Orange County Customer Experience Awards: Part 1

Over the course of the past couple weeks, I have been impressed by some local firms providing an exceptional customer experience. I’d like to highlight some of them over the next few weeks, and have thus begun the Orange County Customer Experience Awards. By the way, if you’ve recently had a great experience with a company, let me know. I’d love to hear about your experiences, and possibly highlight them here. PLEASE NO SELF PROMOTION.

While my experiences are with small, local firms, I believe enterprises should take note and evaluate how they might provide the same type of exceptional customer experience even if they are a $10 million, $100 million, or billion dollar company.

My wife and I recently had our second child, and after much research and online shopping for “dual strollers”, we decided to check out a local shop to actually see these modern engineering marvels that have ever bloated sticker prices, functions and features to see what all the hype was about.

We had been informally introduced to a local boutique firm called OC Travel Tykes that takes an expert consultative approach to strollers. I know, I know, it’s strollers for pete’s sake. But the captivating part was, once we arrived to meet Kelly (the owner and proprietor), she took the time to do a relatively exhaustive needs analysis on our lifestyle, asking a number of questions like “how often do we travel?”, “How often do we exercise?”, “How old is your oldest, and how often do they like to ride in a stroller?”, etc.

Once this initial conversation was completed, Kelly introduced us to each of the strollers that were candidates for our needs, and explained why certain strollers probably weren’t the best fit for our needs, ultimately allowing us to drive the conversation, while taking time to give background on each company, philosophy, parts and materials, frequency of returns, and pros and cons of each stroller.

The experience (regardless of the product) was one of the best I’ve been part of for quite some time. I kept thinking, “This is such a phenomenal experience. All things the same, I want to buy our stroller here.” A bit of perspective; This type of reaction happens in me about once every 4 years. Since I live and breathe CRM, I find myself being generally overly critical in evaluating vendors across the board.

Time passed, life is busy. Kelly politely placed a couple of follow up calls about a week apart.

Ultimately my wife and I stepped back into the “Stroller mindset”, discussed our options, cringed a bit at the price, and had made our choice. We planned on heading back to OC Travel Tykesthe following weekend to to pickup the stroller, but discovered that another major vendor was having a 20% off sale.

While I was impressed with the customer experience, I wasn’t about to pay a 20% tip for the experience. After all, customers are fickle, and though I hate to admit it, I fall into that category. I called Kelly and explained to her the situation. I wanted to buy from her. I would gladly pay a small premium, but I couldn’t justify paying 20% more. After some consideration, Kelly offered to meet the price, and candidly shared that it didn’t leave much margin for her since she operated on a relatively small volume, but that she was happy to do it.

THINGS THAT OC TRAVEL TYKES DID RIGHT THAT VERY FEW COMPANIES ARE ABLE TO DELIVER

1. Offered a unique value proposition
Strollers are typically offered through big box department stores with low wage employees with very little expertise is strollers. In addition, no one else that I am aware of offers the “life needs analysis” that we received.

2. Low Barrier to Entry
OC Travel Tykes offers “Try before you buy” options. I haven’t seen that anywhere else

3. Personalized Service and Flexibility
Kelly schedules one on one appointments the best that she can. This avoids the typical retail experience of talk for 2 minutes, and then off to help another customer. She also allowed price flexibility for a business case/proposition that made sense.

BENEFITS OF OC TRAVEL TYKES APPROACH

1. She earned our business
Now granted, she didn’t make a mint off of our purchase, but she did get compensated for her time and efforts. She moved one more unit for her vendor. Multiply that by dozens of customers and you begin to see meaningful profits.

2. She created a “Fan”
I am now blogging about my experience. Anyone who has been in sales and marketing will tell you that the best lead is a personal referral.

3. Free Marketing
Not only will I tell my friends and family, but also thought that this experience was noteworthy enough to write about it. I have no idea how many new strollers or associated products she might sell because of this word of mouth, but it is probably more than the one that I bought. Multiply this be a few others who comment personally or through social media, and one positive experience multiplies into dozens of sales

4. The potential for repeat business
The next time I need a stroller (God forbid we have triplets), guess where I am going to go first? OC Travel Tykes. They’ve earned by business. Depending on the longevity of the company, my kids could potentially buy strollers from there when they have kids. This is how great organizations are built.

Do you know of any other companies in Orange County (or elsewhere) providing exceptional customer experiences? Let me know. Share a comment.

How is your organization doing at personalizing experiences, providing compelling value propositions, and enabling raving fans to share their experiences through personal interactions and social media?

Sound off everyone!

Thanks again to Kelly and OC Travel Tykes for a great experience!

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A primer on Social Media: Listen, Build, Engage, Share

If you are just familiarizing yourself with social media and how to leverage it in your organization, Becky Carroll on the 1to1 media blog does a nice job of summarizing the benefits of Social Media, and how companies can leverage tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  She does a nice job of separating the “cool factor” and hype from tangible benefits that can be reaped.

Has your company leveraged Social Media to deepen customer relationships?Do you have plans to? What question or concerns to you have?  Soundoff.

Guest Blogger Becky Carroll: Social Media Builds Customer Relationships

One of the most common questions being asked right now is this: “What should my company do about social media?” As more and more businesses are jumping in and creating corporate profiles on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and flickr, marketers are feeling the pressure to jump on the bandwagon. Some of these marketers plan to use social media as a cool set of tools to build awareness about their company. However, it is much more than that. Social media can be an integral part of a strategy to build customer relationships.

Let’s look at how social media can be used to deepen customer interaction and increase customer loyalty.

Social media builds trust.
It allows companies to be perceived as more human. You aren’t just talking to Comcast; Frank Eliason is there for you. You want to know more about Zappos; Tony Hsieh tells it like it is. Customers don’t want relationships with faceless companies; they want relationships with other people. The use of social media hastens the trust-building process by putting people instantly in touch with other people–critical in these days of corporate bail-outs and public uneasiness. Trust is the main component of a strong customer strategy.

Social media builds community.
Customers can’t easily rally around a website, as there is little interaction there; but they can rally around a brand’s presence on social media. What makes these communities so powerful is that many of them have been built and sustained by a brand’s fans. Fiskars, which makes scissors, encouraged the formation of a scrapbooking community. However, it is their customer ambassadors, or Fiskateers, who are responsible for driving the conversation and inviting others to join in. National Instruments uses its community, powered by social media, to bring together business customers to share technical information with each other, which is then used in National Instruments marketing materials. These communities are examples of likeminded people coming together and interacting around a common purpose; in this case, a company’s products and services. Ongoing customer interaction and engagement such as these increase loyalty and ultimately rate of purchase.

Social media increases word of mouth.
It allows information to be shared peer-to-peer at light-speed around the globe. As a result, customers are turning to social media ratings and reviews to research an organization’s offerings before making a buying decision. This is especially true in the B2B environment, where a large number of B2B buyers are participating actively in social media for business–reading blogs, writing reviews, watching user-generated videos, and joining social networks (source: Forrester). All of this enables the rapid spread of company news and information, as well as the sharing of customer success stories. Organizations that enlist their customers to help evangelize their products and services via social media find those customers to be fiercely loyal and willing to share their experiences with others who are like them. This in turn builds trust, as well as the customer base.

Social media enables two-way conversations.
This is the gold in the equation. Where companies used to have to rely on one-way email blasts, advertisements, and direct mail pieces, they can now interact directly with customers via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and a myriad of other social media tools. More is required than simply hanging out a corporate shingle on these sites, however. Companies need to fit these conversations into their overall customer strategy and marketing communications plan. In so doing, they will be able to gain deep customer insight from these new online interactions, including an understanding of customer behaviors and needs, as well as online reach and influence.

Getting Started
The best way to begin using social media is to stay quiet. Yes, social media enables great customer interactions, but first it is important to do some listening. Once a company has spent time monitoring conversations–about the company, competitors, the industry–only then is it truly equipped to begin participating in conversation. This is the best way to be relevant when stepping forward and inviting customers into your virtual lounge to get to know them, their likes and dislikes, as well as their personal side. The foundation will be laid, and rich customer relationships have every opportunity to blossom from these online engagements.

via Guest Blogger Becky Carroll: Social Media Builds Customer Relationships – Think customers: The 1to1 Blog.

1 to 1 Marketing’s 2009 Voice of the Customer Survey Results

1 to 1 was kind enough to share the results of their 2009 Customer Survey.  In this are some expected responses. Others are perhaps a little more surprising.  At the end of the day, the results reinforce what we all know to be true.  Over time, success in business  is ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

This Is No Surprise – Or Is It?

1to1 recently conducted its 2009 Voice of the Customer Survey. We asked the question: What is the most surprising thing you learned from customer feedback in the past year? I found some of the responses, well, surprising. What do you think?

Here’s what some respondents had to say:

Customers like to be heard
Given a chance, customers will be brutally honest about how a company treated them and ways to improve [the experience] for other customers.

People wanted to be communicated to more.

Customers desire information from us, other than our direct product and service areas, e.g. partner and community information.

Customers want to be part of the overall strategy of our company.

They were willing to spend time helping me refine my offering.

Their willingness to share their feedback and make suggestions for improvement.

Customers are willing to speak if we ask them.

How willing customers are to talk about their personal experiences, challenges, and problems.

How easy it is to really listen to client concerns.

Customers Like Us!
What a great job our customer care team is doing when handling customer inquiries.

We do better than we thought!

We do a better job of satisfying customers than we realized.

Most of our customers actually like what we are doing.

Or Not…
Our company is sometimes hard to work with.

How difficult we are to contact if you don’t know who the right person is.

Customers really didn’t like our hold music. We saw a 3 point improvement in voice CSAT by simply changing the music.

We had a lack of knowledge about customers and what they are looking for.

Often the things we think we do badly are often not even on the customer radar screen. The things we don’t really regard as important are!

That we overcomplicate our selling model–it is really about engagement versus selling, and leveraging that engagement has been powerful!

Listening Equals Learning
Price is not the determining factor when customer buy.

In an overzealous drive to deliver the best and greatest experiences it is often the basics that we don’t deliver on that crack the foundation of the customer relationship. Customer relationships are like a game of golf: The most amazingly played shot won’t win the round, but a horribly executed one can ruin all.

The same service was differently appreciated in Asia or in the Americas or in Europe.

They are close to the issue, good or bad, and bring a view that at times we do not consider.

The importance of knowing the customer by name.

Our customers were using our website to get more information about us.

How some competitors have caught up with us in replicating our “unique” product mix.

What some of our employees do to break our operational procedures.

“I didn’t know you did that!”

Listening Also Equals Results
There is an indisputable link between improvements in customer experience and its link to bottom-line results.

It’s great to stop and hear what [customer] are saying; this improves our product, which translates to higher prices and revenue.

Listening to customers is a simple way of cutting costs by fixing customers problems or issues.

via This Is No Surprise – Or Is It? – Think customers: The 1to1 Blog.

Social CRM: Use it and Implement it properly

Michael Maoz at Gartner shares with us in his blog post Social CRM: Made for the Cloud, AND Requires care/feeding a good reminder that any technology, whether social networks, crm systems, or your iPhone is only as good as the strategy and execution behind it. As we collectively race to harness, leverage, and integrate social media into our business models, it is important to always keep the customer at the forefront and engage them in a meaningful, intentional way.

Here is an easy way to advance your abilities in understanding the customer’s intent: leverage communities. Most of you work hard to move every transaction to something automated: voice response, email, online self service, kiosk, ATM – and in so doing lose the ability to understand what the customer might be trying to tell you about their wants and needs. But a social network, properly observed, analyzed, and maybe even participated in more on that piece in another blog can yield insight into how you as an organization need to change if you are going to win customer loyalty.

Just tossing up a social site, or giving customers the tools to interact, won’t help. You will be heading towards a more Social CRM that will require the same discipline that most of us failed to maintain with our previous pre-social networks CRM initiatives. Without corporate commitment, you might as well be handing out sharp knives to a party of three year olds – someone’s going to get hurt.

Without the focus on the customer, social media and social CRM become the latest fad and tech gadget until the next generation comes along. Focus on your customers. Learn to listen, observe, and interact with them in a way that adds value.

Customer Retention in Tough Times

As we collectively try to gain visibility to what is happening in the marketplace, the following contains some good basic reminders of necessary requirements to survive in the marketplace today. I’d love to hear about how your company has implemented some of the ideas below and how that has helped your organization succeed.

No doubt as the recession takes hold companies are at risk to lose more customers than new ones coming in.

The problem: If you don’t invest in keeping and developing your existing clients – especially in tough times – then it’s more than likely that your business will decline.

You’re no doubt familiar with the mantra that states that it costs about 5 times more to bring in a new customer than to sell to existing customers.

So the question is what are you doing to communicate with your customers? Do you have a structured customer development program to upsell, cross sell and above all manage your relationships in such a way to make sure these customers – whom you’ve already spent a long of money acquiring – from walking?

Here are some ideas you may want to focus on:

1. Establish a systematic, formal process to cultivate and grow high potential accounts

2. Create a schedule to “touch” key accounts regularly

o Build variable schedule based upon account potential not current value of the relationship

3. Develop a strategy to manage marginal accounts those that cannot be effectively managed by the sales force

o Outsource is one way to go

4. Raise awareness of new products and services

5. Under promise – over deliver

via B2B Sales and Marketing Blog

Just 100 Days away from Customer Lifecycle Management | Graham Hill, Customers & More

Graham Hill presents a great framework for rolling out a Customer Lifecycle Management initiative. In the sea of opportunity and moving parts, the ability to execute the delivery of a focused project plan is key if you are to realize the unlocked potential that exists within your existing and future customer base.

One other key point that could go unnoticed is that you’ll see after the 100 day plan, he points to Kaizen, a method of continuous improvement, which surprisingly goes unnoticed in many CRM implementations. The initial launch is only the beginning of the journey towards increasing profitablity.

Customer Lifecycle Management in 100 Days!

By Graham Hill, Customers & More

The recession is forcing companies to rethink how they do CRM. Gone are the ‘big-iron’ CRM projects of yesterday with multi-million budgets, inflexible two-year project plans and ROIs that were little better than inspired guesswork. In their place is a new approach to CRM, based upon running projects as internal corporate ventures that deliver tangible results, at low cost, within 100 days.

To make internal venturing work for CRM, it needs to be based upon three parts, each of which supports the others.

1. Proven CRM Theory – The first part is a thorough understanding of proven CRM theory. This provides a robust platform upon which to build an internal venture project. Without this platform, it is all too easy just to copy other companies’ CRM projects without understanding how they need changing to suit your company’s unique capabilities. Proven CRM theory provides the know what.
2. Detailed CRM Practice – The second part is detailed experience implementing CRM projects and operating them afterwards. This provides a practical framework for planning the CRM project, piloting it in stages, implementing it and then operating it afterwards. But experience by itself is not enough. You also need to understand enough CRM theory to know how to adapt experience with other companies to your own situation, particularly during planning and early piloting. Getting it right at the beginning will mean that you don’t have to significantly change the project later on, when it is much more disruptive and costly to do so. Detailed CRM Practice provides the know how.
3. A 100 Day Project Plan – The final part is a 100 day project plan, setting out how you will implement CRM and start delivering tangible results within 100 days. Obviously, you can’t deliver an enterprise-wide CRM programme, e.g. telco Billing & Collection, in 100 days. But you can break larger programmes down into smaller 100 day projects that you can more easily manage for results And by results I mean delivering project milestones, on-time, in-full, to-budget. Only by running projects as internal ventures can you ensure delivery of results, with whatever resources are available, at a minimum cost. A 100 day project plan provides the CRM blueprint to get started.

So how do 100 day projects work in practice?

Recently, I directed a small team that implemented Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) for a national operating company of a major mobile telecoms provider, all within 100 days. The lifecycle of the 100-day project was broken down into five stages:

• First 10 Days – Feasibility – The first 10 days should be spent understanding the company’s current CRM capabilities, who the key resource holders are and planning the project milestones and costs in detail. The time should also be spend arranging for critical data required later in the project to be available just in time. One of the biggest problems in CLM projects is data not being available when required.
• Days 11-50 – Soft Pilot – The next 40 days should be spent developing and running a ‘soft pilot’ of CLM for the highest priority target customers. This includes gathering data, developing propensity models for e.g. customers likely to churn, creating attractive propositions, programming the campaign management system, developing marketing communications, arranging fulfilment for customers that respond and of course, reporting results. The idea of a soft pilot is that the CLM capabilities are tested manually to ensure that everything works as intended. Inevitably, some things don’t and soft piloting gives you the chance to fix them before they are automated in the next stage.
• Days 51-70 – Hard Pilot – The next 20 days should be spend automating the soft pilot once it is working smoothly and repeating the soft pilot process for next the highest priority target customers. Once the soft pilot from the previous stage has been run smoothly without any problems a number of times, it can be automated. This includes automating data feeds, customer scoring by the propensity models, offer selection for customers, the whole campaign delivery and fulfilment process and reporting. Early results should also be examined in detail and changes made to targeting, offers and communications to hopefully improve results. The soft pilot process should also be repeated for the next highest priority target customers. You may have decided that retaining customers likely to churn is the highest priority. These customers would have been soft piloted in the previous stage and hard piloted in this one. The next higest priority might be customers you think are likely to increase in value, or to take up a particular product. They would be soft piloted in this stage prior to being hard piloted in the next one.
• Days 71-100 – Implementation – The last 30 days should be spent hard piloting the next highest priority target customers from the previous stage and standardising the whole CLM process across the business. In the previous two stages, the CLM process has been systematically tested and automated across prioroty customers. In this stage, the process is standardised across the business so that it becomes daily business for all staff operating it in the future. This includes measuring, monitoring and managing the business by the results delivered. As this will form the basis for all future CLM activities, it is essential that this stage is carried out by the company staff who will operate CLM in the future. It can be challenging to get operational staff to change their emphasis from doing activities to delivering results, but it is essential if CLM is to deliver the results expected of it. Customers’ behaviour is continuously changing and CLM needs to continuously change with it.
• Post 100 Days – Kaizen – The post 100 day period should be spend further standardising the CLM process and in improving all aspects of CLM. This includes, improving the results of individual campaigns, improving underperforming propensity models and improving the operation of CLM. Although lean processes should be implemented automatically during CLM’s development, the pressures of managing internal ventures with a 100 day target mean that this is not always possible. Just applying lean thinking to business processes can reduce non-value-adding costs by up to 20-40% and process cycle-time by a similar amount.

This project delivered multi-million Euros of annual incremental revenue, on a total customer base of less than 5 million and a targeted customer base much smaller still. All for a total outlay of less than Euro 250,000. And all up and running by the telco’s own staff within 100 days. You can work out the ROI for yourself.

Find Out More, Get the Presentation

I have presented and run whole day workshops showing how ‘You Can Do CLM in 100 Days’ at a number of Telecoms CRM conferences over the past year. Send me an email to graham(dot)hill(at)web(dot)de if you would like me to send you the full presentation.

Are you afraid of RISK – or are you thriving in this marketplace?

A great article by Martha Rogers related to the great opportunity that exists for those who are willing to take measured, calculated risks in the current marketplace. I know of several companies who are seizing the opportunity of a marketplace frozen in uncertainty to grab market share, retrench their infrastructure, and realign processes to thrive in the current market, and explode when things turn around. The key takeaways from the article are below:

RISK Is the New Four-Letter Word – Think customers: The 1to1 Blog

During this period of quiet belt-tightening, some companies and governments are developing agoraphobia – fear of venturing forth – afraid to take any chance at all. While it’s good that we’ve learned some painful lessons from Bernie Madoff and AIG and Ameriquest, we need to watch for signs that some companies will emerge from the Bear Period stronger than their competitors for several key reasons:

They will take this opportunity to build stronger relationships with customers by deliberately understanding and helping their own customers through the downturn.

They will build trust by doing the exact best thing for customers. We’d like to see a cell phone company that sends notices to all their customers telling each one which of the company’s subscription plans would be best for each, and offering to switch them.

They understand that no business has a 100 percent guarantee, but use careful predictive modeling to minimize risk by focusing on customers who are the most valuable now and in the future high actual and potential value customers and meeting each of their needs better and better.

They balance the short-term revenue that provides cash flow with the long-term equity creation that ensures future success for shareholders, customers, and employees – and they build that balance into the metrics and management of the organization.

Ultimately, these are the companies that will proactively save lives rather than retreat behind the safety of preventing death, and will emerge from the current downturn outshining their competitors. I want to invest in them. I want to be their customer.

Read the full article here: RISK Is the New Four-Letter Word

Why Bother with Customer Centricity?

CRM Magazine asked their subscribers “What is the number one concern that keeps you up at night?”.

I found it interesting that none of the responses resembled anything like: “My kid is failing out of school”, or “My spouse works too much”, or “I can’t make the mortgage payment”. Oddly enough, all of the responses were CRM related. Go figure.

Nonetheless, the results were as follows:

—————————————————————–
Creating and Maintaining Customer Satisfaction: 27%
Providing a Return on Investment: 27%
Maintaining User buy-in and enthusiasm 16%
Cementing Customer Loyalty 15%
Finding the right CRM Tool 6%
Keeping up with CRM Innovation 4%
Respondants who sleep soundly 5%
——————————————————————

Today, I’d like to focus on the number one reason that people are not sleeping at night, “Creating and Maintaining Customer Satisfaction”. We’ll talk about the other number one, ROI, in a few weeks. But, first, I’d like to take a step back and observe some findings from another study.

In a survey conducted by CRMGuru.com, it was discovered that having a Customer-Centric Strategy was the most important driver of success of any CRM implementation. In a future post, I’ll take the time to illustrate that Customer Loyalty has significant impacts on both the top and bottom lines.

So how do each of these pieces of the puzzle fit together? What is the relationship between Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty, and implementing a Customer Centric Strategy?

Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty are two golden keys to giving your company competitive advantage. Building and implementing a Customer-Centric Business Strategy is created with the intention of increasing both your customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.

The first step in implementing a customer centric business strategy, (or any other initiative) is to take a snapshot of where you currently are. This makes it possible to measure your progress along the way. The two main benchmarks that can help measure the success of your initiative are:

1. WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION LEVELS?
How many of your customers are satisfied with the products and services you are providing to them?

2. WHAT IS YOUR CUSTOMER ATTRITION RATE?
In other words, how many of your customers are defecting and choosing your competitor’s products and services.

The second step is looking at 5 key areas in developing your customer centric strategy. I have listed a few things to consider in each area:

1. Overall Business Strategy

- What are your customer’s needs? Spend more time understanding this, as opposed to trying to get your customer to interact the way you want them to
- Focus new product development around customer feedback

Graham Hill just made a great post related to this How Harnessing Your Customers Doubles Your Innovation Success>/a>

2. Organizational Issues

- Senior management committed to leading company through organizational changes
- Sales, Customer Service, and Technical Support given incentives to work together to provide outstanding customer service
- Move majority of CRM technology selection authority from IT to “business” decision makers

3. Work Processes

- Build and modify work processes around servicing the customer better
- Work hard at increasing efficiencies, streamlining processes
- Seek to be the Low-Cost producer in your industry

4. Technology

- Consolidate all customer related data into one repository
- Integrate key front-office, back office, and web office systems to interact with each other
- Choose leading technology with capable vendors to assist in the process

5. Training and Support

- Provide your staff with excellent training
- Budget time and resources to make sure they are confident with the new system
- Adjust compensation incentives to encourage use of new systems, and transition sales focus from new customer acquisition to retention

“Being customer centric focuses your business decision-making processes on the impact that those decisions will have on your customers. The real trick is making the “right” decisions that result in a positive impact. In order to do that, the organization needs to understand who its customers are, where they are going and how can the customer’s needs be met. That type of understanding requires information, and information comes from data.” says Kevin Murtha of Greenbrier & Russel’s, in an article in the September, 2002 edition of DM Review. http://www.dmreview.com/

It is essential for your company to be able to have the systems in place to be able to capture, analyze, and share the information about your customers so that you can be more responsive to their needs, provide them with unparalleled service, and keep them as customers for life. But it all starts with strategy.

The Limits of Customer Analytics in a Recession | CustomerThink – CRM, CEM & Social Media

Customer segmentation is a big issue as companies look deeper at their existing customer base, and as Graham points out, not only are companies needing to readjust their strategic initiatives and sometimes entire operational models, the data that they have in their database may not mean what it meant just a few months ago:

The recession has resulted in a number of companies having to change their ‘business operating models’ and to switch their emphasis. Sometimes this can have unintended consequences . For example, talking to one telecoms executive, his company’s emphasis has changed from acquiring new customers, to retaining the ones it already has. This is quite a change for the telecoms industry, more used to spending huge sums of money acquiring new customers to replace the ones that it lost the previous year, than to keeping existing customers. This change applies to many other industries too.

As the recession evolves into something more frightening, I am sure that there will be many more of these ‘phase changes’, as businesses switch from their current operating model to a different one.

The difficulty with changing the emphasis from customer acquisition to retention, is that it requires very different business capabilities. Acquisition is generally done through mass marketing campaigns to the market as a whole. What is generally on offer is a bundle of product, service, even experiential components, that are almost identical to what competitors are offering. The emphasis is on competitive intelligence and mass marketing capabilities. Retention on the other hand is mainly done with a combination of mass-customised follow-on offers to individual customers based upon their recent behaviour. The emphasis here is on customer analytics and mass-customised marketing capabilities. Making the switch can be very difficult, as although most companies already have these new capabilities, they are not always there in the right quantities to deliver against management’s change in emphasis

via The Limits of Customer Analytics in a Recession | CustomerThink – CRM, CEM & Social Media – Think, Feel & Connect.

Getting Back to Segmentation Basics – Think customers: The 1to1 Blog

You’ve heard it a thousand times, but I’ll say it again anyway: Customers today expect you to know who they are i.e. understand their specific needs and treat them accordingly e.g. communicate with relevance.

During a session at the Gartner CRM Summit UK, Furkan Ocal, a manager with Peppers & Rogers Group, reminded attendees about some of the important basics of gaining that customer knowledge. He offered four fundamental steps for customer segmentation that can help business leaders to better understand and communicate with their customers: identify, differentiate, interact, customize IDIC. These principles may not be new, but they’re effectiveness have stood the test of time.

Read more at the 1 to 1 Media Blog