Lets assume your brand’s 200 LED panels sold today through different format stores and you don’t know half of the customers who bought it? Well, you have swalloing too may redpills and welcome to the real-world. There are quite a few ways to get the data in. Let us focus on one suggestion that, as a CE brand you should probably be able to espouse.

Lets focus on the brass tacks, one of them being demo / installation. Your business’ focus should be more intently on installation and demo aspect then the way you do business today – Incentivise more to source the right amount of customer information from the personal visit by you engineer.

Not all the buyers are encouraging you to visit them for an installation / demo? Well, like I said its the redpills. No sweat! You need to focus on some incentive (let’s call Easter eggs) for your unknown buyer as well, incentive for the engineer alone would render itself as a useless strategy after sometime of deployment.

Lets take an example, if it’s the Air conditioners that you have recently sold and want to know a few psychographic and demographic details about the customers, ensure you engineer doesn’t call and ONLY say ‘When can I come over a for Installation/Demo?’, if he/she does, mostly he will end up with an undesired response. Instead, consdider teasing the customer a bit – Something like, “having spent a bit on your appliance now and knowing there is a running cost associated with it, do you know how to optimize the energy consumption and thus the monthly / quarterly bill? I (the engineer) can comeover do a bit of your room-assessment and arrangement and could make some recommendation” – No, you are setting the ball to roll a bit, most probably your customer would (hopefully) perceive some ‘Value’ in your engineer’s visit.

People are generally creative, that includes your Demo/Installation Engineers too. Sadly, most of the times we do not get opportunities to demonstrate our abilities – So, ask your fleet of service / installation folk to give you suggestions that could be incorporated in your process – Get a poll done, deliberate the chosen ideas and get a few qualified ones incorporated as part of process to collect customer information, don’t forget to have a nice & sustaninable incentive strategy – Trust me, you will be surprised with the results.!

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?

Pretty much everyone in marketing space I have spoken to in the last month of two have mentioned budget cuts for the forthcoming year without any adjustment around returns expected, and incidentally the aforementioned folks were talking about approaches to optimize the budget in an effective fashion.

The situation reminds of the old-but-still-relevant saying “need is the mother of all invention”

Barring the fundamental issues around economic downturn, a telco operator in Australia is kind of insulated. Please read Vodafone Australia – Marketing Optimization to know more.

What is Marketing Optimization (MO)?

In a nutshell, MO translates marketing challenges/problems/issues into mathematical equation and recommends approaches to meet the optimized objectives – This is either reduced cost or increased returns.

Interestingly, to leverage the value from marketing optimization, you don’t need to have doctorate in Statistics or need to be technically savvy – Business team with basis understanding of Statistics and Computers would be able to comfortably reap the value. After all, we are using technology to solve business problem, and the solutions are built keeping this in mind.

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And, if you want to know more or discuss further, please do click here to contact me.

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.

However, the real question is, do you, as a marketer want to automate the entire process? You might ask, if it is a relevant question? Yes, it is!

Let me give an analogy in aviation industry. The role of technology in aviation space has increased so much; flying a passenger aircraft from Helsinki to Caracas is possible without having to have a Pilot on board. The engineers behind the scenes at Boeing, Air Bus, Embraer et al is well aware, the instinct of the Pilots on board is something that can, by no means be automated. And, this very instinct is one of the critical factors for sustenance of safe flights.

What can we understand from this analogy? Though, it is possible to automate the marketing, particularly campaign management function much as you want to, it is essential to keep the human touch intact in whatever way you can. Sooner or Later you will realize, this decision has paid-off handsomely in managing customers effectively, i.e. either in managing marketing costs or increasing the returns you get from various marketing programs.

Please do not fall prey to sales-talks from vendors who make automation process look like result of a magic wand swing, do exercise adequate caution before registering what is being told to you.

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..

The long wait has finally come to an end to passengers who miss their phone calls and text message in mid air. United Kingdom based AeroMobile in association with Airnic and Telenor has developed a system that can help you to keep your phone on at cruising attitude, however, the in-flight system installed in each plane has complete control over keep the network available to its passengers, technically the crew can turn the accessibility off during nights.

The AeroMobile system automatically activates once the aircraft reaches 20,000ft. A video then informs passengers they can turn their mobile phones on. Passengers then receive a free text from AeroMobile telling them to switch their mobiles to ‘silent’ mode out of courtesy to their fellow passengers. Calls can be made and received while the plane is at cruising altitude. The service also allows text messages to be sent and received. The system allows for a maximum of five or six calls to be made at once. Passengers using AeroMobile will be charged a premium roaming rate.

As the solution stands currently, the network provided by AeroMobile system on-board offers basic text messaging and voice call server, however, expected to provide data services such as Blackberry etc in sometime.

A couple of Airlines have started using the service, the first-ever call from AeroMobile network was made from an Emirates flight heading to Casablanca. Emirates have seemingly invested to close to USD 27Million on this infrastructure. And, I am quite sure leading airlines would follow the suit – Sooner or later, “talking in the air” could be used a true statement, so get ready to read it correct as it may not stay as a metaphor alone for a longtime.

Getting back to the context, I thought of writing this post today while reading an article from Peppers & Rogers on value of Data for Customer Management – As an enterprise, if you want to be a customer-centric organization, it cannot be done without understanding your customer basis the data you have about them, customer data is an inevitable element if you want to be a truly Customer-Centric Enterprise.

I wrote on the value of a functionality and usability rich solution a couple of months ago and its associated value for business. Going in-sync with that post, being able to manage data effectively, which is an underlying element, is one of the functionality I was referring to. Under the realms of customer management, today there are dime-a-dozen solutions available out there in the market – This means, there is good likelihood to get lost amidst of all these solutions and can potentially make incorrect decisions.

It is essential you don’t get floored by one (or) some aspect/s of the offering, which might probably help you meet one of your short-term goal. But surely not going to help you the way it should on a long-term basis.

This view of mine was proven right again by one of the well known managers in the Indian banking industry. In a conversation, he mentioned how their investment in one of the slick-looking but functionally-weak (weak, as per their requirement) customer management solution is not aiding them in meeting some critical objectives. He mentioned, the myriad of extra workarounds they have to do to make the solution deliver, which again is not very efficient.

Before making up your mind on investing in a particular solution, spend adequate time in understanding what are all available in the market for Effective Customer Management. Try to look for solutions  that would aid you in acheiving your short-term goals without losing focus on long-term objectives – Basis this, weigh the Pros and Cons without any bias and then make an informed decision.

In the last five odd years, whenever I have presented strategies and recommendations for customer management, enterprises I have worked with often requested us to build a strategy without having to relook into the customer data.

Organizations that played the Data Warehousing Game in the last half-decade without attaching tangible and intangible roles of the warehouse are too skeptical to give the deserved importance to look at the customer data for tangible values – In my opinion, warehouse Solution vendors and importantly some Enterprise Marketing Management Solution vendors are one of the key stake-holders to blame for this.

Amidst of meeting their quarterly figures, they went on a binge to sell software licenses without bothering to address the true needs of Customer Management.

I always requested the enterprises that consider walking the warehouse pathway, to hold their horses before boarding the bandwagon and think over how warehoused data would assist them in making meaningful business decisions, which touches either the top or bottom line of the business. Likewise, urged enterprises to be cautious to deal with Enterprise Marketing Management Solution vendors without adequate Customer Data Management Capabilities.

Sure, you already have substantial data that can be leveraged in customer management but not without some massaging – Fact is, the data that you have as is might not provide value it ought to in customer management, you definitely have to prune it a bit to realize its unseen potential in business.

Always, I repeat, always evaluate how the Customer or Enterprise Marketing Management solution you are considering handles the Customer Data – Firmly insist a demonstration of the solution’s capability around customer data management. In a warehouse scenario, proactively assess what you do once the data is organized in the warehouse pertaining to customer management and other business values it can provide.

In absence of this, you might end up automating some part of Customer Management, but it is surely not complete – Sad part in most of the cases is, you may not even realize the solution is incomplete.

In the world of effectice customer management, data management is one of the crucial steps and not to be ignored..