Top 5 Tips for Retailers to connect with Customers

by tz4rgp | Mar 3, 2014 | Blog |

A few days ago I was asked for my top 5 tips for retailers on how to connect with their customers, limited to 100 words. For a topic that one could write a novel on … Well, here is my answer: –       Help customers solving their problem. This distinguishes and makes you found by the customer –       Marketing/loyalty programs offer your customers value and are not mere vehicles to gather more data points –       Simplify your customers’ life, e.g. with a card wallet instead of own app that directly integrates with your CRM and POS –       Relevant communications at the right time, place with the right content – without appearing intrusive. For this you need to know your customer –       Consistent communications across channels and interactions, optimized for used touch point They probably need some more elaboration, especially the last one. First and foremost, the reason for any business to exist is making profit for its owners. This is not equal to producing and selling things (or providing a service) with a margin. The business will succeed only if it focuses on identifying its customers needs and then delivering solutions for these needs. It is not about pushing a product into the market (mostly, consider that needs can be created by smart businesses). This thought is well in the domain of Service Dominant Logic although I am not a strong proponent. Marketing and loyalty programs are important interaction vehicles between businesses and their customers. Both, especially loyalty programs, need to be set up to be mutually beneficial. It is not only about gathering more customer data that can be...

CRM is dead! Yeah, right – and Earth is a disc

by tz4rgp | Dec 2, 2013 | Blog |

A few days ago I came across a blog entry by @MikeBoysen titled Customers Don”t Want Relationships…PERIOD! A really intriguing title and read – perhaps written to stir up a discussion. Works for me, as it stirs me up from of my absence from this blog of mine… Mike, after this very strong claim the starts with another one: CRM is dead. Well, CRM seems to be pretty alive for a dead one; as a strategy and also as a technology. And here is exactly the point where Mike and other influencers – I had discussions about this topic e.g. with @bob_thompson from CustomerThink as well – are dead wrong (I couldn’t resist this pun). Their argumentation is solely based upon CRM being a technology. And then they compare CRM with another acronym that they claim is a strategy, concluding that the other one is far better. Apples vs. pears. Technology vs strategy. CRM is not a technology. It is also not a process area. CRM is a strategy. CEM is another, related, strategy. Buying a technology without a strategy to implement is bound to fail. It is like entering a road without a destination in mind. This holds true for whatever acronym is used, including CRM, SCRM, or CEM, but also “Loyalty Management”, or “Social Media”, or “Big Data”. What do I need “Big Data” for? Or what is the purpose of doing “Social Media” in an enterprise context? Are customers loyal to a vendor or does a vendor simply manage to create the impression that he is better able to deliver to customers’ needs than other vendors?...

Value Co-Creation in a World of Goods Dominant Logic

by tz4rgp | May 28, 2013 | Blog, Uncategorized |

Back in March Wim Rampen posted a very readable article titled Value is Always Co-Created In Use. I must say that I agree with the main thought of value not being created by the companies that deliver a service or product  – but by the customer when using them. But then I regard a (business) world that decouples products/services from value as a kind of Utopia. Basic premises for this concept to work on a grand scale are that –       resources are readily available to everyone –        and/or everyone is created equal. Neither of them is fulfilled. We live a world of limited resources; everybody’s skills are different; negotiation powers differ as well. Additionally people and organizations do not always act rationally, or in the interest of a greater good. Instead they have their own interest in mind, which is often very short termed. I have a challenge to see the world embracing this thought of value being created in use, because it means changing the way business works – even the way humans work. The challenge is that, as long as an exchange of “something” is involved in a transaction of sorts, I as the customer) have to have a lot of trust into the other party (the vendor, service provider, …) that the good or service that I gets to create value is worth the expense that I incur beforehand – and often it is not. Now, our whole economic system is built around exchange. I would like to leave private interactions un-discussed here, as I believe that we have a different notion of “value” in private...

Social Shopping = Groupon? Nope – this is only the beginning

by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |

Some time ago my wife Nicole posted a small series of blogs about the topic of Loyalty on ciber.com. In these readable blogs she identified and summarised three main strategies of acquiring loyal customers, which are Every day low price Classic loyalty programs that base upon cash-back options or that are points based Hybrid models To gain and retain loyal customers it is necessary for Retailers (or brands, or …) to get into a mutual engagement with the customers. In order to achieve this it needs something like a WOW!-factor. An important way to get this factor for Retailers is the usage of social media (or social CRM when being more advanced). Every day low price of course means plain ole price competition. No WOW!-factor whatsoever involved here. On top of that there can be only one competitor that actually has the lowest price. All the others go in from second place onwards. Given that, competition only on price is the surefire way to a Retailer’s death if the Retailer is not the one with the lowest price. Price competition kills margin, service levels, shopping experience, ability to gather and analyze more data on customers, as it needs an investment, which needs to be paid out of lowering margins. Every day low price works well for highly commoditized products and services, else it is dangerous. Customers will not see the real price of a good or service anymore but ask/search for a discount. It is extremely difficult to change this behavior once it shows up – and we consumers are already educated about the fact that the same product...

Social Shopping – A Retail Future

by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |

A while ago I blogged about threats and solutions in the retail industry that have their origin in rise of social media; with this post I would like to continue on this topic, focusing on possible solutions for retail companies. This blog also ties in to a recent article by Mark Tamis on Social CRM in Retail. In his article Mark describes an interesting and elaborate scenario that showcases a technology enabled, consumer and network driven decision process, using the example of buying a party dress. This example is interesting because, although the process is entirely consumer driven, the involved companies use the technology to add value to the customer, thus achieving a win-win situation. What the involved companies (a retailer and a hairdresser) are doing is establishing customer loyalty by [unordered_list style=”green-dot”] Engaging the customer Providing a superior shopping experience, combining online and offline aspects Enabling the customer to get immediate feedback from their network [/unordered_list] With this the two involved companies manage to align their interests with the customer’s interests. In other words, they are distinguishing themselves through service, instead of price. Trying to achieve loyalty through the offer of “least price” is a surefire way to death. To quote the 1986 Highlander movie: There can be only one. Although the scenario described by Mark sounds very advanced it isn’t. The enabling technologies exist and “just” need to be tied together. We are not talking Star Trek here. I really like this scenario as it depicts what could be. Still, integration is a hard business. Because of this I would like to come forward with another scenario...

Some Klout Score Musings

by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |

Today I’d like to present some musings about the klout score. Now, mine is not particularly high – actually it is pretty low – as you can see below; but the curve is interesting, if set into a context. So far I only followed my klout score pretty idly, till I started to do some minor experiments on 16.02.2011. You see some immediate effect on the day after. This is mainly due to me posting a blog entry and communicating this via Twitter and LinkedIn. There also should be a communication via CIBER’s Twitter account. This usually leads to a few clicks and one or two followers on Twitter. However, the real point I’d like to draw your attention to is the 22.02.2011. This is the day the 6.3 earthquake struck in Christchurch downtown and caused severe devastation. As you may know, I normally blog about CRM and social CRM on the CIBER site, so that event is clearly outside my usual activity. Now the catch is: I do live in Christchurch and quite some of my network friends do know this. So I did some simple things by updating my status in the few networks that I actively use: [unordered_list style=”green-dot”] LinkedIn with direct update to Twitter Facebook XING [/unordered_list] As you can imagine this still caused some reactions of my friends – quite some of which are real life friends. Of course there are still one or two CRM related posts of mine in there, plus an opinion on a political matter in Germany, but the majority of all conversations deals with the Christchurch quake, and the...