Don Peppers and Martha Rogers Ph.D. invented one-to-one business strategy over 15 years ago. Today, they are recognized gurus, acclaimed authors and globally sought-after speakers.
I've been following some of the debates in the airline industry about the new ways to engender loyalty: social media as the new loyalty vehicle versus costly frequent flyer program (FFP) miles. While social media has already become an essential ingredient to airline's customer programs, the FFP will continue to be a foundation for one-to-one customer engagement.
The New York Times' website has a number of interesting blog discussions going on at any one time, but over the weekend Dick Cavett and David Brooks posted a back-and-forth discussion on the erosion of trust in our society - speaking about what Brooks suggested might be a lack of "social trust" that could account for people's lack of support for any positive solution to our country's current problems (like overspending).
Cavett referred to Martha's and my book Rules to Break & Laws to Follow, pointing out that Chapter 7 was all about trust, and doing a very serviceable job of linking this problem to the political issues involved. He even surmised that our advice to Toyota, at this time of stress, would be "to do more to re-woo disaffected customers than just customary apologies and reform -- to do something 'extra' and original. Something like five years of free maintenance, a paid vacation, school tuition? Maybe fun-designed safety helmets?"
Continue reading "Trust - A Political Role as Well as a Business Role" »
There is a major shift in the value proposition for telecom operators today because voice revenue, which has been the core revenue source of telecom operators, is on the decline. There are many signs in the market that shows voice is on its way to becoming "just another application" on data network like messaging or gaming. For example, 8 percent of international voice traffic is now carried by Skype.
The main obstacle that stands before the widespread adoption of voice as "just another application" is the cost of mobile access network which is rapidly changing with the evolving mobile access and backhaul networks. In five to six years, mobile broadband will be readily available everywhere and that is going to change the game totally for the telcos. Simply put, operators will have to find different ways of making money.
There is a lot of discussion lately about "return on customer experience," an idea we think should be almost directly aligned with our Return on Customer concept. Buzz-Talk's blog has an excellent summary of many of the more recent findings in this field. Unfortunately, the "proof points" that get the most attention in Buzz-Talk's and other discussions of customer experience management have to do with comparisons of the overall economic and financial performances of CXP leaders and CXP laggards.
Continue reading "Comparing Customer Experience and Return on Customer" »
There is an interesting and well-informed article discussing Martha Rogers' and my Return on Customer metric in the most recent issue of the UK's Marketing Week magazine. David Reed, who covers the "data strategy" beat for the magazine, writes that while the data side of marketing has benefited greatly from a renewed attention to the financial metrics of success, particularly ROI, this might be a short-term blessing for the discipline. What he means is that ROI metrics typically look at campaign or product profitability figures, but have little to say about the long-term value created (or often destroyed) by marketing efforts. On the other hand, he says, the ROC metric does capture long-term value, because it incorporates changes in customer lifetime value (LTV). [Note, please that Martha and I have trademarked the terms "Return on Customer" and "ROC." We grant permission to people to apply these terms to their own analytics efforts when we deem the terms are used correctly.]
Continue reading "Has the Time Come for "Return on Customer" At Last?" »
As I write this, I am recovering in my hotel room from an early-morning run several times up and down each of the four different staircases in this hotel, in a foreign city (not going to tell you what city, but it's way far away from the US - virtually opposite side of the world). Something I noticed about this modern hotel is that the number of steps between floors varies with each stairwell! While the floors are all level and have no ups or downs in the hallways, the stairwells themselves each have the same number of steps between each of the principal hotel room floors but that number is 21 steps for one of the stairwells, and 22, 23, or 24 steps for the other three (go figure). I don't know the explanation for this, and truth is I'm not even very interested in it, but when you have to run up and down stairwells in a hotel because it's too early for the fitness center to be open, then you have to occupy your mind somehow.
Continue reading "The Perils of Treating Different Customers Differently" »
As organizations set new priorities for 2010, they must understand how continuing market changes will impact future business in order to keep their momentum going. Enterprises must find ways to balance achieving profitability by containing costs in the short term with delivering on customer needs and extracting the greatest value from a customer in the long term. This will help them weather the crisis without destroying their fundamental value, which is the value of their customer base.
Anyone have any ideas for this newspaper publisher? He runs a state-wide newspaper for a religious denomination, and every two weeks they mail about 16,000 32-page newspapers out to subscribers. Paid advertising makes up about 10% to 15% of these pages. They have a modest e-zine as well, and they have all their news on their Web site, too. Every state has a similar church-denomination newspaper, and he has teamed up with the editors in two other states, with whom he shares news tips and stories. There is no central newspaper organization for the whole country, however. A typical story in his newspaper might be one that covers a controversial resignation or organizational dispute occurring in one of the state or national religious organizations, or maybe a report on missionary work, and so forth. But this newspaper editor's question to me was, what more should he be doing, given the dramatic new technologies available?
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