Reading Time: 3 minutesThe dynamics of customer service are shifting. Not so long enough, the ultimate goal was to deliver customers “high tech, high touch” – a highly digital experience that was nevertheless comforting and personalised. Increasingly that framework is becoming a paradox I believe as brands sort new economic models for dealing with cross-channel customers. The current […]
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Perspectives
The business of cloning
Reading Time: 2 minutesThere has been a carbon copy approach to business for some time, and business schools are at least partly to blame. Management is now a taught vocation. OK – we all have to learn, but the problem is that everyone’s taught the same things and taught to work in the same ways. Same ideas. Same […]
Reading the minds of millions
Reading Time: 4 minutesSocial markets, just like their financial counterparts, are driven by sentiment and the interactions of many. What’s being said about you now – right now – on Twitter, Facebook et al represents your likeability in real time. Some days you’ll trend up – meaning people generally feel good about you. At other times, the mass […]
The fall of the wall between customers and culture
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe context for cultures is changing. In four vital ways.
Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle …
Reading Time: 2 minutesMarkets today operate in a vicious circle of increasing assumption. The more companies deliver, the more customers expect. Business as expected is all the things you must do to confirm your place in the crowd. All that effort doesn’t inspire loyalty, it doesn’t even change the relationship, because it doesn’t change the way you’re seen. […]
Loyal – to what point?
Reading Time: 4 minutesAs I write this, I’m sitting about six rows back from where I normally sit on this flight. The space around me feels like it has shrunk – again. They haven’t offered me the nice headphones. I didn’t get a newspaper like I used to. I’m not grizzling. After all, they’re such little things aren’t […]
Brands at the speed of life
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhat a pleasure to discover the writings of Simon Graj. I very much enjoyed this post on how changes in the speed at which consumers see and recognise brands affect the nature and manner of the relationship. Graj suggests brands are on a collision course with consumer habits because while brand creators and managers feel […]
Posting a profit
Reading Time: 2 minutesLikeability has both a top-line and a bottom-line. Social monitoring tends to focus on the top-line: mentions; retweets; likes; comments. Top-line likeability is important because it monitors partiality towards your brand – the prevailing emotion at that moment. But it can be easily swayed, by offers, for example, or news. Bottom-line likeability is the measure […]
Excitement vs risk: The very different emotions driving purchase of B2B and B2C brands
Reading Time: 3 minutesPhilip Kotler once described brands as helping people to make decisions. In a world of frenzied competition and bewildering choice, they are of course the fastest, simplest and most effective way to link a name to a perception of value. What can easily be overlooked however is that B2B and B2C brands are not just […]
Strategy: why the 2% is so critical
Reading Time: 2 minutesAs part of making his case for why execution rules over strategy, and particularly why spending too much time on strategic thinking is a waste of time , Tom Peters features a quote from Al McDonald that unequivocally states the views of the former Managing Director of McKinsey & Co on strategic planning. “Never forget […]
Customer service is worthless
Reading Time: < 1 minuteWe shouldn’t even think of “customer service” as being about something that is valuable to customers. The reasons are simple. We live in a service-focused age, and the people who buy from your brand know they’re customers. So “customer service” does not describe anything customers don’t expect and it certainly doesn’t envelope anything of particular […]
Out of the blue moments
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAs marketers, we’re taught to look for patterns. Research, we are told, will give us the insights we need to predict how whole swathes of our society will react. Brands are looking to predict how buyers will act or react so that they know what to expect. Consumers themselves of course operate under no such […]