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Archive for January, 2008

 Council: Customer Affinity Is New B2B Marketing Measure

Friday, January 25th, 2008
BACKED BY A MAJOR NEW study, the CMO Council is urging B2B companies to create marketing performance models based on “customer affinity,” a concept that the Council concludes is far more meaningful than “soft metrics” such as brand awareness/satisfaction or response rates to marketing campaigns.

 

The study, “Profitability from Customer Affinity,” was conducted in the B2B technology sector, but has far-reaching ramifications for many markets.

 

“We’re pushing to sensitize the marketplace to the reality that engagement and interactivity with customers is far more meaningful and valuable than just blasting out one campaign after another, or measuring communications effectiveness,” sums up CMO Council Executive Director Donovan Neale-May.

 

The study confirmed that customers rank brand perception low on the totem pole in terms of what drives their relationship and purchasing decisions, and the council believes that traditional brand measurements actually reinforce ineffective marketing practices and “severely limit the role and vision of the CMO.”

 

In contrast, companies’ ability to develop strong interaction/ engagement with customers has “enormous impact” on their returns, and may actually be the most essential competitive advantage and determinant of their overall business performance in the years ahead, stresses Neale-May.

 

What exactly is customer affinity? It is a set of disciplines that includes brand awareness, trust and credibility, but goes beyond “surface metrics” like customer satisfaction, loyalty or advocacy. Affinity “digs deeper into critical aspects of the customer relationship and lifecycle experience,” including product relevance, value-added services, co-innovation, responsiveness, business practices and policies, problem resolution, value of customer interactions, clarity and resonance of messaging, customer knowledge, communications quality and consistency, explains the report. Marketers, it stresses, “need to play a significant role in defining, orchestrating and activating all of the factors impacting customer affinity.”

 

B2B technology was chosen as the focus of the initial affinity study because of its size and importance (annual expenditures of $488.5 billion in the U.S. and $1.5 trillion worldwide) and its unique, complex set of customer relationship challenges, explains Neale-May. A major deliverable was the Customer Affinity Index (CAI), which measures how leading technology companies stack up in terms of customer equity and attachment.

 

However, the Council views this study as a first step. Going forward, it plans to continue to research what drives customer affinity, hone metrics and use the methodology created for the tech sector to conduct similar studies in a number of markets, including financial services, Neale-May reports. The ultimate goal: Give companies within a market the ability to create their own, hard performance metrics based on the customer affinity model.

 

In the tech market, the Council conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research over a six-month period with senior-level IT buyers/specifiers; channel solution providers; marketers with IT manufacturers/vendors; and customer relationship, service and call-center executives.

 

The findings revealed significant disconnects between customer and vendor priorities and communications. For starters, contrary to traditional marketer perceptions, branding isn’t all that important to customers. Customers’ top five factors in evaluating and selecting a tech vendor are level of competency, caliber of service and support, level of commitment, compatibility with existing infrastructure and quality of thinking-again, reaffirming the alignment theme. Brand perception/promise ranked in the bottom five responses.

 

Customers and vendors/channel partners also disagree about what it means to be “customer-centric.” Customers say that the most important factor is strategic alignment of the vendor’s organization with the customer. Meanwhile, alignment is “neither a top priority nor a real competency” among vendors/channel partners, concluded the researchers.

 

Over half (52%) of customers said that “organizational, operational and cultural alignment around the customer” best characterize a customer-centric company, compared with just 40% of marketers and 35% of channel partners.

 

No shock, then, that only 21% of vendor marketers themselves, and just 3% of channel partners, view vendors as being “extremely well-aligned” with the end-use customer.

 

More of the telling data:

* 56% of vendors perceive themselves as being “extremely customer-centric,” but only 12% of customers agree. In fact, fewer than half (47%) rank vendors as moderately customer-centric, although 65% rank channel partners as falling in this category.

* 85% of vendors believe they’re getting better at responding to customer needs, but 45% of customers disagree (and 41% don’t view channel partners as getting better at responding).

* 52% of customers described their relationships with vendors as “dependent and captive,” “struggling for common ground” or “combative and adversarial,” and 45% described their relationships with channel partners in the same terms.

* Customers and vendors by and large agree on the importance of co-innovation and collaboration in product and services development and decision-making, but they differ somewhat regarding which co-innovation factors are most important.

Customers’ top three factors are help desk and customer support center feedback channels, field technician and sales engineer visits, and input sessions around new-product road maps. Vendors’ top three are executive visits and interactions, the help desk/customer support channels, and beta visits and interactions.

Karlene Lukovitz can be reached at klukovitz@klmedialink.com.

 See our company Measuredup featured and vote for us

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Click the link below or enter into your URL and vote for us.

It would help so much.

Just click the Killer button. Free and easy.

http://killerstartups.com/today/3/

 Reviews Roll In As Sites Add Video

Monday, January 14th, 2008

News Analysis: Reviews Roll In As Sites Add Video

Amazon, Orvis, PetCo jump on next wave of customer feedback.
January 14, 2008
By Kenneth Hein

The written word may be powerful, but video is mightier still, and there’s the rub for marketers.

As Amazon, Orvis and PetCo encourage consumers to upload video reviews, the marketers give the public a dynamic tool to tout or trash products.

Before a fan plunks down $69.95 for the Hasbro Star Wars Darth Vader Voice Changer, for example, they may want to watch the video review posted by Gregory J. Daniel on Amazon.com. “This is an example of what the Darth Vader helmet will sound like when you make the mistake of buying it. Don’t I sound just like Darth? Can you even hear his voice, or is it just like a droning in the background.”

Amazon has no issue with such reviews. “Written reviews have been tremendously successful, but when you can actually see the item in action all the writing in the world [can't compare],” said Colin Bodell, vp, Amazon.com, Seattle, which added video in November. “We want to deliver a richer shopping experience and give them as much information as possible so it will lead to a more satisfying shopping experience.”

While a video review for a book may not be necessary, Bodell said they were particularly helpful for new toys like the latest Tickle Me Elmo or complicated consumer electronics devices.

For Orvis, a video of a customer catching a trophy fish using its Zero G Saltwater 909-4 fly rod speaks volumes. “It’s another reason for people to come to our site,” says Brad Wolansky, vp-eCommerce for the Sunderland, Vt., firm. “They want to engage with us and brag about their fish. Of course, we like to see them stay on our site longer—we like video for all those reasons. We also like the fact that it can make a customer feel good about their purchase decision. That’s the root of customer reviews, making them feel more secure.” Orvis added video in August.

Video consumer reviews are still new, very new. They make up only a small fraction of Amazon and Orvis reviews. But, this is expected to change quickly as more consumers embrace video and more marketers offer reviews on their sites (See “New Ideas,” page 10). Video phones and the simplicity of some of today’s desktop applications make creating video “less of an event,” said Marc Karasu, president of MeasuredUp.com, New York. Karasu left his post as vp-marketing of Hotjobs.com to quarterback MeasuredUp.com. The site encourages consumers to sound off about good and bad products and customer service. Next month, the site is relaunching with video capabilities.

Video is a natural for consumers under 30, as they are heavy users of such sites as YouTube, he said. Video can be powerful “if you are shooting secret footage of an outrageous customer service experience,” Karasu said. However, “if it’s someone standing front of a store talking about what happened,” not so much.

Video is currently only about 1% of all reviews, according to Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice, the ratings and reviews service that created Orvis and PetCo’s consumer review section, based in Austin, Texas. However, Web sites can leverage this small pool of video reviews for a larger impact. Sections can be created showing the top-10 video reviews. Consumers can also be connected directly to the videos via e-mail links and RSS feeds.

In this respect videos not only offer a valuable opinion, but also entertainment value. “We’ve had other people linking to our site to watch the videos, there is always that entertainment opportunity,” said Bodell. “We look forward to more content as it gets easier to put video up there. It will also be better produced once the technology gets better and high-speed connections continue to become more prevalent. People will find creative ways of using it that we haven’t even envisioned yet.” Authors reading chapters of their books and explanations behind their writing is starting to appear on Amazon. Brands are also invited to post product demonstrations, as well, said Bodell. However, “they can’t be blatant advertisements,” he said. “They can buy ad placements.” Amazon weighs each submission based on its value to buyers in aiding their purchase decision.

Does this start to blur the lines of marketing? Probably, said Seth Godin, author of the new book Meatball Sundae. “If it is clearly labeled as to who is producing the video, call them what you want. ‘What is advertising?’ is a question we ask every day.”

Regardless, video is “a logical, predictable next step in the evolution of consumer reviews,” said Godin. Still, there are benefits to the written word. “Video is a lot less casual. You can spend 30 seconds writing a few sentences, video is more of a commitment,” he said. “Plus you can scan a whole page of written reviews, but you’re not going to watch a whole page of videos.”

khein@brandweek.com

 Companies can take the free Measuredup Pledge and build brand

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Welcome Companies and Business owners.

Take the Measuredup Pledge.  This is a program we have developed to help forward thinking companies demonstrate their commitment to improving Customer Service and making customers happy.

If you are interested in promoting the Pledge to your customers then please download the Measuredup logo and Pledge from Measuredup.com.

It is free to companies and makes a powerful statement that might just differentiate you from your no good competitors.

In this world of fragmenting media and online marketing its harder then ever to market to your audience and Customer Service is more important then ever in building your brand.  Show your consumers you care about them, are not afraid to put your brand where your mouth is and are committed to improving your Customer Service.

The Customer Service Pledge:

This company cares about our customers.

We want them to be happy and understand that without them we are not in business.

We know we can’t always be perfect and that some consumers will be angry sometimes, but we are committed to improving our Customer Service and making sure our employees always respect the customer.  In this way we will increase brand loyalty, word of mouth and repeat business.

By placing the Measuredup.com logo on our website we are supporting the Measuredup.com Customer Service Pledge to focus on making the consumer happy and to improving our customer service.

We believe the customer is always right.

We are so committed to Customer Service that we want to hear from you if your problem has not been addressed and we encourage you to submit customer service reviews to our company or to www.Measuredup.com

We look forward to making you a happy customer.

Download the free Measuredup.com logo and company pledge from Measuredup.

 How to get to a real person when trying to reach a company

Friday, January 4th, 2008

We have all tried calling companies to complain or ask questions only to be put into endless electronic prompts or messages that lead nowhere as we get more and more frustrated.

All we want is to speak to someone and then the issue would eaily and quickly be resolved.

But how do you get a real person on the phone.

Here are the best ways to do it:

- Do not answer the prompts.  Simply wait for a person to get on the line.  Many times these electronic systems do not know what to do when no one presses any keys and then they transfer you to a person.

- Simply keep pressing the number zero while at the same time saying Customer Service over and over again.  This will often transfer you to a person.

If neither of these works then keep along with the electronic system looking for an opportunity to connect to a real person.

Once you get a real person, right away ask them their name and extension and give them your number in case you get disconnected.  This creates a dialog and makes it more accountable forcing the rep to pay attention and be professional.  They do not want to get into trouble.

One other thing you can do with companies that really try to give you the runaround and avoid putting on a real customer service person is to write a review about them on www.Measuredup.com  It is free and easy to do.

When you do this you are telling other Measuredup users and consumers about the issue and your review is indexed on Measuredup and on search engines where other people will find them when searching for a company.  Doing this forces companies to pay more attention to you, revise their customer service and do a better job of interaction with consumers. Measuredup is a great way to complain or praise a company and their customer service in a public forum where others can read about the issue and make their own comments.

 How to start a job search for free

Friday, January 4th, 2008

If you are entering the job market or thinking about ways to see what other opportunities are out there then you need to do 5 things.  These 5 things are free or cost very little and are the most important things you can do to get things going. You should spend 2 hours a week on these and in no time you will see that you are starting to generate some traction.

5 free things to do to start a job search

1. Get your resume together, refresh it, make sure your contact info is up to date and revise any objectives or skills.  You would be surprised how many people have an outdated resume.

2. Get your resume posted on as many job boards as you can.  This is free and it not only allows you to search for opportunities by city or industry but recruiters can find your resume when they search for people.  You can type “job boards” into Google to get the names.

3. Open a LinkedIn account on www.Linkedin.com  This site is amazing and by searching for past colleagues and coworkers you will in no time build a network that will help you find new opportunities and get you references.  Go on to the site and play around with it and you will see the power of it.

4. Ask your friends and family for help and to tell you if they hear of anything.  Sometimes people just need to be asked for their help and do not want to be presumptious by offering.

5. Find the best trade magazine in your industry and start reading is regulalry.  Not only will you be up to date on new industry news and language but you will see who is growing, merging and hiring. Best of all you will sound up to date in an interview.

If you do these 5 things you will see that in no time you will start to get traction in your search and the momentum will open up new opportunities.

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