by twieberneit | Feb 4, 2021 | Blog |
Everyone (and their dog) tells you that you need a 360-degree view on your customer, right? According to Techtarget, the “360-degree customer view is the idea, sometimes considered unattainable, that companies can get a complete view of customers by aggregating data from the various touch points that a customer may use to contact a company to purchase products and receive service and support.” And you are fully sold to this famed concept and term. In this case, I am sorry for spoiling your day. You in all likelihood do not have it, you do not need it, and here’s the kicker: You do not want it. The 360-degree view on the customer is just another case of too many people using too many too big words. You are asking why? Let me explain. I fully get it. The customer is your North Star, the guiding light, the one reason for your company to exist. Your company is customer centric, you are looking outside-in. Your company’s purpose includes to help your customers fulfilling their needs and desires, thereby making a profit. And you are successful doing this. No doubt, you are on the right way. And indeed. What is needed to follow this way in reality involves collecting data about your customers. A lot of data. Master data, transactional data, behavioral data, consent data, structured and unstructured; you name it. Over time, this becomes a veritable treasure trove, if collected and used correctly. Even if not. When doing it right, you have already broken down many, ideally all, of the data and organizational silos that prevent you from communicating with...
by twieberneit | Oct 8, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
#CRMKonvos #17 – The dark side of the Cloud – danger, hope, liability, subscription, privacy … are they all gone? Quo vadis on premise and managed services? We are looking at the dark side of the cloud, its effects, chances and possibilities. We are also analysing the acquisition of Emarsys by SAP, do a little breakdown of the Microsoft cloud services that got announced last week (MS Teams anyone?) and general perspectives. Is the coveted 360 degree on the customer an illusion? And there is some harsh reality facing some suboptimal corporate structures. Fair play, as lived by Zoho, is another topic to be covered … Expectations towards SAP and its Customer Data Platform CDP++ are going towards the next level. Is SAP planning to destroy the silos to create more transparency? Is CDP really some BS (hint: not really) or can it be used in a valuable (for the customer) way)? A CX platform or at least a #COTP (Customer oriented Transaction Platform) are possible ways. Lots of ground to be covered. This episode is in...
by twieberneit | Oct 3, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
During this episode we talked with Mitch Lieberman who has quite some experience in the CRM industry, on the vendor- and analyst side. He was with Epiphany, Sugar, and with G2, to name but a few.He has the insight and the sharp mind that makes this conversation particularly interesting, without me diminishing the other ones, though.Mitch certainly got our grey matter into high gear during our conversation that started with CX, went into a solid discussion of the value (what is it?) of Customer Data Platforms, CDP, on to conversational systems – and back. Btw, what is a CDP? Let Mitch provide his interesting view.We learned a lot.You can, too.This conversation is in English, apart from a few minutes at the beginning and the...
by twieberneit | Mar 4, 2017 | Blog |
These days, customer experiences increasingly need to be delivered with the help of technology. This does not mean that direct interactions and people are no more important in marketing, sales, or service; on the contrary, but that an increasing number of customers is using the web, social media, chat, or an app to identify suitable products or services or to resolve an issue, when needed. The Customer Executive Board found that 57 per cent of the buying process is already completed before sales personnel get engaged. A Cisco retail study confirms the American Express findings and states that around 60 per cent of all in-store purchases start their journey electronically. The American Express Global Barometer claims that 60 per cent of all customers abandoned a purchase because of poor service experiences. Over the past 20 or so years the way products and services get sold and customer service as well as marketing get delivered to customers changed dramatically. Gone are the times where a potential customer was addressed via a radio- or TV-spot or an ad printed in a newspaper, or a letter in the mailbox … – well, it still happens, but the focus shifted. We started off from one single, unidirectional marketing ‘channel’ – the customer comes into my store and interacts with me, a person. From there on we added an ever increasing number of additional channels, like the ones mentioned, plus many more. In today’s omni-channel world we also have telephone, e-mail, web-delivered ads, mobile apps, branded and white-label communities, social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., chat, messenger applications like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat,...
by twieberneit | Feb 14, 2017 | Blog |
The customer, the elusive entity that every business is about – or at least should be about. The customer gets targeted, marketed to, sold to, serviced, analysed, shall have a positive customer experience, and sometimes even is made happy. The ‘customer’ as an entity is owned by the marketing department, err, the service department, oops, sales … or is it IT? After all IT is likely to run the CRM system. If it is not a cloud system, that is. In reality it is different in every company and probably rightfully so. On the other hand every department has their own requirements and the ‘owner’ of an entity is likely the one who decides upon the relative priorities of these requirements. And the fulfillment of requirements regularly decides upon the effectiveness and efficiency a business unit can operate with. Now the marketing department is heavily invested in collecting all data that a customer leaves behind in order to understand behaviours and be able to entice known and unknown customers into buying (in the case of a B2C business) or solidifying the lead to an extent that it can be handed over to the sales department (in case of a B2B business). They are interested in lots of attributes, segmentation, slicing and dicing towards various dimensions. Born were Data Management Platforms, and Customer Data Platforms, and overall a very thriving industry of Marketing Technology. The sales department now is interested in opportunity management, CPQ (configure, price, quote), relationship with the buyers and their potential influencers, closing the deal as efficiently as possible. Born is a world of sales support software....
