Customer Engagement

By Marty Carroll

This is the first Foviance newsletter of 2010; a year we believe will be remembered for the true emergence of the mobile internet as a mature, ubiquitous, mainstream technology.

I offer my reasons for this optimism with a round up of the key factors which will be driving mobile internet adoption and development in the year ahead. Paul suggests that the signs all around us indicate that mobile customer engagement is already gathering impressive momentum. Xavier looks at the shape the evolving mobile internet will take and offers some insight into for businesses planning their own strategy in the light of instantly popular app technology. And finally Clare looks at the impact all this will have for more traditional content publishers and how they are evolving to embrace rapid mobile innovation and adoption.

You might also enjoy reading and commenting on some of our consultants’ thoughts and opinions on our regularly updated blog page.

I’d also be very happy to hear from you directly with any feedback.

Marty

In this issue:

• 2010: The year of mobile
• The ‘Determined Creep’ of mobile customer engagement
• Mobile websites versus mobile applications
• An all-consuming interest in mobile content

Blink and you might miss it – The Tipping Point for mobile customer engagement might be upon us quicker than we thought.If, like me you are reading Malcolm Gladwell’s brilliant new book ‘What the Dog Saw’ you will have come across the term ‘creeping determinism’, a concept attributed to psychologist Baruch Fischhoff who first came up with it thirty five years ago. The principle states that as time goes by we start to convince ourselves that what has now happened was in fact always going to happen. Furthermore, through this process of enlightened hindsight, we convince ourselves so entirely, that any doubt we may have had upfront diminishes and is lost from our memory. Read more…

In 2009, Foviance’s CEO Paul Blunden contributed to the 4th annual Customer Engagement Report along with industry experts like Jim Sterne. It is possibly the best Customer Engagement report so far produced in association with cScape and is the most influential and comprehensive report available. Read more…

If there is one word that sums up the year we have just been through it would be ‘unpredictable’. I have heard it said again and again in every area of our customers’ and our own business.

A year ago, when I put together my round up of the year for the 2008 year end newsletter, the recession was really gaining momentum on the back of the credit crunch and we already faced a very difficult outlook. In 2009 with the recession in full-swing, business was in constant flux – one day there would be no projects underway the next there would be a half a dozen urgent propositions. Like every agency and consultancy in our industry, we had to become masters at expecting the unexpected and delivering great experiences for our clients. Read more…

By Marty Carroll

Customer experience is not a fad. Yes the terminology is bandied about much more than before but before customer experience we had customer satisfaction and customer engagement. Using the words ‘customer experience’ implies that an organisation is looking at how consumers experience the brand in a more strategic way. Indeed we’ve been gratified to see a large number of organisations really grasp the concept and value of customer experience. Some initiatives have delivered excellent returns on investment and have proven very effective, but we now believe such initiatives are no longer enough in themselves, and here’s why.Modern customers and consumers have an unprecedented ability to communicate with each other. As a result of the comments, interactions and opinions of customers published across every digital channel, there now exists a vast knowledge pool of insights into every business, and almost complete transparency in every marketplace.

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Social media adoption promises plenty of positive benefits to modern businesses. It is simple, quick, cost-effective, and can help organisations to reach out and collaborate with wide audiences in a variety of interactive forms that simply can’t be achieved through direct communications. Forrester Research analysts predict that by 2010, 82% of all companies will be using social media marketing. Unfortunately there are now too many companies trying their hand at social media without a well thought through strategy. They are blindly jumping on the social media bandwagon without any clear understanding of how to implement it. Companies need to take a step back and plan sound social media strategies as they would any other projects they choose to undertake.
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Many multi-channel businesses are now convinced that making an investment in tailoring their customer experience strategy is time, effort and money well spent. They’ve seen for themselves that improving the experience of customers has a demonstrable impact on engagement, as well as commercial activity if that is part of the goal. So what should be the next step for these businesses? Should they simply maintain the measurement, analysis and improvement of experience for the broadest possible range of customers? Or is there potential for some of those businesses in focusing their efforts on their most strategically important customers?It would be naïve to believe that some companies aren’t already identifying segments of their customer base that represent the largest proportion of commercial profit, in some form or another. It’s a relatively simple process to isolate and track customers by certain criteria – their postcodes perhaps, their membership of a loyalty scheme, their past purchase record, or a particular behaviour they display during their interactions. These triggers could be used to deliver an enhanced, or at least different, customer experience. Perhaps they should be guided towards particular offers or incentives that have been selected to appeal to their profile? Or maybe their interactions should be monitored so that they can be contacted by virtual or human agents if their purchasing journey is aborted for any reason? These are intriguing possibilities with plenty of potential.
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To 3D Secure or not to, that is often the question.  We did some work for one of our clients and 3D Secure was part of the study. In summary:. Read more…