Posts Tagged ‘Customer-Centric’
Hey Marketers! What’s Your Customer Service IQ?
One of my biggest pet peeves as a marketer (and PR practitioner, too!) is not having access to customers.
Fortunately, I have worked for many companies that have trusted me and allowed access.
Of course, I have also received my fair share of Heismans from sales and management. Heck, by their blocking you would have thought I was requesting their first born for a ritual sacrifice or worse… their yearly bonus.
Today, in our social world there is absolutely no reason to refuse marketers access to customers. Unless, of course, said marketers are raving lunatics running around high on tactical crack because their sales team is demanding leads. Then yeah, they shouldn’t be allowed to chat it up with customers.
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Are You Leading Your Industry As A Wikibrand?
According to the new book, Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company In A Customer-Driven Marketplace, by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover, a wikibrand is a “progressive set of organizations, products, services, ideas and causes that tap the powers of customer participation, social influence, and collaboration to drive business value.”
This philosophy requires a massive organization culture shift. Wikibranding is about having the guts to allow the customer co-pilot your business. We only need to look at companies like Zappos, Dell, Southwest, FedEx, Target, and Cisco to see that wikibranding is not only possible, but it makes for a very profitable company. (Here are wikibrands by industry, if you are curious to see what your competition might be up to.)
Keep Reading…
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Tags: Branding, Customer-Centric, Customer-Driven, FLIRT Model, Mike Dover, Sean Moffitt, social business, Wikibrands | 
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Saturday Morning Reads (Late Edition): Is Social CRM Bringing Companies & Customers Together Yet?
“No company will tell you, ‘I don’t want to be customer centric,’ but do you know the difference between taking an inside-out versus an outside-in approach?” - Ranjay Gulati
An organization’s goal for being social with customers is, presumably, to gain a better understand of what customers want and need. Typically used to warehouse customer data, marketing campaigns, and customer service endeavors, CRM systems now must also capture the social interactions of customers and prospects as well. It is those social interactions— in a natural setting—that will provide organizations with untarnished insights.
More importantly, by drawing the customer closer, the organization will find a refreshing ‘outside-in’ view that leads to budget, resource, and time savings when it comes to new product or service development, customer service and marketing communications.
Keep Reading…
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Killing Giants: Let Your Customers Help You Topple Your Goliath!
“Conspicuous consumption has given way to consumers bragging to their friends that they’ve made good choices. Importantly, there’s an increased degree of vigilance to this new feeling of smart consumerism. The definition of value has become more complex. It’s not that people won’t spend money—we will—but the way that we look at everything has changed.”
That is how Stephen Denny describes “The “New Normal” in his latest book, Killing Giants: 10 Strategies To Topple The Goliath In Your Industry.
It would be naïve not to believe that sentiment doesn’t also hold true for business buyers (B2B). How then should marketers capture the attention of their customers when fewer resources, reduced budgets, and customer scrutiny are also part of “the new normal?”
Let’s take a look at the 10 strategies companies have used and—more importantly—how their customers have helped them to topple Goliath.
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Tags: Black Like Me, Customer-Centric, Intuit, JetBlue, Killing Giants, Stephen Denny |
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There’s a Difference Between Listening to Customers & Giving Them a Voice
I just finished reading Ernan Roman’s latest book, Voice-of-the-Customer Marketing: A Revolutionary 5-Step Process to Create Customers Who Care, Spend, and Stay and I must say, this book is a gift to marketers, management and any business owners who truly cares about their customers.
I first learned about Ernan’s new book when Denise Lee Yohn interviewed him on her blog. (If you don’t read Denise’s blog, Brand as Business Bites, you should. It’s full of great branding insights!)
After reading the interview, I knew that I had to put this book on the top of my reading list because it not only embodies my beliefs on customer-centric business—it provides a process to bring the customer closer to the center of the organization.
While “voice of the customer ” research has been around for a while, Ernan shares his five-step process so that companies can put VOC research into practice. For those who might be speculative, the process is backed with solid case studies.
Listening Versus Understanding
The foundation to any well thought out social media strategy is listening. If you are familiar with social media, you know listening means using tools like Radian6, SM2 or Google Alerts to capture what people are saying about your brand on the Internet.
However, there is a lot of work that needs to take place between listening, understanding and implementing change. Listening online alone often leads to a misunderstanding of context and nuance.
Scott Rogers captures that best in his post, Listening Versus Understanding: There is a Difference.
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Tags: Customer-Centric, Ernan Roman, Marketing Management, Marketing Research, Organization Design, Relationships, Social Media, VOC, VOC Research, Voice of the Customer, Voice of the Customer Marketing |
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
