Entries by Paul K. Ward (144)

Friday
Aug242007

Five Forces of CEM

Customer experience management is a misnomer, in the sense that a customer experiences your company or branded product within a context that you only partially control. But certainly it's worth looking at what creates these perception and decision-driving contexts.

Hence, I've developed a complement to Porter's Five Forces, which I call the Five Forces of CEM. (They are a cornerstone of CEM strategy that I teach in seminars around the world. Next up: London. Then Hong Kong.)

Among those five forces are networks of trusted opinion represented by friends, experts and -- to some extent -- bloggers. Another set of forces are trusted networks of FACTS -- libraries, ePinions (the pricing side), CNET and so on. Well, facts and opinion blur. And nowhere do they blur so mightily as on wikis, which support the editing and publishing of content from often anonymous and opposing authors.

Hence the recent controversy surrounding volunteers editors of Wikipedia content. These editors are not interested in facts. They want to change them, or hide them. And when these editors represent corporate interests, they obviously are trying to influence these forces that impact customer perceptions and decision making.

What they are forgetting is my rule of MIB. Manage what you can and should. Influence what you cannot manage -- or should not manage. And when bad things happen, balance what is said with an authentic response (based perhaps on facts, or contrition, for example. Sometime you have to "open the kimono" (as crisis communications experts call it) and show corporate details that have not been scrubbed clean.)

What corporations such as Diebold and Fox News have done is to leave fingerprints on edits that deleted or altered factual material on Wikipedia. Even if you dispute a fact on Wikipedia (or anywhere else), as a corporation your behavior, if detected, will tell your customers more about who you REALLY are than anything you claim otherwise. So, Diebold and Fox thought they could manage history. At best, they could only influence it, which they should have done by leaving alone battles they could not win, or posting opposing points of view on the online community-driven encyclopedia. Now that their manipulation of Wikipedia entries has been proven, they're left having to balance out the bad news.

Here is an interesting bit on the topic from Keith Oberman, who interviews a Wired editor about what all this means.

Monday
Aug202007

Diet Coke. Mostly water.

Excellent link at the NYTimes blog Freakonomics on Coke's new ad for Diet Coke: 99 Percent Water. 

Check out the link here.

That ad is oh-so-grist-for-my-mill.

Pepsi has been kicking Coke's proverbial heinie (sp?) over bottled water. Pepsi "gets" that bottled water can be branded and can sell at high prices but that it doesn't need to be PEPSI branded (in fact, better if it's not). Coke dragged its feet for years embracing bottled water because they felt they needed somehow to "Coke" brand anything they sold. 

The difference between the two companies: Coke thinks it controls its brand, and that it is the only one that creates brand equity; Pepsi realizes that brand equity is in the eyes of the beholder. That's you and me, and we want to put quality stuff in our bodies because of (name the top ten trendy reasons, pulled from anti-brand sentiment, natural food obsession, healthy/active self-image, hey-I'm-too-old-to-love-cola, etc.). Note: this is probably a cultural difference between the two companies, driven in part from Coke's long position as number one in the market, and Pepsi's long position as the challenger. The consequences of the cultures: Coke does things like New Coke, and Pepsi continues to erode Coke's marketshare by redefining the terms of engagement and looking for market preferences, not just how to sell more Pepsi.

Now, this article points out something really cool: the shift in what is acceptable advertising, driven by a shift in how people perceive WATER.

NOTE: Yelp shout-out to Chloe F (an elite Yelper), who tipped me off to this article. If you're not on Yelp and you're in the US, check it out.


Wednesday
Aug152007

Tag Cloud for a Global Non-Profit

One of my biggest clients, for which I did a comprehensive market analysis, is a global non-profit. We did a comprehensive perceived customer value survey that included free-form text to capture comments on any topic the respondent wanted to talk about.

Here's the tag-cloud for those free-form comments. Even though the organization thinks of itself as a "global non-profit", where do you think its members really want to get value? What kind of value? Interestingly, the weightings in this cloud confirm the survey results. The term "difficult" clues the client into challenges faced by respondents. The terms "meetings", "local", "training", and "education" show that a lot of value is created locally. This may also be an opportunity for the client to offer distance learning, but that would need to be investigated to make a solid business case.

Finally, as a side note, the word "survey" was accompanied mostly by comments such as "this survey was too long". The challenge with designing surveys that are strategic -- not tactical -- is that you often need a more complete view of each respondent. And you need far more respondents than normal, because you seek insight into an unknown number of value-driven segments. Other alternatives can include conjoint analysis.

created at TagCrowd.com

Friday
Aug102007

Customer Experience Management - Paris


Krygyzstan. Where the heck is that?

It abuts Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. That's where. Oh, and it shares a border with far western China.

This part of Eurasia has been independent of the USSR/Russia since the early 1990s and, according to the great CIA World Factbook, is about the size of South Dakota. Its gross domestic product is hovering around $10billion USD (that comes to just over $2000 USD per capita, PPP), and it exports cotton, tobacco and wool, as well as some harder goods for industry and a few things, like meat, that perish and so are used in the region.

There's no question that the Kyrgyz people and fashion are both solid and a bit exotic to many of us in the West. My wife visited there a while ago and witnessed a sixtieth anniversary celebration of the end of World War II, when Kyrgyzstan's citizens fought for the USSR against Nazi Germany. Old men of Russian and Eurasian descent, in tightly fitting military uniforms, proudly marched through downtown Bishkek. Their families, dressed mostly in clean, practical Western clothing, proudly lined the streets. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren, beatific, lovely, welcoming and joyful, dotted the parade route. (The photos Angela took are breathtaking.)

You can find Eurasian jewelry in many European countries at low prices. And you can find Eurasian wool caps and cotton clothing at low prices. So, whatever "exoticism" that might exist in their exports are getting discounted in the markets and therefore in the minds of buyers. They're just not going to pay a lot for stuff from Kyrgyzstan.

Then, there's "Kyrgyzstan in Paris." See the photo above. The styles in the shop window are definitely Eurasian. The materials, the patterns. They are exactly like the outfits worn in and out of Bishkek. That's why I stopped short when I saw the store in Paris -- the merchandise in the window was identical to what I'd seen in Angela's photos from her trip.

But there's a bit of a difference with these clothes. They're all made in France.

And the shop, A La Bonne Renomée, sells them for a pretty penny. (Un charmant centime-euro?)

So, what's the product? What's the brand? Is it enough to say on the tag that one of these beautiful items is "Made in France by French artisans," which is my best recollection of what the tags actually say? Even if these items are virtually identical in pattern and styling to actual Kyrgyz clothing?

This raises to me the very interesting fact that the value of a luxury brand is often tied to a designer or to a "fashion country" (most European luxury goods originate in France or Italy).

If you walk into this shop, set on a fashionable corner in Paris' bustling Marais district (at 26 rue Vieille du Temple), you'll find all the offerings beautiful, exotic, suggestive of Eurasia. The merchandising is gorgeous -- hardwood blond floors, airy high ceilings, warm but clear spotlighthing. It is a Paris boutique. But you'll definitely "feel" as though most of these products are just Eurasia put through a Paris fashion filter.

What aspects of fashion designers or "luxury countries" create value in the products? In A La Bonne Renomée, the only significant difference between Kyrgyz clothing and what it sells is that they made them in France. Hence, we learn, you can charge a heck of a lot more. (More than would be expected from the differential in labor costs.)

I'm obsessed with the topic and have done a lot of research, on the ground and in journal articles, about the role that country origin plays in product and pricing perceptions. (The recent TRIUM/NYU events in Florence focused in part on the luxury market. It was a feast of ideas.)

As the world goes increasingly global (Kyrgyzstan was the first Eurasian country admitted to the World Trade Organization), and borders become more fluid, a product in one country will have its "country of origin" effect diminished. In fact, many products are so replete with parts pulled from all over the world that it's hard to say which country is really the originator.

Nevertheless, nevertheless. Country branding has a value that will persist beyond any reasonable analysis of a product's parts. This is good, particularly when that value is real (see my article on Camembert below). If your county's wines really ARE better, or at least unique and noteworthy, being able to charge more can have a measurable affect on your balance of trade, and the value of your currency, and bond prices.

LEFT IMAGE: A bargain-priced bijouterie on the Right Bank in Paris, selling authentic Eurasian jewelry.

And so, over time, I predict countries will spend more and more money branding themselves. And, I hope, they will also look inside their borders for what is truly special, and will preserve it.

As for A La Bonne Renomée, I love their stuff, and their vision for making Central Asian clothing fashionable. After all, part of what makes fashion so pricey is that it says something about YOU -- it's classier than wearing a bumper sticker on your car that says, "Uzbekistan ROCKS", and more comfortable than a tattoo that says, "This land is Eurasia, this lands is my Asia."

You can check out the boutique's site (in English) here. [Si vous etes francophone, voila un lien pour un blog avec une article en archive selon le magasin. C'est un blog tres sympa et intelligent, mail l'auteur a installé des plug-ins pour les pop-ups sexuel, donc fait attention.]

Friday
Aug102007

McKinsey on CRM Success Factors

Here's a snippet from that addictive ITfacts.biz site. (Well, addictive to me.)

McKinsey Consulting conducted a survey of companies boasting successful CRM implementation with the goal to define the factors of CRM success. Correct timing led the ranking of the top reasons for successful CRM implementation. Modules launched at intervals that promoted adoption by users - 79%. All affected business units provided input during planning - 69%. Users appropriately trained to use the new system - 67%. Cultural shift addressed - 59%.

More here. You'll have to be a subscriber to McKinsey Quarterly to read the article. What? You're not a subscriber? Then why have I had that link down on the right for a year??? :)

A good number of my clients, and at least two companies I consult for, have had a hard time convincing folks that CRM is more than contact management on steroids. For a globally-active, enterprise level CRM consultant, this is just shocking. CRM is where the rubber ought to meet the road in creating a competitive value proposition and executing it operationally, strategically, analytically -- at every touch point. Everyone at your organization should be involved in the CRM strategy and implementation. Unless you're just doing salesforce automation, in which case all of your competitors will eat your lunch.

If CRM is just contact management on steroids, then why are the best implementations correlated with a culture shift? Why would everyone need to provide input? If you're beginning to think that CRM is necessary, you should also be thinking that it is transformative. Or that it ought to be.

One quick example: Have you mapped the moments of truth your customers experience with you? No? Then how can you develop processes, technology and training to make sure you meet or exceed their expectations at those moments? Isn't that really where your organization's value is created or destroyed?

And what do these considerations have to do with contact management? I suppose you are starting to see that CRM is a not just important, but that it's a very big deal in creating market value. Or that it ought to be.

Now, please feel free to go ahead and use CRM software as a sales automation tool -- or to communicate to prospects. Just make sure that, when you bring in new customers, you aren't putting them into a meat grinder made up of poor processes, misaligned incentives, and garbage technology. Or else you're just annoying a larger group of people who will happily talk ill of you and then go to your competitors the next time.

SO.

Is CRM just contact management on steroids?

Wednesday
Aug082007

Five CRM Trends for 2007

Hey, want to save a lot of time investigating CRM systems? Want to know what's creating competitive advantage in customer strategies? You could ask me. Or you could go to this link and check out what Search CRM thinks. (Or, you could do that, and then ask me whether I agree.) Here's the top-of-mind summary from the link, but check out the link to explore more:

1. Top 15 CRM vendors, emerging trends revealed: ISM released its annual rankings of the top vendors for small and midsized business (SMB) and enterprise CRM in March, and while the names are familiar, the market is seeing change. According to the report by the Bethesda, Md.-based consultancy, analytical tools, mobile offerings and Software as a Service (SaaS) trends are driving changes.
2. CRM software rankings tell a familiar tale: Siebel and SAP remain the leading enterprise CRM products, but midmarket players like Salesforce.com, RightNow and Microsoft are gaining ground, Forrester Research found in a February report. The firm predicts the market for CRM software and services will reach $10.9 billion by 2010, up from $8.4 billion this year.

3. Gartner ranks customer service software: Gartner's April Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers found a fragmented marketplace. Only Siebel made the leader's quadrant, while Microsoft and Salesforce.com were named as visionaries. There still isn't one vendor that has created a full suite for customer service needs.

4. Is SAP losing the CRM usability race?: At last year's Sapphire conference, SAP announced a revamped user interface, but it is still not widely available. Meanwhile, CRM competitors continue to focus on usability. SAP's CRM roadmap is still not clear to many users.

5. Improving the customer experience: Call centers making an emotional connection: An increasing focus on the customer experience is driving call centers to improve customer satisfaction by identifying and measuring customer emotions. Call center agent training and carefully crafted customer surveys can improve the emotional connection with customers, but the business and corresponding technology is still in its infancy.

I'd like to comment at least on Number 5. The biggest challenge for any company moving forward will be coming up with an integrated way to measure, monitor and improve their customers' perceptions of the company's brand. Analytics in CRM are big, but naturally their being driven by sales and/or decision support. They are not being used as effectively or comprehensively in true voice of the customer (VOC) initiatives.

I'm not depressed about this lack of tools and enterprise commitment to what is essentially the core function of a business, viz., to create and improve a relevant, profitable and sustainable value proposition -- using facts. First, it means a lot more work for me.

Second, my clients only have to do a little bit of this kind of work (customer strategy development, VOC initiatives including customer satisfaction programs, market research) to be incredibly successful. To say that customer analytics is a growth area is to say that early adopters can get a big lead. If you can create a great customer experience by aligning people, process, technology, communications and social network conversations, you're going to win, because so few companies have figured out the power of these tools and approaches. It's the Wild West, baby ... tighten your saddle and pull down your hat.

Thursday
Aug022007

Turkish Lemons, Belgian Potatoes


Two big megatrends are going to battle with each other, but neither will win: bigger distribution systems within markets such as NAFTA and the EU; and a demand for quality, local, AUTHENTIC products. 

One of my favorite BBC bloggers talks a bit about the variations in produce quality across the EU (and almost-EU, i.e., Turkey). Click here for Mark Mardell's piece on lemons and potatoes.

Lots of research has been conducted lately on customer perceptions of the national and local character/provenance of products. Anyone for Chinese toothpaste? Maybe not for a while. Anyone for Chilean wine? Maybe so! 

Such perceptions directly affect pricing and marketing strategies. They will also affect policy. 

My wife talks about a story she read, which I haven't looked into, concerning the AOC (appelation d'origine controlée) requirements for Camembert cheese. AOC guidelines are used to determine whether a product can legitimately associate itself with a region in France -- the implication, of course, is that the guidelines define what is "authentically" French. 

Apparently, some Camembert makers want to broaden their distribution of the product, and they're concerned the cheese will spoil as it travels increasingly far from the source. So they want to pasteurize the product -- verboten, in France. (Well, I shouldn't say verboten, since that's German. Il est interdit. Defense de le faire. Vous etes fou. Etc.)

And there's the conflict: if Camembert becomes pasteurized, will it be the same cheese? Will it taste worse? Will it go the way of the ... dare I say it ... Belgian potato? A sad day, if so. After all, it was the Belgian potato that gave us French fries.

[UPDATE: Here's a link to a blog posting on the issue, which quotes an archived New York Times article.]

Thursday
Jul262007

Just a cool link!

It doesn't take much data to give you an idea of what's going on -- if you get the right data. I'm working on an article concerning CRM analytics. In the middle of doing that, I found this Very Cool Link. Using a visualization method remotely resembling Hollywood's motion capture, you can adjust how a series of dots move on the screen to make a man or a woman do something ... with variations you can control. 

Intrigued? Click!

(Safe for all ages.) 

Monday
Jul232007

WobbleFlix?

As part of the CEM certification course I help teach, we look at how channels have unique interaction characteristics that can create strategic advantage. Netflix offers DVD rentals online, with a rental queue. Blockbuster was traditionally a brick-and-mortar location. 

Netflix has more titles than your local Blockbuster. You don't have to leave your house to choose your next movie. Or to get it. Sure, there's a delay (but Amazon.com has gotten us used to this ... ).

Netflix as a result has been growing gangbusters, while Blockbuster was feeling the heat. Then they got into the online business. We go through very careful analysis of the site experiences and churn rates for online customers at each firm. Things were looking good for Blockbuster's strategy.

Except that the board, and the stockholders, felt that Blockbuster's investments were just too costly. Profits plummeted while they acted like a growth-obsessed startup instead of the cash cow they had been. CEO? Fired. New CEO has a Southland Corporation background, all retail and supply chain. 

Ah, now we come to today. 

Netflix, hot on the heels of Blockbuster's new CEO, is actually reeling a bit. But it's because they've lost some growth momentum to Blockbuster's combined online/retail model. Rent online, return to your local store (not all stores are participating.)

The saga continues. Will Blockbuster continue to pick away at Netflix? Or is the new CEO a signal that Blockbuster doesn't want to compete online?

Check out the Netflix earnings story here .

Monday
Jul232007

Mashups, no longer cutting edge?

I've actually been lecturing on Mashups lately -- did a gig at the World Bank, and it's part of my Customer Experience Management talks now. My argument is basically this. With AJAX at the front end allowing customers to see and interact with data stores from different sources, and with the enterprise's ability to aggregate, recombine and supplement its own data incrementally, all at low cost, then the only thing keeping a company from letting customers manage their own experiences is ... nothing. Mashups are here. The question is, what kind of access can you give your customers to your data -- crossed with things like Flickr, Google Maps, and so on -- that will build your brand?

If you don't think giving customers this level of control and transparent access to key data is a good idea, feel free to maintain that opinion, whilst your competitors beat the socks off of you in the market. :)

And, hey, here's a great link listing some new mashups. See if you can imagine something similar for your business.

Thursday
Jul192007

Democratic Tag Clouds

This may seem off topic from global CRM issues, but bear with me.

Pollster.com posted an analysis recently of the language used by Democratic candidates in a Spring debate. The analysis was represented as tag clouds. (Janet Harris, a friend of Pollster.com, posted the analysis. I think but I'm not sure that this is the same Janet Harris who founded and runs Upstream Analysis, a consultancy that does media monitoring.) Tag clouds are most often used to represent the relative popularity of words on a given topic by making popular words larger and/or heavier in typeface. Common words such as "the" and "and" can be removed.

In fact, some services don't actually look at the words, but at the way people like you and me tag them. Britney Spears might be the phrase, but "doofus" might be the tag applied to her by some number of people. If you doubt that people would be so rude in tagging content, check out the user tags describing Britney Spears albums on Amazon.com. (When folks like you and me tag things, those tags make up a "folksonomy" -- not a taxonomy.)

Check out Janet's analysis here, and then come back for the global CRM point. [UPDATE: In the interests of bipartisanshipnessicity, here's a link to a Republican debate tag cloud.]

(fingers thrumming on the table)

OK, you back? Interesting, huh?

OK, the idea is this. When determining your value proposition in a given local market for your products and services, you had better get some savvy market intelligence, especially about how your target audiences will value/assess your offering. You can do focus groups, surveys ... and you can actually get prospects and customers to tag your offerings on your home page.

If you look at these tags across cultures, what do you think you'll discover? Will it matter? Will you be able to act on it?

If you doubt that tag clouds, presented to your chief marketing and sales people, won't make an impact, take a look again at Janet's analysis, and pretend you are a campaign strategist for Chris Dodd (Senator from Connecticut, and a decent guy from all accounts, including from personal experience). You want to bet that Senator Dodd has already seen this information?

The trick always is to find out what your market thinks and feels about you. If you can, exploit the power of the Internet to give you that insight: consider tag clouds.

Hey, and here's something cool: a tag cloud for this blog posting:

created at TagCrowd.com

Thursday
Jul192007

Seven Consumer Trends, and the Empowered Consumer

The megatrends I keep in mind are these:

1. The internet is empowering more people each day. They buy smarter, share more and redefine what matters in their online interactions.

2. The network effect that comes from connectedness makes the first trend non-linear and increasing.

3. Businesses that want to outperform the market will leverage the first two trends.

But ... these are three trends. Where are the seven trends promised in the header to this post? Here, in this incredibly great summary of consumer (read: internet user) trends that really matter, by Reinier Evers of trendwatching.com. Don't just read it, print it and tape it to your desktop.

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