Touchpoint Insights, April 2010: Improve Customer Experience, Drive Loyalty

Insights and Influence in 140 Characters or Less…

What’s your customer experience? The Tweets that made into the Top 10 this month point to a continuing and focused interest on how organizations interact with their customers, their brands and their ability to drive loyalty. The underlying theme? People. Specifically, how your people create the experiences that drive perception.

If the wisdom (and interest) of THIS crowd is any indicator, a course on understanding and improving customer interactions and perceptions would be a class we all might consider. As you dive into the “stories behind the Tweets” below, you may find yourself learning more than you expected – about subjects that are more important to your business than you thought. Have fun!

1.) Reading: "Managing The Customer Experience Makes Perfect Sense" http://ow.ly/1vT8H
I couldn't have said it better myself: a succinct primer on CRM (customer relationship management), CEX (customer experience) and the critical lines that connect the two for a total experience that fulfills wants as well as needs. Maybe I'd add one thought: it's not always about adding or retaining touchpoints. Sometimes ditching extraneous ones drives a better customer experience, not to mention helping your bottom line. (Tweet Score: 41)

2.) Go beyond knowing what your customers want to do, and learn why they want to do it. http://ow.ly/1qssF
I couldn't have said it better my....oh, I already used that one? As we grapple with the best mix of service, efficiency and belt tightening, can we endeavor to retain our humanity as well? Customers appreciate efficiency, as long as we don't make our efficiency at their expense. Until A.I. gets a whole lot more sophisticated, human touchpoints will remain critical to moving clients and prospects through selection, satisfaction, loyalty and especially, into advocacy. (Tweet Score: 40)

3.) Reading: "Fall From Grace: How Brands Can Avoid Losing Status, Respect, and Prestige" http://ow.ly/1GMT0
Brands are a jealous mistress. Yes, they like to be wooed early on, given gifts, attention, and cosseted. But heed well. It doesn’t end there, after the launch...when the consultants have gone home.... Like a lover, brands don’t want to be taken for granted just because they’re no longer shiny and new; they’re still complex creatures that demand attention and, dare I say, maintenance. Hmmm, kind of like a successful marriage..... (Tweet Score: 38)

4.) What assumptions are we making about customer behavior that might simply no longer be true? http://ow.ly/1vb4j
Such a simple question and such a beast to answer. But each of us has the capacity to open our minds to see beyond. Whether it's a new process, delivery method, philosophy, or indefinable something that you've just glimpsed in your peripheral "vision", whether you're in agriculture, manufacturing or working for Apple, molds are waiting to be broken all around us. (Tweet Score: 36)

5.) You have customers. Customers who love you. So how do you get them to make their feelings public? http://ow.ly/1vSMo
Are you capitalizing on your brand ambassadors? Do you even know who they are...outside your own marketing department, that is? Also known as advocates, these dream clients (and third-party promoters) live on the happy golden end of your Customer Relationship Lifecycle. Sure, you want to actively appreciate them, but you also want to map how they got there, and do your utmost to clone the winning process. (Tweet Score: 35)

6.) Why has your company survived, while others in your industry have failed miserably? Cust experience, perhaps? http://ow.ly/1vBUL
Chills, I tell you, this article will give you chills! (The good kind.) First of all, you get to read, "aggressively unknowledgeable and remarkably useless" in reference to sales help. That's pretty much worth your time right there. But talk about a brand ambassador (Yes, in fact we were. Just talking about them, that is.) The author's enthusiasm has just put this electronics store on my list of must-see New York sights. Statue of Liberty, you'll have to wait your turn. (Tweet Score: 34)

7.) The next generation of Mercedes customers: conversant, digital, and willing to tell MB exactly how to market to them. http://ow.ly/1vapM
“Would social media mavens be effective in building product buzz around a new, younger Mercedes Benz?” “With Gen Y'ers...in business school?” With all due respect Mr. Auto Dealer, if you think the jury is still out on that one... I’m speechless and even my snark has deserted me. MB has made smart early moves towards understanding its new generation of customers, even if the old boys in the checkered jackets haven’t quite joined the hayride. (Tweet Score: 32)

8.) In an age of user-generated content and "#brand ambassadors", what's to keep the ad agencies in business? http://ow.ly/1z1fA
In these days of social media when anyone can be an 'influencer', are ad agencies dinosaurs on the looming edge of the ice age or an integral part of the commercial landscape? That all depends on their skills of evolution and adaptation. Where creatives congregate, the masses will follow: with 65,000 new videos uploaded to YouTube daily, someone needs to guide us to the ones worth watching. (Tweet Score: 31)

9.) Are your customers lost in your brand house? Have you given them a clear floorplan? http://ow.ly/1y00X
Branded house, house of brands, or house of cards: get your branding house in shipshape with a blueprint, or the whole structure may topple. If you've built your organization organically and your products, messages and deliverables present as a jumble, you're likely missing great opportunities to cross-sell and build upon your values and vision. (Tweet Score: 30)

10.) You may be better off targeting key influencers than #consumer masses. Better still: both/and. http://ow.ly/1BO93
“No one puts Baby in the corner!” Movie, anyone? So wise, Dirty Dancing, and so true. Baby is an Influencer, and you never put your Influencers in the corner, or so says Adrienne Baker in this succinct, valuable overview of a new Forrester study on mass influencers. (Tweet Score: 27)