Customer Experience - The CEO's Perspective

It was interesting to hear John Browett, CEO of Dixons, this morning on Radio 5.


He talked about the importance of customer experience in the decision making process and as this was the theme of my presentation at the idio Content Marketing Breakfast yesterday, I thought I'd say just a few words.


Mr. Browett is spot on when he suggests that the customer experience is key when choosing ,in particular, expensive items such as laptops, camcorders, televisions etc. We are often attracted by the low prices we can get on the web, but really want to have a play with the gaming console first, or see the quality of the TV picture in real life. So obviously experiencing the Product is important as well as Price.


And so is the retailers high street or retail park shop. When we go there to 'trial' the product, we don't really want to be bombarded with sales patter but do what expert, unbiased help when we ask for it. 


Now if I find the right Product in the right Place at the right Price, I'm going to buy. But I might still be tempted to go away and do a bit more research and check out the price again before maybe buying on line. Mr Browett said this morning that about 16% of their sales are online. But I wonder how many of those sales follwoed that customer journey of

Research - Store Visit - Further Research and Price Validation - Buy Online

And actually how many of those at the end of the day went on to buy elsewhere online because of price or advice given from another retailer.

A recent post of mine talked about this example from Best Buy on how they have been trying to continue the conversation / relationship / connection / sales cycle once the potential customer leaves the store. Email address captured and the information researched in store is sent on- hopefully immediately!


Of course, the potential customer then might also want further 'Tecchie' advice.  And sorry to mention Best Buy again but this is exactly what Twelpforce is all about..

I know that Debenhams tried The Spectacular Twitter Experiment where Tweeting in store for help would result in a Twitter Assistant turning up if required - but I'm not sure where that went.

Anyway, I digress a little.

What we are seeing is some retailers really understanding that it is the whole customer experience that really matters. And that to me is what CRM is all about. Creating Brand Worlds ( yes I know I mention the Brand word when talking about CRM ) that are focussed on the 4, 5 or 7 Ps of Marketing. Remember those?

The original 4 being Product, Price, Promotion, Place.

Good CRM is about putting the customer at the centre of these and creating relevant, engaging and rewarding experiences for them

Want to know more? come see me present at Emerce Connect in Amsterdam December 13th or get in touch - gianfranco@cuzziol.com

Book Review : Online Marketing: A User’s Manual by Murray Newlands.

The use of the words ‘user’s manual’ would seem to set the tone for this book, positioning it as some kind of reference piece for those of us involved with the practicalities of online marketing. Indeed, the quote from Chris Brogan on the front cover, “This book is actionable. It’s useful…Murray’s given you all you need to get started”, would back this up.


The book tackles what in the author’s opinion are the basics of online marketing: social media, digital branding, company websites, blogging, online PR and blogger outreach, email marketing, video marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, digital advertising, with each chapter aiming to cover these various elements. It was inspired by the experience of the author being asked to go away and write the digital strategy for the organisation.

Murray and indeed Chris Brogan both suggest that the book can be read in one or used as a reference book. I decided to use the latter approach to start and dipped into two areas – one where I like to think I know a fair amount, email marketing, and the other where my knowledge is a little more sketchy, video marketing.

The chapter on email left me not really understanding if the book was meant to be a practical guide or a planning guide. There were good ideas on how to use email but they actually didn’t leave me feeling confident that I could give this to someone new to email and let them get on with it. Some of the real basics are missing, which reduced my confidence in the rest of the content.

The idea of having a ‘Tools and Resources’ section at the end of each chapter is great. But that then leads me onto another couple of issues. This book is obviously aimed at the US market so the reference points are American and actually limited in number. There are more useful reference points but they are kept within the main body of each chapter.

So, to video marketing. Again the chapter swung from needing a strategy for your video marketing to making sure your smartphone is charged ready for use to make a video. Reading this piece confirmed another view I had from the chapter about email – that the book lacked consistency in what it was trying to do. Even the flow of the basics seemed a little off, with Strategy third in a list of three after Video Hardware and Software.

Following on with a more traditional reading of the book from cover to cover, it is an easy read and does give a good introduction to all the areas of online marketing. I’m sure the reader would be more confident to approach each subject in more depth after taking in the whole. That is particularly true if you are a complete novice to the areas of online marketing. So its audience is probably restricted to individuals in very small organisations who are just venturing into the world of online. I would say that in larger organisations the level of knowledge already held in the marketing, PR and IT departments already surpasses what is in this book. The real trick missed here is how you actually pull all these online strands together to create a single online marketing strategy for your organisation.

Of course, the other issue with any book that covers the digital space is that it will be pretty much out of date as soon as it hits Amazon. A way to overcome this would have been to create an online version of the book that could be regularly updated as the world moves on.

This is a good start but probably not as useful as reading up on the topics online or investing in books dedicated to each section. There are good examples in some chapters but these are lacking in others. For me the topics are covered in too little detail and not in a consistent manner. It would seem to be Murray Newland’s blog set down on paper.

This review first appeared on the Marketing Society Blog

From Benign Dictatorship to True Democracy

That was the title of the very interesting after dinner speech at the Digital Leadership Dinner given by The Marketing Society on Tuesday evening.


Read a summary here  and listen to a snapshot from speaker John Grant, author and co-founder of  Ecoinomy here 


My own view from a marketing perspective, is that even with many marketing models where we believe that we are moving towards true  democracy we are still just painting Benign Dictatorship in a different colour. The recent example of Subway for example allowing customers to choose between a variety of new sandwiches for the new product launch is limited democracy. They were given a choice from a selection from Subway.


If we are looking to see how widespread democracy through crowd sourcing is, the take a look at over 1000 crowdsorcing and crowdfunding sites listed here . 


Of course it depends on how we define democracy. If we believe that all brands should be run by consumers, then quite frankly I'm not sure there is a future in that. But if we believe that democratic barnds are ones that allow consumers a say in new product development including suggesting new products and services ( eg Starbucks) , or allow consumes to openly cast a vote on how good a product or service is ( eg Amazon ) then I'm a believer!

An A to Z of eCRM - T

T is for Targeting and Segmentation

Segmentation + Targeting = Relevance

And remember that Targeting and Segmentation is multi-dimensional. From a consumer’s perspective it’s all 

about understanding

Who I am

What I am

Where I am

When I am

Ultimately, this keeps the consumer happy and makes your own marketing more efficient.

(Chart taken from somewhere..but I cant remember where..sorry)

It's not how clever you are..it's how unclever you are

Don't think that Intelligent Marketing means Complex Marketing!!....more to follow

Walking Adverts

Do you remember the heyday of the Sandwich Board? According to Wikipedia they are still in use. Well it would seem that the modern equivalent could very well be us...the consumer.

John Moore at WOMMA 2010 states that the average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times per week in conversations with friends, family, and co-workers.

So although we do not walk around promoting brands visually as a Sandwich Board Man( although wearing a Superdry, Gio-Goi, Nike item of clothing or driving an Alfa Romeo or BMW, of course does this), we do, it seems, in our day to day conversations. It is this type of Advocacy (positive) brands aspire to tap into.

Especially when you mix in what I highlighted in a previous post about how according to Nielsen,90% of consumers trust product and brand recommendations from people they know.

Attitudinal vs Behavioural Loyalty

I recently read a whitepaper co-written by Don Peppers - www.peppersandrogersgroup.com

In it, it discusses the types of Loyalty. It describes Attitudinal Loyalty, occurring when a customer is favorably disposed to you: they like you and they trust you. The other definition of loyalty is behavioral loyalty, which is measurable by transactions: a customer is loyal if they buy repeatedly.

Of course we all want customers to be attitudinally loyal but the paper reasons that the only real business benefit of loyalty comes from behavioural loyalty.

In my opinion this is not the case. I may regularly shop at the local Tesco, but this Behavioural Loyalty is a Forced Loyalty as it is the only supermarket within easy reach . I might however on an ad-hoc basis use Waitrose..and I love the Waitrose experience so much that I recommend it to friends and family as a result of my attitudinal loyalty which results in an indirect business benefit to Waitrose.

I am surprised that Mr Peppers does not take this into account – but I am wondering if the fact that the paper was co written by Oracle’s VP of CRM Applications influenced the focus on a transactional viewpoint.

Email Marketing - What's your ROI?

I came across an amazing statistic this morning about the ROI organisations are getting from their email marketing.

Although a year old now, the Adestra Email Marketing Census highlighted how few organisations actually know what their ROI is.According to this census,the majority of respondents being in the UK, a staggering 42% of organisations have no idea what their ROI is!!

And yet, 78% of these organisations believed that as a channel , email was 'excellent' or 'good' for ROI, and yet Direct Marketing was only regarded 'excellent' or 'good' by 6%. I find this confusing as I always thought email was a direct channel ?

I know that often email marketing is seen as being a pretty cheap channel, but that doesn't excuse organisations doing the fundamentals of getting a grip its effectiveness. I was once given these wise words: 'If emails cost as much as direct mail, a lot more thought would be put into how many are sent out'

This is very true in particular when you begin to look at the negative impact too many emails can have on open rates, and even on getting them into the recipients inbox now that the like of Hotmail monitor email open activity as part of their junk email filtering

I can only hope that the 1 in 3 organisations in the survey that say that Measurement & Evaluation is a focus are all in that group that say they have no idea what their ROI is!

Redefining 'conversation'

I came across this interesting piece from the Ogilvy Blog and what conversation means these days .

To me it's interesting because it still promotes the idea of conversation as really being the constant throughout the evolution of marketing. The conversation may alter or take on a different emphasis depending on where and when it is taking place, but it still exists.

The conversation might be taking place via a social media site where peers are exchanging thoughts on a product, or it may between the brand and the consumer via feedback programs or a series of emails.

What's key is that we as marketers understand what the conversation content needs to be at that particular moment, and uses technology, where appropriate, to optimise this content and uses technology to make the conversation easier to take place.

The future is not about combining the conversation that is marketing with technology

It's about doing that now!

One Way Conversations

It beggars belief, but I still get charts like these from clients about one way conversations, ignoring the opportunities to have proper conversations, not monologues, going between them and their customers..let alone between the customers themselves!!

It's all about influencing the conversation

It's no real surprise that Nielsen's latest global research on trust in media highlights the importance of the personal recommendation.

What is surprising is how often brands ignore this fact when thinking about B2B audiences, in particular in the SME and Micro segments. Of all the B2B audiences, these are probably the ones that act more like normal consumers looking to peer recommendations and personal experiences for help in purchase decisions.

The Nielsen article can be seen here

Social CRM ?

Social Media, it's everywhere!!. At its simplest level I guess its a way of creating and hopefully continuing conversations with customers, but obviously also embracing the conversations that are already happening out there.

One of the most important conversations we have with our customers is through Customer Service - a key touchpoint of any CRM Strategy.

So does Social Media translate into Social CRM? Is there a need to split out the strands of CRM... Social CRM, Store CRM, Telephone CRM?

This debate on Social CRM is interesting but only the start of the debate.

Free for all..

Old Chris Anderson seems to be getting some mixed press on his latest idealogical handbook, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. John Naughton's The Networker column in the Observer..There's no such thing as free, picks up in particular on the writings of the journalist of the moment Malcom Gladwell who goes for the jugular in his New Yorker column.

Oh and my copy just arrived from Amazon with Free delivery... see you later