instead of decrease frustration and churn.

However, the growing confusion opens unique opportunities. Here are a couple of strategies to start action plans around.

• Creating a disruptive mindset by reimagining your business and constituent relationships in a digital world.


• Making trusted content the center of your business strategy and constituent experience.


• Infusing social constituent experience across all business functional and digital touch points.


• Repeatedly measuring and proving the financial results.

If you haven't begun the journey, now would be the time to start.

“Lithium’s blueprint is in direct response to customer requests for advisory and insight services to help them make their social customer experience strategy a reality.” He defines social customer experience as “unlocking the passions of your customers in the digital world in a way you can capture those insights, measure them and empower your organization to bring your customers along.” ~~Rob Tarkoff, Lithium Technologies President and CEO

Growing Constituents And Revenues Are Top Priorities For 2013

As more signs point to strengthening economic activity in the US and selected regions of other parts of the world, corporate austerity is fading and growth is back in the spotlight. Acquiring customers, improving the customer experience, and growing revenues have returned to center stage. Forrester Research recently asked more than 2,000 global business decision-makers at large organizations what their “critical” and “high” priorities are for the next 12 months. We found that:

• Their top priority is acquiring and retaining customers (73%).
• Tied for the top spot is growing overall company revenue (73%).
• The third most important priority is addressing the rising expectations of customers and improving customer satisfaction (68%).
• Lowering operating costs now only takes sixth place on the priority list (63%).

It is evident from these data that effectively managing customer relationships has become the top priority for business success.

Better customer experiences drive improvement for three types of loyalty: willingness to consider another purchase, likelihood to switch business to a competitor, and likelihood to recommend to a friend or colleague. Forrester's models estimate that the revenue impact from a 10-percentage-point improvement in a company’s performance, as measured by Forrester's Customer Experience Index (CXi) score, could exceed $1 billion.

More here: Carpe Diem With The CRM Playbook: Growing Customers And Revenues Are Top Priorities For 2013 | Forrester Blogs.

Are there risks to mobile CRM?

There's no stopping the mobile CRM revolution, but those who rush into it headlong with an eye only to the many benefits may be in for an unpleasant shock. As if we didn't have enough to worry about, mobile CRM is laden with risks, too -- from getting on the wrong side of the customer to getting on the wrong side of the federal government. Then there are the myriad security concerns that go along with making sensitive company data accessible on a device that may be woefully insecure.

More here: The Hidden Risks of Mobile CRM, Part 1 | Mobile CRM | CRM Buyer.

Is your contact center loyalty focused?

Is your contact center loyalty focused? One of the trends I am seeing is that as companies more fully understand the link between customer experience and loyalty, especially with customer service, they are increasingly viewing contact centers as value-creators and not just cost centers.

Some of the effects we are seeing is less focus on average-handle-time and other productivity metrics, more focus on customer feedback and quality metrics, more on-shoring of previously off-shored interactions, and more investment in agent training and coaching.

Tidbit: Consumers that are satisfied with customer service interactions are more than 4 times as likely to repurchase than those who are dissatisfied.

Interested in a Voice of the Customer Program? First build executive support

Interested in a Voice of the Customer Program? First build executive support. Those who have gone through the process all say it is critical.  It is also consistent with research showing that executive support builds a foundation for VoC success.

Executive support helps Customer Experience pros put key building blocks in place, such as adequate tools to collect and analyze data and processes to systematically act on it.

How do you build support? Prove the value of the program by demonstrating tangible business value. Track the results of service recovery efforts to save unhappy customers and aggregate the results of improvement projects initiated by VoC-collected data.

So, get started fast but make sure the C-suite is on board.

5 questions to ask about your customer focus

Whether you are a business leader of a department or the CEO, these questions make sense to ask and get answers about.

Asking the right questions is most of the job some days. Thanks to Peppers and Rogers for their insight into these questions. They have been at the customer focus for a long time now.

1. How many new customers are you attracting and what is their value?

2. How many customers are you losing; why and what is their value?

3. Why are your continuing customers loyal to you?

4. What is the profitability of each customer group?

5. Are your customers vouching for you?

Read more: Customer Strategy | Making Customers an Asset of Your Business

What is the Customer Experience Index? Why should you care?

Is it ok to your investors to ignore money on the table by providing a mediocre customer experience?

Kerry Bodine, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, discusses what Forrester's Customer Experience Index is and what it means for you at Customer Experience Forum 2012 in Los Angeles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTlpizEuuHM

Related articles

• How to Build a Connected Brand through a Better Customer Experience (greatfinds.icrossing.com)


• Why some companies succeed without focusing on customers (customerthink.com)


• Who are the UK's 2012 Customer Experience Leaders and What Can We Learn From Them? (customerthink.com)


• Customer Experience and Outside In thinking (and our book about it) (forrester.typepad.com)

What is the future of customer surveys in our brave new world of customer experience?

What is the future of customer surveys in our brave new world of customer experience?  As more companies thirst for customer feedback, the number of surveys has escalated. But there is a limit to customers’ willingness to complete surveys. I know, as a customer myself, that I am growing weary of completing the long, almost narcissistic surveys. 15 to 30 minutes, really???

As completion rates get more difficult to maintain, companies will become more efficient with the questions they ask, target questions at specific customers in specific situations, and stop relying as much on multiple-choice questions. Tidbit: When the Tempkin Group asked large companies with Voice of the Customer programs about the changing importance of eight listening posts, multiple choice survey questions were at the bottom of the list.

Customer Experience Update: 11/3/2012

Fidelity Communications Brings Customer Experience Into the Contact Center For smaller companies, superior service often becomes their ticket to success. For Fidelity Communications, a high-speed Internet, phone, and cable TV provider based in Missouri, transforming their contact center became the way to satisfy customers and engage call center agents across multiple states, thereby cutting costs, decreasing hold time, and building loyal relationships in an industry overshadowed by big business.

Hoffman's Hot Seat: Building the Contact Center of the Future 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman catches up with Paul Jarman, CEO at inContact, about the trends that are shaping customer service, including rising customer expectations and the need for companies to become more agile and responsive in meeting the needs and preferences of their customers, and how these factors are influencing the requirements for running the contact center of the future.

6 Tips for Social Media Customer Service - Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate and is providing organizations a new way to interact with their customers and foster relationships. And customers themselves are leveraging social media to get the answers they need from the brands they do business with quicker and also magnify their voice. According to Jasdev Dhaliwal, head of communities for global social media and online engagement at AVG, 17 percent of Americans have used social media for their customer service needs at least once in the past year. "Customers have a voice and they're using it," Dhaliwal said during the Social Media for Customer Service Summit organized this week by Useful Social Media.

Your Customers Are Complaining. Do Something About It - I'm about to start a gut renovation of my kitchen, which, of course, is an incredibly stressful -- not to mention expensive - project. For cabinets, we got a recommendation for a designer at a local cabinet store. We met with her, got some great ideas, and went home to wait for the quote.

How do you turn bad customer service into a win-win?

Customer service isn't always easy. No product or service is perfect. Customers get frustrated. There are some basic principles that executed consistently can turn bad customer service into a win-win.

Here are some very good ideas from Amber Schaub, founder and CEO of RuffleButts, an online retailer specializing in clothing for toddlers, offers a few tips on providing excellent customer service based on her five years’ experience as a small-business owner:

• Always respond promptly. Even if you don’t have an immediate solution, customers like to know their complaint has been heard. Offer a tentative time frame if possible, or let them know you’re working on a solution.


• Carefully choose employees. Employees who will be working in the customer service department or handling any customer interactions. “They are ultimately your voice,” says Schaub.


• Make it personal. Include a handwritten note or a personal follow-up call.


• Follow the golden rule. Treat your customers as you would like to be treated in a similar situation.


• Use the Wow factor. Wow them. They will never forget it.

via How to Turn Bad Customer Service Into a Win-Win : topic :: American Express OPEN Forum.

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• 5 Tips for Using Social Media as a Customer Service Tool (entrepreneur.com)


• New Study Shows 20% of People Turn to Social Media for Customer Service Complaints (prweb.com)

Are you thinking customer experience?

Passion for our customers is what it is all about. Here are some recent articles focused on the customer experience.

Protecting Our Data-Driven Efforts In a world that's ever-more reliable on data, some proposed policies in front of Congress threaten to hamper companies' customer-experience efforts. If Congress passes some of the proposed data privacy bills, personalization in marketing and one-to-one communications will deteriorate.

Data, Data Everywhere The new reality of marketing is one in which consumers expect a sophisticated level of personalization in their communications, offers, and interactions with companies. At DMA2012 in Las Vegas, thought leaders from all aspects of the direct marketing industry will converge to discuss and share best practices about how to help organizations move forward on the path toward integrated, one-to-one communications.

Why Some Companies Succeed--For Now--Despite Their Poor Customer Experiences Recently there was a question via email from one of Forrester's clients, who asked: "How do you explain the success of companies that consistently provide a poor experience but perform well financially?"

Delivering Customer Service That Makes an Emotional Connection Many companies strive to provide great customer service. However, few companies deliver the kind of customer service that makes an emotional connection with customers - the kind of connection that fosters loyalty and willingness if not an eagerness among customers to recommend a company to a friend.

Related articles

• Moving from Customer Service to Customer Experience (customerthink.com)


• Customer Service Drives Sales (customerthink.com)


• Reverse Customer Service Strategy (smallbiztrends.com)

How much does it cost you to get one new customer?

In the world of marketing and the customer experience, there are two things worth knowing. Do we know the answers? If not, we should. Seth Godin nails them both.

Two things every business and non-profit needs to know:

• How much does it cost you to get one new customer?
• On average, what's that customer worth over the relationship you have with her?

The internet revolutionizes both sides of the equation.

For more, read Seth's Blog: Lifetime value of a customer/cost per customer

Is our strategic plan called "doing things"?

I don't think I would advocate not having a strategic plan but they probably could be simpler than we make most of them. Regardless of what you call it, the focus should be on getting something done, on doing things. The focus should be execution.

In the world of business technology, speed is huge. Executing is huge. Results reign supreme. Experiments are the norm. We ought to obsess about the customer and sweat the details about executing what helps them. We should keep moving and never stop thinking of what the customer experience is like. No stone should be left unturned in our pursuit of amazing customer service. It is in fact the small courtesies that great an emotional connection to our products and services. Is every contact with us memorable? Did we add value?

Are we doing it? Are we getting it done today?

“We have a strategic plan. It’s called ‘doing things.’ ” —Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines CEO and Founder

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• Busy Planning Strategy Without Thinking Strategically (relationship-economy.com)


• 3 Simple Keys to a Strategic Plan That Rocks! (ruralstops.blogspot.com)