November 19th 2008
The first step in designing your ad campaign is to define your customer. You need to be very specific about the age, gender, marital status, geographic location, religion, political affiliation, occupation, educational level, and so on so that you can buy the proper ad placement. Continue Reading »
November 11th 2008
You have a brilliant idea and a huge market. You have started your business. Now how do you keep the show on the road?
It is not difficult to run a business. There are only a few very easy and basic rules to follow. A common mistake is to become overwhelmed by details in the beginning, preventing you from really getting off the ground. Remember, you can learn as you go along.
One of the most important reasons why people highlight the details is on business must appear “complete” and thus give as much information as possible. However, a large percentage of the information is not important in the early stages - often for the first few years. Continue Reading »
July 26th 2008
Make people smarter! The abilities of real people delivering service to the e-customer services person will need to increase so they can add value to what the system already provides. If service representatives are left innumerate and illiterate, unable to organize, disaffected and reluctant, they will probably not add anything positive to the service experience. The bar is raised for those able to justify their involvement in the process. It has already started to happen.
Is there a future where we will go to one man to buy everything? A man who is wired into the complete network and is fantastically adept at manipulating the available tools to get us what we need. He may be able to serve and support thousands of e-customers because each needs personal involvement so seldom. Continue Reading »
July 26th 2008
The human touch is going to come back into fashion. It will (yet again) become the differentiating factor between services. Computers can deliver lousy service pretty much on their own. The very best of humankind needs to be coaxed and coached out into the open. People need to be showcased and supported.
On the way to the virtual world some businesses have a lapse of memory — it’s a kind of ‘Honey, I forgot the people‘ approach. Others adopt an Animal Farm like ‘machine is good, people are bad’ approach. If they adopt the attitude of pigs they should expect to end up as bacon.
Every business should understand that at heart the internet is not a machine, it’s the interaction of millions of people. In the end someone still says ‘I have something for you to buy’ and someone still replies ‘I would like to buy it’. The technology simply represents one set of people trying to sell to another group of people. Continue Reading »
July 26th 2008
Service organizations will grow up that will enable demand for ordering and delivery to be met continually. Production will be the only variable. Let me explain. There is a relatively finite amount of purchasing power in the world at any one time. There is also a finite amount of time to view and order products. This means that if there was only one shop to order from it would be relatively easy to build a process and an infrastructure that could cope with the total demand for dealing with orders, complaints, payments, deliveries and returns.
This is how postal delivery services work. They know how many homes there are and organize delivery men to deliver each day to a certain percentage based on the general level of demand. Most of the time there is sufficient slack built into the system to cope with demand blips. This may just mean the delivery people working a little faster or longer occasionally. Continue Reading »
July 22nd 2008
Free agency. Choice. Accountability. Life-affirming values. They are the most effective tools for coping with the legion of personalities that arrive at your electronic door. Don’t depend on convergence to allow you to limit the playlist. Do you know the e-customer? If you sing it, I can play it. You will never guess what they all want so let them make their own world. Guide them to it. Play the part of mentor.
Don’t rush on the first date. There is plenty of time to pop, sparkle and slide messages past his eyes and into his brain. First he has to be open to the new ideas and most e-customers aren’t ready when they are acclimatizing themselves to your little place. A new world for him. Take it easy. Continue Reading »
July 22nd 2008
So open up your heart and hear this.
The whole business world needs a good slap around the back of the head. Someone holding its head down shouting, ‘What is that? What do you think about that?’
There is no joy to be found in doing a half a job and there’s very little money either. You need to get into the mind of the real e-customer. And he’s legion, multiple, distinctive, and ever-changing. Continue Reading »
July 18th 2008
<CROSS-CHANNEL CONTACT HISTORY (MAIL, TELEPHONE), PENDING SUPPORT ISSUE, FIRST AND LAST SUPPORT CALL AND EMAIL, SUPPORT LOG/EVENT HISTORY, PRODUCT RETURN HISTORY …>
Data generated from your direct mail, telemarketing, customer support, and product return operations can be a critical part of measuring true customer value, cost to serve, and cost of customer contact and conversion. Linking this type of external data with your email marketing system will enable you to spot—and avoid— potential problems. Imagine, for example, that a customer has sent you an email complaining about a product defect. If customer service doesn’t let marketing know about the problem, marketing might send the already-angry customer an email offering the latest add-on to the product he or she is complaining about. Continue Reading »
July 18th 2008
<FIRST PURCHASE DATE, LAST PURCHASE DATE, PURCHASE FREQUENCY, PURCHASE VALUE (ACTUAL PURCHASES OR AVERAGE PURCHASE), PRODUCTS PURCHASED, PURCHASE DRIVER (WEBSITE “WALK-ON,” EMAIL RESPONSE, BANNER CLICK-THROUGH … )>
Because past purchases are among the leading predictors of future interest, you should use the information contained in the customer’s purchase history to determine the timing, offer, targeting, and personalization of your promotional communication. If, for example, you bought book from BarnesandNoble, you’ve probably been identified as someone who’s interested in high-tech business books, which means there’s a good chance you’d be interested in Geoffrey Moore’s Inside the Tornado. Continue Reading »
July 18th 2008
As we look at the different sources of profile data, keep in mind that customer or member profiles are dynamic: they’ll evolve as your relationship with the customer deepens. Your goal is not to collect all of this information at one time. Asking a lot of questions on a first encounter can be very off-putting. Imagine walking into a store and having someone come up to you, introduce herself as an employee, and immediately ask for your phone number and how much money you make. You’d probably react quite negatively and you might even leave. Asking for personal information on your website is no different. Continue Reading »
