Which marketing platforms are here to stay?

The sheer number of marketing applications offered as downloads or services is exploding. Everyone wants in on the real-time marketing game, likely because as the U.S. and the world come out of an extended economic downturn, there are few places more ripe for automation leading to efficiency than how we market and sell goods. What’s more, the […]

Analytics at the core of customer engagement

There’s so much customer data around us, and it gets richer and faster each and every day. People are talking non-stop about Big Data and its many uses in various parts of the market. But what’s not really getting as much attention is how analytics are used to make loyalty platforms effective for meaningful customer […]

Customer engagement surfing big data insights

Beaches, believe it or not, are a fantastic way to analogize customer engagement, Big Data and right-time marketing. Everyone loves the beach and its complex interaction of soil, wind, sea, geography, and physics. It has a course-grained scale like wave breaks and dunes, and is also very discreet at the level of drops of water and […]

Misadventures in customer loyalty management

Recently, I had a great bad experience in brand social media use. It was great as a timely reminder of the danger of impersonal customer engagement, especially for someone who works in customer loyalty. It was bad because that lesson came at the expense of hours wasted at the airport. The Story My husband and I flew […]

Retail banks should take a lesson from omni-channel retailers

In a previous post I commented on the lack of innovation in retail banking in the UK and in other European countries. Riding the waves of the digital revolution, there is no doubt that most retailers will eventually adopt an omni-channel (‘OC’) approach to customer service. But is this equally true for retail banks? With […]

It only takes seconds to lose a customer

Getting the right information on demand is an eternal problem of today’s knowledge workers, and will only grow. Lack of knowledge causes a delay in decision-making, and ultimately leads to bad decisions. This is the essence of the Two-Second Advantage, where a little knowledge in the correct context at the correct time is much more […]

USAA knows something other companies don’t

I used a long drive to Northern California this week to catch up with my insurance company, USAA. I had a laundry list of things to cover from a birth to a death and from selling a motorcycle to buying a new car. These administrative changes can take a long time and involve being passed […]

Don’t think like your customers, get them to think like you !

Predictive analytics is big business now. Hand in hand with Big Data they represent one of the only ways to get to know your consumer market and understand how they’ll behave under conditions, respond to marketing and react to incentives. But the problem with all of this is that it’s a constant cat and mouse chase, consumers are […]

Frustrated With Your Shopping Experience? It Doesn’t Have to Be this Way.

The following is a guest post by Sean O’Shaughnessey. I admit it, I hate shopping. When my wife hands me a list for the grocery store I am convinced she is trying to punish me for some past transgression. I know better than to argue with her though, so I dutifully head to the store. […]

Operational excellence, meet customer intimacy

Most organizations continuously strive to achieve operational excellence, but they spend less effort understanding customer needs — and few marry these two sources of customer value effectively. While a focus on lowering costs, improving quality, and providing consistent, reliable service will continue to be important, I see a shift in the coming decade to combining […]

Stop relying on luck for a good shopping experience

The following is a guest post by Sean O’Shaughnessey. Recently, my daughter was in the market for a dress and her experience with the retail store was so positive, she became a fan. Her particular experience was due to a one-in-a-million, perfect store clerk with a photographic memory. Yet now, technology is capable of consistently reproducing […]

There’s a technology tsunami hitting the world of commerce

I had a great chance this week to catch up with a friend from Venture Beat about my thoughts on what’s revolutionizing our world in this moment. While that’s a broad question, the answer is very specific: The patterns for how people buy and sell are shifting very rapidly.  Buying and selling touches everything that we […]

Customers are just part of the process, not the journey

Journey won 8 awards including Game Of The Year at the DICE conference this week, an accolade which was well deserved for a number of reasons. You control a solitary figure and guide it through a personal story, along the way meeting the occasional lone figure who is controlled by another over the net. But […]

Delighting customers is the new black

Customer experience management is a very hot topic because so much is in flux at the same moment. Before recent times, we managed customers as demographic segments and used focus groups and segmented lists to design and deliver the best message at the best time based on a great deal of pre-planning. And we were […]

Meeting your customers where they are, anytime, anywhere

Many made predictions as 2013 kicked off, but one caught my eye. Forrester’s Nigel Fenwick called this new year the Year of Digital Business. As Fenwick points out, there has been a communications evolution that has many retailers scrambling to find ways to get closer to their customers with innovative new technology to beat the […]