Customer Service King

Here are several excerpts from a post in Gar Reynold's Presentation Zen weblog, Can I Trust You If You Do Not Trust Me?:

Many years ago a Japanese friend of mine was dining in Tokyo with her mother in a famous five-star hotel. After they paid and lingered a bit in the elegant lobby, they began walking out the front door when the assistant manager came and stopped them asking them if they had paid for their meal, subtly implying that they had not. They were taken aback by this and shocked that they had to explain that they had of course paid. After some conversation the assistant manager accepted their word. But it was too late. The joy of the mother-daughter birthday lunch was now replaced by a very bad taste indeed. Later the hotel would try to apologies by phone (but only after the daughter wrote a formal letter of complaint), but even screwed that up by "appearing insincere," she said. Today my friend will not only never enter that hotel again (in any country) but has since influenced many of her friends with her story. "They didn't trust me and my mother," she said "so why should I give them my business ever again? I hate the very thought of that place." Trust is a big deal, and what a fragile thing it is.

All the services you offer, all the hours spent on employee training, and all the details your business or organization sweats can all be for naught if people sense you do not trust them. Trust is not everything in a relationship, but it's the first thing. Interpersonal relationships without trust fade away pretty quickly. Can not this apply even to teachers and professors? Will not even the best lesson plan fail if a student feels that the teacher does not trust the student. If you don't trust me, how can I trust you?

My default is to trust, yet this is a risky and fragile thing. As John Maeda points out in his book, "[I] trust unquestionably...but I am open to UNDO-ing that trust whenever deserved."

A post in the Innovation Weblog, Strategies for Implementing Customer Innovation, summarizes several strategies for putting customers at the center of your innovation initiatives; strategies that were discussed in Patricia Sybold's new book, Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-design Your Company's Future:

Observe what customers do: "Look… at what customers and potential customers are doing. Try to observe customers in their natural settings.  Watch how they do things, what they're trying to do, and how they improvise or customize in order to accomplish their desired outcomes in the way that works best for them."

Provide toolkits and guidelines for innovation: "If you want to harness customers’ innovative abilities, provide them with built-in opportunities to innovate. Give them ways to mix and match, to extend your products, to customize, to extend the capabilities you've provided… Encourage them to share their improvisations, customizations and extensions with others."

Invite and reward customers for providing guidance to others: "Invite your expert customers to categorize and classify your information and your products in ways that make sense to other customers or prospects. Solicit their recommendations and suggestions for additional features and new-product ideas."

Create customer communities and observe/participate in the online communities your customers care about: "Don't just post a discussion form on your web site. Recruit and incent the right group of people to act as consultants in ongoing discussions with each other and with your organization… If you hear negatives, learn from them and fix the problems."

Put a program in place to encourage and support promoters: "Even the most loyal fans sometimes need encouragement to get the word out there. Offer your customers benefits for promoting your products and services -- since it's something they'll do naturally, anyway… If the products they're promoting include their own contributions, they'll be even more enthusiastic about promoting them."

Many of Patricia's suggestions will no doubt strikes fear into the hearts of the managers and leaders of conservative, product-focused companies. They demand a level openness and risk that some people just aren't prepared to accommodate. "You want us to condone our customers fooling around with our products and figure out new things they can do with them? Are you nuts?" Participating in online communities appears to be risky, too. "What if they criticize our products or say bad things about our company?" But this kind of discussion may already be taking place -- whether you know it or not. So why not be proactive and demonstrate how you solve their problems and address their concerns?

Such is the brave new world of customer focused innovation.  Yes, there are some risks.  But there are some potentially huge rewards, too, as this book compellingly demonstrates through its ample selection of case histories.

Here are several excerpts from an article by Businessweek.com reporter Catherine Holahan, Small Biz Ads: The Year of the Web:

On Jan. 17 Michael Rivkin and Alexander Libkind released Zodiac Interactive technology that will let subscribers search for local businesses and never miss a minute of what's on the tube. Simply hit a button on the remote, and the live-action picture on the screen shrinks to make room for a local search menu, which users can peruse by category or keyword.

Businesses in the vicinity matching the desired criteria are then displayed onscreen. Clicking on a vendor causes the cable subscriber's phone to ring with the business on the line.

Rivkin, Zodiac's CEO, plans to support the service by selling interactive banner ads from local vendors on the search screen. Zodiac may charge businesses for the call as do other click-to-call Web services.

"The Final Frontier"

Search is still a primary driver for local Web advertising. But as search ads get more expensive, it's new products such as pay-per-call advertising and local mobile advertising that have potential to reel in many of the small businesses that have yet to advertise on the Web (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/22/06, "The Small Fry Sour on Search Ads").

"Local online advertisers are the final frontier in online advertising," says Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a research firm specializing in local advertising. "Smaller local businesses were slower to catch on, but they are starting to flow onto the Web at a pretty high rate.

Atwood attributes much of the growth to a realization among small business owners that customers are researching potential purchases on the Internet and new Web services, such as click-to-call advertising, which have made it easier for small businesses without much of a budget to advertise online. He predicts local online advertising will jump more than 32%, to $7.7 billion this year. That's up from $5.9 billion last year.

Taking Search Local

The quest to capture more ad spending from smaller businesses is attracting traditional search advertisers such as Google. Last year, Google unveiled two local business advertising products in conjunction with its local search and map offerings.

Users can search through Google Local for businesses related to specific keywords near a location. The results are then displayed and marked on the map.

Sponsored links from applicable advertisers appear in a blue box, before directory listings. Google also displays printable coupons, supplied through a partnership with Valpak.com, along with the local search results.

Google also offers free click-to-call services in its local search directory with technology provided by VoIP (VOII), a company that owns a patent on click-to-call technology. VoIP CEO Tony Cataldo says the company has seen steady growth through the involvement of advertisers such as lender Nationwide, which has click-to-call features on its Web site to let customers fill out online forms while speaking with a representative over the phone.

Google is not the only search engine trying to cash in on local advertisers through local search and click-to-call services. Search engine platform Yahoo has offered a similar service on its local search property since 2004.

Internet commerce giant eBay has offered click-to-call services since acquiring Internet communications company Skype in 2005. And in August, eBay and Google announced they would team up to develop click-to-call text ads. They plan to test the services early this year.

Smaller search engine Ask, owned by Interactive Corp. (IACI), also is getting into the market. In December the search engine unveiled its new AskCity service, which combines maps and local search with reviews and tickets from other online sources such as IAC's online local guide service Citysearch and ticket-service Ticketmaster. AskCity does not yet include advertising but eventually will offer opportunities for local advertisers such as online coupons, says Ask's vice-president for product management, Doug Leeds.

Web Ads Go Legit

A Web site, however, isn't the only thing holding local businesses back from advertising online. There is concern about the reliability of tracking for online ads due to click fraud, says Borrell's Atwood.

There's also the mixed message from traditional media companies with whom local businesses have advertised. Often they will only sell online ads with print ads, making online advertising appear like an extra rather than an effective medium. EMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman says this will become less of a problem as traditional media companies embrace Web advertising themselves and develop partnerships with Google and others.

Here are the most interesting CRM-related news stories from the past week:

• Salesforce.com's Platform Dreams
• Sugar CRM - Roadmap To Commercial Open Source Technology
• Sage Software Announces Real Estate CRM Product Available
• SAP looks to more tightly link info workers to ERP, CRM
• SAP embraces on-demand and mass customer acquisition
• Eloqua Corporation Continues to See Strong Growth in Demand Generation Market
• Marketers Not Integrating Email: Survey
• Centive Celebrates Ten-Year Anniversary
• Factiva SalesWorks Enhanced for salesforce.com's AppExchange
• Jumsoft Issues CRM App for Mac OS X
• Kyliptix Gives Individuals and Business Users the Power of CRM
• SuccessFactors Launches Innovation Lab
• iCentera Rolls Out “Portals for Mortals”
• Kana Launches On-Demand Service App
• Kintera Announces LiquidScore for All Kintera Sphere CRM Users
• Amdocs Launches Industry’s First Software Suite Designed to Help Service Providers Achieve and Profit from Convergence
• SMEs to spend $2.44 billion hosted/SaaS CRM and ERP/SCM
• New SaaS Firms Take On Big Guys With Creativity
• Altitude Software launches Altitude uCI 7.5
  
• Autonomy Introduces Meaning Analytics Warehouse
• ShoreTel Announces Integration of its Productivity-Enhancing IP Telephony Applications with Salesforce.com
• Digisoft Announces Upgrades for Call Center Products
• MyFax Improves Fax Management, Reporting and Security Options
• How Smartphone Platforms Compare
• Will the iPhone Affect Business Phones?
• SeaMonkey Group Updates Browser Suite
  
• NewsGator puts hosted business RSS service online
• Serendipity Technologies Makes Available First Secure RSS Reader
  

Here is an article by David Cichelli, Senior VP of The Alexander Group, that appears in Sales & Marketing Management, Sales Operations Celebrated:

If you are like most sales executives, it's easy for you to name your best salespeople. Great salespeople drive great sales results, but a great sales department is more than just having a few big hitters. Great sales organizations are built on well-tuned and aligned sales management systems. Whether you have a small or large sales force, you need superior sales operations support to be successful.

Sales operations are a set of functional activities that support the sales organization. In small companies, these functions are often shared among individuals. Larger sales forces need a dedicated department to provide professional and continuous sales operations support. For mega sales entities, sales operations becomes a major resource, often with its own vice president directing the efforts of sales operations specialists.

Sales operations functions fall into six groupings:

Measurement and reporting: Keeping score is a fundamental sales operations task. Sales managers needs sales reports, budgets and sales projections. More advanced programs can create sales dashboards to provide continuous tracking of results, which need to be shown to every level of field management. Web-based reporting simplifies this task.

Talent assets: Hiring and keeping the best people requires well-defined systems to recruit, train and develop top sales talent. More complex sales forces need career path management and succession planning.

Accountability management: Assigning sales ownership and rewarding results ensures accountability of efforts. Accountability management includes systems for quota allocation and management, sales crediting, territory/account assignment and changes, and sales compensation.

Communication: Creating successful customer messages requires engaged partnership with product management. Business development efforts such as sales campaigns and trade shows help create leads for sellers.

Provisioning: Using technology to its fullest potential provides the sales force with at a finger's touch access to sales force automation, customer relationship management, mobile communications, customer service solutions, expense management and issue reporting.

Strategy planning and deployment: Ensuring sales force alignment between customer needs and product divisions' ambitions requires serious investments. Multi-dimensional buyer segment analysis creates opportunities to re-examine sales channels, organization structure, job design, headcount allocation and annual forecasting.

To congratulate a great sales department, acknowledge and reward the great sellers, but celebrate the behind-the-scene sales operations solutions that make it all possible.

Here's an interesting post from the Marketing MO weblog, Business Brands: Same Impact as Consumer Brands?

How important is branding to a B2B company?  A German radiologist, Dr. Christine Born, has presented research that shows that business brands can cause the same type of brain activity as consumer brands.

Kevin Helliker’s article about the study, “This is Your Brain on a Strong Brand: MRIs Show Even Insurers Can Excite”  ran in The Wall Street Journal on November 28.

The study was the first ever to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to research the impact of brand recognition on the brain. While it’s a small and yet-unpublished study, it raises a few intriguing points:

• Big brands produced brainwaves in parts of the brain associated with positive emotions.  
• Smaller brands produced brainwaves in parts of the brain associated with negative emotions.
• None of the brands in the study activated the decision-making part of the brain.
• Brains responded just as powerfully to strong insurance brands as to strong automotive brands.

Consumer research has linked the importance of brand recognition in consumer markets for years, but few have believed that business brands have the same impact.  Can General Re, Xerox or Salesforce.com really evoke the same emotions to a business buyer as Starbucks, Porsche or Nordstrom does for consumers?

While many business leaders still debate whether B2B brands matter, this study will certainly provide more evidence that they do.  And I'm sure we’ll see more research in this area.

After all, in the B2B world, the quality of personal relationships is often the key to closing a deal.  And what is a great relationship based on?  Trust … execution … followthrough … personal dynamics.  All traits that define the very essence of a brand.

A brand is a promise that your company makes to your customers.  It’s about an experience your customers have when they interact with your organization and your products and services.  And in B2B, you can convey your promise and experience through your sales collateral, your website, your trade show presence, the way you answer your phones, the way your products and services deliver, and how your sales team builds relationships with prospects and customers.

If you’re ready to improve your company’s branding, you don’t necessarily need to run out and launch a massive national branding campaign.  Instead, look at your own brand personality and how well you convey it in everything your company publishes and does on a daily basis.  Here are a few articles from our blog that can help:

• How to build a business brand with personality
• How to build a brand at every touchpoint
• How to “be the brand”

And here’s a terrific white paper about B2B branding at Interbrand’s Brand Channel website.  It’s written by Kevin Randall of Moveo Integrated Branding, and it covers a lot of ground on why B2B brands are important with meaningful real-world examples.

In her Customers are Always weblog, Maria Palma's Do You Have a Chief Customer Officer? post notes that:

Sears Holdings Corp just hired their first-ever “Chief Customer Officer”.  John Walden joins the company after spending the last eight years at Best Buy.  He will oversee marketing, services, and the company’s direct-commerce business.

I think we’ll begin to see more companies creating this position of chief customer officer within the hierarchy of executive roles.  I came across ten questions by Jeanne Bliss, author of Chief Customer Officer:  Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, that will help you decide whether or not you are ready to appoint someone to this position.

1. Is there someone in your company who clarifies what is to be accomplished with customers? Be sure that the CCO or executive leadership does not do this in a vacuum and then try to "throw the brick over the wall" to the leaders for a rubber stamp. That brick will be tossed back so fast you won't know what hit you.

2. Is there is a clear process to align efforts toward a common goal?

3. Does your company have a roadmap for the customer work? Bring together a team with at least one experienced person from every operational area.

4. Are there clear metrics for measuring progress and ones in which everyone agrees? Too often goals are kept lofty and high, and people aren't made accountable for their completion. Reward individuals only when a group has accomplished an entire task.

5. Are there clear roles and responsibilities regarding the handoffs between silos?

6. Do people really participate and care about the customer work? Create a formalized team who dedicates 25 to 50% of its time to customer work. To make participation stick, however, requires the commitment of the senior leadership to whom these people report. Form an alliance with the vice presidents of each operating area and get them to agree on what will be done. Let the marching orders to your virtual team come from their direct supervisors. Have the supervisors make it clear they sanction and praise their new role in the customer work. Finally, make participation in the customer work a privilege.

7. Are appropriate resources being allocated to make a real difference to customers? Have an organized annual planning approach that dedicates time to both customer objectives and investment.

8. Is the work considered doable? "Boiling the ocean" is a term people at Microsoft often use to describe seemingly undoable tasks. Our frenzied enthusiasm gets away from us, and we talk about the end "nirvana" state rather than the steps to get there. Don't abandon strategy. Rather, dole it out in bite-size pieces. Know the end game.

9. Is there a process for the marketing of achievements both internally and to customers? Tell your people what's going on with customers. No report equals no action. Likewise, tell your customers what you've done for them in a letter signed by the president, for example.

10. Is recognition and reward wired to motivate customer work? Know what your customers value most, and tie achievement and recognition to the performance of those specific things. You'll get people acting differently because they'll know and understand the targets and what they need to do to reach them.

Now the question comes back to you: Is anyone doing this stuff or even thinking about it? Does anyone have the time to? Don't just ask these questions, stew over them. Debate them with top leadership and the board. And know that, whatever you decide, driving customer profitability isn't going to be a walk in the park. The reality: this is at minimum a five-year journey. Pace yourself.

An article by Shamus McGillicuddy, ERP Implementations May Fall Short for Hasty SMBs, notes that small businesses that take the plunge into enterprise resource planning (ERP) tend to go live with their ERP projects faster than midsized and large businesses. Here are several excerpts:

Speed is often a virtue, but businesses that focus on it as a measure of success tend to overlook the true potential ERP has for transforming their operations.

"There is more focus in smaller companies on just getting things in there, which is probably why they're so fast," said Cindy Jutras, vice president of manufacturing and ERP research at Boston-based Aberdeen Group Inc. "At the same time they seem to stop short of taking it to the next level. They get in there, and then they kind of stop."

According to an Aberdeen survey of 1,200 manufacturers about ERP adoption, 86% of small companies achieved their first "go live" milestone within their first year with ERP, whereas midsized companies reached "go live" in less than a year just 64% of the time and large companies just 47%.

Jutras said 24% of the 450 small businesses (companies with less than $50 million in revenue) surveyed measured success by the amount of time it took them to reach their first "go live" milestone.

Jutras said small companies look for a quick launch because of limited resources. There's only so much time they can devote IT and business staff to getting an ERP system up and running.

Speed is a virtue, but not when it's a measure of success, Jutras said. There are better performance metrics to measure for, she said. Without them, small businesses won't be getting the most out of their investment.

"I think they get up and running faster than larger companies but they don't necessarily use all the functionality that they have available to them," Jutras said. "There is still a huge reliance on things like spreadsheets. Management by spreadsheets is alive and well not only in small manufacturers but predominantly in small companies."

Successful implementations are more likely among small businesses that actually set out metrics for measuring return on investment (ROI) and cost savings. Jutras said her survey revealed that less than one-third of small businesses actually compute ROI for ERP.

Eric Klein, research analyst at Boston-based AMR Research Inc., said small companies often are nervous about getting bogged down in the complexity of an ERP implementation. That nervousness partly explains the slow growth in ERP adoption among small businesses.

Klein said vendor revenue from ERP adoption among small customers -- those with revenue less than $50 million -- grew by just 3.3% last year. It's the midmarket firms, with revenue between $50 and $250 million, that are seeing the robust adoption rate at 17%. And ERP revenue grew by 13% among companies with $250 million to $1 billion.

"There is a mindset of ERP being too complex," Klein said. "I think a lot of businesses are afraid of how long it will take to make it work."

Here are the most interesting CRM-related news stories from the past week:

• Salesforce.com launches Winter 07 release
• Salesforce.com encourages imitators
• Salesforce.com Celebrates First Anniversary of the AppExchange
• Salesforce.com Announces Earthforce
• Cognos Joins AppExchange But Isn't Going SaaS
• Finetix Investor Relationship Management Solution Now Available via Salesforce.com's AppExchange
• Bluewolf Launches On-Demand Media CRM Solution for Salesforce.com's AppExchange
• Tango Consulting Announces Launch of Retail Intellect CRM on Salesforce.com's AppExchange
• Right90 Demand Forecaster Solution Now Available on Salesforce.com's AppExchange
• Conga Mail Merge On Demand Now Available on salesforce.com's AppExchange
• Microsoft Readies Major Update to Dynamics CRM
• SugarCRM Expands Partner Program in Japan
• FrontRange Announces GoldMine Plus Account 4.0 CRM Enhancement
• NetSuite Names New Executive VP of Services
• New GM for Onyx
• Web-Based SalesNexus Contact Management Software Offers Powerful New Mobile Features
• Genius.com Secures $10 Million in Series B Financing
• INeo Knows Lead Management Kung Fu 
  
• SPSS Advances Data Mining Software with New Release
• Endeca Named One to Watch in 2007
• Trillium Software unleashes first data quality dashboard
• 123Together.com Provides Free Microsoft Outlook 2007
• Oracle beefs up self-service
• Oracle Releases Enhanced Siebel eBilling and Billing Analytics Applications
• Oracle Rolls Out 51 Security Patches
• Kintera Expands Comprehensive Social CRM Platform to Include SaaS Fund Accounting
• Convio acquires GetActive Software
• Abacus Launches BuyerPoint(SM) for Store-Based Retailers
• Equitec buy extends Acxiom’s retail abilities
• Microsoft Wants You to Check Out New POS Software
• SAP launches new All-in-One version
• Lawson Software Introduces Lawson QuickStep Fashion
• Microsoft to Test New Keyword Analytics Tool
• Is Apple's iPhone a Technical Coup?
• A closer look at three new Skype phones
• Dell Launches Ruggedized Notebook PC
  

An article in The Wise Marketer, (free registration required), Top ten factors that make or break consumer trust, discusses research that was recently conducted in the UK by Corporate Culture. Here is a summary of the research findings:

Gender bias
Women in particular believe trust is an essential quality in the companies they buy from (56% of women cited this as important, compared to 47% of men).

Most trusted & untrusted
The most and least trusted business sectors are:

Rank     Most Trusted                                                    Least Trusted
1             Entertainment and leisure                                     Tobacco
2             Food companies; Supermarkets; Technology       Fast food
3             Pharmaceutical                                                    Petrochemicals
4             Cosmetic/toiletries                                               Gas/electricity; Construction

Source: Corporate Culture Customer Trust Index

Top ten trust/distrust factors
The index also identified the top ten factors that make customers trust or distrust a company:

Rank           Most Trusted                                         Least Trusted
1                  Keeps promises (76%)                             Doesn't correct mistakes (80%)
2                  Customer service (70%)                           Fails to protect privacy (77%)
3                  Consistently high quality (64%)                 Doesn't do what it says (74%)
4                  Deals effectively with complaints (64%)    Inaccurate billing (70%)
5                  Value for money (64%)                            Too many sales calls (65%)
6                  Honest/admit mistakes (59%)                   Inconsistent quality (63%)
7                  Product safety (59%)                               Ingredients may damage health (60%)
8                  Meets individual needs (52%)                   Doesn't inform price/product changes (50%)
9                  Listens to customers (51%)                      Outsources call centers/operations (55%)
10                Clear pricing (49%)                                  Unclear pricing (52%)

Source: Corporate Culture Customer Trust Index

The research also noted that trust drives sales. If a company loses the trust of consumers, three out of four (76%) say they will simply stop buying from the company. Conversely, if a company earns consumer trust, 42% will buy more products, and over half (54%) will recommend the product to others.

Four keys to building trust
Corporate Culture has identified four steps to help companies to earn consumer trust:

1. Ensure your product or service meets the expectations of your customers;
2. Remember that you are only as good as your last personal contact with the customer;
3. Show consumers the difference your product makes in their life;
4. Be seen to act responsibly in everything you do.

According to John Drummond, chief executive for Corporate Culture, "There has been a massive increase in the amount of marketing money companies are spending to win customer trust. This can only make sense if it is based on a genuine understanding of why customers trust companies and what the most powerful form of communication is for them. One of the key points of this research is that the future of marketing is about belief in business. It suggests that what people believe is a more powerful influence on buying behaviour than price, quality or reputation. What people believe is also more powerful than the facts about your company or your product."