The Insight Advantage

Has LinkedIn Killed the Value of References?

Jen_Berkley — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 02:11:03 +0000

Submitted by guest blogger, Maeve Naughton – Senior Manager, Field Marketing at Fluke Networks and Customer Reference Expert

In my younger years, if you were endorsed by someone, it meant that you were being recommended by them. Someone valued and approved of your services or work and were willing to stand up and say, “Yes, Maeve is a good bet! I’d hire her.” It was almost like a badge of honor. You wouldn’t endorse the guy you bought an apple from because you shared an email or even a phone call to find out where his apple stand is located. That would just be silly. You don’t really know anything about them. You might, however, endorse their ability to grow great apples, after you have tried some. Maybe you found value in the price of the apple, maybe it was the greenest one on the block, offered the most crunch, lasted a week without going bad. I think you get the point.

Things have changed, and change isn’t necessarily a good thing. LinkedIn’s endorsement feature is such a thing.

According to the LinkedIn blog from Dec. 18, 2012, “Endorsements are a valuable way to enhance your professional identity and is an even simpler way to help build the professional brands of your connections. And we’re seeing great reception, with more than 550 million endorsements given out since launch.”

What I would love to know is, how many of those 550 million endorsements are legit? To me it seems like the LinkedIn endorsements are a popularity contest. Maybe even the same idea as seeing how many Twitter followers you have.

Why do I keep bringing up “legit”? I’m not going to call out people specifically but every now and then I get a happy little notice saying “so and so has endorsed you”. Well that’s just fabulous. I dated him 10 years ago and he would have no idea what my press release writing skills are like. Or, I met so and so at a party and now they’re endorsing me for my “Marketing strategy”. Funny, because we never talked about Marketing, just different types of beer we both like.

Why do I care so much about what LinkedIn is doing with this new feature? I have years of customer reference experience and taking lightly what is seen as a reference, is, well, disturbing to me. It belittles the value of a reference. I get that it’s an easy thing to do, just click a button and you’ve ultimately acted as a reference for someone, but the real world of references isn’t that easy. Reference professionals are some very hard working folks. They make sure that the right reference is matched to the right opportunity whether it be speaking with an analyst group or speaking with a prospect. It’s not as easy as clicking a button and it’s done. Hopefully people are smarter and know that just because someone is endorsed doesn’t mean that they’re good at what they’ve been endorsed for. They need to look at the actual recommendations, talk to references, both ones provided and those not provided.

With all this being said, I do love LinkedIn and am on it a few times a day checking out the suggested news for me and seeing who is moving where and all that good stuff. It’s a great site, but I think they majorly failed with the endorsement feature. References aren’t as easy as a simple click.

Do you agree?

Understanding “Big Data”: What About Good Old Fashioned Customer Research?

Jen_Berkley — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 01:49:28 +0000

‘Big data’ is another one of those buzzwords that had reached the tipping point and is a topic that any business person worth their salt needs to be somewhat conversant on.

My clients have been asking me how big data fits in with their focus on understanding their customers using traditional tools like surveys and interviewing. As perplexing as the concept can appear to be, it’s really quite simple. Traditional tools still have a place in this new ‘big data’ world…

Understanding your customers’ needs and wants and getting inside their heads about what challenges they face so you can figure out how to be invaluable to them is hugely important to business success. This information is data, regardless of how you GET that data. Conducting your own surveys, interviewing your customers, or buying syndicated market data. Plain and simple, it’s just data.

Likewise, the information that can be collected about the transactions your customers conduct with your company is also data. Whether you mine your own databases for that information or ask your customers directly. It’s data.

Similarly, information you can get about the behaviors that your customers or target market exhibit BEYOND their interactions with your company and information about the environments/settings in which they do what they do is also data.

The farther you get away from your own interactions with your customers, the more likely it is that you will need to turn to other sources for the data, but it’s all just data.

‘Big data’ refers to data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using regular database management tools and applications that businesses would be using for their daily processes. There are specialized tools that programmers can use to basically wrestle down big data sets and find meaningful insights from.

But don’t get overwhelmed…again, data is data. And your approach to data shouldn’t change, regardless of how MUCH data you are dealing with. It’s very simple:

Define WHY you are collecting data…what are you trying to learn?

Decide what sources of data think will best address the ‘why’ (start small and expand later)

Figure out where you will store the data (start small and get more sophisticated later)

Set a plan for analyzing the data (how, who, how often, etc.)

Decide who needs to be informed about what you’ve learned (think across the organization)

Repeat…

The good thing about the focus on ‘big data’ is that it focuses businesses on HAVING data and using it to improve their business products and processes including marketing strategy, sales processes, customer support, product strategy, and more.

A recent Forrester report said that “To improve customer engagement, companies must invest in solutions to effectively manage big data.”

Businesses who look beyond producing cool products that customers ‘need’ and expand to a listening/collecting mode are always going to be more successful. It’s critical to constantly update your understanding of your customers and their world in order to stay relevant to them. If ‘big data’ gets businesses more aware of that fact, then ‘Viva le Big Data!”

Your thoughts?

Why Do Some Companies Avoid Research Like the Plague?

Jen_Berkley — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:31:01 +0000

In a recent discussion about obstacles to win loss research, we talked the fact that some companies just don’t do ANY research.

Some of the reasons that companies don’t do research:

Don’t trust their customers’ perspectives: Some companies are skeptical about their customers’ ability to be objective/overcome their biases. Other companies consider their technology/concepts to be beyond their customers’ limited imagination. Even the most innovative product companies have something to learn from their customers that will ensure that their products/services are delivered in a way that appeals to their target market (packaging, messaging, and more…).

Think that research will take too much time: Research that is done over time vs. at one specific point in time can help ensure that no product launch or critical business decision has to wait for a project to be complete. ANY insights you can inject into business decisions can improve the success of those decisions.

Think that research will cost too much money: There are many ways to do research on a shoestring. The simplest, least expensive research involves just picking up the phone and talking to your customers about how things are going, what their biggest problems are, and how you could continue to meet their needs. Outside research resources definitely have their place when the research is large in scope and difficult to manage using in-house resources or when it’s important to have statistical levels of confidence in the data and/or an objective view of the data.

Companies who DO use research to gather insights about their customers are able to provide solutions that are targeted directly to a real market need and are more likely to win over their competition based on having the best understanding of what their market cares about and what messages will appeal most to them when positioning their products and services.

Companies of all sizes, from high tech to no tech can all benefit from listening to their customers and exploring the best type of research for addressing their immediate and long-term needs.

What obstacles have you seen stand in the way of companies doing research? How has that worked for them?

Top Obstacles to Win Loss Research

Jen_Berkley — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:24:56 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a session at the inaugural Marketing Camp Silicon Valley and we explored win loss analysis: what is it, why do it, what are the obstacles, how to overcome them, and more.

Win loss analysis is one of the lowest hanging fruit for organizations, providing a relatively easy and quick way to get invaluable insights that have implications across the organization. But very few organizations are doing win loss analysis…why IS that?

We came up with this list of obstacles…I’ll be blogging over the next few weeks about ways to overcome many of these.

First, there are the functional areas that can serve as obstacles:

Sales – doesn’t want to give access to their contacts, skeptical and even paranoid about the information that will be collected

Marketing – bandwidth

Product Managers – “we’re already done with the product so can’t do anything with the input”

Then there are the perceptions/mindsets that get in the way:

Companies that just don’t do ANY research

“It takes too long to implement win/loss programs.”

“We won’t get any good, deep insights.”

“It’s hard to quantify the results.”

“We’ll just get self-fulfilling results…the person who does the interview will hear what they WANT to hear.”

“No one will want to talk to us…they’ve moved on.”

“It will take too much training to do it well and make sure the interviewers do a good job.”

What obstacles have you seen that get in the way of companies talking to customers they have won and those they have lost? How have you overcome these obstacles?

If you’d like to learn more about win loss analysis, contact us for our “7 Good Reasons to Implement a Formal Win Loss Approach” white paper.

Technology Is Revolutionizing Customer Service

Jen_Berkley — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 05:32:13 +0000

From guest blogger, Lance Overbay – Lance studied engineering and minored in English. He has a love for all things Android.

Today’s entrepreneur and startup business owner is born into a world of digital communication. Mobile phones are often used for texting rather than talking. Requests for information now involve finger-walking the Internet rather than physical journeys backed by research in yellow pages, the print newspaper or word-of-mouth testimonies.

It seems that many prefer the anonymity of computerized contact over the visual or verbal upfront requirements of a personal meeting or phone call. To compete in this digital society, business owners must learn how to apply current technology to all matters involving customer support. The power of Live Chat Software, social media programs, and email can help promote quicker response times, fulfill customer expectations and save money in the process.

A Swelling Population Demands New Methods of Customer Support

There was a time when society consisted of small communities, mom-&-pop businesses, and a local economy based on friends serving friends. One-on-one customer support was easy to maintain, desirable and satisfying to both the business owner and the customer.

Even small communities consist of many groups of strangers among friends. The demand for service exceeds the capacity of upfront visual and verbal customer support.

Old methods of live customer support can be:

Expensive
Difficult to monitor
Time consuming
And employee intensive.

On the occasions when staff overload results in 45 minutes of recorded messages, menu phone trees and customer frustration, the customer can develop a negative attitude toward the business, its products and its customer support policies. By applying the features of a chat application and other various social media tools, an aggressive business can use this focus on technology and anonymity to help connect users to the proper support networks in a manner that is less expensive to manage and still customer-preferred.

Social Media and Live Chat Software Uses Technology to Improve Customer Support

Current technology promotes the opportunity for every business to provide instant access to real-time customer support. Unlike call waiting, customers who make contact via digital devices are not forced to endure the monopoly that accompanies dial-tone silence and recorded messages. Even in the event that a particular online customer support session involves a customer wait, working from a computer or the likes of an iPhone gives that customer an opportunity to fill the lag time with personal research, a review of currently posted online answers or any other type of online interest. So your customers can research, chat with a friend, update your status on Facebook, Tweet, or check your email while you wait for your customer support specialist to assist you. Embracing new technology in your customer service model can help your customers to connect and might improve your profits overall.

So…do you see this as a positive trend? Or are there trade-offs?

The Chief Customer Officer (CCO) Movement…a Good Sign for Customers

Jen_Berkley — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:26:30 +0000

We’re all familiar with a wide variety of CXO positions, but how many of you have run into a CCO lately? Well it’s becoming more and more likely that you WILL run into one in organizations worldwide as the creation of Chief Customer Officer roles become a strategic move for organizations according to a recent Inc. Magazine article.

What IS a CCO? The Chief Customer Officer is the executive responsible in customer-centric companies for the total relationship with an organization’s customers. This position is intended to provide a single vision across all methods of customer contact. The strategic importance of CCOs has gradually grown since the 1990’s when the role was created and in some cases was just a symbolic way for organizations to say that they were customer-focused. Today, the CCO typically reports to the chief executive officer, and is potentially a member of the board of directors.

According to Curtis Bingham of the CCO Council, there are now over 500 CCO’s worldwide and the role is rapidly evolving.

CCOs are often responsible for influencing corporate activities of customer relations in the call center, sales, marketing, user interface, finance/billing. fulfillment and post-sale support. Sometimes they even may head up one of these functional areas, but still maintain a cross-functional focus.

One interesting example of this is a client of mine, Vendavo, where their new Sr. VP of Global Sales, Jennifer Maul, previously held the CCO role in the organization. Jennifer’s new role is “responsible for lifetime customer relationships, customer success, and growing the customer base”. As a result of the close relationship between those goals and the sales team, she now has a different title, but is still responsible for customer relationships as well as the sales function. This would indicate that customer retention and satisfaction is fundamental to Vendavo’s sales/growth strategy…that’s a good thing!

I’m encouraged by the increasing number of CCOs and the increased focus of organizations on how important customer relationships are to the bottom line. If you aren’t delivering/supporting your product or communicating with your customers in a way that meets their needs/expectations, it doesn’t matter how cool your product is…they will find someone else who is willing to make their experience easier and less painful.

To learn more about this evolving role, explore the CCO Council site. There are many tools there to help determine whether the time is right for your organization to create a CCO role and the success factors for doing so.

If you consult with organizations, you should understand more about this role and realize the important message your clients are sending if they have a CCO…it is a huge clue about their strategic focus and will give you insights about what is most important to them.

Please share any insights you have about this role and the challenges that companies may be having in implementing such a position.

Payoff for Coordinating Customer Experience Management

Jen_Berkley — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:41:28 +0000

From guest blogger, Lynn Hunsaker, of Clear Action – Customer Experience Optimization Consulting

Connect your customer experience management efforts across the company, and enjoy exponential benefits, according to the 2011 Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management Benchmarking Study.

Companies with managers (of their top five methods to achieve CEM goals) who meet together quarterly or more often for coordination purposes, or have dotted-line reporting to a single executive or committee tend to enjoy advantages* in the following areas:

Role of CEM: Top management’s day-to-day activities indicating that customer experience is a competitive differentiator, CEM is a formal business process, and CEM is an influencer of major business decisions.
Voice of Customer: Identify and collect voice of the customer form all the influencers on the buying decision (i.e. initiators, approvers, users, buyers, influencers, gatekeepers, decision-makers). And involve executives in listening to customers, capture front-line employees’ observations of customer sentiment, and capture customer complaints anytime anywhere.

How We View Customers: Integrate customer feedback sources, analyze integrated customer data, establish a single view of each customer across divisions and regions, use customer metrics to evaluate organizational performance, and include customer metrics in the company’s balanced scorecard.

How we Focus Employees on Customers: Onboard all employees regarding customer experience programs, review business processes form the customer perspective, use customer metrics in performance reviews, reward customer experience improvement by teams, align incentive pay to customer experience metrics, and create department-level action plans to improve customer experience.

How we Focus our Business on Customers: Use customer feedback to guide annual operating plan and listen to customer needs prior to product development efforts. And increase funding for cross-organizational collaboration.

Top 5 Methods to Achieve CEM Goals: Study participants named the following customer experience management efforts among their top 5 ways to improve customer experience:

Recommendations: Recommendations for stronger customer experience strategy, cross-organizational cooperation, and business results are provided in the study, which can be accessed at www.ClearAction.biz/benchmarking.

NOTE: 25% discount code = B2B25; save an additional 20% by downloading the 2010 and 2011 reports together, with discount code = 2studies.

*Companies with managers (of their top five methods to achieve CEM goals) who meet together quarterly or more often for coordination purposes, or have dotted-line reporting to a single executive or committee reported at least 20 percentage points advantage in the performance of holistic customer experience management, as well as strong business results.

Footnotes of coordination graph:
¹ or more often for coordination purposes
²to a single executive or committee

Footnotes of top 5 CEM efforts graph:
¹ including user experience
² including CRM, ERP, data mining
³ not customer-facing
⁴ dissatisfied to delighted
⁵ including forums, user groups
⁶ to increase purchase volume or duration

Using Social Media to Manage Your Customers’ Journey

Jen_Berkley — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:11:06 +0000

I came across an interesting blog post in Forbes today about the importance of using social media to help not only get involved in, but manage, your customers’ journey.

Customers begin their buying process way before they contact vendors that they are interested in. Think about the amount of research you personally have done before deciding which vendor to contact about any product or service you purchased recently. Personally, I’ve sent inquiries out to email lists for groups I belong to as well as put out inquiries on Facebook to get recommendations from like-minded people in my community who can recommend solutions to my problems.

Customers are also using web search to become more educated before deciding who to contact. Web search provides access not only to vendor websites and product/service information, but also community board, blog posts, and rating sites.

Being armed with all of the above information can help short circuit the qualification process as a buyer and your buyers know that.

By understanding what your customers are looking for at each step of their research process, and providing it, you can ensure that you are included in their short list of providers they will contact.

And the best way to get a deep understanding of how your customers are navigating their buying process is to talk to both customers you have won as well as those you lost. By conducting ongoing win-loss analysis, you can ensure that you understand the various points in their research and purchase process, what information that were looking for and what criteria they used to qualify vendors. All of this information is vitally important to making sure that your marketing efforts are hitting the target.

What do you know about the information your customers is looking for, and where? You may be surprised…

Have You Thanked a Customer Lately?

Jen_Berkley — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:52:59 +0000

It’s that time of year for giving thanks…but I suggest that this should only serve as a simple reminder of a mindset we should have all year long, especially when it comes to our customers.

Keeping customers happy and preventing them from being lured away by your competitors is a key strategy to having a stable customer base and healthy revenues. Part of a successful customer retention strategy is ensuring that customers know that they are valued and not viewed as a commodity that you can replenish as needed.

And when it comes to making your customers feel valued, a simple message of ‘Thanks for your business!’ does the job perfectly. Have you ever been on an American Airlines flight when they say “We know you have other choices and we appreciate that you chose to fly with us…”. I know it’s a script that the flight attendants are given, but obviously, it had an impact on THIS customer. It’s a great message…for all of us!

But words alone can only have so much of an impact. I just looked back at the July 2011 email I received from Netflix which was their first announcement of the debacle that led to a plummet in customer numbers and their stock price. “We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business.” And now we are going to raise prices on you and ‘encourage’ you to stop ordering DVD’s…what?! I felt ANYthing but valued after reading that email. And will never feel the same about Netflix, a company that I had been a raving fan of up until then.

An example of how ‘actions speak louder than words’: Yesterday a San Francisco gas station owner lowered gas prices by 50 cents per gallon for 8 hours as a way of thanking his customers and helping make their holiday travel a bit less expensive. WOW! No advertising of this offer ahead of time to get MORE business, just a concrete (and unexpected) thank you to his customers. And, how cool that his actions made the local news, but that wasn’t his objective. It was a pure token of thanks. Side benefits: extremely loyal customers who hopefully won’t be tempted by saving a few cents per gallon at a competing station and who will spread the word about this station to others.

Here are a few ideas for how you can say thank you to your customers, not only during the holiday season, but ANY time during the year (or ALL year!):

Send an insert with all orders (or orders over a certain amount) that provide a discount on future orders…with a message saying “Thanks for your business!’

Create a culture in your organization for anyone who interfaces with your customers (sales reps, support staff, cashiers, customer service reps, etc.) to make sure they say a sincere “Thank you for your business” after each interaction.

Have executives proactively call key customers for the express purpose of saying “Thank you”…no selling involved.

Those are just a few deas to get your juices flowing…let us know what you have done, or are thinking of doing, to let your customers know how much you appreciate their continued business!

And thank YOU for taking the time to read our blog! We’d love to hear your comments…

Sifting Through Social Media Noise Requires Good Analysis

Jen_Berkley — Sat, 21 May 2011 18:18:26 +0000

Businesses across the world are realizing that they need to figure out how to sift through the megatons of information that is being shared about them via social media amongst customers, ex-customers, prospective customers and more.

It’s extremely important to pay attention to the information being posted online about the impressions that people have of your products and your company. This information can complement the work you may already be doing to collect customer feedback via customer satisfaction questionnaires or any other research you do to understand how to better meet your customers’ needs.

There are many social media monitoring tools available to collect information from public areas of the Internet. Most of them automatically classify each comment using natural language processing technology (NLP) to help assess whether they are positive or negative. This approach can help take a broad sweep at assessing what the sentiment is out there about your company and your products. Monitoring these metrics over time and seeing what variations occur in conjunction with new product launches or organizational changes is very important, however this just tells you ‘what’ people are saying and doesn’t tell you ‘why’ people feel that way about your company/your products.

In order to get the biggest benefit from monitoring social media, it’s important to look at the actual comments that are collected and analyze what is behind them. For people that are frustrated with your company or products, is it the purchasing process, installation of your product, or actual daily use of your products that is the core of the problem? This information can be very helpful in making decisions about where to invest improvement efforts, product enhancements, etc.

Likewise, it’s very helpful to understand what it is that customers like most about your products. This information can help you ensure that you don’t mess with the elements of your product that customers like most.

Getting full understanding of the social media noise requires in-depth analysis of a sampling of the actual comments. Some organizations have the bandwidth and expertise to do this in-house, however, sometimes it is necessary to bring in external resources. Researchers who do qualitative research such as interviewing, focus groups, etc. have the expertise to know how many comments to review in order to have a valid sample that represents all of the comments that are out there. A good researcher can glean the details behind the comments and look for trends to help you get clearer about what to do to improve the perception of your company and products.

Net net: be sure that you are not only looking at social media metrics, but also investing the time to analyze what those metrics mean via thorough analysis.