Checkout the article on ZdNet - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazon-launches-ad-supported-kindle-for-114-a-milepost-on-the-way-to-free/47147

Basis the very little I know of consumer insights, those who are ready to pay $150 for a eReader are “not part of” the lower-part-of-the-value-pyramid who are desperately looking for a $50 rebate at the cost of their privacy – Heard someone say iPad will eventually kill the Kindle, I don’t think Apple will have to, as Kindle is on a suicidal mission.

Notion INK seem to a promising piece of a hardware, Sony must be working on something new and a host of offers are in the market (including a huge segment thinking Tablets/iPads could be used for reading) are trying to reduce the already reducing market share of kindle.

Amidst of all this, Amazon’s marketing team are hallucinating with mindless product/marketing ideas! Dear Amazon, could you please wake up to reality?

The rate at which things are going, mindless marketers and their technocrat siblings would want to get into someone’s dream and run a 30 seconder every once-in a while.

The invention of Polaroid to film-based photography made a huge difference to how the art was performed, nonetheless, barring the invention of Polaroid nothing much really happened in film-photography.

The subsequent invention of digital photography pretty much changed all the rules of the game. In fact, Polaroid as a invention in film-based photography was probably one of the radical difference that was brought. However, in digital technology, I guess changes are happening on a fortnightly basis. Are you interested to witness such a radical change that can increase your ROI and reduce the management time multifold? I assume you are vigorously nodding..

I am indeed delighted to witness a substantial change to a subject that I deal with more frequently than photography – Web Analytics as we know it for quite sometime is going through a sea change.

One of the solutions that I represent to the market is going to completely change the way how things are done. And, nothing more thrilling than playing a role of a change-agent in one-way or the other.

If you are website owner or a blogger or any sort of an active netizen, you often want to know more on whats happening to your website/blog/portal et al.

Till date, pretty much all the solutions that are out there with a high brand visibility and recall does one of the following or a may a little bit more.

• Parse/Scan through the web Server log files and provide you with some information
• Expects you to embed a huge-list of tags against various elements of the website and tracks them and subsequently provides some information
• Sniffs the network packets (Don’t ask me any questions on ethical aspects of this practice) and provides you with some information.

I must admit a few of the existing product/service providers do a pretty decent job in whatever they do. However, what they provide is either very limited or awfully diffult to implement and manage in an ongoing fashion.

In spite of the aforesaid limitation or the cumbersome process to use these solutions, you are assured only get to know what happened on the website. i.e., things such

1. Referrals
2. Time spent on Each Page
3. Keywords/Search Phrases from Search Engines
4. Goal definition funnel
5. Network & associated Geography location
6. And, the likes.

As you would have noticed, the way the aforesaid software applications are built IS NOT know about the end consumer/browser’ experience. Wouldn’t you agree?

How are turning the whole thing upside down? Well, not really as it would be totally disruptive! Lets ensure the bread is available as usual, and provide a Cake?

Do you believe your website/portal is a serious business channel? Are you dissatisfied with the inference you are deriving out on whats really happening to properties on the web? Do you want to move away from a whole of virtually useless information and want to know your consumer/customer’s experience on your web real-estate?

If your answer is YES to any one of aforesaid questions, talk to me, I will take you on a transcendental journey towards the new way of (Web Analytics)  life and help you do real-life magic in understanding your customer experience.

A recent incident where one of my colleagues gets a phone call from one of the leading general insurers in India and, the telemarketer ensures to gain my colleague’ attention and engages him in a chit-chat on phone for over 20 odd minutes. Gotten convinced with the marketing offer, my colleague was ready to buy the product under one condition – i.e., like most of us, asks the telemarketers to papers and an agent (read Human Being) to meet to furnish the details and subsequently process the policy.

This one simple but yet very important condition to any consumer lead to another 20 mins of dialogue and at the end, the telemarketer settles for take-it-or-leave-it-now attitude. Its so sad to witness this – The insurer almost won a new customer and lost at the same time for an obvious process failure which leads to substantial notional loss.

Automating various aspects of marketing process is considerably easy with some consistent effort, this however assumes the underlying strategies/processes are intact with an ongoing sustained effort from the management and other key stakeholders of the Business.

The equivalent business aspect I can think of is Retail Banks discouraging customers to visit the Branches. For example, to deposit funds into an account, some Banks levy a fee if the monies were to deposited through the teller counter in the Branch. Wherein, if the same thing is done via the ATM is totally free – Note, the Banks are moving a transaction to a cost effective channel, not managing customer acquisition.

The reason for the letdown from the tele-marketer is very simple, the insurer hires an external telemarketing service provider and has a seemingly tight SLA (Service Level Agreement) that states commissions/revenue for the telemarketer would be based on converted sales through telephonic offers only and not worries to amend the agreement on aspects of passing on the lead to the insurer – This is so supremely absurd!

I understand the value of customer acquisition through cost-effective channels, but with some substance beneath and not with an industry like insurance which is so nascent on market penetration levels and every insurer is doing the best to win customer.

To any business customer acquisition is a very critical aspect and its essential its dealt with uttermost care – Insurers or any business for that matter cannot just afford to miss a customer just because he/she cannot buy a product via the telephone.

Oh! My dear Marketers, are you listening?

Though its been a couple of years of India waking up to the Customer Management and associated priorities in business management, my initial interactions with aforesaid folks, reemphasized upon the state of affairs being still nascent and yet to grow, the statement of Campaign Management as a priority item in the scheme of things its quite a good evidence on the industry’s nascent stage.

I respect their views, however it is in need to widen their horizon and look beyond the obvious as determined by basic conventional CRM wisdom.

As the figure above suggests, to maintain and uphold the objective called “keeping the house tidy” is subjected to a few players playing their designated roles.

Its never a one man’s job and importantly claiming a slick broom would do the trick is futile claim as it is currently suggested by some myopic customer management (Campaign Management) consultants.

To give you an idea on the role players in Customer Management, the charts starts with the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Finance Officer staying on top with CEO’ business objective alignment and product managers holding the second line. In addition, the analyst, campaign managers, segment managers and business and IT operational folks follow the suit – All these personas have a defined role that they must play in order to get the desired results.

The power of technology (or software application, if you will) to excel in their scheme of things should not only have campaign management but an entire set of applications and a orchestrating scheme to meet the business objectives .

The CEO/CMO and CFO needs to have a summarized and holistic picture of what is currently happening and how well its in alignment with the business strategy, they should be able to identify any discrepancies and deploy appropriate course measure to manage it effectively.

• IT specialist should be able to define policies on data management and securities related area and let this piece run in an auto-pilot mode, intervene and correct as appropriate.
• Basis the data sourced, the analyst should be able to identify product associations, customer affinity quotients by creating segments, perform analysis to identify potential cross/up-sell opportunities or proactively identify signs around customer management and keep these information consumable by management and operational business folks.
• The product management and the marketing teams should come together to ensure basis the gaps and additional revenue potential identified by analysts are acted upon.
• The product management team also should keep track of each activity where the customer is contacted through an outbound or inbound communication, if the performance is found to be unsatisfactory, make real-time course corrections hence increase the bar
• The Information Technology operational team should store the history of all the aforesaid activities for future references.

Now, as you can see the aspects mentioned above are to be used at various level of intensities (basis your business model) for effective customer management.

You may now agree, a one-size-does-not-fit-all and such one-sized approach may not be a very appropriate one in such scenarios involving various stakeholders.

Please exercise due caution when it comes to evaluating business software applications for customer management, ensure the solution that are being considered will (A) fit well in your environment and (B) covers the aspects mentioned above in one way or the other.

I am keen to know your views on this, please do leave a comment with your opinion or send me a message through the Contact page. Also, if you enjoyed reading this article and would like to be kept informed of any such new articles, you can subscribe below for an email notification.

Three years ago I shared with readers a list of 50 ways to be more customer-focused and deliver a better experience.  I’ve decided to update the list and publish it again.  It’s a bit long so you might want to print it out and read it later.  Even better, check off those actions you and your team take on a regular basis.

Here are 50 Ways to Improve Your Customer’s Experience:

1. Open the door for your customer whenever possible.  This is especially important if her hands are full.

2. Don’t just hand your customer his product, “present” it to him.

3. Keep the store temperature at a setting that is comfortable for customers.  Most retailers set the thermostat at what’s comfortable for the employees.

4. Acknowledge your customer’s children.

5. Offer to gift-wrap purchases if you already know it is a gift.  Don’t wait for your customer to ask.

Read More..