Outside Innovation

Corporate Blogging: It’s Time to Get with the Program

Why have corporate blogs become so popular of late? There are two reasons. First, it’s a fast follower phenomenon. Your executives don’t want to be embarrassed because their peers are doing it and they’re not. Second, blogging is a good move from a brand and PR perspective. Today’s customers want your brand to be authentic. They want you to acknowledge the warts that they know are there. They want a real face and a voice to a faceless corporation. They want to talk back. Not just in the online support groups, but in dialog with powerful execs.

The corporate blogging “movement” – by which we mean the compulsion for every company to have one or more blogs – is also part of another bigger societal change. Our professional and personal lives have blurred. While we might want to resurrect that barrier, it’s too late now. Most of us have opened up at least parts of our personal lives online. And, low and behold, our customers like to know that we’re real people.

This hit home to me when I found many of my business clients using Twitter. What are they tweeting about? It’s a mix of business and personal stuff. Usually people are careful to only talk about things that might conceivably interest their friends, colleagues, and other followers.

But tweeting is below the radar (for most corporate execs). Blogging is definitely on the radar screen. When you first start blogging, you’ll be concerned. Your competitors and your disgruntled customers are watching what you say. They are ready to pounce. It can be intimidating. But loyal and thoughtful customers and industry-watchers and subject matter experts also want to have their say. They will trust and respect you more if you are open with them and willing to respond to their comments. Don’t hesitate to add personal stuff. Remember that blogs are windows into your soul, not just your company. The more soulful the company, the more it’s respected.

Jim Keys, CEO of Blockbuster at Forrester Consumer Conference

Background was at 7 Eleven before he went to Blockbuster. I see Blockbuster, I see 5000 stores domestically and 8000 stores worldwide as a springboard to great opportunity.

What do 7 Eleven and Blockbuster have in common?
They both started in Dallas, Texas
Both created worldwide brands
Both expanded to big retail chains (7 Eleven now has 45,000 stores). In 1985, everyone thought it was irrelevant. We had defined ourselves for the blue collar male.. Beef Jerky, beer, etc.

I went to Japan to our licensee, and discovered that they were selling Sushi. This terrified me. We had trouble getting hot dogs right.. But they realized that convenient fresh food was what people wanted, and with techology (past sales + weather) you could predict how much fresh food you'd need.

7-11 was chapter 11 in 1991. We pulled the brand out. We built into it an obsession with change. Every week, there are 50 new items that are available to the store to introduce to the customer.

Blockbuster made the convenience of VHS tapes to the consumer. But by 2007, when I arrived, the company was on a trajectory that was very dangerous. What we did was to inject change into the system. To recognize that the only constant in retail is different.

New Experience at JetBlue's New Terminal 5 at JFK

I just travelled through JFK on JetBlue three days after their new terminal opened! What a treat! I arrived bleary-eyed after a red eye from San Diego. Getting off the plane at 5:30 am, I was expecting that there might be ONE coffee shop open. Much to my delight, all of the restaurants were open AND all the shops!

In fact, the restaurants were optimized for self-service--something that business travellers often need to resort to--There was a great breakfast buffet, chilled areas where you could get juice, yogurt, etc. , Self-service coffee as well as wait in line coffee for the folks who prefer the double latte with a shot of something. All payment was handled at fast-moving check out lines.

Among the wonderful retail stores, was Muji (I wrote about this retailer in Outside Innovation. So I was able to squeeze in a bit of a shopping spree before I headed off to find a place to plug in my laptop.

What REALLY delighted me were the laptop friendly counters that are strategically located throughout the terminal. These include plugs, space to plug in, free Wifi (courtesy of JetBlue), AND the ability to order food and beverages right from your seat.

NBC Consumer Content -- Where is it Going??

Cameron Death (pronounced deeth), VP Digital Content, NBC Universal at Forrester conference.

How consumer attitudes towards TV have changed.. primetime networks crossed with cable networks in 2002/2003.. in terms of marketshare... So major networks have increased their cable share. We're an industry that has had to shift to make changes in terms of consumer viewing habits.

DVRs is one of the most fundamental shifts.. 34% of people who watch The Office do so in a time-shifted mode. So we're doing a lot of stuff to keep viewers and consumers engaged throughout the time-shifted experience.

Showed same Broadband and Internet chart.. Video online is now a reality. The pipe is wide open. If you look at the growth of YouTube.. 28 billion minutes spent last year 90% growth; 300 million users.

Since adoption rates (new technology coming up to 50% adoption) is happening faster and faster, so we as content providers have to up our rates of delivering content on all platforms. Multiple screens going at the same time, e.g. watching tv, surfing online, IM'ing with friends, etc.

Take Aways from Forrester's Consumer Forum 2008: James McQuivey

Highlights from Forrester's James McQuivey's speech on "Satisfying Consumers for the Next Decade." Began by showing the adoption curve for electrification between 1900 and 1930. What's the difference between early adopter and laggards? Convenience. (Showed lots of technographics examples of adoption rates of different technologies, etc.)

People share a set of universal needs. Satisfy those needs with convenience and you win. It's even more important that we do this in a recession. Adoption curves may flatten out during a recession, but they explode at the end of it.

What are the universal human needs? (Not Maslow's hierarchy-- messy)

People share 4 universal needs:

1. Connection
2. Uniqueness
3. Comfort
4. Variety

A Second Look at the Customer Segment Advocate Role

Since I wrote this week’s classic report in 2004, I have been thinking about a better term to use to describe the critical job position of a strong, senior customer experience leader. It occurs to me that Customer Segment Owner or Customer Brand Manager might be a good title (although "manager" may not be high enough in the corporate hierarchy to have the necessary clout).

Here's some interesting food for thought from Graham Hill, a CRM consultant who frequently comments on my blog posts:

CRM consultant who frequently comments on my blog posts:

“Like you, I see quasi-segment managers in place in financial service companies, particularly credit card companies. But they are responsible for creating as many collaboration problems as the segment management problems they resolve. And the brand managers in automotive are a hybrid between product and segment managers, but let's not fool ourselves that the customer carries anything like as much weight as the model-lines. And the collaboration problems are just as endemic in automotive as in financial services.

Segment managers are an end-state of a logical organisational evolution from, for example, a product-centricity, towards a customer centricity. The evolution goes through a series of stages, each one of which is necessary if the next stage is to work.

The stages start with pure product-centricity. This typically evolves through the development of internal networks of colleagues who need to work together to deliver the value proposition; to cross-functional teams that formalise the collaboration of the internal networks; to a customer segment coordinator who takes on formal responsibility for collaboration across different teams; to a matrix organisation with nascent segment teams reporting to both product and customer management; and finally to bona fide segment managers responsible for all aspects of segment experience delivery. The vertical silos of product-centricity have given way to the more connected, more collaborative customer-centric organisation.

The problem with many of the so-called segment managers in financial services and the brand managers in automotive is that companies have usually just jumped from a product-centric siloed structure to a customer-centric siloed structure, without working through the necessary intermediary stages first. It is the intermediary stages that drive the transformation to customer centricity, not just organisational restructuring.

To be honest, I am not sure that a formal customer segment manager approach is relevant anymore. They too quickly ossify into rigid, inflexible roles that neither serve customers nor the business. In the information-rich business environment we find ourselves in today, dynamic sensing of changes in the market and responding to them rapidly is the key to success.

I still see a role for a customer segment manager, but mostly as the conductor of how the whole organisation orchestrates the end-to-end experience. Not as the designer of how specific touchpoints will be delivered. Supporting the segment manager are a number of customer analysts, delivery staff, delivery partners, even customers themselves, who are responsible for taking the experience framework and mass-customising/personalising it so that it delivers the right value, to the right customer, at the right touchpoint.

Customer segment managers sound like a great idea, but the devil is in the organisational evolution details.”

~ Graham Hill, CRM Consultant

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Customer (and Partner) Segment Advocates
Patty’s Dream Team: Roles and Responsibilities You’ll Need for Your Customer-Centric Organization
By Patricia B. Seybold, October 23, 2008

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Poll: Aligning Your Organization around Customers' Issues

What have your experiences been when you have tried to align your organization around specific customers' issues? Please take our quick poll and send us your comments!

Opportunities to Improve Customer Experience While Cutting Costs

We are all watching the downward spiral of the global economy with trepidation and making contingency plans. Our budgeted projects may be slashed. Our headcount may be downsized. Our travel will be severely curtailed. Our customers’ spending on our products and services will no doubt decrease. But what’s the silver lining in a severe downturn? We have to get innovative and resourceful. Here are some tips to consider:

Shift Policies to Trust Your Customers and Partners and Eliminate 30% of Business Friction

As we work with organizations and their customers to streamline customers' scenarios and to improve the customer experience, we find that some of the most customer-unfriendly practices are the result of deep-seated customer distrust on the part of the organization. Well-meaning corporate stewards have put policies and processes in place to prevent fraudulent behaviors in response to the actions of a minority of bad acting customers. Instead of using intelligent technology to identify the few real offenders, companies put elaborate blanket safeguards in place. These safeguards create friction and a lot of unnecessary work for your employees, your partners, and your customers. Our recent Customer Scenarios in a wide-variety of industries show dramatic opportunities to save money and increase revenues by shifting to a customer-trust model.

Create Trust-Based Policies; Isolate Offenders. Why not operate on the assumption that your customers and business partners are honest and will not knowingly steal from you or defraud you? Remove the costly and onerous hoops you currently make everyone jump through in order to use, share, restore, and enjoy the products and services you provide. Here are just a few examples of customer-unfriendly policies that annoy customers while increasing operational costs:

• Placing a multi-day hold on funds deposited at an ATM machine, forcing customers to come into the branches to make deposits so they can access their money (a common banking practice in several countries).

• Requiring that a serial number match a service contract number before you'll provide technical support or renew a support contract.